Open Access

This month marks the beginning of the negotiations, led by Jisc on behalf of the higher education sector and in collaboration with key sector bodies including Universities UK (UUK), SCONUL and Research Libraries UK, to discuss how UK universities continue to access and publish open access in the journals from the five largest publishers of academic research.

De Gruyter Brill is expanding its Subscribe to Open program, DG2O, by immediately switching 37 additional journals to open access. In total, 58 journals from the De Gruyter portfolio will be published open access via DG2O in 2025, making approximately 2,300 research articles freely available to the global scholarly community.

On February 26th, 2025, the Arab States Research and Education Network (ASREN), Training Centre in Communication (TCC Africa), and Public Library of Science (PLOS) hosted a dynamic virtual webinar to officially launch their strategic partnership aimed at promoting and strengthening open science principles and practices across North Africa.

The University of Kansas (KU) and award-winning open science platform Frontiers are pleased to announce the renewal of their open-access publishing partnership for an additional year. Initially established in 2024, this agreement maintains its terms to provide KU researchers with seamless, cost-free access to publish in all Frontiers journals. 

Elsevier, a global leader in scientific information and analytics, and Washington State University (WSU) are pleased to announce a new Read and Publish (R&P) agreement for 2025. The five-year agreement marks a pioneering step in the Northwest American region, enabling WSU researchers to publish their work open access in Elsevier’s journals and ensuring their research is accessible to a global audience.

ResearchGate, the professional network for researchers, and the Canadian Center of Science and Education (CCSE), an organisation delivering support and services to educators and researchers in Canada and around the world, have today announced a new Journal Home partnership that will grow the international readership and author community for CCSE’s journals.

On Open Data Day 2025, Frontiers is launching the FAIR² (FAIR Squared™) Data Management Pilot, a first-of-its-kind peer-reviewed service that helps researchers get credited and cited for their work while making data AI-ready, reusable, and impactful.

The De Gruyter eBound Foundation is pleased to announce a major milestone for University Press Library Open (UPLOpen), its comprehensive open access initiative and eBook platform. Launched in April 2024 with a goal of drawing attention to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), UPLOpen now hosts 10,000 open access titles from more than 50 prestigious academic publishers.

Knowledge Unlatched (KU), a Wiley brand, is collaborating with LibLynx to enhance the delivery of comprehensive usage analytics for Open Access (OA) scholarly publications. LibLynx’s innovative Touchstone analytics solution, developed in partnership with PSI Metrics, will enable libraries worldwide to assess the impact of thousands of OA titles made available through KU’s library crowdfunding initiatives.

The Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovation of Serbia has adopted a new national open science (OS) policy – the Open Science Platform 2.0 – that applies to all Serbian publicly-funded research projects and programmes. EIFL welcomes the adoption of the policy, which significantly expands the scope of OS efforts in Serbia, and updates the country’s first national OS policy, which was adopted in 2018. 

We’re pleased to once again share our annual reporting from the Plan S Journal Comparison Service to give our community insight into how our publication fees are used to support journal activities. 

The 10-campus University of California system (UC), 20 of 23 California State University (CSU) campuses, and 30 private academic and research institutions represented by the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC) have reached a comprehensive four-year transformative open access agreement with Oxford University Press (OUP).