Read more about the ‘Empowering Ethiopian Research Universities: A Multifaceted Approach to Overcome Open Access Barriers in Scholarly Publishing’ project, and the OBC Collective Development Fund, here:

openbookcollective.pubpub.org/pub/announci...

Subscribe for more alternative: opensauce.simonxix.com #opensoftware

kMeet instead of Teams or Zoom

Zotero instead of Endnote or Mendeley.

Replace 1 or 2 pieces of propietory software with an open source alternative. Zettler instead of MS Word or Google docs. (I need to do some of these changes myself - JF)

Changing software culture in higher education can be a monumental challenge. Longterm goal is divesting from Microsoft and Google. Simon suggests 1 or 2 small changes we can do now

Moreover funding these commercial companies supports the ongoing genocide in Gaza. None of this is compatible with the goal of a more open, ethical and sustainable research culture.

Simon talks about researcher dependency on proprietory software despite known pitfalls and problems. The British library's outsourcing to propriety software made it vulnerable to the cyber attack of 2023. These companies are openly exploitative of UK education

Mahesh Karnani speaks on making publishing inclusive and efficient through free preprint peer review in neuroscience

Many people see repository deposit as just meeting REF requirements, but responses to OA generally was more positive

We are now hearing from Ali Kay of Leeds University about the impact of mandates. Initially there was an increase in repository deposits especially of REF eligible output. But qualitative data is also needed #EORC

Enjoyed @judithfathallah.bsky.social's point that the citation advantage and openess of publishing #OpenAccess is more personally beneficial for researchers, particularly as publishing with "prestige" legacy publishers doesn't result in permanent contracts these days anyway!