n this issue, we feature an editorial by Mitsuhiro Okada, Professor Emeritus at Keio University .Who shares his insights on the progress of the Open Access (OA) movement in Japan.

A Glimpse into the Open Access Movement in Japan

Following the 2023 Sendai G7 Summit of the Science-Technology Ministers, the Japanese Government is committed to Open Access (OA) by 2025*. However, on the Japanese public academic journal platform J-Stage, run by. The Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and financially supported by the Japanese Government. Only 6% of the approximately 3,700 registered journals (and 10% of the roughly 2,000 active ones) are open access.

So, how can the Japanese government achieve OA by 2025 – 2026?

One of the characteristics of academic journal publications in Japan is that most are edited by an academic association or society. Where the members pay an annual fee to receive rapid access to articles. J-Stage is designed to facilitate each association. To convert their registered journals to immediate OA. In fact, a significant majority already allow free downloads .For fair use in accurate mobile phone number list research and education, although some associations set embargoes.

The governmental

Declaration of OA by 2025 provides godaddy vs ionos by which is better in 2024 a good occasion for academic associations to discuss transitioning from the traditional association. Model to a new model with immediate OA. Typically, Japanese academic. Associations own the copyrights of their journal articles. This is not necessarily a major hurdle; if the association decides line data on OA.They could apply CC licenses to all articles published in the last 50 years at once.

For the 2025

OA realization in Japan, a top-down solution could be implemented where. The government orders each university or institute to set up an Immediate OA Repository (Green OA). Each university or institute would then require researchers to submit. Their final versions for independent publication, regardless of the corresponding journal publication. This approach raises various issues, such as conflicts with the spirit of Japanese copyright law. Ambiguity in defining the “final version” of an accepted paper, and the potential weakening of Japanese academic associations. These issues need further discussion.

Various

Sectors involved have been making efforts towards the OA goal in Japan for some time now. These include a series of Japan Open Access Summits, the fifth of which was recently held. Thanks to these ongoing collaborative efforts, I am confident that we will soon reach the OA goal in Japan.

I would like

to point out some issues on OA in the Humanities. In my opinion determining if a modified .Work exceeds the range of “derivatives” in the CC-license sense is more delicate in the humanities than in typical scientific fields. While removing a violated work from an online page is easy .It is not as straightforward as traditional paper media used in some humanities fields. There are a few more issues in the Humanities and the related. Some of them are more specific in Japan. I plan to discuss those elsewhere.

*For the referred papers and their evidence data produced from any public research grants awarded. By the grant application calls announced in 2025 and after.Acknowledgments: The author would like to thank Prof. Miho Fujimori (NII) for the discussion during the preparation of this report.