Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) provide an invaluable contribution to higher education, yet their role is often overlooked and understudied. We report on a UK-based study to describe the experience and views of GTAs with particular focus on training and professional development. Our findings draw from a survey of 32 GTAs along with informal group discussions with a small number of undergraduates and academic staff. A key theme from our project is the value of subject-specific training. We explore this issue and raise the possibility that in addition to university departments, learned societies and academic associations within the discipline may have a role to play in providing pedagogical training for GTAs and early career academics.

Academic associations are a vital part of the academic community, facilitating the interaction of researchers and production of knowledge, yet the impact of Open Access on their future has been too often regarded as marginal to the main discussion. Open Access presents an evident threat to those associations, which have become dependent upon a sizeable proportion of their income coming from owned journals published in conjunction with publishers. Yet, Open Access also presents opportunities, and academic associations should be bold in using a combination of their expertise, prestige and experience in publishing to ensure their futures in a newly emerging market.

The push to implement Open Access (OA) as the new standard for academic research dissemination is creating very real pressures on academic journals. In Canada, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) recently adopted a policy requiring that journals applying for its Aid to Scholarly Journals (ASJ) grant make their scholarly content freely accessible after no more than a 12-month delay. For journals such as the Canadian Journal of Political Science (CJPS) that not only publish high-quality, peer-reviewed articles to a specialized audience but also support the work of scholarly associations through the revenues they generate, the push to move to OA comes with a number of challenges. The Canadian Political Science Association (CPSA) and the Société québécoise de science politique (SQSP) established a committee to chart the best course of action for the CJPS in light of this changing landscape. This article summarizes the key findings of the committee and underscores some of the challenges of OA for journals with a profile similar to the CJPS, as well as for the broader research ecosystem that they support.