An important current challenge for research information providers is ensuring the automated discovery of Open Access (OA) content in hybrid journals. Discovery services are unable to systematically identify the free full-text availability of OA articles. A systematic and standardized manner is proposed to identify OA at the article level.

Article available under subscription, the corresponding presentation given at the NASIG Annual Conference is available at this address.

Thieme, an international medical and science publisher, in collaboration with the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) of Munich’s School of Management and Department of Economics is about to launch a new open-access journal, based on an innovative business model: “Pay What You Want”. Following acceptance of a paper after peer review, authors will be given the opportunity to pay an APC fee that they feel is most suitable.

OCLC has signed agreements with leading publishers in Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine and other subject areas to add metadata for books, e-books, journals, databases and other materials that will make their content discoverable through WorldCat Discovery Services. Among these partners: DOAJ, OpenEditions, BMJ Publishing Group.

New tools dedicated to the assessment of scholarly publications have arised lately. They have gained widespread interest in many sectors, but according to Euan Adie (founder of Altmetric.com) and Mike Taylor (senior project manager for infometrics in Elsevier Research Metrics), there is still much work to be done in digging deeper into these metrics.

The Max Planck Digital Library has put forward a study on the transformation of the subscription-driven system for scientific publications to an Open Access model. For the first time, quantitative parameters are presented showing that the liberation of scholarly literature is possible at no extra costs.

The American Copyright Office has released its “Report on Orphan Works and Mass Digitization”, including recommendations for legislation on orphan works and the creation of an extended collective licensing (ECL) regime for mass digitization. This post focuses on the recommendations on orphan works.

This briefing paper, “Promoting Open Knowledge and Open Science – Report on the current state of Repositories”, presents an overview of the international repository landscape as of May 2015. The paper was produced by COAR on behalf of the Aligning Repository Networks Committee, a group of senior representatives from repository networks around the world.

More than 1.2 million people have signed up to use ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID), a registry or ‘science passport’ that allocates users a unique 16-digit identifier and webpage that they can use to record their publications and grants. ORCID announced that users would soon be able to record on their profile the many different types of peer review they do.

Publishers and libraries are increasingly experimenting with Open Access (OA) books, according to a new survey by industry advisors, Publishers Communication Group (PCG). Books published under the so-called “author-pays,” Gold Open Access model with no paywall for readers are expected to slowly grow in importance, with funding derived from a variety of sources including library budgets, the study reported.

Results from a pilot study correlating Open access article processing charges (APCs) and the journal impact factor. According to this study, some open access journals using the APC business model may be exploiting impact factor status as a means to raise prices.