Purpose
The purpose of this Interest Group is to provide a platform for exchange and collaboration among “fully OA” scholarly journal publishers. The aim of the group is to provide unity, not by creating one voice for full OA publishers, but by bringing together a diversity of different voices.
By “fully” OA, this means such publishers who publish 100% of their journal content OA and are not mixed model nor in any kind of transition to OA (see “Membership Requirements” below for a full definition).
The focus of this group is primarily to share non-confidential information, resources, and to discuss matters of interest or concern to fully OA organisations, which may on occasion lead to joint actions or shared statements.
The Interest Group will not privately discuss costs, pricing, or other items of a competitive nature unless previously discussed with competition law experts. This group is not a formal business alliance when aiming to work with institutions, funders, or other organisations over issues of monetary value.
Any position papers, letters, commentaries, or other outputs will always have a list of signatories for full transparency of who did and did not sign or participate. This Interest Group provides the framework and schedule to discuss such actions, but it is not the author of them unless all members are in agreement.
Membership Requirements
Membership of this group is based only on the organisation’s publishing model (i.e. Open Access) and is independent of the organisation’s business model, e.g. whether commercial or non-profit, using APCs, or otherwise.
Members of this group at the time of joining must be:
1) Fully OA organisations whose journal content is published under the Definition of an Open Access Contribution contained in the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.
2) OASPA members with any journals listed (or pending) in the DOAJ and who demonstrably abide by community standards of publishing ethics and the OASPA code of conduct.
3) Any legal entity that essentially meets requirements 1 and 2 (i.e. membership is not limited to publishing companies). Non-exhaustive examples are: library publishers, preprint platforms, data platforms, etc.
This means that journal publishers who are committed, but still in transition, to being fully OA, or who operate a mixed model of OA and toll access, are not eligible for membership of this group, to enable focus on non-transitional matters.
Logistics
This group agrees to regularly meet at least once a quarter online and yearly during the OASPA conference or AGM whether online or in-person.
- The OA group will adhere to the OASPA Code of Conduct and follow OASPA guidelines for Interest Groups, if available.
- The Chair of the group will be nominated at the first meeting. Chairs will rotate annually, although re-nominations are allowed.
- All Interest Group members will be clearly listed online.
- Significant outcomes of the group will be made publicly available on the OASPA website.
- New members can request to join at any time by contacting the Chair of the group, or OASPA. Membership requests will be considered at each monthly meeting with at least 75% of the group agreeing on admission if the criteria stated above are met.
Stephan Kuster from Frontiers is currently chairing the monthly meetings. You can reach out to him with his email: stephan.kuster@frontiersin.org
Current Members of the Interest Group
- Copernicus Publications
- Frontiers
- JMIR Publications
- MDPI
- Open Library of Humanities
- PeerJ
- PLOS
- Ubiquity Press