“DeepGreen—A Data Hub for the Distribution of Scholarly Articles From Publishers to Open Access Repositories in Germany”


  • DeepGreen is an automated delivery service for open access articles. Originally conceived to take advantage of the so-called open access component—a secondary publication right in Alliance and National licences in Germany to promote green open access—it aims to streamline open access processes by automating the distribution of full-text articles and metadata from publishers to repositories.
  • The service, developed by a consortium and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) in its initial phase, has successfully established itself as a national service, facilitating open access content distribution and contributing to Germany’s open access infrastructure.
  • As of December 2024, DeepGreen distributes articles from 14 publishers to 84 institutional repositories and 6 subject-specific repositories.
  • This article describes the role of the DeepGreen service in Germany, its collaboration with publishers and the potential of automated processes for storing articles in open access repositories, which, as publicly owned institutional infrastructures, ensure sustainable access and provide secure, redundant storage.

https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.70000

| Artificial Intelligence |
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“Questioning the Predator of the Predatory Journals: How Fair Are Global Publishing Standards?”


What is concerning now is far from just publishing in predatory journals. It is the new emerging trend where academics and non-academics misuse the term ‘predatory’ by applying it to any lesser-known publishers or those publishers mentioned in blog lists of predatory journals. This oversimplification can blur the boundary between what is actually predatory and what is not. It prevents from having any possible scholarly discussions. It can delegitimise any legitimate emerging journal and even discourage researchers who lack funding from attaining any form of publication. Which means that this misuse of the term, even unintentionally, has the potential to marginalise academic communities. Considering this trend, it is vital to educate ourselves on the distinction between predatory journals and what is regarded as a new, lesser-known emerging journal.

https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1662

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“Tracking Transformative Agreements through Open Metadata: Method and Validation Using Dutch Research Council NWO Funded Papers”


Transformative agreements have become an important strategy in the transition to open access, with almost 1,200 such agreements registered by 2025. Despite their prevalence, these agreements suffer from important transparency limitations, most notably article-level metadata indicating which articles are covered by these agreements. Typically, this data is available to libraries but not openly shared, making it difficult to study the impact of these agreements. In this paper, we present a novel, open, replicable method for analyzing transformative agreements using open metadata, specifically the Journal Checker tool provided by cOAlition S and OpenAlex. To demonstrate its potential, we apply our approach to a subset of publications funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and its health research counterpart ZonMw. In addition, the results of this open method are compared with the actual publisher data reported to the Dutch university library consortium UKB. This validation shows that this open method accurately identified 89% of the publications covered by transformative agreements, while the 11% false positives shed an interesting light on the limitations of this method. In the absence of hard, openly available article-level data on transformative agreements, we provide researchers and institutions with a powerful tool to critically track and evaluate the impact of these agreements.

https://doi.org/10.31222/osf.io/tz6be_v1

| Artificial Intelligence |
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“News & Views Special Edition: How Much Scholarly Publishing Is Affected by Us Presidential Executive Orders?”


If federal agencies are being instructed to withhold or withdraw submissions, then, to quantify what this might mean to publishers, we have estimated the volume of output from a few key federal agencies? . . . .

  • The data span the previous 5 years.
  • The US accounted for around 15% of global output.
  • The CDC accounted for a tiny share: 0.1% of global output and 0.6% of US output.
  • The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), of which the CDC is a part, accounted for just under 6% of global output, but just over 40% of US output.
  • The NIH produces around 95% of DHHS output.

https://tinyurl.com/yr44kt7k

| Artificial Intelligence |
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“Hurdles to Open Access Publishing Faced by Authors: A Scoping Literature Review from 2004 to 2023”


Over the past two decades, numerous widespread efforts and individual contributions to shift scientific publishing to open access (OA) faced a number of obstacles. Due to the complexity of knowledge production dimension and knowledge dissemination, the challenges encountered by researchers, publishers, and readers differ. While examples of such barriers exist across multiple parties, no attempt has been made to synthesize these for active researchers. Thus, this scoping review explores the barriers documented in the scientific literature that researchers encounter in their pursuit of publishing open access. After screening 1,280 relevant sources, 113 papers were included in the review. A total of 82 distinct barriers were identified and grouped into four subclusters: Practical Barriers, Lack of Competency, Sentiment, and Policy & Governance. The largest cluster in terms of barriers assigned was Sentiment, accounting for 51.2% (n=42) of all barriers identified, suggesting that perceived barriers are the strongest determinants of publishing OA, while the most frequently occurring barrier was “high article processing charges”, reported in 88 papers. Furthermore, burdens faced specifically due to the location of the researcher were identified. Understanding and acknowledging these barriers is essential for their effective elimination or mitigation.

https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/vzefj_v1

| Artificial Intelligence |
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How Can We Achieve Sustainable Funding for Open Access Books?”


Is the biggest blocker to open access (OA) for books actually the economics of it all? Book processing charges (BPCs) do not scale but they remain a significant method of paying to produce OA monographs for many researchers and libraries. However, in the last few years, we have seen several new initiatives emerge that seek to solve the problem posed by funding via BPCs alone. There is a proliferation of collective funding models for OA books, including Opening the Future, Open Book Collective, MIT Press’s D2O, JSTOR’s Path to Open and others. They all work differently, but they all offer alternatives to BPCs. In this article we explore the theme of sustainable funding for OA monographs, presenting a range of new models, and suggest that their normalization is well overdue. We also present the work of the library at Lancaster University on their new strategy supporting open access. While this article takes a somewhat UK-centric path, what is happening in the UK may be replicated in other countries and contexts. With demand increasing for monographs to be open this is a timely topic. The authors welcome discussion from publishers, libraries and other stakeholders.

https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.673

| Artificial Intelligence |
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“Wiley Launches Pilot Pricing Framework to Support Equitable OA Publishing for Researchers in Latin America”


The pilot program, which began on January 21, 2025, supports authors across 33 countries in Latin America, including in Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean, to publish research in Wiley’s portfolio of nearly 600 gold open access journals. Discounts on Article Publication Charges (APCs) are applied in direct relationship to the Purchasing Power Index (PPI) value of each participating country, informed by data from the World Bank International Comparison Program. The anticipated timeline for the pilot is 12 months, with a mid-term review to inform future actions.

https://tinyurl.com/3t8kkyfv

| Artificial Intelligence |
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“Open But Hidden: Open Access Gaps in the National Science Foundation Public Access Repository”


Introduction: In 2022, the U.S. government released new guidelines for making publicly funded research open and available. For the National Science Foundation (NSF), these policies reinforce requirements in place since 2016 for supported research to be submitted to the Public Access Repository (PAR).

Methods: To evaluate the public access compliance of research articles submitted to the NSF-PAR, this study searched for NSF-PAR records published between 2017 and 2021 from two research intensive institutions. Records were reviewed to determine whether the PAR held a deposited copy, as required by the 2016 policies, or provided a link out to publisher-held version(s).

Results: A total of 841 unique records were identified, all with publicly accessible versions. Yet only 42% had a deposited PDF version available in the repository as required by the NSF 2016 Public Access Policy. The remaining 58% directed instead to publisher-held versions. In total, only 55% of record links labeled “Full Text Available” directed users to a publicly accessible version with a single click.

Discussion: Records within PAR do not clearly direct users to the publicly accessible full text. In almost half of records, the most prominently displayed link directed users to a paywall version, even when a publicly available version existed. Records accessible only through the CHORUS (Clearing House for the Open Research of the United States) initiative were further obscured by requiring specialized navigation of publisher-owned sites.

Conclusion: Despite having a repository mandate since 2016, NSF compliance rates remain low. Additional support and/or oversight is needed to address the additional requirements introduced under the 2022 memo.

https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.17767

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“Staffing of Library Publishing Programs in the United States and Canada: A Data-Driven Analysis”


Introduction: Using the Library Publishing Coalition’s (LPC) Research Dataset, this paper focuses on the staffing of library publishing programs at colleges, universities, and consortia in the United States and Canada from 2014 to 2022.

Methods: In order to transform the data into a consistent format and write it into a single table as a commaseparated values (CSV) file, we created a program written in C# and executed on Windows 10. We narrowed the data set to focus on just library publishing programs from the United States and Canada, as well as to those that responded to the survey in early and later years. We also analyzed the data by enrollment and compared the staffing of library publishing programs to the staffing of academic libraries in general using the annual Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Library Trends and Statistics Annual Survey data.

Results: The average library publishing program relies largely on professional staff, has shown the most growth in paraprofessional staff, and has lost staff overall since 2019 while still showing growth overall since data collection began. Discussion: Compared with staffing of ACRL libraries in general, library publishing programs lost staff members at about a four-times higher rate from 2014 to 2021.

Conclusion: From 2014 to 2022, the number of library publishing staff did not grow at the same rate as the number of staff in libraries did as a whole. Also, although there are certainly general conclusions or trends, there are also opportunities for additional quantitative and qualitative research to be done in this area.

https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.17755

| Artificial Intelligence |
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“Librarians at the Center of Peer Review Training: Increasing Collaboration among Scholarly Communication Stakeholders”


  • Librarians can organise peer review training, such as the six-part peer review series ‘Peer Review in Scholarly Journals: History, People, and Models’ delivered at UIUC, and build networks with key stakeholders to improve them.
  • Knowledge of peer review processes is still lacking for academic authors at all career levels.
  • Peer review training initiatives should be tailored to the information needs of researchers.
  • By partnering with other scholarly communication stakeholders, librarians are uniquely equipped to effectively deliver programs and services which can increase awareness of and interest in scholarly communication.

https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1657

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“Moving Open Repositories out of the Blind Spot of Initiatives to Correct the Scholarly Record”


Open repositories were created to enhance access and visibility of scholarly publications, driven by open science ideals emphasising transparency and accessibility. However, they lack mechanisms to update the status of corrected or retracted publications, posing a threat to the integrity of the scholarly record. To explore the scope of the problem, a manually verified corpus was examined: we extracted all the entries in the Crossref × Retraction Watch database for which the publication date of the corrected or retracted document ranged from 2013 to 2023. This corresponded to 24,430 entries with a DOI, which we use to query Unpaywall and identify their possible indexing in HAL, an open repository (second largest institutional repository worldwide). In most cases (91%), HAL does not mention corrections. While the study needs broader scope, it highlights the necessity of improving the role of open repositories in correction processes with better curation practices. We discuss how harvesting operations and the interoperability of platforms can maintain the integrity of the entire scholarly record. Not only will the open repositories avoid damaging its reliability through ambiguous reporting, but on the contrary, they will also strengthen it.

https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1655

| Artificial Intelligence |
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OASPA: “Fully OA Journals Output Shrank in 2023, But Hybrid OA Made Up the Lost Ground”


The OASPA dataset shows that members collectively published almost 1.2m articles in 2023. But 2023 output grew by only 4% over 2022, which is one quarter of the previous year’s growth, and one tenth of the long-term average. . . .

Reported numbers of articles in fully OA journals [published by OASPA members] shrank for the first time in 2023. OA articles in hybrid journals continue to grow strongly, making up for the lost ground in fully OA and so total output grew overall. In 2023, the volume of articles in fully OA journals shrank by two thirds of a percent, compared with a growth of 14% the previous year. Hybrid OA articles grew by 22% in the same period, down slightly from 24% the previous year. Output grew by 4% overall, compared with 16% the previous year. . . .

In fully OA journals [published by OASPA members], the proportion of CC BY (just over 80% of output) and CC BY-NC-ND (around 10%) has been steady since 2018. CC BY fell back slightly in 2023, and that of CC BY-NC-ND grew slightly – but both by just 1 percentage point, so it’s too soon to tell if this represents a change to long-term trends. The proportion of CC BY-NC-ND licenses grew slightly: from 10% in 2021 and 2022 to 12% in 2023.

Licenses with some restrictions are significantly more prevalent in hybrid journals, although this trend is showing signs of reversing. Historically, more restrictive licenses were displacing the proportion of CC BY, which had fallen from around 75% of hybrid OA in 2014 to around 51% in 2019. However, in 2020 CC BY licenses recovered ground and now account for around 67% of Hybrid licenses (up from 62% the year before). CC BY appears to be displacing the other two Creative Commons licenses in hybrid OA. In 2023, the proportion of CC BY-NC-ND was down slightly to 23%, and CC BY-NC up slightly to 10%. CC BY now accounts for over two thirds of hybrid OA output, up from half in 2019.

https://tinyurl.com/55u5b8ue

| Artificial Intelligence |
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Paywall: “Improved Open Access Support through a Popular Open Access Fund”


This paper describes results of a 2023 survey of authors who applied to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) Open Article Fund between July 2018 and June 2022. The author sought the respondents’ opinions and experiences in regard to the fund’s impact, value, and award criteria . . . also asking authors about their opinions of funder mandates and their participation in open science practices.

https://tinyurl.com/mvh7hr8d

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Paywall: “OA Journals in Subscription-Based Full-Text Databases in 2024: An Analysis of EBSCO’s Academic Search Complete”


Two sets of samples from all the 3,481 peer-reviewed non-embargoed full-text journals in ASC were examined. One set is 10% random samples, and the other set is journals from major publishers excluding gold OA publishers. Both sets have similar results that over 70% are OA journals.

https://tinyurl.com/4t8u25yy

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"Math and Aftermath: Impacts of Unbundling a Large Journal Package on Researcher Perceptions and Behavior"


This study seeks to understand the effects on researchers’ work at a large research university in the wake of the university library’s shift from a near-comprehensive journals package with a single, large publisher to a selective list of individual journal subscriptions. Analyzing historical journal usage, along with turnaway and interlibrary loan trends from the years following the changes, the authors made use of structured interviews with local researchers to bring context and meaning to the quantitative data. The interviews highlighted researchers’ strategies for gaining access to literature in their fields to which the library does not subscribe, and revealed assumptions about timeliness of access, as well as relationships between library subscriptions and local researchers’ publishing behavior.

https://doi.org/10.5860/lrts.69n1.8170

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"Assessing Opt-In Rates for Transformative Agreements"


With increasing requirements for open access (OA) by funders, academic libraries have begun piloting so-called “transformative agreements” with publishers. One type of agreement gives researchers at an institution read access to all content while also allowing them to publish articles OA in hybrid (and sometimes gold) OA journals without payment of an Article Processing Charge (APC). Such models often give corresponding authors from an institution the ability to opt in or out of making their article OA for hybrid journals. This article provides an assessment of two pilot transformative agreements at one large research institution that participated as a member of a consortium. It provides insight into opt-in rates overall for each publisher as well as breakdowns by disciplinary affiliation and rank of the researchers, as well as the combined impact of the agreement and other mechanisms on the overall OA availability of research at these publishers with researchers at the institution regardless of corresponding author status. The discussion includes a review of lessons learned and the overall benefits and challenges of working with such agreements.

https://doi.org/10.5860/lrts.69n1.8184

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"New Bill Aims to Block Foreign Pirate Sites in the U.S."


Pirate site blocking orders are a step closer to becoming reality in the United States after Rep. Zoe Lofgren introduced the Foreign Anti-Digital Piracy Act earlier today. Should it become law, FAPDA would allow rightsholders to obtain site blocking orders targeted at verified pirate sites, presumably run by foreign operators.

https://tinyurl.com/zcyxms22

Bill

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"A Decade of Open Access Policy at the Gates Foundation Based on Experimentation, Evidence and Evolution"


This article provides an in-depth look at the Gates Foundation’s open access (OA) policy journey as 2025 marks a decade of OA policy for the foundation. There have been two iterations of the policy – the original version that was launched in 2015 with a focus on gold OA, and which was then adapted in 2021 to reflect the Plan S principles, including limitations for publisher payments based on journal type and repository deposits. Now, in response to the ever-evolving needs of the scholarly ecosystem, the foundation is updating its policy again to strive for broader impact and to support practices that drive greater inclusion of scientists around the world, particularly those from low- and middle-income countries. This article will provide a deep dive into the decisions and data used to define a more equitable approach to dissemination of the research funded by the foundation.

https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.690

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"Clarivate Identifies Top 50 Universities Powering Global Innovation"


Drawing on a host of Clarivate data – from the Web of Science to Derwent World Patent Index, and Derwent Patents Citation Index – the report highlights how knowledge flows between academia and industry across countries and regions, underscoring the global nature of innovation. The study identifies the top 50 universities named on the academic papers that received the highest number of citations from patents granted to the companies and organizations on the Top 100 Global Innovators 2024 list.

Key findings include:

The top 50 universities powering global innovation are distributed across eleven countries or regions – from Canada to South Korea

  • U.S. universities such as Harvard, Stanford, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) dominate. Harvard leads with its high volume of research outputs, but MIT’s smaller, yet highly impactful publications highlight its exceptional ability to translate research into groundbreaking innovations
  • Strong regional citation patterns emerge, with companies in Eastern Asia and Europe heavily relying on local academic research, while U.S. research is the most globally cited
  • The United Kingdom demonstrates particularly diverse international influence, with its research often serving as a bridge across regions.
  • Five organizations – Roche, Johnson & Johnson, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Samsung Electronics, and Siemens – account for over half (51%) of citations from top innovations to academic research

https://tinyurl.com/yc4nea6k

| Artificial Intelligence |
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"Preparing Institutions for the Transition: Consortial Cost-Sharing Models in Transformative Agreements in Austria"


Over the past ten years, the member institutions of the Austrian Academic Library Consortium (KEMÖ) have gradually opened up their researchers’ publications to the world, one publisher at a time. By pulling their resources together, KEMÖ members have successfully converted their subscription-only agreements, for the most part, to read and publish deals in a cost-neutral manner, which include an article allocation comfortably covering the consortium’s publishing needs. However, the new business models disrupted the pre-transition status quo: the existing distribution of costs, based predominantly on institutional subscription spending, differed from the emerging institutional-level output and potential associated costs. While moving to fully article-based pricing was felt premature, the consortium decided to explore ways to make the internal cost distribution more equitable. This article presents the various cost-sharing models reviewed and the process leading to the models ultimately introduced for several transformative agreements.

https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.671

| Artificial Intelligence |
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"Every AI Copyright Lawsuit in the US, Visualized"


Over the past two years, dozens of other copyright lawsuits against AI companies have been filed at a rapid clip. . . . This wide variety of rights holders are alleging that AI companies have used their work to train what are often highly lucrative and powerful AI models in a manner that is tantamount to theft. . . . Nearly every major generative AI company has been pulled into this legal fight, including OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, Google, Anthropic, and Nvidia.

We’ve created visualizations to help you track and contextualize which companies and rights holders are involved, where the cases have been filed, what they’re alleging, and everything else you need to know.

https://tinyurl.com/sv4ja66n

| Artificial Intelligence |
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Paywall: "After the Big Deal: Data-Informed Management of Unbundled Journal Packages in a Consortial Environment"


Facing increasing costs for their Elsevier ScienceDirect bundled subscription, the 60 libraries of the State University of New York (SUNY) System restructured their large package in favor of a smaller curated list of titles and adopted a data informed approach to assess the new package. . . . Based on the experience of other consortia, the authors expected an increase in usage of subscription alternatives such as open access content, interlibrary loan, post-termination access requests, and individual article purchases. Preliminary review showed usage of Elsevier content initially dropped 50% after unbundling and then increased annually at a marginal rate. While consortia staff attempted to use a data-informed approach to evaluate titles for yearly subscription reviews and yearly package adjustments, this approach was not sustainable post-unbundling.

https://doi.org/10.1080/0361526X.2024.2435429

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"Paris Declaration Calls for Data-Driven Forensics to Spearhead the Fight Against Fake Science"


Supporters of research integrity have signed a new declaration calling for data-driven forensics – known as Forensic Scientometrics (FoSci) – to lead the charge in detecting, exposing and even preventing fake science. . . .

The event involved researchers, experts, and professionals from around the world who are committed to upholding research integrity, many well-known sleuths among them. Attendees signed the declaration over the following weekend. . . .

The FoSci Paris Declaration has made the following key commitments:

  • Advocate for transformation
  • Open a dialogue with policymakers to design de-incentivizing strategies to tackle the mass production of problematic papers
  • Advocate for reform of institutions involved in scientific research based on the group’s findings
  • Develop expertise and share knowledge
  • Facilitate training for researchers and professionals exploring these questions
  • Share and provide research and data in the FoSci community
  • Establish a regular cycle of professional meetings
  • Improve the tools and methods of forensic scientometrics
  • Improve the group’s ability to communicate its findings
  • Inform editorial boards, publishers, research institutions, governments and all relevant involved parties about the group’s work
  • Participate in building software and tools to enable the reproducibility of their forensics findings
  • Establish points of contact between FoSci members and concerned organizations

https://tinyurl.com/mrywc3ch

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