Open Access Week Interview with Francesca Corazza

The Copim team talks with Francesca Corazza about her experience joining Open Book Collective as a Project Manager.

Tell us a little bit about yourself! When did you join the Copim community? How’s your experience been at your position? 

I joined the Copim community two years ago and I’m currently working as a product manager at the Open Book Collective. My involvement in various aspects of platform building, outreach strategy, and business models, has been an all-round learning experience. I have cooperated on the development of the collective since its initial phases, working alongside different initiatives guided by the same principles of cooperation and non-competition. Being part of an international, truly inspiring community has made all the difference.

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?

The whole Copim community, which follows the Scaling Small approach, sustains various models and initiatives through collaboration and resource sharing between community-led projects to support a more sustainable future for OA book publishing. Within this context, I can’t not mention the Open Book Collective, a community platform and not-for-profit organisation which contributes to generating support for small to medium OA publishers and infrastructure providers to produce high-quality books and make them more widely accessible to global readers.

The OBC enables libraries to discover and provide financial support to OA publishers and service providers via membership programmes, fostering bibliodiversity as against a publishing landscape dominated by a few large commercial corporations. It goes down the path of a multi-layered engagement with different communities within a governance framework that protects the common good and services, and by and large, its experience so far has been very positive. 

This is just one of the initiatives that could be mentioned in this respect – like Opening the Future or Thoth, just to consider the Copim initiatives – which is extremely promising for the future of OA scholarship.