The Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR), a prominent advocate for repositories on the global stage, stands together with various organizations in applauding the European Union Council's Conclusions on promoting high-quality, transparent, open, trustworthy, and equitable scholarly publishing. These Conclusions underscore the vital role of not-for-profit, open access publishing models in advancing the scholarly ecosystem.
In recent years, there has been a global shift towards open access models for scholarly research outputs. However, this transition has revealed that commercial pay-to-publish approaches have introduced disparities into the system, particularly affecting researchers in resource-constrained settings who lack the necessary funds for publication. The 'read and publish' agreements have proven ineffective in reshaping the business models of major publishers. Instead, they perpetuate unsustainable price hikes and further consolidate a monopolistic system that incentivizes researchers to publish exclusively in journals controlled by these major publishers.
The Council's Conclusions explicitly acknowledge the adverse consequences of commercial pay-to-publish models, expressing "concern that the increasing costs of paywalls for access to scientific publications and for scholarly publishing cause inequalities and are becoming unsustainable for public research funders and institutions accountable for the spending of public funds, decreasing funding available for research." The Conclusions also emphasize the need to "avoid situations where researchers are limited in their choice of publication channels due to financial capacities."
Furthermore, the Conclusions 'ENCOURAGE Member States and the Commission to step up support for the development of aligned institutional and funding policies and strategies regarding not-for-profit open access multi-format scholarly publishing models' and to 'invest in and foster interoperable, not-for-profit infrastructures for publishing based on open source software and open standards.'
Europe is home to over 3,000 open access repositories, primarily hosted by universities, research centers, and government agencies, forming a crucial component of a not-for-profit scholarly communication infrastructure. These repositories extend beyond merely collecting manuscripts of paywalled papers; they represent an investment in public research infrastructure that can stimulate and enhance innovation in scholarly publishing by connecting repository resources with value-added services such as peer review.
The COAR Notify Initiative, an endeavor focused on developing a standard approach to link research outputs hosted in repositories with overlay journals and peer review services, bridges two potent communities – diamond open access and green repositories. This initiative holds the potential to achieve economies of scale while establishing a sustainable, scalable, and dependable international infrastructure for scholarly publishing.
COAR represents a broad and robust international alliance of research organizations and national networks, all united by a vision that aligns seamlessly with the principles of the EU Council's Conclusions. By collaborating across various stakeholder communities, we can expedite our progress towards a new paradigm for scholarly communications, one rooted in the common good and shared community values.
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