Its a model Australian research publishing leaders could pursue

Swedish research funding agencies, universities and institutions will fund 50 per cent of publishing costs for researchers’ articles to appear in the 576 open access journals published by Springer Nature. The Bibsam consortium of universities and research institutions plans to adopt the same arrangement with other publishers.

It’s a model that may be adopted here; research funders and information managers do not appear to have the stomach for an all-in U Cal v Elsevier brawl. The university network no longer subscribes to the publisher’s journals after negotiations on open-access for U Cal researcher publications failed.

The Council of Australian University Librarians, which manages publisher deals says, “a transformative read and publish agreement” with a university press and learned-society publisher is in negotiation.  “The focus is on journal publishing with the aim of transforming the nature of the agreements from subscription-based access to content as the starting point, to service-based publishing and open access to content as the end point.”

CAUL adds, “early planning and preliminary modelling is underway with a major publisher for a read & publish agreement to commence in 2021.”  (CMM August 21).

Sound like Springer?