To realize their full potential for under-served groups, Open Educational Resources may need to be approached from post-colonial perspectives https://edtechhub.org/2022/04/08/decolonising-open-educational-resources-oer-why-the-focus-on-open-and-access-is-not-enough-for-the-edtech-revolution/

Open Access to digitized artifact collections, such as those of art museums, can provide usage metrics, inspire artifact and financial donations and enable metadata enrichment, despite concerns about model sustainability and support ecosystem presence https://medium.com/open-glam/avoinglams-response-to-the-writing-of-kimmo-lev%C3%A4-director-general-of-the-finnish-national-gallery-960869a51c45 As Open Access shifts cost burdens from reader-facing paywall frameworks to author-facing publication contributions, equity concerns remain, while novel publishing models seek to ensure scholarly output access without imposing author-related restrictions https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2022/04/26/guest-post-open-access-and-the-direction-moving-forward/

Transitional agreements facilitate journal-level transitions to Open Access, while being compatible with Plan S requirements https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2022/april/acs-publications-commits-entire-hybrid-journal-portfolio-to-become-transformative-journals.html Open Access to image reproductions of artworks removes cost-related barriers to the publication of scholarly monographs and collected volumes in the domain of art history, while promoting the dissemination of novel approaches and ideas https://medium.com/open-glam/emersons-nature-and-the-commons-42ef5312654a While support for Open Access to peer reviews appears greater among junior academics and scholarly authors than on average across stakeholders in the field of economics, e.g., active reviewers, uncertainty lingers concerning its benefits and implications https://voxeu.org/article/economists-want-see-changes-their-peer-review-system-let-s-do-something-about-it Though Open Science makes inroads across scientific disciplines, in the domains of humanities and social sciences it is likely to be encountering challenges related to field-specific research procedures, investigation methods and data formats https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2022/04/21/what-does-open-science-mean-for-disciplines-where-pen-and-paper-are-still-the-main-working-methods/

Though Open Access publishing facilitates intellectual property rights retention for scholarly authors, business model and national legislation differences can constrain the degree to which Open Science principles are implemented https://www.agendadigitale.eu/cultura-digitale/il-diritto-morale-di-ripubblicare-in-open-access-le-opere-scientifiche-cosa-deve-fare-litalia/ The French National Center of Scientific Research recommends its associate scholars to primarily publish their works in venues that do not involve author- or reader-facing fees, in an effort to promote the transition to Open Access https://www-cnrs-fr.translate.goog/fr/cnrsinfo/le-cnrs-encourage-ses-scientifiques-ne-plus-payer-pour-etre-publies Digital Object Identifers (DOIs) allow for stable links to scholarly publications, support metadata associations between versions of record, related documents and data sets and can be issued by multiple registration agencies providing additional services https://musingsaboutlibrarianship.blogspot.com/2022/04/5-things-you-may-not-know-about-dois-or.html

As recent data on article processing charge levels indicate, the publishing market for scholarly articles in Open Access undergoes maturation, as price increases slow down, the journal market further segments and demand grows in middle to high price ranges, as the market review by Dan Pollock indicates: https://deltathink.com/news-views-open-access-charges-continued-consolidation-and-increases/.

In their recent piece on article processing charges (APC) waiver programs, published in Science Editor on February 21, 2022, Sara Rouhi, Romy Beard, and Curtis Brundy note that, even though the transition to Open Access publishing programs gathers pace, APCs likely pose a cost barrier to scholarly authors, while representing an author equity issue. At the same time, journal publishing models not based on Open Access invariably involve reader-facing paywalls, which amounts to a reader equity issue, since readers without relevant academic affiliation or disposable funds are not able to access scholarly content. In other words, the transition to Open Access resolves the reader equity issue by removing reader-facing barriers to scientific content at the expense of introducing the researcher equity considerations, as scholarly journals need to remain financially viable after they make their output freely accessible.  In her opinion piece, Sara Rouhi, the Director of Strategic Partnerships at PLOS, has approached the APC equity issue by contrasting equality and equity, while indicating that Global South researchers from low- and middle-income countries likely suffer from funding limitations, as compared to their Global North colleagues. Similarly, Romy Beard, formerly the Licensing Programme Manager at Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL) working with libraries and consortia from developing and transitioning economy countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa, has contrasted the exigencies of the pay-to-read and pay-to-publish approaches, while indicating that APC discount policies fall short of fully redressing the inequities between the Global North and Global South countries. Yet, higher levels of APC waiver awareness, information availability and application uniformity can be expected to alleviate these disparities. In response, Sarah Rouhi explores the publisher perspective on APC waivers, such as at the PLOS, while exploring the attendant aspects of financial sustainability, cross-discipline differences, workflow shortcomings and inclusion effects. By presenting an institutional perspective, Curtis Brundy, responsible for collections oversight and scholarly communications at the Iowa State University Library, draws attention to the growing prevalence of transformational agreements that have the APC-offsetting arrangements built-in.

Whereas the pandemic period has seen preprints significantly influence public policy-making and lead to life-saving discoveries, preprint retractions also indicate the need for gatekeeping mechanisms, such as peer reviews, to prevent irresponsible use, as Clare Watson argues in a review article titled "Rise of the preprint: how rapid data sharing during COVID-19 has changed science forever," Nature Medicine, (2022).

On July 5, 2021, Mikael Laakso from Hanken School of Economics has published a research report on Nordic academic journals, which was funded by the Nordic publications Committee for Humanities and Social Science Periodicals (NOP-HS). According to the press release for this research report, it provides a comprehensive overview of the Nordic scholarly journals in the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), while focusing on journals fulfilling its geographic sampling criteria, such as being based in Nordic countries. This research has derived its primary data from bibliometric information and a web survey conducted during the first half of 2021. This study has encompassed 353 Nordic journals. Representatives of 72 of these journals have provided responses for the the attendant web survey.  Among the more interesting findings of this research report are that 86% of the sampled Nordic journals are published in English (p. 19). Over 50% of Nordic scientific journals are published by professional bodies. 75% of these journals are published in Open Access. Thus, for this journal sample, whereas Open Access publishing cuts across publisher types, such as research universities, scholarly societies and professional publishers, closed access model deployment, e.g., for 75 journals from the sample, is predominantly concentrated (87%) in the hands of professional market players (p. 21). For Nordic journals, the more important funding sources are grant funding, third-party organization support, e.g., by home institutions, volunteer work and membership frameworks (p. 26).