This week, we share a survey seeking experiences with content reuse permissions, signpost an upcoming global discussion about OA publishing, and highlight an event at Cambridge University discussing innovative preprint sharing initiatives. We explore how researchers and students can promote open science and foster a more inclusive learning environment, and we discuss the benefits universities would gain by developing open educational resources. We read about the importance of sharing research failures, and we explore the relationships between grants and research outputs through open funding metadata. Finally, we highlight the expansion of De Gruyter Brill’s S2O program.
To engage with:
Share your experiences with content reuse permissions via Open Pharma
Oxford PharmaGenesis has launched a survey to investigate how content reuse permissions, costs and restrictions affect the dissemination of medical research. Medical publications professionals who obtain content reuse permissions from journals are invited to share their experiences through the survey, which will help drive future conversations between the pharma industry, medical communications and publishing fields. Share your insights before the survey closes on 17 November 2025.
Take part in HIFA’s global discussion on OA publishing via HIFA
Join the Healthcare Information For All (HIFA) global discussion about the experiences of healthcare professionals with open access (OA) publishing, which will explore the perception, benefits and problems associated with OA. HIFA are seeking input from everyone involved in the global evidence ecosystem, including researchers, publishers, healthcare professionals and library professionals. This project is led by the HIFA Open Access working group, including representatives from Open Pharma, and it follows an online survey that was completed earlier this year. Join HIFA for free to take part in this discussion, which begins 13 October 2025.
Register now for a public forum on preprint sharing initiatives via COAR
The Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) and the University of Cambridge Libraries and Archives are hosting a public forum on 3 December 2025 to discuss preprint sharing initiatives. Publish, Review, Curate (PRC) is a flexible preprint sharing model, ranging from typical publication of a reviewed preprint by a journal to innovative new methods of preprint sharing. The event will highlight the benefits and adaptability of the PRC model and showcase different PRC initiatives. Register now for the free in-person event at Cambridge University. Registration is limited to 65 attendees on a first-come, first-served basis and closes at the end of November 2025.
To read:
Support equity and inclusivity for students with OA and plain language via Open Pharma | 6-minute read
Journal subscription fees are a considerable cost for academic institutions, and they can negatively impact student and researcher experiences, particularly in the context of global inequities in education and research. OA publishing is essential for removing financial barriers in an equitable way, while plain language summaries play a crucial role in making research truly accessible and understandable to all audiences. Empowering the next generation is also vital, as Millie Harrison (Intern at Oxford PharmaGenesis) notes, “students, graduates and early career researchers are future leaders, but they can often feel discouraged or disempowered to effect change”. To address this need, Millie presents practical steps both researchers and students can take to promote and engage with open science.
Why universities should develop open educational resources via LSE Blogs | 6-minute read
Essential learning materials are becoming unsustainably difficult to access, often owing to prohibitively high costs borne by academic institutions or by students themselves. In this article, Niamh Tumelty (Director of The London School of Economics and Political Science [LSE] Library) and Caroline Ball (Community Engagement Lead at the Open Book Collective) discuss the benefits of open educational resources (OERs) – ranging from lecture slides and videos to entire courses – in reducing financial barriers and improving participation and public engagement. Although OERs require “investment in content and in people”, the authors argue that the risks of not developing them may be even greater.
Transparency around research processes can aid future scientists via Nature | 4-minute read
Séverine Toussaert (Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford) champions transparency and disclosure of research failures in this article, and she shares trial-and-error experiences of the research process – including misbehaving results, redesigning experiments and facing multiple journal rejections. Dr Toussaert discusses three reasons why not talking about setbacks can hinder researchers’ development, and she encourages current researchers to be more transparent about their research journey and the lessons they’ve learned. For people interested in learning more about research processes, Dr Toussaert co-hosts an interactive seminar series Behind-The-Scenes.
Explore grant–research output relationships using open funding metadata via Crossref | 8-minute read
The Crossref Grant Linking System has enabled funders to openly share metadata about the support they provide. In 2022, Crossref expanded this initiative by developing an approach to link received funding with research outputs. In this article, they present their latest dataset containing 250 163 relationships between grants and research outputs from over 23 000 member organizations. They also share comparisons between the 2023 and 2025 datasets showing the growing engagement with open funding metadata. This analysis feeds into their Research Nexus, a network mapping all aspects of the research ecosystem, which Crossref aim to expand through raising awareness of the importance of funding metadata.
De Gruyter Brill expands its S2O programme via STM Publishing News | 2-minute read
De Gruyter Brill is expanding its Subscribe to Open (S2O) programme in 2026 to include 66 more of their journals, doubling the total number of journals in the programme. Providing there is sufficient institutional support for their S2O journals at the end of February 2026, the 2026 journal volumes will be published OA. Starting 1 January 2026, participating institutions will also gain free access to each journal’s archive of previous issues. These moves highlight De Gruyter Brill’s commitment to fair and sustainable accessibility across the sciences, social sciences and humanities.
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