Gates Foundation grantees find themselves once again facing a new Open Access Policy that increases their compliance burden. And, though the compliance burden increases, financial support for open access and other publication-related fees, which functioned to smooth pathways for compliance under the previous 2015 and 2021 policies, is eliminated. This essay explains and compares the 2021 and 2025 policies, argues that the rollout of the new policy led to misunderstandings, and details possible implications for grantees, readers, and publishers.

In October 2023, the cOAlition S group of funders commissioned a study by scidecode science consulting to assess the impact of Plan S. The study investigates various aspects of where this initiative may have had an influence on the global scholarly communications landscape. This webinar organized by OASPA on 9 April 2024 offered an opportunity for the early results of this work to be presented and discussed with the OASPA network. As well as the recording, please find responses to unanswered questions and panelists slides – Ashley Farley (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), Pablo de Castro (scidecode and University of Strathclyde), Wolfgang Benedikt Schmal (scidecode and the Walter Eucken Institut, Freiburg) and Emma Wilson (Royal Society of Chemistry).

DOAJ wishes to learn from their users community their opinion about DOAJ’s journal metadata, their indexation policy, the DOAJ Seal, and more. They have published a survey available in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish. PDF versions of the questions in each language are available for download. All global stakeholders and users of DOAJ, regardless of location, are encouraged to participate in the survey. The survey will close on Friday, 6 May 2024.

As Article Processing Charges (APC) has been a growing concern in academia and policy making, the need for a model where both authors and readers do not pay – the so-called Diamond, or non-APC model – is regularly called for. However, this call is often combined with questions about its sustainability, particularly in financial terms. To answer this concern, this article explores the practical conditions to implement a direct funding mechanism to Diamond open access journals, that is recurrent money provided by funders to support the publication process.

If 2023 was a year of consolidation for OASPA (Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association)– thinking about connections with OASPA members and stakeholders, reviewing areas of focus and streamlining  internal structures and operations – 2024 is planned to be a year of action and intention. Claire Redhead, Executive Director, provides an overview of OASPA’s vision, priorities and activities planned for the coming year.

Plan S is an initiative for Open Access (OA) publishing, which requires that from 2021 scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants must be published in compliant OA journals or platforms. This annual review provides an overview of Plan S activities in 2023, along with the latest advancements in their policies. The review sheds light also on specific actions taken by cOAlition S funders in the realm of scholarly communication.

View the review as a pdf version.

DIAMAS is a HORIZON Europe project that aims to understand and support institutional publishing, paying particular attention to initiatives that do not charge fees to read or publish scholarly outputs, i.e., Diamond Open Access (OA) publications.
The following synopsis presents a summary of the DIAMAS project’s Landscape Report “Institutional Publishing in the ERA; results from the DIAMAS survey” highlighting its main findings.

This paper proposes to establish a global  research infrastructure for Diamond Open Access (OA). This infrastructure will aim at providing resources and services to diamond open access communities worldwide to strengthen their role in scholarly communication. It will be a global infrastructure serving communities worldwide, while operating as a distributed system that aligns diverse communities to achieve shared goals. The proposed infrastructure aims to support and align the common resources for the entire diamond open access ecosystem, as uncovered by the OA Diamond Journals Study and the Action Plan for Diamond Open Access.

This study aims to investigate the attitudes and actions of scientific journal editors in China towards open access. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 Chinese editors from various scientific journals during September and October of 2022. The results indicate that the editors generally possess knowledge of open access and have implemented an appropriate open access model for their respective journals. If the Chinese-language journal editors expressed a lack of motivation to adopt open access, unless a policy is imposed, the English-language journal editors acknowledged that they have no other choice but to adopt open access.

Following the success of the Global Summit on Diamond Open Access, that took place on 23-27 October in Toluca, Mexico, a concluding statement has now been ratified and released outlining the collective way forward for Diamond Open Access.

Co-organised by Science Europe and their partners – Redalyc, UAEMéx, AmeliCA, UNESCO, CLACSO, UÓR, cOAlition S, OPERAS, and the French National Research Agency (ANR), this event gathered a total of 700 attendees to all three main events – the Redalyc Journal Editors International Conference, the AmeliCA Members Meeting, and the 2nd Diamond Open Access Conference.