The road to research open access going nowhere is paved with good intentions. In contrast, the peak libraries body take a pragmatic path.
Over a couple of years, the Council of Australian University Librarians negotiated deals with publishers that made their journals free to read in Australia, paid for by each university’s total subscription fee.
CAUL is moving again, setting out 19 principles for OA agreements with publishers, including:
- a “clear commitment” to “the rapid transition to open access publishing”
- transparent pricing models, “reflecting fair value and relative to the costs of the services provided”
- “user types must include all staff, students and walk-in users”
- OA agreements apply to all a publishers journals
- no article processing charges (pay to publish) funded by authors or there departments
- authors retaining rights
Participants include the big five, including alpha publisher, Elsevier, (umpteen stories in Campus Morning Mail, culminating HERE). Bob Gerrity from Monash U explains it all HERE.
Perfect it is not. The European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities warned in 2022 such agreements, “effectively consolidate and enhance their already dominant position in the field of scholarly publishing, solidifying their role as the gatekeepers of publicly funded research.”
True, but until the market creates new models that destroy the publishers business model, CAUL has at least got them to the table.
