From a new and important open letter signed by 17 Nobel laureates and more than 30 international organizations:

The exorbitant article processing charges (APC) that come hand-in-hand with the Author-Pays OA publishing model deepens the inequality between researchers from developed countries and those in lower income countries. […] In developing countries, APC associated with the publication of scientific articles could represent a large proportion of the annual grants (as much as 35-130%).

The letter, spearheaded by a group of young scientists, calls out Plan S for its friendly fire, and cites the momentum behind the UNESCO Recommendation. Among other suggestions, the letter calls for the creation of an ad hoc worldwide committee, a Global Initiative for Equitable OA Models.

This is one to watch—and join.

Tonya Riley, writing for Cyberscoop:

The Federal Trade Commission voted 5-0 on Thursday to issue a policy statement warning education tech companies against using data collected from children via education services for additional commercial purposes, including marketing and advertising.

A promising move … for children under 13. Teens and, well, college students remain, as Riley puts it, "susceptible to industry surveillance."

From the Wiley press release:

This agreement, which marks Wiley’s first in Latin America, positions UNAM as the leader and pioneer in the development of open access research, allowing its researchers to publish most if not all of its articles open access across Wiley’s portfolio of hybrid journals.

It's a strangely spare announcement, with ambiguous language ("most if not all," hybrid journals only?). Without more details, the "deal" looks like a PR stunt: Latin America—home to the nonprofit, fee-free alternative—joins the read-and-publish club.

From Springer Nature's press release announcing an OA book deal with Max Planck:

The initial three-year agreement, live as of 1st January 2022, will enable authors from all 86 Max Planck Institutes to receive a discount on the standard Book Publishing Charge (BPC) to publish their book OA. MPDL will contribute central funding toward the coverage of the discounted BPC, lowering the costs for authors even further. The discount and funding will be available across all of the publisher's book imprints, under a CC BY licence, ensuring their work is freely accessible and discoverable to all communities across science, technology, medicine, the humanities and social sciences. They will be available to readers around the world via Springer Nature's content platform SpringerLink. 

Deals like this one are an extension in spirit of the journal-based read-and-publish model—even if there's no straightforward "read" component. Springer Nature charges $15,000 to publish an OA book, via a Book Processing Charge (BPC). Max Planck researchers won't see that charge, as the German institutes will cover the difference after the deal's discount. The problem is that deals like this prop up the BPC system, which excludes the vast majority of the world's scholars. Researchers lucky enough to work in wealthy European countries and a handful of rich North American universities, meanwhile, accrue all the OA benefits.

From the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI) announcement:

The Book Analytics Dashboard Project (2022-2025) is focused on creating a sustainable OA Book focused analytics service. […] In addition to scaling workflows, infrastructure and customer support, the Demonstration Project is developing a long-term plan for housing, maintenance and funding of the analytics service as a sustainable community infrastructure.

It's a mess right now—a labor-intensive harvesting of (in Lucy Barnes' phrase) "apples, oranges, grapes, kiwi fruit and pears."

Godspeed to the COKI people.

Kate Eichhorn, [writing in the *Chronicle of Higher Education*](https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-gig-economy-comes-for-scholarly-work) [paywalled]:

> In early March, Chegg launched a marketing campaign to convince educators to sell their teaching materials to the company’s recently launched Uversity platform. Chegg describes Uversity as a “collaborative learning library,” though many educators may disagree with that characterization. […] The message went on to break down Chegg’s assessed valuation of different types of curricular materials, with a caveat that the listed price reflects the company’s current 50-percent bonus — a limited-time offer. Apparently, if I rushed to take advantage of this promotion, I could cash in to the tune of $375 per practice exam (limit 4), $375 per study guide (limit 4), $120 for lecture notes (limit 15), $75 per practice quiz (limit 5), $120 per case study (limit 5), and $120 for lab notes (limit 10).

Chegg, the cheating-as-a-service (CAAS) platform, is preying on underpaid academics:

> That there’s a market for Chegg’s predatory practices at all reflects the grim reality of higher education in the 2020s. As stories about the [New Faculty Majority](http://www.newfacultymajority.info/) reveal, a critical mass of faculty members don’t make enough money to support themselves and their families. As a result, side gigging is already a norm in higher education.