Green and gold are artificial distinctions, mainly driven by the technical and business separation between publishing platforms and institutional and thematic repositories operated by research institutions or research communities. Building on two efforts that were presented last year at Open Repositories in 2018, (1) Next Generation Repositories functionalities and (2) prospects for greater integration between repositories and journal publishing platforms, we have developed a conceptual model for publishing overlay services on top of distributed repository platforms. The model removes the green and gold dichotomy by providing a system that integrates publishing capabilities with repository capabilities, thereby combining the strength of the two worlds, while building out an integrative and interoperable infrastructure for scholarly communication.

The preprints landscape has been evolving fast – with a 20-fold increase in the number of preprints posted in the Life Sciences alone, there is no doubt that things are changing. The landscape, however, is very complex, as it involves a wide range of stakeholder groups with somewhat different requirements and objectives. Across 2018 and 2019, Knowledge Exchange and Research Consulting undertook a study on preprints and investigated them through the innovation diffusion theory.

Our study has been investigating the core benefits of publication via preprints, attitudes towards them, trends in usage, incentives and disincentives and the core values, strategies, and aims of preprint services providers. We interviewed about 40 stakeholders, including research funders, research performing organisations, service providers (preprint servers) and individual researchers. Based on their views, we were able to fully appreciate the high level of uncertainty in this area, but also its untapped potential.

In our proposed presentation, we will provide our views on this increasingly important topic and engage the OR2019 attendees in an open discussion to drive future technical and cultural developments.

In June 2018, two math professors, Timothy Gowers (University of Cambridge) and Dan Kral (University of Warwick), in collaboration with Queens’ University in Canada, launched a peer-reviewed mathematics overlay journal built entirely on articles contained in the arXiv repository hosted at Cornell University. ‘Advances in Combinatorics’ is a journal that is free to read and will not charge authors to publish. The relatively low costs of running the journal are being covered by Queen’s University Library, which is also providing administrative support. As we continue our progress towards 100% open access, it is critical that we develop sustainable and quality models that have no costs to authors. The presentation will provide an overview of the broader vision for academy-owned open access and next generation repositories, present the model of the overlay journal ‘Advances in Combinatorics’, and discuss any issues and challenges identified through the work to date.