Some days I look at the things I've done and think: when I am gone there will be no trace of me, and all that I have worked upon will over time turn to dust. This may well still be true, but there are other days, like today, when I feel pretty good about the world and the things that I am working to make within it.

First, the Knowledge Commons identity management system was changed yesterday. This has been the result of an extremely lengthy period of work. Months and months of programming have gone into this to make it right. The changeover itself took seven hours yesterday and was physically and mentally exhausting for me, as I was doing it immediately after my skin graft surgery and because I have chronic norovirus and am receiving IV feeding in hospital for this. This is all quite a gruelling regime! However, it seems to have worked out. People are reporting success, we can see people logging in, and, overall, the bugs that we now have to fix are not major. Hurrah!

Then, I noted that today marks the start of the second "Lower Decks" conference about the platform Janeway. This is a collaborative event co-organised by The Open Library of Humanities, Michigan Publishing Services, and Dublin City University Library. It is hosted in Dublin by DCU and looks at users' user experience, updates, innovations and use cases from institutions using Gameway as their publishing platform. Janeway is now led by my colleague and friend Andy Byers. But, again, Janeway is something that I co-founded and made, and it feels brilliant to see that people are organizing entire conferences around this software.

Finally, I am quoted in Research Professional today on the University of Nottingham divesting from big deal packages at major publishers, in favour of open access. However, here's the full quotation that I gave that didn't quite fully make it:

In times of austerity, it is inevitable that publishing deals will come under scrutiny and be examined for the value for money that they provide; especially if they are for-profit. If, as the university says, they are able to transfer this funding into innovative open access publishing models, such as the Open Journals Collective, or to fund infrastructure that needs it, then this could indeed be a very positive initiative. However, the truly important thing is not to dress up austerity as the reason that we go to open access. Quality open access publishing requires revenue streams as much as traditional publishing; they still need to pay staff. It should not be seen as a shortcut merely to defunding more of our scholarly ecosystem.

Of course, Nottingham is in the higher education news at the moment for all the wrong reasons (many staff losing their jobs as the UK "Labour" government runs universities into the ground). However, more and more I am aligned with Sam Moore's views in his Beyond the Market that we must resist an ever-creeping austerity mindset in thinking about OA.

References

• Jones, Frances, et al., 'University of Nottingham Drops Five Publishing Deals', Research Professional, 21 May 2026 https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-universities-2026-5-university-of-nottingham-drops-five-publishing-deals/ [accessed 21 May 2026]
• Moore, Samuel A., Publishing Beyond the Market: Open Access, Care, and the Commons (University of Michigan Press, 2025)

Things I have made (KC IDMS in place, Lower Decks conference, and quote in ResearchProfessional) was originally published by Martin Paul Eve at Martin Paul Eve on May 21, 2026.