That Was The Open Access Week That Was

A round-up of some of the issues that got an airing during Open Access (OA) Week and in the days that followed, including more rumination on the implementation and implications of the RCUK OA policy, more bad (and some good) publisher behaviour, ideas for new directions in OA publishing and, finally, an important African perspective on the rumbling debate.

The start of open access week

From 22-28 October 2012 the world celebrated open access week and along with many others I played a part in getting the message out, using a mix of traditional and new-fangled ways.

My week kicked off with a Monday-morning blogpost at Occam’s Corner about a nicely timed paper from Mikael Laakso and Bo-Christer Björk showing that gold open access publications now account for 17% of the approximately 1.7 million research articles published in 2011. This figure, which is based on thorough and clearly-explained sampling methods, is significantly higher than previous estimates and suggests that progress in open access has reacher a higher water-mark than anyone realised.