Editor’s Note: Today’s post is by Matthew Salter. Matthew is the Founder and CEO of Akabana Consulting LLC, a boutique publishing consultancy that offers strategic publishing, editorial, marketing, business development, and Japanese language services to learned societies, scholarly publishers, educational organizations, and publishing service vendors. From 2016-2021 he was the Publisher of the American Physical Society, prior to which he was the Associate Director, Journal (APAC) for IOP Publishing, and the Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of MacMillan Science Communication (then a division of Nature Asia-Pacific) based in Tokyo.
In Japan, as in most countries in the northern hemisphere, the Spring is a time of renewal: the Sakura blooms, green shoots emerge and new spring-themed beers appear on the shelves of convenience stores. In the corporate and academic sectors, however, Spring not only heralds the promise of warmer weather and seasonal beverage options, but also signals the start of the new financial and school year with new budgets, appointments, and company staff reshuffling, as well as the promulgation of new policies and initiatives. April Fool’s Day is not really a thing in Japan, so whereas many companies in the West tend to avoid the first of the month when making important announcements, it is in no way unusual that the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), the nation’s second-largest public-sector research funder chose April 1st, 2022 to unveil its revised open access policy and implementation guidelines with a typical lack of fanfare outside of its home country.
This fascinating Scholarly Kitchen piece reflects on Japan’s approach to the national open access policy. Which is very different from, and far more conciliatory than, the likes of Europe’s Plan S or the UKRI’s open access policy. We wonder if their less aggressive and less confrontational policy will prove to be more effective. We have included links to a long list of related items.
Such a comparatively low-key approach is in line with past precedent as Japanese funding bodies such as JST, have typically opted for a light-touch and iterative approach to open access policies – which for the most part have been developed in consultation with publishers – in contrast to counterparts in other countries that have put forward more radical and headline-generating open access initiatives such as the US OSTP “Holdren Memo”, Plan S, and UKRI’s open access policy announced in mid-2021. Previous versions of the JST open access policy issued in 2013 and 2017 went little remarked upon in many open science circles and were notable for their conciliatory approach, in contrast to the openly-stated ambition to disrupt and reform the world of scholarly publishing of many other funders. Following this consultative tradition, the current policy was circulated in draft form to publisher members of CHORUS, of which JST is a participating funder, for comment prior to publication.
To many observers, the low profile of Japan in the open access debate is anomalous, given the country’s position in the world in general, and the international research community in particular. Japan is a major international economic power ranking #3 in the world in terms of nominal GDP (behind the USA and China), which translates into healthy education and science budgets that claim approximately 3% of total income. Long a leader in scholarship in the region, and for the last 100 years on the international stage, Japan boasts a vibrant and highly developed research infrastructure of more than 3,400 universities, colleges, and research institutions that include many players of international repute which were, at least pre-COVID, attracting growing numbers of overseas researchers. Together these produced over 127,000 scientific and technical publications in 2020 that saw Japan maintain its position as a major global center of research excellence and ranked as the 7th most prolific producer of global scientific publications (a whisker behind Italy in 6th place). Government initiatives in recent years have stressed increased international collaboration aimed at boosting Japan’s international influence in science and technology research, whilst striving to balance increased openness with research security.