There are many new initiatives in open scholarship. Here, we’ve provided a list of some of the most important ones.
Plan S
Plan S is an initiative for Open Access publishing that was launched in September 2018. The plan is supported by cOAlition S, an international consortium of research funders. Plan S requires that, from 2021, scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants must be published in compliant Open Access journals or platforms.
Invest in Open Infrastructure: A Concept version 0.2
We imagine a world in which communities of researchers, scholars, and knowledge workers across the globe are fully enabled to share, discover, and work together. It is clear that the needs of today’s diverse scholarly communities are not being met by the existing largely uncoordinated scholarly infrastructure, which is dominated by vendor products that take ownership of the scholarly process and data. We intend to create a new open infrastructure system that will enable us to work in a more integrated, collaborative and strategic way. It will support global connections and consistency where it is appropriate, and local and contextual requirements where that is needed.
For more information: Invest In Open
Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services (SCOSS)
Support for open access to published research and data continues to grow. Also growing are high-level efforts — from the likes of the EU and funding bodies like the Wellcome Trust — to make the open sharing of research findings conditional to funding.
While such policy directives are essential to advancing open access, so too is an infrastructure that can support a publishing landscape steadily migrating to a state where “Open” is the default.
Many key services that now comprise the existing infrastructure, which has evolved over time, are non-commercial and far from financially secure. Some could even be described as “at risk”.
Being that many of these services are now fundamental to implementing Open Access and Open Science policies and supporting these workflows, securing them has become a growing concern of the broader OA and OS community.
The formation of the Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services (SCOSS) represents a community-led effort to help maintain, and ultimately secure, vital infrastructure.
This recognition of the crucial nature of such infrastructure, and of securing it, is what led to the formation of the Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services (SCOSS).
Groundwork for the coalition was laid by the Knowledge Exchange, which presented many of the foundational ideas for it in its 2016 report Putting Down Roots, Securing the Future of Open Access Policies.
In the new knowledge economy, skills, knowledge and new ideas are a country’s most valuable resource. Keeping ahead of this economic transformation requires a new approach to knowledge discovery and dissemination that combines strong policies with core infrastructure and cultural change. A new model, F.A.I.R., is being adopted worldwide to make research output data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable.
A policy statement on F.A.I.R. access to Australia’s research outputs was released in February, 2017. It affirms the need to make Australia’s publicly funded research outputs F.A.I.R., recognising this will require different approaches across different types of research output, a long-term national commitment, and consideration of the global change agenda.
With F.A.I.R. access, Australian research will be more visible, the broader community will have better access to well-founded knowledge, Australian researchers will be able to more easily collaborate locally and globally, including with industry, and the Australian research enterprise will be more accountable to the community it serves
SCOAP3 is the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics) , which has converted key High-Energy Physics journals to Open Access at no cost for authors. SCOAP3 centrally pays publishers which in turn reduce subscription fees to all their customers. These funds are pooled in a SCOAP3 common fund: each country participates in a way commensurate to its scientific output.
Seven Australian Universities are currently members of SCOAP3 : ANU, Griffith University, Macquarie University, University of Melbourne, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), UNSW and University of Western Australia. Up to date info on SCOAP3 is here.
Knowledge Unlatched is committed to changing the current system for publishing scholarly books They are working together with libraries to create a sustainable route to Open Access for scholarly books. Many libraries from Australian and New Zealand participated in the pilot.
The OLH publishing platform supports academic journals from across the humanities disciplines, as well as hosting its own multidisciplinary journal. The organisation is looking for more partner – see the Open Library of the Humanities – prospectus for Australia and New Zealand
For information on how you can participate in any of these initiatives, or if there is another you think we should add please contact us
And… if you are interested in how scholarly communication is innovating and evolving dramatically, take a look at 101 (actually now closer to 500!) Innovations in Scholarly Publishing
Page updated December 04, 2019
Australasian Open Access Strategy Group 