Global cooperation in not-for-profit open access publishing

Projects are expected to contribute to the following expected outcomes:

• Enhanced understanding of the different non-for-profit open access publishing solutions, their business models and sustainability;
• Coordination amongst institutional not-for-profit open access publishing services between Europe and other areas in the world at the non-technological level leading to high-quality publishing services and publishing venues at the global scale that are trusted by researchers;
• Enhance the uptake of elements of open science by open access publishing services in Europe and other areas of the world (e.g., open peer review, early sharing of research, post-publication peer review models etc.);
• Fit for purpose training materials and trainings for service providers and scientific journal editors in different disciplines enabling the improvement of the quality of publishing services and of the scientific quality of publishing venues along internationally accepted standards.

These targeted outcomes in turn contribute to medium and long-term impacts:

• Increased equity, diversity and inclusivity of open science practices, and in particular open access publishing on a not-for-profit basis, in the European Union and in the world;
• Structured mechanisms for knowledge transfer between relevant not-for-profit open access publishing services in the European Union and other areas of the world.

A significant increase in open access publishing activities based on not-for-profit business models can be observed in Europe and across the world, which in principle do not charge authors for publishing. They are the result of technological advancements leading to shifting roles of actors involved in scholarly communication. Their offering is presented as an alternative to commercially oriented publishing, or is a continuation of long-term traditions of institutional and mission-oriented publishing in a new digitally enabled context. Such services enable inclusivity for all authors, regardless of affiliation and funding, and support a healthy diversification in the scholarly publishing ecosystem. Research institutions and their libraries are often involved in their operation. In some countries, they operate at the national level and are frequently supported by national funding agencies. In many cases, such initiatives have evolved into robust and reliable services which enjoy the trust of researchers.

The aim of this topic is to support the cooperation between such not-for-profit publishing services and their editors to enable the flow of knowledge between the European Union and one or more other areas of the world, and in more than one discipline. It is expected that most of the activities of the actions will take place online, and that platforms and other online tools will be used to perform as many of the activities as possible.

The call will fund activities that will:

1. Gather, share and improve good practices with regard to the non-technological aspects of service provision (editorial scopes, peer-review policies, organisation of editorial and publishing business processes, translation, among others), and with regard to business models;
2. Implement practices that will strengthen high-quality publishing services at the global scale so that they are trusted by researchers across countries and disciplines;
3. Develop training materials and organise virtual trainings for not-for-profit publishing service providers and their editors to increase knowledge transfer and dissemination of good practices. The materials should become available in open access.

Applicants are expected to cooperate with projects funded under call topic HORIZON-WIDERA-2021-ERA-01-43: Capacity-building for institutional open access publishing across Europe, and call topic HORIZON-INFRA-2022-EOSC-01-02: Improving and coordinating technical infrastructure for institutional open access publishing across Europe, to ensure synergies and complementarity of outcomes.

Duration: The action should be no longer than 36 months.