The Royal Society of Chemistry (#RSC) just issued a vague and puzzling statement about its plans.
rsc.org/news/our-evolving-appr…

It once planned to convert all its journals to #OpenAccess by 2028. By which it apparently meant #APC-based OA. But after talking with customers in different parts of the world, it learned that some regions "are not yet ready for fully OA." By which it means APC-based OA. "The resounding message we heard over and over is that one size cannot fit all." By which it means that not all can pay APCs.

"It became clear that we needed to adapt our vision for openness to account for a landscape that is increasing in complexity and no longer coalescing around a single direction for open research." As if the global landscape had ever coalesced around support for APCs.

But RSC is still committed to some kind of transition to OA. "We are now shaping our future OA approach to support authors in ways that suit them best in a local context."

If it plans to support no-APC forms of OA, it carefully avoids saying so. It never mentions #GreenOA and never endorses #DiamondOA. (It mentions one diamond OA initiative in Africa, but it's not an RSC initiative.)

I'm guessing that it plans to rely on locally customized #ReadAndPublish agreements. (I've argued that all such agreements use APCs in disguise.) But if so, why not say so? If it has other models in mind for regions "not ready" for APC-based OA, why not say what they are?

#APCs #South #ScholComm

Trump’s “two weeks” statement was just one aspect of a broader effort at political and military misdirection that took place over eight chaotic days,
from the first Israeli strikes against Iran to the moment when a fleet of B-2 stealth bombers took off

Trump seemed almost gleeful in telling reporters that he could make a decision “one second before it’s due,
because things change, especially with war.”

All the while, Trump was making blustery statements indicating he was about to take the country into the conflict.
“Everyone should evacuate Tehran!” he wrote on Monday last week on Truth Social.

The following day, he posted that he had not left a meeting of the Group of 7 in Canada to broker a Middle East cease-fire but for something “much bigger.”

So, he told the world, “Stay tuned!”

These public pronouncements generated angst at the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command,
where military planners began to worry that Trump was giving Iran too much warning about an impending strike.

They built their own deception into the attack plan:
a second group of B-2 bombers that would leave Missouri and head west over the Pacific Ocean in a way that flight trackers would be able to monitor on Saturday.

That left a misimpression, for many observers and presumably Iran, about the timing and path of the attack, which would come from another direction entirely.
nytimes.com/2025/06/22/us/poli…