Dear all,

Apologies for cross-posting.

Open Knowledge International is pleased to announce a new blog post titled ‘Understanding the cost of scholarly publishing - Why we need a public data infrastructure for publishing costs https://blog.okfn.org/2017/10/24/understanding-the-costs-of-scholarly-publishing-why-we-need-a-public-data-infrastructure-of-publishing-costs/’.

As we celebrate International Open Access Week http://www.openaccessweek.org/, we wish to highlight the lack of financial transparency in the scholarly publication system. How much is paid for scholarly communication? Do current publishing models work in the service of research? How can more financial data help to understand problems in the publishing system? These questions are extremely hard to assess at the moment, because we simply lack the data for it.

In our blog post we make the case for a public data infrastructure of the cost of scholarly publication. The post summarises evidence from different studies to explain the drivers of financial opacity, its detrimental effects on scholarly publication, and outlines steps that we can collectively take towards a public data infrastructure.

Since Open Knowledge International is planning substantial work in this field, we would love to invite your feedback. Maybe you have thoughts on how you would like to move the topic forward? Maybe you plan activities in this area?

We would love to learn how your upcoming plans and interests align with this topic. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with us and email myself and Sander van der Waal (Head of Network and Partnerships) at research@okfn.org. We are happy to arrange a short call.

In any case, please do feel free to share our blog post widely in your networks.

Warm wishes,

Danny Lämmerhirt