Description
An introduction to a set of interviews with several of the Copim team, about their work and how it relates to this year's Open Access Week theme: 'Community over commercialisation'.
For Open Access Week 2024, members of Team Copim talk about their work and what 'Community over commercialisation' means to them.
The Copim team talks with Anna Hughes, the communication and engagement manager at Jisc and COPIM.
Tell us a little bit about yourself! When did you join the Copim community? How’s your experience been at your position?
Hello! My name is Anna Hughes, and I’ve worked in academic libraries for over 20 years, most recently in academic engagement and research services teams. Following a move to Jisc to develop and lead the programme of engagement activity to support their members with the implementation of the UKRI open access policy, the opportunity arose to move across to Copim earlier this year. Having worked closely with a number of the Copim team to run sector webinars and collaborated on resource development, it was an easy decision to make! Although my role in Copim is to lead on the development of an online resource bank around OA monographs, I’m also one of the overall outreach and engagement coordinators so have the opportunity to be involved across the project more widely which I’m really enjoying. And learning a lot!
How do you interpret the theme "Community over Commercialization" in the context of Open Access Week 2024 and your work, and why is it important for the field of open scholarship?
Community has always been an important theme in my work. Working in communications and engagement, I have always tried to put the community, or the audience, at the heart of what I do. From working with directly with open access librarians to surface pain points around the UKRI open access policy and then developing resources to support them in conversations with researchers, to working with subject matter experts and advocacy groups from across the scholarly communications landscape to run workshops and webinars that supported and educated Jisc members around the UKRI policy and OA more generally.
Since moving to work with Copim, I have developed a more holistic understanding of what community means. The powerful idea of ‘Scaling Small’ which animates so much of Copim’s work is the notion that small, diverse presses and publishing projects can become mighty when they work in collaboration with each other and with colleagues in universities, libraries, infrastructure providers and more. In a time when commercial publishers are diversifying and increasingly investing in global research data and infrastructure platforms, it is vital that like-minded people and organisations come together, not only to ensure that essential structures will be unenclosed, open, and owned by the academic communities that rely on them but to avoid monopolies and ensure that bibliodiversity is sustainable and affordable for all.
How can we encourage a shift toward using community-minded options in knowledge-sharing systems as the default choice, and what are the practical steps that can be taken to achieve this shift?
Something I’ve been working on for a while, in my previous role, and in this one as well, is how to support academic libraries in choosing which publishers and models to support when it comes to open access. There are so many questions for libraries to consider and with limited budgets, how do libraries evaluate which new models of open publishing they should support? Commercial publishing is embedded within the ecosystem but it doesn’t mean they are the only publishers to support, especially when budgets are being cut and the topic of financial sustainability is coming to the fore. My Jisc colleague Caroline Mackay articulated the dangers of blindly following down the same path trodden by open access journal publishing back in 2023 in a two-part blog post (part one and part two) and this was followed by two blog posts by Copim colleagues. Part One lays out the problems with BPCs to achieve OA for books and highlights various alternatives; Part Two suggests some practical steps to convince budget holders to invest in collective models instead. Part Three is a truly a collaborative effort, community driven resource of criteria for libraries to consider adapting and re-using in creating their own rubric to evaluate which OA programmes they should invest their money in. Inspired by work being done by librarians at the Universities of Salford and St. Andrew’s, the community made it clear at a series of Jisc webinars that this a resource they needed to have in order to have vital conversations with everyone involved in research at their institutions, from researchers themselves to library colleagues and managers.
The more widely this topic is discussed, and these types of practical reuseable resources / templates are shared amongst the community, the more likely it is that practitioners will have the materials and evidence needed to make their case upwards (i.e. with the budget holders!) for supporting OA publishing whilst making the benefits, risks and costs involved clear and identifiable. And if you’d like to find out more, one of the authors of this resource is speaking on this very topic later this week at a UKSG event: Getting out from the back of the sofa: Or, how can we achieve sustainable funding for Open Access books?
Can you share any success stories or initiatives where community control of knowledge-sharing systems has had a positive impact on research accessibility and collaboration?
To flip that question on its head, if any readers have examples of where community control of knowledge-sharing systems or where collaborations are happening between institutions, publishers and infrastructure or service providers, why not share this knowledge with the DIAMAS project at their webinar on 23 October 2024 15.00-16.00 CET. More information and registration details.
The concept of community in Diamond OA publishing, is not always the go to, with competition between actors often present. Smart use of shared services, sharing knowledge and expertise, and potentially saving costs in the process has benefits for individual organisations as well as for the scholarly communication and open access publishing ecosystem as a whole. DIAMAS would like to invite anyone active or interested in the Diamond OA space to join them, share views and experiences in order to ascertain and identify opportunities for future collaborations that will optimise expenses and facilitate financial sustainability.
How can individuals, institutions, and organizations actively participate in Open Access Week 2024 and contribute to the theme of "Community over Commercialisation" in their local contexts?
While it can feel overwhelming at the amount of activity advertised during OA Week – especially on social media – it is a really good opportunity to learn, explore ideas and connect with practitioners. Lots of academic libraries use OA Week to connect at a local level with the harder to reach groups (researchers come to mind!). It is a good ‘hook’ for connecting and starting conversations. I always hear that conversations that researchers need to become aware of all the ideas and issues involved with OA (and open research as well), this is the opportunity to do so! Embedding ideas around the different ways to publish OA eg. via non BPC models and the reasons for doing so as early as possible in the research publication journey will encourage the authors of tomorrow to explore non-commercial publishers and perhaps even inspire practices of experimentation and reuse. And don’t forget to use the week to improve your own knowledge and make connections – use the hashtag #OAWeek and the official website to find events that interest you. The highlights from last year’s OA Week (with the same theme of “Community over Commercialization”) show the variety and range of activity globally. And even if you can’t watch everything live, keep some aside for when you have a quiet hour or so at work…
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