The Bibsam Consortium’s new action plan
Based on the recommendation of the Association of Swedish Higher Education Institutions (SUHF) regarding charting Sweden's path beyond the transformative agreements and the national guidelines for open science, the Bibsam Consortium Steering Committee has adopted a new action plan.
Making scholarly publications immediately open access creates better conditions for scientific knowledge to be more quickly spread and put to use. This benefits researchers at higher education institutions and other research performing organisations, professionals in the public sector, such as in schools and healthcare, as well as in the business sector, media and the general public, in that results, methods and theories can be scrutinised, discussed, and supplemented.
Sweden has made significant progress, but the pace of the transition to an open and sustainable research system must accelerate. At the same time, expenses associated with publishing must be reduced without affecting Swedish researchers' opportunities to disseminate research results in the form of scholarly publications.
New action plan
The Bibsam Consortium action plan is intended to guide negotiations with scholarly publishers. The aim is to facilitate the open publication of scholarly results, to bring about a redirection of payment streams from a subscription-based to an open access publishing system, and to achieve transparency, an overview of and reduced expenses for scholarly publishing.
Against this background and the SUHF recommendation (2023:7), the Bibsam Consortium Steering Committee has adopted the following action plan:
- that the Consortium should not sign agreements for reading and publishing in so-called hybrid journals, and instead only negotiate for publication in open access journals; this approach should be implemented from 2026 and apply to all open journals, regardless of publisher
- that new pathways to open publishing are promoted and supported and alternative business models are developed, and that researcher-driven journals that want to migrate from traditional publishers to other platforms are supported
- that publication occurs under an open license, in accordance with the FAIR principles, and that copyright conditions to promote open access, for example via so-called secondary publication rights, are explored
Recommendation regarding charting Sweden's path beyond the transformative agreements
In November 2023, recommendations regarding the transition to an open publishing system were established by the SUHF board. The recommendations are based on the findings of a working group comprised of researchers, representatives of higher education institutions, funders and negotiators from the Bibsam Consortium.
National guidelines for open science
On behalf of the Swedish government, the National Library of Sweden (Kungliga biblioteket, KB) has developed national guidelines for open science. The guidelines are intended to provide support and guidance to actors in Sweden who have an important role in the transition to open science.
About the Bibsam Consortium
Since 1996, KB has negotiated licence agreements for electronic information resources and publishing agreements on behalf of Swedish universities and university colleges, as well as public agencies and research institutes. In 2023, the Consortium's turnover was approximately EUR 60 million.
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