Tag: Open Access

VHL 25 Years: Achievements, Challenges and Opportunities

VHL's 25 years anniversary logo

In 1998, the Latin American and Caribbean Health Information Network approved the Declaration of San José “Towards the Virtual Health Library”. 25 Years of the VHL development have gone by as a health information management framework for LA&C. There were many achievements and challenges that turned into opportunities thanks to coordinated network working and the availability of common methodologies and systems. We experience the advancement of digital collections, cloud storage, open science, open data, institutional repositories, open software, etc. Now, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is at our doorstep and, more than a challenge or threat, it is an opportunity to renew the VHL model and celebrate its 25th Anniversary. Read More →

SciELO joins OA Switchboard with over 300 open access journals in the SciELO Brazil collection

Photograph of a work of art composed of two globe-shaped structures made and lifted by steel cables. In the foreground, three people are kneeling facing where one of the cables is attached to the ground to the right of one of the globes. In the background, next to the other globe, two people are standing talking.

SciELO Brazil is now live and connected to OA Switchboard to support widespread visibility and access to SciELO journals. Read More →

A milestone for the open access book: 50,000 open access books in DOAB and counting

DOAB logo

A milestone for open access – the Directory of Open Access Books now includes over 50,000 open access books published in 90 languages by 560 academic book publishers. The directory, representing scholarship from authors and publishers around the globe, is openly available to the scholarly community and the general public at large. Read More →

New international recommendations for open access publishing – #BOAI20

On the 20th anniversary of the BOAI, when the concept of “open access” was coined, the Open Access Initiative announces new international recommendations that aim to dismantle inequalities and achieve greater equity and inclusiveness in creating, contributing to, accessing, and benefiting from knowledge. Read More →

SciELO Books 10 Years: Interview with the Vice-Rector of Culture and Open Science at the University of Coimbra, Delfim Ferreira Leão

As part of the ten years celebratory event, which is proposed as a forum for the recognition of advances, challenges, and debates on the future of the digital book in the light of open access and open science, we interviewed speakers and authorities from institutions linked to the development of SciELO. Delfim Leão, Vice-Rector of Culture and Open Science at the University of Coimbra, is the fourth interviewed.
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SciELO Books 10 Years: Interview with OAPEN Foundation director and DOAB Foundation co-director, Niels Stern

As part of the ten years celebration event, intended as a forum to recognize the advances and challenges, and to debate on the future of digital books in the light of open access and open science, we’ve interviewed speakers and officials from institutions directly linked to the development of SciELO. We continue this series of interviews with Niels Stern, director of the OAPEN Foundation and co-director of the DOAB Foundation. Read More →

SciELO Books 10 Years: Interview with the Directors of the Founding Publishers

As part of the ten years celebratory event, intended as a forum to recognize the advances and challenges, and to debate on the future of digital books in the light of open access and open science, we’ve interviewed speakers and officials from institutions directly linked to the development of SciELO. We started the series with the directors of Fiocruz, UFBA and Fundação Editora Unesp Publishers. Read More →

Society has a strong demand for open access science

Analysis of more than 1.6 million comments left on downloads by the US National Academies shows that half are for academic use and the other half reveal adults across the country who seek highest quality information to improve the way they work, satisfy their curiosity, and learn. Knowing the importance of such information, policymakers should be encouraged to protect it. Read More →

The latest blows from predatory (or pirate) journals

Albertus Seba, Locupletissimi rerum naturalium via the Wellcome Collection

Piracy and, specifically, scams by predatory publishers are growing around the world, becoming a growing concern in academic publishing, drawing the attention of the most serious publishers. This problem is not so serious in Latin American scientific publications. Post available only in Spanish. Read More →

The Impossibility of Open Science without Otherness and Epistemic Plurality [Originally published as the editorial in Revista de Administração Contemporânea vol. 26 no. 2]

[The] objective in this text is to present a counterpoint to the positivist bias that has dominated the debate on open science and eventually highlight some problems and provide a more plural and inclusive perspective on the subject. Read More →

Guest Post — Building an Easier Path Toward Open Access Book Publishing: Support for Authors [Originally published in the Scholarly Kitchen in March/2021]

Christina Emery presents an updated overview of the open access books landscape and examines the challenges of open access book publishing according to feedback from authors and researchers, plus what support is available to them. Read More →

How much does it cost to publish an article? Academic publishing services and their market values

How much does it cost to publish an open access article? This post reports a study published in F1000Research, in which the authors collected detailed data on each stage of scientific publishing, from acquisition, preparation, up to dissemination of content, considering six scenarios with different editorial service providers. The average cost varies between US$460 and US$520, depending on the number of articles published per year. Read More →

How will the Rights Retention Strategy affect scholarly publishing? [Originally published in the LSE Impact blog in September/2021]

The extent that authors retain control over their published research is dependent on what rights they sign over to their publisher prior to publication. As part of efforts to promote the immediate open publication of research a number of research funders have endorsed the Rights Retention Strategy (RRS), by which authors can declare their author-accepted manuscript to be open access. In this post Stephen Eglen, explores the rights retention strategy and discusses the potential impact it might have on scholarly communication more broadly. Read More →

The Holy Grail does not exist: OPERAS-P and OASPA’s workshops for publishers on innovative business models for books [Originally published in the OAPEN blog in July/2020]

In May 2021, OPERAS and OASPA hosted a series of three European workshops on business models for open access books targeted specifically at small and medium-sized academic book publishers.. As part of the OPERAS-P project work package 6 (Innovation) OPERAS was looking into innovative, non-BPC business models. The feedback gathered in the course of these three workshops informed a report The Future of scholarly communications, published at the end of June 2021.
“The discussion showed that while the Holy Grail of OA book publishing does not exist, what does exist however, is a strong will to experiment with various approaches, spearheaded by small and medium sized academic book publishers.” Read More →

Accelerating Plan S: open access agreements with smaller publishers

Open Access (OA) agreements between consortia, libraries and smaller independent publishers are increasingly being used around the world, reflected by the growing number of published OA articles. A recent report from the Association of Learned & Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), of which SciELO is a member, shows the progress being made in other regions of the world. On the other hand, Latin America, a pioneer in OA journals, does not suffer from these limitations, but for small publishers in many countries there is still a long way to go. Read More →