Rising to the challenge - Reports from APE 2018, held in Berlin1

For one of Europe’s most important gatherings on scholarly communication, ‘Academic Publishing in Europe’, more than 250 delegates gathered in Berlin from 16 to 17 January (pre-conference 15 January). Since 2006, the conference series has addressed key challenges, particularly technological innovation and business models. ‘Publishing 2020: Ramping up relevance’ was the focus this year, and the notion of ramping up relevance led to the re-affirmation of key themes that have characterised the conference series, and made it valuable to those present: 1. Open access; and particularly funder demands for more progress on the transition to open access publishing by national deals to enable the so-called ‘flipping’ of the business model to avoid ‘doubledipping’ by publishers when collecting subscription fees, plus article processing charges. 2. Content versus data as an unresolved issue for many publishers that remain undecided as to whether they should keep prioritising peer review and publication of content, or focus on providing a platform capable of creating value from data. 3. Looming new technological challenges associated with the blockchain and the rise of machine learning that is likely to challenge academic publishing. Open access (OA) returned to the fore in an opening address delivered by the President of the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Science and Humanities (also the conference venue), Professor Dr Martin Grötschel. He took the opportunity to convey his impressions of the standoff between the German libraries and research organisations and Elsevier, having taken part in the negotiations. The president of the International Publishers Association, Dr Michiel Kolman, could not respond, as he had delivered his opening address earlier. Open access as public policy was a major theme at the pre-conference. Geraldine Clement-Stoneham (MRC, UK) detailed how the openness of research results has been a priority of public policy for more than a decade, and how funders expect more progress on open access publishing and open data. Robert van der Vooren (VSNU) outlined the ambition of 100 per cent open access to journal publications in 2020 by funding article-processing charges. To date, deals with the top eight publishers have led to more than 50 per cent open access publishing for about 24,000 corresponding authors funded by VSNU institutions. Axel Marion (Swiss Rectors’ Conference), presented an open access strategy by which all publicly-funded