New initiative to boost Open Access | Max Planck Society

"A growing number of research organizations want to establish an international initiative which aims to convert the majority of today’s scholarly journals from subscription to Open Access (OA) publishing. This is the result of the 12th Berlin Open Access Conference  hosted by the Max Planck Society in December 2015. An Expression of Interest, published today and already adopted by thirty signatories, invites all parties involved in scholarly publishing to collaborate on a swift and efficient transition for the benefit of scholarship and society at large....The scholarly organizations share a common interest in “the large-scale implementation of free online access to, and largely unrestricted use and re-use of scholarly research articles“. According to the Expression of Interest (EoI), the aim is “to transform a majority of today’s scholarly journals from subscription to OA publishing”. This transition will be pursued by “converting resources currently spent on journal subscriptions into funds to support sustainable OA business models”. At the same time, the signatories agree “to continue to support new and improved forms of OA publishing”...."