ALT The transition of many academic journals from the subscription model to open access shifts payment for publishing services from readers to producers of knowledge. Although this transition makes publications openly accessible to readers globally, many authors and institutions worldwide face financial barriers to publishing in the journals they choose at affordable prices. In response, cOAlition S (an international consortium of funding organizations advocating for open access) commissioned Information Power to develop a globally equitable and sustainable pricing model for academic publishing. We recognize that many stakeholders prefer a scholarly publication ecosystem without charges of any kind, and particularly author-facing charges, for open access publishing. While charges remain part of the scholarly communication landscape, then we feel strongly that open and transparent data should be used to calculate more equitable prices that reflect local purchasing power.

ALT UKSG Conference and Exhibition 30 March - 1 April 2026 Scottish Events Centre, Glasgow

ALT TikTok is the video-sharing social media platform of the moment. Young people, most often of the age of undergraduate students, are its primary users. Creating a library TikTok profile and sharing video content on the platform is consequently an excellent way for academic librarians and their libraries to engage with their student users. This case study explores the strategy employed at the Ferriss Hodgett Library at the Grenfell Campus of Memorial University for creating and sharing engaging videos on our library’s TikTok and other social media channels. Providing a critical evaluation of TikTok use and discussing themes and ideas for video content alongside best practices, this article outlines how short-form videos can be leveraged via TikTok and other video-based platforms to make the academic library and its staff more relevant and approachable, and lay the foundation for building stronger and more meaningful relationships with students.

ALT This case study explores the role of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) in increasing the visibility and accessibility of Ukrainian academic journals. Ukrainian journals face numerous challenges due to economic constraints and the ongoing war. The article presents how open infrastructures play an important role in supporting journals during conflict, invasion or major disruption, using DOAJ as a case study. It analyzes what has worked and what could have been improved in DOAJ’s approach, including its collaborative efforts with the Supporting Ukrainian Editorial Staff (SUES) project, the Open Ukrainian Citation Index (OUCI) and Research4Life as initiatives to increase the visibility, transparency and impact of all digitized Ukrainian academic journals, despite the ongoing war with Russia. Recommendations are presented to increase the quality and visibility of Ukrainian journals and to guide open infrastructures in supporting journals from conflict areas.

ALT Peer review is a cornerstone of scientific advancement, intended to provide an unbiased evaluation of research originality, rigour and merit. While this process is intended to be impartial, increasing scrutiny has focused on the adequacy and fairness of the peer review process across various scientific fields. Questions regarding the reliability, accountability, potential reviewer bias and competence of peer reviewers have been raised. Despite these concerns, there has been very little empirical research directly addressing these issues.

ALT Open access (OA) has become a critical component of academic publishing, promoting free access to research outputs. The Oxford University Research Archive (ORA) plays a crucial role in this by serving as the institutional repository, tasked with the collection, preservation and dissemination of the University of Oxford’s scholarly output. However, the demands of ensuring compliance with OA policies, particularly those set by funders and the Research Excellence Framework (REF), have imposed significant administrative burdens on both researchers and support staff. This article explores the evolving landscape of OA at the University of Oxford, the shift towards gold OA, the integration of automated systems to ease administrative load, and the future directions for improving OA policy adherence and research dissemination.

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ALT Bibliodiversity is mostly studied based on publication languages or the imbalance of the means of knowledge production and dissemination. This article explores the concept of bibliodiversity by analysing the consumption of open access books across different regions and examines the subjects of interest using the Thema classification system. The study deploys social network analysis to investigate affiliations between countries and book classifications, identifying clusters of shared interests. The results point to a correlation between regional proximity and subject interest.

ALT Over the past ten years, the member institutions of the Austrian Academic Library Consortium (KEMÖ) have gradually opened up their researchers’ publications to the world, one publisher at a time. By pulling their resources together, KEMÖ members have successfully converted their subscription-only agreements, for the most part, to read and publish deals in a cost-neutral manner, which include an article allocation comfortably covering the consortium’s publishing needs. However, the new business models disrupted the pre-transition status quo: the existing distribution of costs, based predominantly on institutional subscription spending, differed from the emerging institutional-level output and potential associated costs. While moving to fully article-based pricing was felt premature, the consortium decided to explore ways to make the internal cost distribution more equitable.

ALT This article discusses attempted definitions of what an academic publishing house is. The wide range of views about the issue, as expressed by editors, authors and institutions, are reviewed and the reasons why they are not satisfactory to develop a comprehensive view of the sector are explained. Then, following a quantitative analysis of ISBN databases and qualitative work conducted through focus groups with experts from nine countries – developed as part of the Cartography of Ibero-American Academic Publishing project – it presents a three-criteria list: the availability of title lists, publication of academic research and funding status. These criteria can help to identify a publishing house as properly academic. Such criteria may contribute significantly to consolidating studies on the sector and to promoting the recognition of academic publishing by the entities that evaluate and generate public policies on science, technology and knowledge dissemination in Ibero-American countrie

ALT The University of Minnesota (UMN) is a large, public institution in the United States. The UMN Libraries has a long history of supporting open access (OA), going back as far as the mid-1990s, and we expanded this support through the creation of an OA investment fund in Fiscal Year 2020. The fund is treated like any other collections fund, ensuring we have a budget specifically marked for investments in OA. As the OA movement has progressed, it has become clear that not all approaches to OA are working in the way they were originally imagined. Potential investments are evaluated on criteria based on our Libraries values and principles around OA, which are outlined in a statement endorsed by campus governance groups. To date, the fund supports a variety of investments, including infrastructure, diamond OA journalsand OA monograph programs – OA models that we believe are sustainable and which align with our values of equity more effectively than APC-based publishing models.