“Major reform is never born of chance. It is the fruit of a shared vision, patient dialogue, sustained cooperation, and collective commitment in service of the common good,” writes Awa Diouf Cissé, EIFL Copyright and Libraries Coordinator in this article published in Senegal’s ‘Le Soleil’ newspaper. 

Milica Ševkušić, EIFL Open Access Programme Project Coordinator, will speak at the Female Academic Network for Africa Research and International Collaboration (FANARC) Conference. The theme of the conference is ‘Research Visibility and International Collaboration’. 

Milica will deliver a presentation titled 'Digital Tools for Research Visibility'. The conference is hosted by the Adventist University of Africa. Registration can be found here.

Join the next meeting of the Community of Practice (CoP) for no-fee OA publishing in Africa. 

Date and time: 19 August at 10:00 UTC/11:00 WAT/12:00 CAT/13:00 EAT (convert to your timezone).

Rima Kupryte, Director of EIFL will attend the 18th Berlin Open Access Conference (B18) organized by OA Forward.  B18  will convene senior leaders from research institutions, library consortia, and funding bodies alongside major publishers to address a central question: What must change now to realign scholarly publishing with the interests of the research community?

Join the EIFL online meet-up of open science trainers and discuss experiences with running workshops for research offices. Amy P. A. Asimah and Dominic Dankwah will also share their experiences of conducting open science training in Ghana.    

Date and time: 12 August 2026, 9:00 UTC (Convert to your timezone).

Registration: Please register here to participate in the meet-up.

Join this EIFL webinar to discuss communications, marketing, visibility and impact of Diamond OA journals. 

EIFL has renewed the agreement with Royal Society Publishing for a further three years until December 2029. The agreement provides EIFL partner countries with free or deeply discounted access to eight high-impact journals in the physical and biological sciences, and waived Article Processing Charges (APCs) for open access publishing in fully open access and hybrid journals.

ACCESS TO JOURNALS

Countries that are eligible for free access - 

Iryna Kuchma, EIFL Open Access Programme Manager, will facilitate a webinar for the EIFL partner in DRC - Consortium des Bibliothèques Académiques du Congo. The webinar will outline the opportunities offered by the EIFL-negotiated agreements for open access (OA) publishing. Participants will learn how to identify eligible journals, submit a manuscript, understand waivers and discounts in Article Processing Charges (APCs), and adopt best practices to enhance the visibility and impact of their research. 

In an open letter to the European Parliament, EIFL joins over 35 organizations calling on the European Parliament to reject the introduction of actor-specific licences for access to public sector information and data in Europe. To address concerns about market dominance and unfair competition by very large enterprises, mechanisms for differentiated charging should instead be used. 

Join the next meeting of the Community of Practice (CoP) for no-fee OA publishing in Africa. 

Date and time: 15 July at 10:00 UTC/11:00 WAT/12:00 CAT/13:00 EAT (convert to your timezone).

Iryna Kuchma, EIFL Open Access Programme Manager, will speak about Eastern European developments and challenges with multilingual content discovery at the COAR (Confederation of Open Access Repositories) Annual Conference 2026. More information about the conference and a programme is here. 

EIFL is a COAR founding member and Iryna is a COAR Board member. 

Iryna Kuchma, EIFL Open Access (OA) Programme Manager, and Tetyana Yaroshenko, EIFL-OA and Country Coordinator in Ukraine, will speak at the Open science in Ukraine: From declarations to actions webinar celebrating Open Government Week and Science Day. 

The webinar will be in Ukrainian and see more information about it in Ukrainian. 

The webinar will focus on the practical aspects of searching, discovering, and exploring scholarly literature using the AI-powered research tools Elicit, Consensus, and ResearchRabbit. Participants will learn how the free versions of these tools can support literature reviews, identify relevant publications, uncover research trends, and improve research workflows.

It is intended for researchers, librarians, and trainers interested in using AI tools to support scholarly research and learning.

Join this EIFL webinar to learn more about research workflows using AI tools

The webinar will focus on the practical aspects of searching, discovering, and exploring scholarly literature using the free versions of AI-powered research assistants SciSpace and Undermind. Participants will learn how these tools can support literature reviews, identify relevant publications, uncover research trends, and improve research workflows.

It is intended for researchers, librarians, and trainers interested in using AI tools to support scholarly research and learning.

Following a consultation in January 2026 by the European Commission on the European Research Area (ERA) Act, six major European organisations – ALLEA, EIFL, IFLA, LIBER, OPERAS, and SPARC Europe have issued a landmark joint statement.  

The joint statement reflects on the current state of open science in Europe and outlines key remaining barriers that require a coordinated approach for open science to reach its full potential. 

Join this EIFL webinar to discuss strategies and tools to motivate your journal peer reviewers and Reviewer credits tool.

Join this EIFL webinar to discuss training programmes for editorial teams, reviewers and authors. 

Join this informal online discussion, 'A Virtual Break', hosted by the EIFL Public Library Innovation Programme (EIFL-PLIP) on the topic 'The Civic Potential of Public Libraries' - that is, the potential of public libraries in divided societies to foster dialogue between different viewpoints and combat misinformation and manipulation encountered online. 

All the best for the holiday season and the New Year, with warm wishes from the EIFL Board and team. Thank you to everyone who has worked with us in 2025. We look forward to working with you again in 2026.