From June 2020 to February 2021, a consortium of 10 organisations led by OPERAS (Open scholarly communication in the European research area for social sciences and humanities)  undertook a large-scale study on open access journals across the world that are free for readers and authors, usually referred to as “OA diamond journals”. This study was commissioned by cOAlition S in order to gain a better understanding of the OA diamond landscape. In the part 1 named Findings, it is observed that ROAD, the ISSN Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources, being more inclusive than DOAJ, “is potentially listing many journals that are diamond and that may have sufficient quality but that have not yet applied for inclusion in DOAJ […] ROAD indirectly helps assess the total number of diamond journals statistically by matching the full database with databases that do have information on fee-charging, and by manually checking a sample of journals.”

Find out more about the study and its recommendations.

On January 28, 2021, COAR launched the Notify: Repository and Services Interoperability Project. The aim is to develop a standard and interoperable approach that will link reviews and endorsements from different services with the research outputs housed in the distributed network of preprint servers, archives, and repositories.

COAR has already developed a proposed model for (bi-directionally) linking resources held in repositories with related resources held in networked services using a distributed, message-oriented approach based on W3C Linked Data Notifications (LDN). The COAR model is described and illustrated in Modelling Overlay Peer Review Processes with Linked Data Notifications.

DOAJ’s mission is to increase the visibility, accessibility, reputation, usage and impact of quality, peer-reviewed, open access scholarly research journals globally, regardless of discipline, geography or language. DOAJ is committed to being 100% independent and maintaining all of its primary services and metadata as free for everyone. See the details of their stategy until the end of 2022.

This contribution examines the distinctive, non-commercial approach to open access (OA) found in Latin America and reflects on how greater diversity in OA infrastructures helps to address inequalities in global knowledge production as well as knowledge access. Kathleen Shearer/COAR and Arianna Becerril-García/Redalyc.org, AmeliCA, argue that bibliodiversity, rather than adoption of standardized models of OA, is central to the development of a more equitable system of knowledge production.

The characteristics of the 123 Latin American journals found in DOAJ that charge to publish (APC) are shown in this study. More than half of these journals charge very low prices and most belong to public universities and scientific societies. Finally, the author recommends that universities develop collaborative models for journals and warns that these APC outbreaks fail to spread across the subcontinent.

(Article in Spanish)

LA Referencia’s partner country, Argentina, has generated national initiatives in the area of Repositories and Open Access, among which stand out the Sistema Nacional de Repositorios Digitales en Ciencia y Tecnología (National System of Digital Repositories in Science and Technology). This interinstitutional initiative aims to form an interoperable network of digital repositories in science and technology, from the establishment of policies, standards and protocols common to all members of the System.

Learn more about the Argentinian portal of Digital repositories.

The past two decades have witnessed accelerated demand for open access (OA) to scholarly publications propelled by the progress in digital technologies. The government of India new policy “one nation one subscription” aims to facilitate larger access to journal articles generated from publicly funded research. However, OA experts argue that this will promote a subscription-based culture rather than providing a sustainable alternative to move away from it. The Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore has been a strong advocate for OA and recently organised a series of discussions to shed light on the roadblocks to OA route especially in the Indian context. India can learn from the early adoption and successful journey of local OA publishing in Latin America.

On 1st January 2021, the government of India released the ambitious draft policy for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (STIP) to the public for comments. The policy aims to bring about changes in the research ecosystem of India by encouraging innovation to make the Indian science and technology ecosystem one that can survive global competition. As part of such an endeavour, the government proposed a ‘One Nation, One Subscription’ plan which would make thousands of journals freely available to Indians.

This White Paper – produced in collaboration with the STM Association – provides an evidence base, supporting practical recommendations towards the equitable and inclusive shift towards open access publishing in countries eligible for Research4Life participation.

This OPERAS workshop took place on 17 November 2020 as part of the 15th Munin Conference on Scholarly Publishing 2020. The discussion showed that overviews over Open Access publishing possibilities, especially for journals, have strongly evolved and are already of good quality in many countries. Yet, this is not true for all European countries and particularly for Open Access publishing of monographs and books. During the discussion it became clear that the community-debate should now focus on building the “house” for Open Access.

Read the full report.