Introduction For decades, the dominant academic publishing ecosystem has been one where research, often funded by public money, is locked behind expensive subscription paywalls. This has fueled a crisis of access, disproportionately affecting institutions and scholars in the Global South and the public at large. Enter open access, a movement aiming to liberate research from … Read more
Introduction Plan S was launched in 2018 by a coalition of research funding organizations known as cOAlition S. The original mandate was to accelerate the transition to full and immediate open access for scholarly publications. It’s a bold, disruptive, and arguably long-overdue attempt to change how publicly funded research is disseminated fundamentally. For years, the … Read more
Introduction The question of whether open access, the movement advocating for free and immediate access to scholarly research, will eventually “die” can be one a provocative debate in academic publishing. It’s a bit like asking if the internet will die: the underlying technology and fundamental human desire for knowledge sharing aren’t going anywhere, but the … Read more
Introduction For centuries, the academic publishing world operated on a relatively “stable” model: scholars wrote research papers for free, editors and peer reviewers volunteered their time, and then commercial publishers or learned societies sold the final product back to university libraries at eye-watering subscription prices. It’s an arrangement that has often felt more like a … Read more
Introduction The promise of open access was a thrilling, almost utopian vision for scholarly publishing: immediate, free access to research for everyone, everywhere. It was supposed to tear down the paywalls that had turned publicly funded knowledge into a commodity accessible only to well-endowed institutions. Among the various open access models that emerged, Gold Open … Read more