Munich, April 8, 2026 – DEAL Open Access Services (DEAS), together with contributing partners the University of California Libraries, Consortia Colombia, the Council of Australasian University Librarians, the Max Planck Society, the German National Library of Science and Technology (TIB), and the South African National Library and Information Consortium, today announced the establishment of OA Forward—an internationally governed coordination initiative that builds on the achievements of the OA2020 movement to advance the next stage of open scholarly communication through coordinated engagement with publishers and other stakeholders.
While the OA2020 and ESAC initiatives were supported and hosted by the Max Planck Society, their success has been driven by a growing international community of libraries, consortia, funders, and research institutions. OA Forward reflects a further step in this development: partners across five continents are now working within a common framework, with broader reach, stronger legitimacy, and shared responsibility across a more unified international community.
OA Forward emerges from a decade of concrete achievement. The OA2020 and ESAC initiatives reshaped the landscape of scholarly publishing agreements, enabling hundreds of thousands of research articles to be published openly each year, driving transparency around publishing costs, and removing the burden of publication charges from individual authors. This foundation now positions the community to engage more deeply and strategically with the evolving scholarly publishing system.
“OA Forward embodies the shared commitment of the contributing partners to strengthen international collaboration around open access negotiations,” said Dr. Bettina Böhm, Secretary General of the Leibniz Association and current Chair of the DEAS shareholder meetings. “Together, we are building on the progress of OA2020 and ESAC to advance open scholarly communication and negotiate better agreements with publishers worldwide.”
“The shift toward open scholarly communication represents a structural transformation of the research system,” said Dr. Heide Ahrens, Secretary General of DFG (German Research Foundation). “OA Forward strengthens the collective capacity of institutions and funders to prompt further reforms and innovations in line with the evolving needs of researchers and the expanding potentials of modern scholarship.”
“This is a community that has developed both the experience and the alignment needed to engage with publishers at scale and, as co-creators of OA Forward, our international partners have shaped not only its direction but its foundations,” said Christian Agi, Managing Director of DEAL Open Access Services (DEAS). “OA Forward cements that alignment and supports a more coordinated approach at every level.”
The maturity and impact of open access negotiations have brought the research community to a new inflection point, where institutions are better positioned than ever to shape publisher agreements and direct resources toward diverse forms of open research dissemination. OA Forward provides the coordination needed to take this work forward collectively.
“What this community has built together—visible in the uptake of open licensing by authors, improved workflows and metadata, and greater institutional control over financial flows in scholarly publishing—is remarkable, and what we are now positioned to do is clear. The scope is no longer only about open licensing and sustainable pricing. Institutions are increasingly focused on transparency, accountability, equity, quality, and control over the scholarly record and its reuse. OA Forward brings this work together, strengthening negotiation strategies while driving innovation across a diverse ecosystem of publishing platforms, research outputs, and open science initiatives,” said Colleen Campbell, Executive Director of OA Forward.
A dedicated OA Forward website will be launched in the coming months. In the meantime, community resources, materials and activities remain accessible on the OA2020 and ESAC webpages.
About OA Forward
OA Forward is a community-driven initiative supported by partners from diverse regions and research communities. Extending the work of OA2020 and ESAC, it advances coordinated strategies for open scholarly communication. The initiative is hosted by DEAS gGmbH, providing a neutral and legally established framework to support globally governed collaboration across international partners.
OA Forward is governed by a Steering Committee drawn from its international partner organizations, bringing together libraries, consortia, funders, and research institutions from across the globe. Members serve as both strategic guides and regional ambassadors, ensuring that the full diversity of the global research community shapes the initiative’s direction.