Open Science working group member Koen Vermeir (France) attended the Society for Scholarly Publishing Conference on ‘Bringing Value in Academic Publishing: Practical Solutions for Thriving in a Changing Environment‘ in Berlin, Germany, in January 2019. He talked about how publishers can bring value for early-career researchers during a panel on ‘Overcoming Blind Spots: Keeping Our Perspectives Open’. He argued that scholarly publishers should live up to their responsibility, as they do not simply provide a service but are an essential element in a healthy research ecosystem. As such, they can bring a lot of value in providing fair access to authors and readers and in guaranteeing the quality and integrity of the publishing process. Indeed, publishers are also to be held accountable for their part in maintaining public trust in science.
Koen also discussed Plan S and the future of scholarly communication with Robert-Jan Smits, the European Commission’s special envoy for Open Access, the DEAL consortium and representatives from academic publishers during the Academic Publishing in Europe conference in January 2019 at the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Berlin, Germany.
