25 October 2023
(Using Google Translate - read the original Swedish here)
In Sweden, a high proportion of Swedish research is published with immediate open access. But the large, traditional publishers' publishing is still dominated by hybrid journals with a large proportion of locked articles. Publishing with publishers that only publish open access journals is an important alternative to the traditional publishers. Now, the four research funders have decided to, in a first step, jointly cover the costs of publishing in 2024 and 2025 at publishers that only publish completely openly accessible journals.
The goal is for as many publishers as possible to be covered by the initiative. Negotiations have begun in the autumn and a news item is that all researchers connected to one of the Bibsam consortium's participating organizations will be covered by the agreements. In line with the conclusions of the EU Council of Ministers that costs for scientific publishing should not burden either readers or authors, the financiers contribute with this investment to promoting an open and accessible publishing system.
Today, through the transformative agreements, the universities have essentially taken over the costs of open publishing from the commercial publishers, says Astrid Söderbergh Widding, rector at Stockholm University and chairman of the Bibsamkonsortiet's steering group. It is therefore very positive that the financiers have agreed to finance articles from the purely open publishers. In this way, universities and financiers in Sweden are now working together for the transition to open access.