For a long while, there has been a lot of anger among researchers and academic librarians towards the legacy publishers: the big corporations that control access to most of the world’s scholarly output. But what exactly is the problem? Let’s briefly consider several possibilities, and see if we can figure out which ones really matter.

It has become rather fashionable in some circles to decry the complain about the lack of progress on Open Access. Particularly to decry the apparent failure of UK policies to move things forward. I’ve been guilty of frustration at various stages in the past and one thing I’ve always found useful is thinking back to where things were.

In my recent preprint on the incompleteness and distortion of sauropod neck specimens, I discuss three well-known sauropod specimens in detail, and show that they are not as well known as we think they are. One of them is the Giraffatitan brancai lectotype MB.R.2181 (more widely known by its older designation HMN SII), the specimen that provides the bulk of the mighty mounted skeleton in Berlin.

Just launched: a new open-access journal of vertebrate paleontology, brought to you by the University of Alberta, Canada! It’s called VAMP (Vertebrate Anatomy Morphology Palaeontology), and it charges no APC. Here’s a illustration from one of the two articles in its first issue.

Arriving as an early Christmas present, and coming in just a week before the end of what would otherwise have been a barren 2014, my paper Quantifying the effect of intervertebral cartilage on neutral posture in the necks of sauropod dinosaurs is out!

Last night, I submitted a paper for publication — for the first time since April 2013. I’d almost forgotten what it felt like.

Just a quick post today, to refute an incorrect idea about open access that has unfortunately been propagated from time to time. That is the idea that if (say) PLOS were acquired by a barrier-based publisher such as Taylor and Francis, then its papers could be hidden behind paywalls and effectively lost to the world.

I was skim-reading the Political Studies Association’s evidence submitted to RCUK’s review. I was struck by one part that perpetuates a common but completely unfounded misapprehension: There may be concern, but it’s misplaced. Using CC By does not allow your work to be misrepresented.

A couple of weeks ago, more than hundred scientists sent an open letter to the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) about their new open-access journal Science Advances , which is deficient in various ways — not least the absurdly inflated article-processing charge.

Dear  AAAS, This is an open letter concerning the recent launch of the new open access journal, Science Advances. In addition to the welcome diversification in journal choices for authors looking for open access venues, there are many positive aspects of Science Advances: its broad STEM scope, its interest in cross-disciplinary research, and the offering of fee waivers.