HighWire Press, once the most prominent start-up in scholarly communications is sold to MPS for a stunningly low sale price. cOAlition S pens letter to publishers, providing several paths to compliant OA. The European Research Council is pulling out of Plan S. And more.

COVI-19 research scandals, accommodating budgets and reducing publishers’ fees, and openness of scholarly communications. Dealmaking in scholarly publishing. UCL and Springer Nature make a deal, MIT and Elsevier end negotiations, and OSU and Taylor & Francis enter into read and publish agreement.

Business outlook post-pandemic. Overflow of research, the speed of preprints, and the decline of women’s scholarly production. cOAlition S transparency rules.

Will things go back to normal? Budget cuts and furloughs, labs and fieldwork at a standstill, and accelerated change in higher education. COVID-19 research explodes, and most Springer Nature journals will join Plan S.

Coronavirus affects scholarly publishing, causing cancellations and postponements of publishing events. A new word enters the lexicon, WFH (Work from Home). Chinese government announces policy shift in research assessment – a “representative works” model.

The coronavirus – a public health story, a science story, a political story, and a human-interest story. Preprint servers’ role in communicating the latest research. Making federally funded research freely accessible is put on hold. RELX releases its annual report.

APE 2020 highlights – geopolitical tensions, open access models, and open research data. Sci-Hub under investigation. Personal privacy and student tracking apps. Springer Nature IPO. And more.

Rumored update to the Holdren Memo. Springer Nature tries again with IPO. Plan S compliance through “transformative journals.” Five publishers announce new service to simplify access to full-text articles. Demographic meltdown in college enrollments. And more.

Open access tipping point? Like “print will be dead” predictions, the future of OA is taking many turns. India isn’t joining the Plan S coalition. Lackluster reception of Plan S and logistical complications of geowalling. MIT’s framework for publishing contracts.

Coercive citation in academic publishing. The Journal Blacklist now includes 12,000+ titles. GSW acquires Lithosphere, the evolution of open access megajournals, personalized research discovery tools, and much more.