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General News
Creative Commons $1m grant
The grant was made in honour of of the organisation's 20th anniversary by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. CC CEO Catherine Stihler said the money will be used over three years for general operating support and "will ensure open access and better sharing for all - not only those with privilege". Read more.
DORA governance changes
 Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) initiative has made changes to its governance procedures to include broader representation in their governance groups. The changes include:
- distributing power outside outside of Europe and North America on the Steering Committee
- reducing financial barriers for organisations in developing or transitional economies that wish to support DORA.
- ensure leadership positions on the Steering Committee reflect the wide diversity of academia.
German Science Council demands Open Access
The (Wissenschaftsrat) Council has called for open and free access to scientific publications saying the faster and more widely research results are disseminated, the faster other scientists can build on them. The statement aims to ensure the final versions (version of record) of scientific publications are kept immediately, permanently, at the original place of publication and under an open license (CC BY). This "paradigm shift" has been welcomed by PLOS who encourage, however, the council to accommodate the developing Open Science ecosystem and not just focus on published Open Access versions of record.
White House report on Presidential memo
In January the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) released a report on scientific integrity in response to a Presidential Memo on Restoring Trust in Science. The report assesses current agency policies related to scientific integrity and makes recommendations for additional steps the US government should take to ensure public trust in science. One of the recommendations related to transparency in communicating science. The report also recommends agencies allow researchers to post manuscripts as preprints once they have cleared agency review.
New index of 200 million scientific docs
The OpenAlex database has been created by Canadian non-profit OurResearch in response to the closure of Microsoft's Academic Graph (MAG). OpenAlex describes scholarly entities and how they are connected to each other. It is integrated with Unpaywall & draws data from sources including ORCID, Crossref & Wikidata identifiers.
Plan S
2021 Annual Review
This report gives an overview of activities over the past year and provides the levels of OA compliance among cOAlition S funders. It also showcases the tools and services being developed, and outlines support for new publishing models, highlighting the
progress on the Transformative Journals framework, reaction to the Rights Retention Strategy, and how small society publishers are moving to Open Access. Read Report.
Preprints
ASAPbio: FAST principles for Preprint
Preprint server ASAPBio has developed a set of principles underpinning a positive and constructive approach to preprint feedback: the FAST principles. The 14 principles encompass four themes (see below). Read more.
Two Million milestone for arXiv.org
In what began as an email list for physicists in 1989, ArXiv preprint server has now grown to more than two million papers - reaching the milestone on January 3. Read more.
COAR collaborates on plan to launch preprint directory
The Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe ( CCSD) of France and the Confederation of Open Access Repositories ( COAR) have announced a collaboration to launch a directory of open access preprint repositories. The directory will build on the outcomes of a project undertaken by the French Committee for Open Science (Preprints Platforms Project). The preprint directory will be publicly available in the spring of 2022. Read more.
New Academic Framework from LERU
The framework aims to reward and recognize a diversity of profiles and contributions and recognises that this " is in line with the cultural transformation that is part of the Open Science movement and with several national initiatives on reward and recognition." Read more
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The MoreBrains Cooperative, supported by the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) and Australian Access Federation (AAF) are conducting a cost-benefit analysis of the impact of PIDs on Australian research. It follows a UK analysis which found a national PID consortium could save universities millions of dollars. A report is expected in mid-year. 
