Library Research News: December Edition
In this issue
- International Open Access Week: Who owns our knowledge?
- Capped Read and Publish agreements update
- Latest on CAUL’s Major Publisher Negotiations
- Updating your Researcher Identifiers
- Hot Tip: Open Alex
- Event roundup
- Catch up on the latest GenAI learning content
- Holiday Notice – plan ahead
It’s been a while since our last Library Research News, but these past months have been full with activity. In October we celebrated International Open Access Week, publishing a series of blog posts in the lead up to our online event, Who owns our knowedge? A conversation, and in November the Library has been immersed in the CAUL Major Publisher Agreements negotiations. Read about these developments and more below.
International Open Access Week: Who owns our knowledge?
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Online session
During International Open Access Week, Deakin Library hosted a panel session along this year’s theme, Who owns our knowledge? Facilitated by Dr Danny Kingsley, Director of Library Services (Information), this stimulating conversation brought together diverse voices from across Deakin University to unpack the systems, structures and stories that shape how knowledge is created, shared and valued. Danny was joined by Associate Professor Judi Parson, School of Health and Social Development, Dr Wade Kelly, Senior Lecturer, Researcher development, Dr Lauren Halcomb-Smith, Lecturer, Open Education, and Teagan Menhenett, Bachelor of Psychology (Honours) student.
Our panellists reflected on:
- Who has access to education and research
- How knowledge is produced and disseminated
- Where knowledge originates
- Whose voices are recognised and amplified.
Dr Wade Kelly shared his thoughts in a follow-up post on LinkedIn, concluding, “[R]esearch communication is, at its heart, an act of care. Translating knowledge so it lands where it’s needed most isn’t peripheral to scholarship; it should be core to it.”
If you would like to watch the event recording, it is now available to view on the Deakin Library YouTube channel: Who owns our knowledge? A conversation.
Open Access Week blog post series
In the lead-up to Open Access Week, Library staff published a series of blog posts addressing different aspects of OA. You can catch up with these articles below:
- Back to Basics: understanding the fundamentals of Open Access
- Where to find open knowledge (and how to use it)
- Opening your research – how to make your publications open access
- Leveraging AI to help with open knowledge
- Open knowledge in action to support research, student and community engagement
Open Access Australasia events
If you missed the Open Access Week events hosted by Open Access Australasia, or you’d like to watch them again, recordings are now available.
The three online sessions brought together
- The politics of knowledge: who controls the story and who has access to it?
- Community ownership: Relation, reciprocity and responsibility
- Vive la révolution! Taking our knowledge back
Capped Read and Publish agreements update
Read and Publish agreements are designed to support the transition to an open scholarly publishing system. They take the Library’s existing expenditure on subscriptions and repurpose it to cover both reading and publishing in that publisher’s journals. When you publish in a journal that’s included in one of the agreements, your article will be made open access, and you won’t have to pay an article processing charge (APC). Some publishers only offer agreements that are subject to a limitation (or “cap”) on the number of individual articles that can be made open access per year. Often, the cap is reached before the end of the year.
The annual cap for open access publishing with several Read & Publish agreements has been reached for 2025. The cap applies to all institutions participating in the agreement.
- Wiley (hybrid journals) – cap was reached on 19 September.
- Springer Nature – cap was reached on 9 October.
- Taylor & Francis – cap was reached on 24 October.
- Wiley (fully open access journals) – cap was reached on 28 October.
For full details about how these caps make affect you, see our earlier blog post, Capped Read and Publish agreements update (3 November. 2025).
Latest on CAUL’s Major Publisher Negotiations
The Council of Australasian University Librarians (CAUL), in partnership with Universities Australia (UA) and Universities New Zealand (UNZ), has recently concluded negotiations with the four largest scholarly publishers: Elsevier, Wiley, Springer Nature, and Taylor & Francis. These negotiations aimed to establish agreements that:
- Provide fair, transparent and equitable value for universities
- Support the long-term sustainability of access to scholarly content
- Maximise open access publishing opportunities for researchers
- Explore new and innovative agreement models
- Advance the transition to full open access.
These goals are fully consistent with Deakin’s Open Research Position Statement, which affirms that research is “a global public good, and barriers to the dissemination of research should be removed wherever possible.”
Key outcomes
- Taylor & Francis: A landmark, fully uncapped open access agreement secured, covering all hybrid and gold open access journals.
- Wiley and Springer Nature: Agreements are being finalised.
- Elsevier: Negotiations paused. No sector-wide agreement for 2026.
- Elsevier’s offer did not meet CAUL’s expectations for fair pricing, transparency, or sustainability. Concerns included:
- High costs compared to other publishers.
- Limited transparency in pricing models.
- Exclusion of gold open access publishing.
Read CAUL’s media release for details on the Taylor & Francis agreement and the Elsevier decision.
Major Publishers Negotiations Hub
For further details about Deakin’s involvement in these negotiations, please see the Library’s Major Publishers Negotiations Hub. On this site, you will find:
- Background information on the CAUL major negotiations with publishers
- Updates on negotiation progress and outcomes
- Alternative access options for journal articles
- Publishing options and advice for Deakin researchers
- Answers to common questions in the FAQs
- Ways to contact the Library team for help or further information.
Updating your Researcher Identifiers
Keeping your ORCID iD, Scopus Author ID, and ResearcherID up-to-date are essential for showcasing your work accurately. Updated author identifiers:
- Enhance the ability of Elements to find and match your publications.
- Improve visibility and ensure accurate research metrics reporting.
- Maintain up-to-date data in your Research Metrics Dashboard.
Take a few minutes to review your research identifier in Elements and make any necessary updates. In particular:
- Make sure your ORCID iD is connected to your Elements profile.
- Confirm that only one Scopus ID is listed under your research identifiers.
Note: If you see multiple Scopus IDs or need to update your profile, follow the instructions in our Researcher and author profiles guide.
Furthermore, in support of open science initiatives, Deakin Library highly recommends that you maintain your OpenAlex profile. See this month’s Hot Tip below for more.
For further support with your Deakin profiles contact your librarian.
Hot tip: OpenAlex
OpenAlex is an open catalogue named after the ancient Library of Alexandria.
OpenAlex has an index of 250+ million works sourced from 250,000 journals, books and conference papers. The data is freely reusable under a CC0 licence, which means that anyone can use, share and build on it without any restrictions or need for permission.
Beyond access, OpenAlex provides detailed author profiles and analyses publication impact, helping users gauge the influence of their work.
To explore an example of an author profile in OpenAlex, see Professor Peter Enticott’s profile.
Event roundup
Graduate researcher workshop series
Our series of graduate researcher workshops has ended for the year, however you can explore previous workshop recordings below:
- Advanced literature searching
- Systematic literature searching for systematic reviews and other evidence syntheses (for Health and SEBE)
- Publishing and open access
- Responsible use of genAI in research
- Getting your data in order: put research data management into practice
Catch up on the latest GenAI learning content
Missed a recent GAP (GenAI Framework Activation Project) session?
The GAP team has added newly recorded videos to the GenAI Hub’s Learning Opportunities webpage so you can explore the key concepts anytime.
Check out the updated Foundations, Communication and Collaboration sections for short explainers on GenAI Basics, Limitations, Prompts, and Communicating with AI.
Deakin GenAI Hub workshop series
Deakin GenAI Hub has launched a new series of workshops designed to build your AI literacy in your work, research, and study.
Our workshops have concluded for the year, but you can explore previous recordings on this page.
All Library events can be discovered on the Library’s What’s On page. Additional professional development for researchers is also available via Deakin eResearch: training and events.
Details for all upcoming library events will be made available on the Library events page.
Holiday Notice – Plan Ahead!
Deakin Library will be closed from Wednesday 23 December, and will reopen on 5 January 2026. Many of us will be taking a well-deserved break starting 19 December. If you have any enquiries or questions, please make sure to contact your librarian before then so we can assist you promptly.
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Library Research News is a regular publication from the library, publishing library-related news for Deakin researchers. To stay in the loop, please subscribe to Article.
To access library research services, please contact your librarian or navigate to Research via the library website. Scholarly Services Librarians bring discipline-specific expertise related to the following key areas:
- expert searching
- research data management
- Copyright for research
- publishing and open access
- research outputs stewardship
- research metrics.