Dear friends of AlterOA,

In this post, we would like to attract your attention and invite reactions to the recommendations made by Adam Smith's in his report of the AlterOA workshop.

Smith's suggestions are as follows (highlights added):

"1. Continue to collect ideas and views from the community of researchers, funders, publishers, research users and librarians. […]There may be scope for a similar event or events held beyond Brussels, especially in the Netherlands in early 2016 while that country hosts the Presidency of the European Council and plans to put open access high on the agenda.

2. Launch a competition for seed funding. Alternative open access publishing models often need start-up capital in order to become established and sustainable. […] The Commission could consider creating an innovation fund and calling for projects to bid for the funding to help them to develop and grow towards helping the Commission reach its goal of open access.

3. Refine the open-access mandate for Horizon 2020 grants to encourage specific kinds of business model and disadvantage others that are not favourable. For example, a rule could state that choosing to publish a paper with a publisher that charges the same subscription fee for a journal even if they receive APCs for papers with the same journal ('double-dipping') is not acceptable. Another example would be to state a preference, but not a requirement, for institutional publishing policies to involve their libraries more—recognising that libraries need to be involved in establishing new ways of disseminating knowledge."

Many thanks to Adam Smith for putting together this report! Comments and other ideas are welcome!

Caroline Colin