Ronald Maier (Vice-Rector for Digitalisation and Knowledge Transfer), Brigitte Kromp (Vienna University Library, Head of the Central Physics Library and the Clearingstelle Konsortien), and Rita Pinhasi (Vienna University Library, Clearingstelle Konsortien) attended the 17th Berlin Open Access Conference (B17) in February 2025.
B17 brought together over 150 representatives from academic and research institutions, national negotiation teams, and research funding organizations from more than 40 countries across all continents. Discussions focused on regional perspectives and challenges in the global transition to Open Access publishing.
Brigitte Kromp co-moderated a session titled "From Transformation to Collective Responsibility: A Conversation Among Actors Engaged in the OA Transition" alongside colleagues from Japan and the USA. High-level representatives from Elsevier (CEO), Springer Nature (CCO), and Wiley (Senior Vice President) were questioned about their roles in this transformation.
One of the key outcomes of the conference, the B17 final statement, reaffirms the community’s commitment to working with publishers to meet the diverse needs of the global research ecosystem. It emphasizes the protection of author rights and researchers’ freedom to use AI, text and data mining in their work. The statement also calls for transparency in research information and pricing, as well as a fair realignment of investments in scholarly publishing.
pictured: Ulrich Pöschl, Brigitte Kromp, Rita Pinhasi und Ronald Maier
photo by Niklas Willén
