For many years, the dissemination of academic research has been controlled by commercial publishers. However, in light of the continuing inflation of subscription prices for scholarly journals, many academics are investigating open access publishing over the Internet. Although most advanced in the natural sciences, given its essentially political character, open access publishing should also be carefully considered by political scientists (and associated disciplines). This article explores open access publishing and suggests the reputational pay-off of ‘normal’ publishing can easily be maintained in the open access realm.

Open Access in the humanities and social sciences in the United States faces challenges in developing sustainable funding models. Begun in part to disseminate scholarship more widely and in part to solve an immediate budget problem faced by academic librarians, Open Access has evolved to include several ‘flavours’ that involve different funding schemes. Because the humanities and social sciences emphasize books more than STEM disciplines and because publication funding in humanities and social sciences is problematic, it will be necessary for publishers, librarians, faculty, and university administrators to cooperate to find sustainable solutions. This includes consideration of whether open access is always the model that best serves the audiences sought.

This Symposium brings together the academic and publishing industry in two key countries (the UK and the US) to analyse and assess the implications of Open Access (OA) journal publishing in the social and political sciences, as well as its different formats and developments to date. With articles by three academics (all involved in academic associations) and three publishers, the Symposium represents an exchange of views that help each of the two sectors understand better the perspectives of the other. More generally, the Symposium aims to raise the visibility of OA among the academic community whose general awareness and knowledge of OA – compared with publishers – has been rather limited to date.

In this article, we present an overview of the major changes occurring in electronic publishing, with a focus on open access. We shall argue that the notion itself of publication is undergoing a deep transformation, as it is no longer the monopoly of a limited number of specialised companies and institutions, but, through the web, it has become an option available to an infinite number of collective and individual actors.

This paper outlines the UK publishing landscape for the social and political sciences, with particular reference to academic journals. The changes and challenges being brought to this environment by open access (OA) are described and the response of UK publishers examined. While some of the initial caution among publishers towards OA in the social and political sciences is beginning to recede, the pressures of funding, perception and engagement remain considerable. Despite scepticism from some quarters about the future role of so-called ‘legacy’ publishers, it is argued that their skills, knowledge and innovation will make them a valuable part of the evolving, and ever more varied, scholarly communications arena.

Openness is central to scientific enquiry and can enable faster and more effective return on investment in research. Open access is linked to innovation in research communication and can help increase the reliability and reproducibility of published research. Growth of open access journal publishing in the social sciences and humanities is second only to life sciences. Surveys show researchers are interested in open access publishing, but some researchers perceive that there is a lack of quality journals offering open access. However, a number of established publishers have recently launched fully open access journals for political and social scientists, such as Palgrave Communications and Research & Politics. Open access journals often operate an article processing charge (APC) or ‘author pays’ business model, to support making articles freely available without charging readers. The APC model could provide financial benefits to society in the long term, but can present challenges for researchers without access to grant funding in the short term.

Academic associations are a vital part of the academic community, facilitating the interaction of researchers and production of knowledge, yet the impact of Open Access on their future has been too often regarded as marginal to the main discussion. Open Access presents an evident threat to those associations, which have become dependent upon a sizeable proportion of their income coming from owned journals published in conjunction with publishers. Yet, Open Access also presents opportunities, and academic associations should be bold in using a combination of their expertise, prestige and experience in publishing to ensure their futures in a newly emerging market.

Open Access has been around for many years. The only new developments of pressing interest are primarily related to UK university and research management bureaucracies. It is unlikely that the laws of copyright – which protect academic and other authors in various ways – will disappear, and certainly not overnight. Commercial publishers will find a business model that sustains them, and experimentation in novel forms of information dissemination will continue. Current rights in intellectual property are of course subject to critique and change, but internet access to information has not and will not suddenly dissolve the basic economics of information production and consumption.

Usage data on research outputs such as books and journals is well established in the scholarly community. Yet, as research impact is derived from a broader set of scholarly outputs, such as data, code, and multimedia, more holistic usage and impact metrics could inform national innovation and research policy. While usage data reporting standards, such as Project COUNTER, provide the basis for shared statistics reporting practice, mandated access to publicly funded research has increased the demand for impact metrics and analytics. In this context, stakeholders are exploring how to scaffold and strengthen shared infrastructure to better support the trusted, multistakeholder exchange of usage data across a variety of outputs. In April 2023, a workshop on Exploring National Infrastructure for Public Access and Impact Reporting supported by the United States (US) National Science Foundation (NSF) explored these issues. This paper contextualizes the resources shared and recommendations generated in the workshop.

One of the goals of open science is to promote the transparency and accessibility of research. Sharing data and materials used in network research is critical to these goals. In this paper, we present recommendations for whether, what, when, and where network data and materials should be shared. We recommend that network data and materials should be shared, but access to or use of shared data and materials may be restricted if necessary to avoid harm or comply with regulations. Researchers should share the network data and materials necessary to reproduce reported results via a publicly accessible repository when an associated manuscript is published. To ensure the adoption of these recommendations, network journals should require sharing, and network associations and academic institutions should reward sharing.

This commentary article explores some of the problems encountered by independent scholars seeking to get their work published in peer-reviewed journals and in particular the difficulties they face in accessing online resources. Though often hidden, these issues are nevertheless very real for aspiring historians and those who have returned late to the historical fold. The article acknowledges the efforts of a number of journals to encourage different voices, but highlights how the limitations of current licensing and Open Access arrangements hinders this ambition.

Marine litter poses a complex challenge in Indonesia, necessitating a well-informed and coordinated strategy for effective mitigation. This study investigates the seasonality of plastic concentrations around Sulawesi Island in central Indonesia during monsoon-driven wet and dry seasons. By using open data and methodologies including the HYCOM and Parcels models, we simulated the dispersal of plastic waste over 3 months during both the southwest and northeast monsoons. Our research extended beyond data analysis, as we actively engaged with local communities, researchers and policymakers through a range of outreach initiatives, including the development of a web application to visualize model results. Our findings underscore the substantial influence of monsoon-driven currents on surface plastic concentrations, highlighting the seasonal variation in the risk to different regional seas. This study adds to the evidence provided by coarser resolution regional ocean modelling studies, emphasizing that seasonality is a key driver of plastic pollution within the Indonesian archipelago. Inclusive international collaboration and a community-oriented approach were integral to our project, and we recommend that future initiatives similarly engage researchers, local communities and decision-makers in marine litter modelling results. This study aims to support the application of model results in solutions to the marine litter problem.

The advancement of technology has drastically changed the way information is being stored in the law library. With current technology, many have found that legal information is easy to retrieve from federal or state government websites in Malaysia. But while federal legislation can be accessed via the internet, some of the law cannot be accessed for the public to review or download. Also, older law is unavailable from the federal gazette website, and it is crucial for the lawyer or law librarian to publicly access it. This paper, by Qudri Ali Abu Bakar, discusses the restriction of access to legal information and looks at some alternative ways of gaining full access to federal and state law in Malaysia.

This article explores ways of decolonising Development Studies by: (1) examining the discipline’s tendencies towards what some have called ‘imperial amnesia’, that is, proclivities towards disavowing if not erasing European colonialism, most evident in 1950s–1960s Modernisation theory, but also more recently in the work of such analysts as Bruce Gilley and Nigel Biggar; (2) considering the opportunities and perils of ‘epistemic decolonisation’, that is, ways of decolonising knowledge production in the discipline, including the limits of ‘non-Eurocentric’ pedagogies; and (3) reflecting on forms of material decolonisation (e.g., the reduction of socioeconomic inequalities by improving better access to education or resisting the corporatisation of publicly funded research) that need to accompany any epistemic decolonisation for the latter to be meaningful.

The National Archives launched a new service called Find Case Law in April of last year. Here Daniel Hoadley, Amy Conroy and Editha Nemsic, of Mishcon de Reya LLP, argue that while this does offer some accessibility and legibility it's perhaps not providing access to the full corpus of law that it could, or even should. Also, on a broader level, they propose that there is a case to be made for access to the law being guaranteed and publicly funded.

Geospatial research in archaeology often relies on datasets previously collected by other archaeologists or third-party groups, such as state or federal government entities. This article discusses our work with geospatial datasets for identifying, documenting, and evaluating prehistoric and historic water features in the western United States. As part of a project on water heritage and long-term views on water management, our research has involved aggregating spatial data from an array of open access and semi-open access sources. Here, we consider the challenges of working with such datasets, including outdated or disorganized information, and fragmentary data. Based on our experiences, we recommend best practices: (1) locating relevant data and creating a data organization method for working with spatial data, (2) addressing data integrity, (3) integrating datasets in systematic ways across research cohorts, and (4) improving data accessibility.