OA Forward launches to coordinate next phase of global open access
A new international initiative aims to take open access negotiations to the next level, bringing together major library consortia and research organisations under a single, coordinated framework.
DEAL Open Access Services (DEAS), alongside partners including the University of California Libraries, Consortia Colombia, the Council of Australasian University Librarians, the Max Planck Society, the German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB), and the South African National Library and Information Consortium, has announced the creation of OA Forward – a globally governed effort to advance open scholarly communication.
The initiative builds on the foundations of the OA2020 and ESAC movements, which were hosted by the Max Planck Society but driven by an increasingly international network of libraries, funders and institutions. OA Forward marks a further evolution, with partners across five continents working within a shared structure designed to strengthen coordination, legitimacy and collective influence.
Over the past decade, OA2020 and ESAC have helped reshape scholarly publishing agreements, enabling hundreds of thousands of articles to be published open access each year. They have also improved transparency around publishing costs and shifted financial responsibility away from individual authors. OA Forward is intended to build on this progress and deepen engagement with publishers as the system continues to evolve.
“OA Forward embodies the shared commitment of the contributing partners to strengthen international collaboration around open access negotiations,” said Dr. Bettina Böhm, Secretary General of the Leibniz Association and current Chair of the DEAS shareholder meetings. “Together, we are building on the progress of OA2020 and ESAC to advance open scholarly communication and negotiate better agreements with publishers worldwide.”
“The shift toward open scholarly communication represents a structural transformation of the research system,” said Dr. Heide Ahrens, Secretary General of DFG (German Research Foundation). “OA Forward strengthens the collective capacity of institutions and funders to prompt further reforms and innovations in line with the evolving needs of researchers and the expanding potentials of modern scholarship.”
“This is a community that has developed both the experience and the alignment needed to engage with publishers at scale and, as co-creators of OA Forward, our international partners have shaped not only its direction but its foundations,” said Christian Agi, Managing Director of DEAL Open Access Services (DEAS). “OA Forward cements that alignment and supports a more coordinated approach at every level.”
The launch comes at what organisers describe as a new inflection point for open access, with institutions increasingly able to shape agreements and direct funding toward a broader range of open research outputs. OA Forward is positioned as the mechanism to coordinate these efforts internationally.
“What this community has built together – visible in the uptake of open licensing by authors, improved workflows and metadata, and greater institutional control over financial flows in scholarly publishing – is remarkable, and what we are now positioned to do is clear. The scope is no longer only about open licensing and sustainable pricing. Institutions are increasingly focused on transparency, accountability, equity, quality, and control over the scholarly record and its reuse. OA Forward brings this work together, strengthening negotiation strategies while driving innovation across a diverse ecosystem of publishing platforms, research outputs, and open science initiatives,” said Colleen Campbell, Executive Director of OA Forward.
A dedicated OA Forward website is expected to launch in the coming months, while existing resources remain available via the OA2020 and ESAC platforms.