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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-GB link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal'>As anyone who has followed the story of open access will know, a multitude of issues has arisen since the 2002 Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) adopted the term in order to promote the idea of research being made freely available on the internet. It has also led to a great deal of debate and disagreement over the best way of making open access a reality. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal'><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal'>However, we seem to be arriving at the point where consensus is growing in the global North around the idea of persuading and/or forcing legacy publishers to convert (“flip”) all their journals from a subscription model to an open access model. This is being spearheaded by the OA2020 Initiative. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal'><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal'>One implication of this would seem to be that we can expect widespread use of the pay-to-publish model where, instead of readers paying to access other researchers’ papers, authors will pay to publish their own papers – by means of article-processing charges (APCs). Currently, APCs are around $3,000 a paper, although they can be both higher and lower than this.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal'><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal'>Researchers in the global South view a mass flipping of subscription journals to OA with considerable concern. Since most have little or no access to APC funding they can expect to see today’s paywalls replaced by publication walls, making it extremely difficult for them to publish in international journals.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal'><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal'>Leslie Chan, associate professor at the University of Toronto and Principal Investigator of the Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network argues, “The institutions and countries adopting the OA2020 initiative express very clearly that it is not their problem that scientists from countries can publish or not. It is a very selfish attitude, individualistic and even nationalistic.”<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal'><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal'>By contrast, Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, UC Berkeley’s University Librarian and Chief Digital Scholarship Officer argues that engineering a mass conversion of subscription journals to OA is currently the only practical way of achieving open access in the near term, and that while a global flip presents challenges for those in the global South, the current paywall situation for them is “awful”. He adds that we cannot expect open access “to remedy all inequities”.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal'><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal'>MacKie-Mason expands on this views in an interview here <a href="https://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/north-south-and-open-access-view-from.html">https://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/north-south-and-open-access-view-from.html</a><span class=MsoHyperlink><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal'><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal'>The interview invites us to ask whether a global OA solution is actually possible. If it is not possible, then we might wonder how the BOAI’s promise that OA would enable the world to “share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich … and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge” can hope to be realised.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal'><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:normal'>List members are invited to comment on these issues on the interview.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>