We are pleased to announce that we are supporting a global consultation on behalf of cOAlition S, focusing on their ‘Towards Responsible Publishing’ proposal. We are working closely with the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS),as well as with expert associates Joy Owango (TCC Africa), Lin Zhang (Wuhan University) and Stephen Pinfield (University of Sheffield).
The ‘Towards Responsible Publishing’ proposal
The funders forming cOAlition S are exploring a new vision for scholarly communication, aiming to make it more effective, affordable and equitable, ultimately benefiting society as a whole. In their document, now available via Zenodo, they state:
Our vision is a community-based scholarly communication system fit for open science in the 21st, that empowers scholars to share the full range of their research outputs and to participate in new quality control mechanisms and evaluation standards for these outputs.
The proposal argues that the traditional journal-accepted article undermines timely dissemination and quality control of new research findings, as well as highlighting that today’s mainstream forms of scholarly communication drive up publishing costs and puts more sustainable and equitable open access models at a disadvantage.
To address these and other perceived shortcomings, the proposal is anchored in two key concepts that extend Plan S:
- Authors should decide when and what to publish.
- The scholarly record should include the full range of research outputs.
To find out more about cOAlition S’s ‘Towards Responsible Publishing’ proposal, we recommend you review the full document available via Zenodo as well as the one-page summary.
Get involved!
Our role in the consultation process will be to gather, curate and facilitate feedback on the proposal from the global research community. Alongside CWTS, we will run surveys and focus groups open to stakeholders from all over the world. An initial feedback survey is now available online – please share your thoughts on the cOAlition S proposal via this link.
The outcomes of the consultation are expected in spring 2024 and will aim to support cOAlition S in revising the proposal so it successfully delivers an open, scholar-led communication ecosystem for the benefit of all researchers and wider society.
If you are interested in finding out more, please get in touch at ellie.cox@research-consulting.com or follow our organisations on social media. More information on the consultation process is available on the cOAlition S website, at coalition-s.org/towards-responsible-publishing.
Twitter: @cOAlitionS_OA, @rschconsulting, @cwtsleiden
LinkedIn: Research Consulting, CWTS
