Mark Huskisson

I find it remarkable that people pay enterprise sums of money for subscriptions that probably cost more time than they save. Teams is an awful deployment of a poor tool, Word is indescribably poor now, and CoPilot is just woeful waste of time and money. Wake up people, there is far better out there.

I'm doing a joint task where I returned to using @microsoft.com Word for the first time in ages. What an utter pile of [insert word here] that software is. Why on earth do your institutions spend so much money for what is, at best, a very average program? It's awful, crashing, buggy, clunky... yuk.

I mean... you would, wouldn't you?

Anyhow, I've become a distraction to @drbeth.bsky.social original post (sorry!). It wasn't intended.
In a quick aside I said hi to my good friend Ed by saying, "Hi Ed. Or should I say, hello Dr Ed!" He replied, "That's Professor Ed to you. Don't lowball me." So... I'm pretty rubbish at these titles

For clarity, I'm not down on UKSG. Most conferences have to be vendor supported to do what they do. Charleston has 30-40 sales reps from each of the large publishers alone, and there's no way I'd champion that. My world is an open science world and that's juxtaposed to Western 'vendor' conferences.

Yes, I agree. Meeting, learning, and moving things forward is the essential element of these events. The sessions themselves? Well...
For Asia, it was USD$250 reg and the Global Summit was by invite. UKSG is USD$1,100 for me.
I will miss you guys and I will get FOMO. I did enjoy UKSG in the past.

I've been many many times. Often as a vendor back in the day. I've just returned from 2 weeks work travel in Bangkok and India and the total cost will be similar to 3 days in Glasgow for UKSG. And I learn a huge amount in Asia. Attending UK events is a hard circle to square for the cost / learning.

Are there any redeeming factors of attending these vendor fests? Apart from meeting friends and old colleagues? And the bar, obv.

Pragya Chaube is absolutely smashing it at the Global #DiamondOA Summit. Expressing her deep frustration at the barriers that the academic incentives system creates for early-career researchers and researchers worldwide. A gifted, dynamic, and erudite communicator cutting through clear frustration.

Devika Madalli describes the Bharat Open Science Platform during her One Nation, One Subscription presentation at the Global #DiamondOA Summit. BOSP is the new OA publishing infrastructure by INFLIBNET for Indian Journals based on #OJS from PKP (@pkp.sfu.ca) for open research for all Indian research

Tracy Creagh (QUT) from the Australasian Diamond Community of Practice assesses OA initiatives across ANZ at the #DiamondOA Summit. Stressing the importance of OASPA, DOAJ, ALMASI, and DIAMAS amongst many others
@oaspa.bsky.social
@creaght.bsky.social
@doaj.bsky.social
@almasiproject.bsky.social

Vanessa Proudman introduces the ALMASI Project to the Global DiamondOA Summit. A landscape scan of Africa, Europe, and Latin America indicates this critical infrastructure operates on $6m per year, calling for better support for these tools & services @almasiproject.bsky.social @operaseu.bsky.social

Loving Zoom's captions at this #DiamondOA conference. I quote:
"Read before.
And so, I mean? And let's say, right?
Okay, well, my relative stress on them.
Well, please.
She now said, ah!
dysactic.
rational.
vocation. Okay, that was your lap.
On an array platform with Zoom. Exists okay
for ourselves"

Anuradha Agrawal (ICAR) – Agricultural research needs to be shared for the wide harvest of humanity ...the current dominant model of scholarly communications builds walls where we build bridges. We aim to dismantle those walls to enable a true open sharing of knowledge for the public good #DiamondOA

Arbain Arbain, Chairman of Relawan Jurnal Indonesia, explains Why Indonesia Matters Today: the rise of open journal systems at #DiamondOA Summit in Bengaluru, India. 28,000 journals and counting. My blog from February 2023 in @scholarlykitchen.bsky.social covers this - share.google/jDbTnBnYGTN5...

And we're off. The 3rd Global Diamond Open Access Summit begins in Bengaluru, India. #DiamondOA

Hey, that's me! See you at the Global Summit in India? A quick bounce from the librarians and publishers in Bangkok at #CharlestonAsia onto the policy makers at the 3rd Global Summit on DiamondOA #DOASummit in Bengaluru. Fun times, tiring times, but honoured to be here in the company of good people.

Goodnight Bangkok, good morning Bengaluru. Bleary eyed day ahead of sorting the suitcase and doing the laundry.

Mark Huskisson is PKP Strategic Business Advisor and Juan Pablo Alperin is PKP Scientific Director. The Summit's logo is an elephant in India reaching up to a tree with many branches. The elephant has a diamond shaped blanket on its back with an open access symbol.

PKP joins the 3rd Global Summit on Diamond Open Access!

🧩 Mon 2 Feb Concurrent Workshop 1: Publishing Platforms and Services for Diamond OA - diamondoasummit.org

Come say hi to @juancommander.scholcommlab.ca and @markhusk.bsky.social!

▶️ Live: www.youtube.com/@IIHRMM

#DiamondOA #DOASummit2026

Shaping Europe’s Research Future: OPERAS Calls for a Sovereign and Equitable ERA Act A Critical Juncture for Open Science, SSH, and Community-Led Infrastructure The European research landscape stands at a pivotal moment. The European Commission’s consultation for the European Research Area (ERA) Act, finalised on January 23rd,...

#ERAAct #PositionPaper | 📢 Following the European Commission's consultation on the ERA Act, OPERAS has just released a position paper with a powerful message: Don't let commercial interests capture the research agenda.

👉Learn more: https://operas.hypotheses.org/9636

Madhura Amdekar from @crossref.bsky.social launches the Crossref day in Bangkok, Thailand. A lot to get through today, with @abartell.bsky.social up next with the importance of quality metadata. Already lots of questions and comments from the community.

On my way to the Crossref event in Bangkok. The air quality may be declining and it may be a little too hot (even at 7am) for the average North European like me, but I'm really looking forward to spending the day with the Thai librarians and @crossref.bsky.social colleagues on behalf of @pkp.sfu.ca.

Image of the Bangkok river ferry with the large corporate Sheraton Hotel in the background

Continuing my career-long habit and preference of not staying in the conference hotel (for costs alone, if not just a little separation), it always brings an enjoyable commute with the locals. Although my arrival in the high aircon after the humid 34C means I'm a hot mess for at least the first hour

I received a job description for a role a recruiter would like me to consider. It's a senior leadership role (insert fake blush emoji for a self deprecating LinkedIn style humblebrag) and a main quality required is, "Must be comfortable using Excel and Powerpoint." For the 1st time I feel qualified.

The #CharlestonAsia Conference comes at a good time due to not travelling to events in the USA. I'm excited to kick off 2026 in Thailand as Asia is a leader in the creation of open access knowledge. This will be a conference of listening, learning, and building the foundations for collaboration.

The last OPERAS Conference was excellent. I'm delighted that the organisers have forgotten how painful it was to host conferences and decided to do another one. @operaseu.bsky.social is a place of real community and innovative ideas that is hard to rival anywhere in European scholarly communication

The Order of Canada insignia: a white, six-pointed snowflake-shaped medal with gold edges, a red maple leaf at the center, and a crown above it, with the words ‘The Order of Canada’ displayed above the emblem.

🎆 What a way to close out 2025 as we celebrate PKP's Founder, John Willinsky, and his appointment to the Order of Canada for more than 25 years of dedication to #OpenAccess and #PublicKnowledge!

-> www.gg.ca/en/media/new...

Image from Muttercraig CC BY-SA at uottawa-mpsp.fandom.com/wiki/Order_o...

#POSI – "An infrastructure organisation’s role is to support its community." We need to champion all in the open infrastructure space, not compete for self-interest to the detriment of the community's needs. There may be a better solution than ours, which is more appropriate for a user's success.

The Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (v2.0, 2025) POSI version 2.0 released October 2025 The POSI Adopters reviewed the version 1.1 principles and consulted with the community to create version 2.0, released in October 2025. The new/always-current ve...

Reading year-end posts from some open initiatives has been extremely encouraging. But, I've also started to get a feel for which of those initiatives have signed up to and reflect the #POSI principles (openscholarlyinfrastructure.org), especially lobbying to cement their own narrow self-interest.

The inaugural article of Reviews of Economic Literature is fittingly titled

"It Is Time to Bring Scholarly Publishing Back to the Academic Community"

It argues that open access crucially needs to be coupled with a new non-profit publishing model

rel.journals.sup.org/index.php/re...