For all its faults, 2020 appears to have locked in momentum for the open access movement. But it is time to ask whether providing free access to published research is enough – and whether equitable access to not just reading but also making knowledge should be the global goal. An explanation of open access and […] … learn more→

Last week, Norway signed a landmark open access agreement with Elsevier, the world’s largest scientific publisher. It came barely a month after the country cancelled its subscription contract: a step that several other countries and organisations had already taken. In early 2017, a consortium of about 700 German universities and research organisations cut ties with […] … learn more→

The University of California recently made international headlines when it canceled its subscription with scientific journal publisher Elsevier. The twittersphere lit up. And Elsevier’s parent company, RELX, saw its stock drop 7 percent in response to the announcement. A library canceling a subscription seems like a simple, everyday business decision, so what’s the big deal? It was not just the clash-of-the-titans […] … learn more→

The move towards open access publishing in scientific research is certainly a global one. However, Latin America or Iberoamérica, a larger community that includes Spanish- and Portuguese-language countries in both Europe and the Americas, is using the OA publishing model to a far greater extent than any other region in the world. Iberoamérican scientists especially […] … learn more→

The prospectus SpringerNature released on April 25 in preparation of its intended stock market listing provides a unique view into what the publisher thinks are the strengths of its business model and where it sees opportunities to exploit them, including its strategy on open access publishing. Whether the ultimate withdrawal of the IPO reflected investors’ doubt […] … learn more→

As they have gained momentum over the past decade, the open access (OA) movement and its cousin, the Creative Commons licensing platform, have together done a tremendous amount of good in the world of scholarship and education, by making high-quality, peer-reviewed publications widely available both for reading and for reuse.  But they have also raised some […] … learn more→