Open Access: Why do scholarly communication platforms matter and what is the true cost of gold OA? – Open Knowledge International Blog

During the past 2,5 years Open Knowledge has been a partner in PASTEUR4OA, a project focused on aligning open access policies for European Union research. As part of the work, a series of advocacy resources was produced that can be used by stakeholders to promote the development and reinforcement of such open access policies. The final two briefing papers, written by Open Knowledge, have been published this week and deal with two pressing issues around open access today:  the financial opacity of open access publishing and its potential harmful effects for the research community, and the expansion of open and free scholarly communication platforms in the academic world – explaining the new dependencies that may arise from those platforms and why this matters for the open access movement.