Emerald Publishing pledges its support to the Open Scholarship Initiative’s Plan A

Emerald Publishing pledges support to The Open Scholarship Initiative’s Plan A, committed to reforming the future of scholarly communication

Emerald Publishing has pledged their commitment as a signatory to The Open Scholarship Initiative’s (OSI) Plan A, an international, multi-stakeholder effort to reform the future of scholarly communication. The goals and outputs of this plan are designed to inform and align with UNESCO’s efforts to craft a global recommendation for open science by late 2021.

OSI is the world’s only large-scale, high-level, multi-stakeholder effort focused on developing an inclusive, achievable, sustainable approach to global scholarly communication reform. Developed in partnership with UNESCO, over 400 leaders in scholarly communication have engaged with OSI since 2015, representing 250 institutions from 27 countries and 18 unique stakeholder groups.

Signing up to Plan A is particularly pertinent to Emerald Publishing, as this aligns well with Emerald’s commitment to furthering open research, and its wider drive to advance the real impact of research, in partnership with its communities. Having launched their Impact Manifesto in 2018, calling for change and putting a marker firmly in the ground to lead the publishing charge towards meaningful impact, the company went on to launch Emerald Open Research in 2019 as a natural extension of their commitment to open and sustainable research. OSI’s Plan A summary paper, Common ground in the global quest for open research, will be published on Emerald Open Research in the coming days.   

OSI’s efforts to date have been characterised by collaboration and with thorough consideration across multiple stakeholders around the world. OSI has been committed to gathering facts that inform reform proposals; working on reforms as a unified community; recognising and appreciating the many different and valid interests and stakeholders; and identifying points of common interest so that they may work together toward common goals and create an open research future that is vibrant, robust and sustainable.  The Plan recommends actions around the discovery and design of research and how communities work together to redouble collective efforts to better meet the needs of research in a way that is sustainable to all. 

Speaking of becoming a signatory of Plan A, Tony Roche, Publishing and Strategic Relations Director at Emerald Publishing, said “We are proud to have contributed to OSI since its inception in 2015, and look forward to the further development of Plan A as a collaborative effort spanning stakeholders across the global scholarly communications ecosystem. For Emerald, open access and open science both contribute towards our wider real impact vision, through which society can reap greatest benefit from research and subsequent innovations.”

Glenn Hampson, Program Director at The Open Scholarship Initiative spoke of the collaboration saying, “We’re honored that Emerald has chosen to help with this effort. Emerald’s leaders have been involved from the beginning in helping OSI think through the future of open research, and in recent years Emerald has developed effective, innovative open platforms to serve the needs of the open community. We very much look forward to working together on Plan A.”

For more information about OSI, go to http://osiglobal.org. or to pledge your commitment and sign Plan A, please visit http://Plan-A.world.

For more information about Emerald Open Research visit https://emeraldopenresearch.com/