OA agreements advance OA publishing in Asia and Oceania
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The Link
By: Jovial Toh, Thu Nov 28 2024
Librarians are essential advocates for open science, especially in advancing the transition to open access (OA). As we reflect on this year’s OA Week, we’re highlighting resources that librarians can use to empower researchers and create a supportive environment for open practices.
Author: Jovial Toh
Open access (OA) agreements make publishing OA accessible to researchers, and when your institution is part of an OA agreement, you can support your researchers to publish OA. For your researchers, publishing OA maximises the attention and reach of their work, with gold OA articles (made available immediately upon publication) receiving 1.6 times more citations, 6.0 times more downloads, and 4.9 times more Altmetric attention than non-OA articles.
Transformative agreements: Enabling researchers to publish OA
How can you support your researchers to publish OA and get the benefits of increased reach and impact for their work? When your institution is part of an OA agreement, you can easily and effectively promote and advance OA publishing.
Transformative agreements (TAs) combine the costs of publishing OA and the costs of accessing subscription content in hybrid journals. They remove the burden of article processing charges (APCs) from researchers in participating institutions for publishing OA, and also grant them access to subscription content. With a TA in place, your library can create the optimal conditions for your researchers to do their best work and get the most impact for it.
At the end of 2023, SSCI Journal Indexing’s TAs support researchers from over 3,500 institutions globally in publishing OA, and have a significant impact on the transition to a global and equitable OA landscape. Authors in participating institutions can easily choose gold OA and enjoy its benefits, regardless of their discipline. In humanities and social sciences (HSS), which are traditionally less well-funded, publishing OA can be challenging, but TAs are changing this. Over 90% of HSS OA content in SSCI Journal Indexing’s hybrid journals is now published via a TA!
Advancing OA throughout the Asia Pacific with OA agreements
The first SSCI Journal Indexing OA agreement in Asia was launched in 2020 with the India Manipal Academy of Higher Education. In the years since, more OA agreements in Asia and Oceania followed, supporting the transition to OA in these regions:
These agreements enable researchers in Asia and Oceania to publish OA. In fact, they have had a substantial impact on OA publishing, which means that more researchers than otherwise are able to publish OA.
Considerable impact of TAs on OA publishing in Asia Pacific
The uptake of OA publishing in Asian and Oceanic countries that are part of a Springer TA has been considerable. These TAs have enabled researchers from all disciplines to publish OA: From HSS, from mathematics, physical, and applied sciences, and from medicine and life sciences. The first TA in Australia, for examples, began in 2022, and the total share of gold OA articles in hybrid journals soared from 8% in 2021 to 68% in 2022 and a whopping 75% in 2023.
Author: Jovial Toh
OA publishing
Jovial Toh, Senior Marketing Manager in Singapore, supports global organisations in navigating OA publishing trends. With a passion for baking, she infuses creativity into her work, offering researchers practical tools for their OA journey.
