Open access: Could defeat be snatched from the jaws of victory?

Tonydlp's bookmarks 2020-12-09

Summary:

When news broke early in 2019 that the University of California had walked away from licensing negotiations with the world’s largest scholarly publisher (Elsevier), a wave of triumphalism spread through the OA Twittersphere. The talks had collapsed because of Elsevier’s failure to offer UC what it demanded: a new-style Big Deal in which the university got access to all of Elsevier’s paywalled content plus OA publishing rights for all UC authors – what UC refers to as a “Read and Publish” agreement. In addition, UC wanted Elsevier to provide this at a reduced cost. 1 Given its size and influence, UC’s decision was hailed as “a shot heard around the academic world”.2 The news had added piquancy coming as it did in the wake of a radical new European OA initiative called Plan S. Proposed in 2018 by a group of European funders calling themselves cOAlition S, the aim of Plan S is to make all publicly funded research open access by 2021. 3 Buoyed up by these two developments open access advocates concluded that – 17 years after the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) – the goal of universal (or near-universal) open access is finally within reach. Or as the Berkeley librarian who led the UC negotiations put it, “a tipping point” has been reached. 4 But could defeat be snatched from the jaws of success? 

Link:

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1132&context=scholcom

Updated:

12/09/2020, 03:41

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » peter.suber's bookmarks
Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » Tonydlp's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.plan_s oa.publishers oa.journals oa.elsevier oa.u.california oa.cancellations oa.offsets oa.risks

Date tagged:

12/09/2020, 11:00

Date published:

11/18/2019, 03:41