This research paper sets up a typology of libraries managed by cultural centres abroad.Nearly 2,200 libraries linked to a dozen of different cultural organizations provide not only traditional services such as loan and access to printed and audiovisual materials but they also approach local citizens, offering help and services in matters of education, literacy, cooperation, social issues or development. These actions may fit under the label of cultural diplomacy actions. This paper analyses the relevance of those cultural centres and offers a classification through a table including networks of institutions of the thirty most significant cultural centres worldwide.

The rise of open access (OA) publishing has been followed by the expansion of the Article Publishing Charges (APC) that moves the financial burden of scholarly journal publishing from readers to authors. We introduce the results of an international randomly selected sampled survey (N=3,422) that explores attitudes towards this pay-to-publish or Gold OA model among scholars. We test the predictor role of age, professional position, discipline, and income-level country in this regard. We found that APCs are perceived more as a global threat to Science than a deterrent to personal professional careers. Academics in low and lower-middle income level countries hold the most unfavorable opinions about the APC system. The less experimental disciplines held more negative perceptions of APC compared to STEM and the Life Sciences. Age and access to external funding stood as negative predictors of refusal to pay to publish. Commitment to OA self-archiving predicted the negative global perception of the APC. We conclude that access to external research funds influences the acceptance and the particular perception of the pay to publish model, remarking the economic dimension of the problem and warning about issues in the inequality between center and periphery. Key points• APCs are perceived more as a global threat to Science than a deterrent to personal professional careers • Younger academics and those in low and lower-middle income level countries hold the most unfavorable opinions about the APC system. • The negative perception about APC is higher among Arts & Humanities and Social Science researchers compared to those in STEM and the Life Sciences. • Age and country income level stood as negative predictors of refusal to pay to publish.