I’m looking forward to my second visit to the Charleston Conference in November. Since last year, I've noticed that the conversations I’m having about Open Access (OA) with North American librarians are shifting. I’m talking less about whether OA should receive institutional support and more about how to create sustainable publishing agreements that reduce obstacles and create opportunity.

JMIR Publications recently renewed JMIR’s unlimited OA publishing agreement with ZB MED. Thanks to this partnership, researchers across Germany can continue publishing...

At JMIR Publications, we believe that choosing the right journal is one of the most critical steps in a researcher’s journey. For over two decades, we have supported open-science frameworks that provide diverse, reliable pathways to measure a paper’s reach and community impact.

For over 25 years, JMIR Publications has operated on a simple premise: health research should be immediately and freely accessible to all. However, recent policy changes from major funders like Cancer Research UK (CRUK) now threaten to dismantle the very "Full Open Access" model that made this possible. By cutting all APC support, these policies risk stifling independent, scholar-led publishers while leaving the massive revenue streams of legacy publishers untouched. Below, we share our response to CRUK and propose five alternatives that reform the system without sacrificing the progress of the last two decades.

The transition to Open Access (OA) is no longer a distant goal; it is a rapidly accelerating reality. As we navigate this shift, the ESAC (Efficiency and Standards for Academic Collecting) Initiative is a useful compass, tracking the rise of Transformative Agreements (TAs) globally.

I had a great time in Austin at the ER&L Fest. The longer I’m in the position of Institutional Partnerships Lead at JMIR, the more I enjoy working with librarians. As a group, they are friendly, thoughtful, and ask great questions. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to me - my mother was a public librarian and I spent many, many hours among the book stacks of her workplaces.

As I am preparing for my trip to Austin for the ER and L conference, I am thinking a lot about the conversations I have had with librarians over the past year, especially at Charleston in November. The consistent theme of each conversation was uncertainty—often budgetary, but also regulatory and administrative. Everywhere, libraries are under pressure to do more with less, leaving many to ask: how to manage library budget cuts while transitioning to open access? It’s clear that librarians are no longer just managing collections;  they’re navigating a total systemic shift.

If you were in Charleston this past November, you know what I mean when I say the air was thick with purpose, and a little bit of worry. The Charleston Conference is always a place where librarians and publishers come together to discuss the tough questions facing our industry, and this year highlighted that scholarly communication is evolving against a backdrop of economic, technological, and policy-driven uncertainty.

The landscape of scholarly publishing has grown increasingly complex, and academic librarians managing collections face mounting pressure to navigate this complexity wisely. With library budgets stretched thin, multiple business models competing for resources, and the ever-present threat of predatory publishers exploiting the open access movement, the responsibility of vetting journals has never been more critical, or more challenging.