Liblicense members might like to know of a new preprint, posted today on Zenodo, which updates the opinion paper about our failure to deliver open access that I published in Learned Publishing a year ago (Green, 2017). In this new paper, I review how the open access landscape has evolved over the past twelve months and propose a novel approach that might help solve both the challenge of delivering open access and solve the serial crisis. (I just had time to include some thoughts about Plan S, too.)

Access the preprint here https://zenodo.org/record/1410000#.W5EGSm996Ul

Key points:

• We’re still failing to deliver open access (OA): around a fifth of new articles will be born free in 2018, roughly the same as in 2017.
• Librarians, funders and negotiators are getting tougher with publishers but offsetting, ‘Publish and Read’, deals based on APCs won’t deliver OA for all or solve the serials crisis.
• The authors of Budapest, Bethesda and Berlin OA declarations foresaw three changes with the coming of the internet. Flipping to a barrier to publish (APCs) from a barrier to read (subscriptions) wasn’t one of them.
• By itself, OA won’t reduce costs to solve the serials crisis: a digital transformation of scholarly communications based on internet-era principles is needed. 
• Following the internet-era principle of ‘fail-fast’, what if papers are first posted as preprints and only if they succeed in gaining attention will editors invite submission to their journal.
• In clinging onto traditional journals to advance the careers of the few (authors), OA is delayed for the many (readers): rebuilding the reputation economy to accept preprints could be the catalyst to deliver OA, solve the serials crisis and drive out predatory journals

And I look forward to feedback and comments.

Toby Green