Category Archives: oa.2.5%

Thinking politically about scholarly infrastructure: Commit the publishers to 2.5% | Boston | College & Research Libraries News

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Boston, A. (2021). Thinking politically about scholarly infrastructure: Commit the publishers to 2.5%. College & Research Libraries News, 82(6), 265. doi:https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.82.6.265

Abstract

Maybe it’s unsurprising that I think about scholarly communication in terms similar to U.S. politics. I originally drafted this article for the Library Publishing Coalition blog before the 2020 election and revised it for C&RL News during the weirdly long interregnum period before the actual inauguration. The 2016 Republican National Committee was the backdrop to my becoming a scholarly communication librarian in February of that year. That’s also when I joined Twitter, to better follow politics and librarianship, and maybe that’s to blame.

The Plan – Towards a Scholarly Commons

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“To do so, the project will undertake the following activities:

Write a Literature Review that situates this work within the current research on scholarly publishing.
Conduct Focus Groups that will provide insight into how libraries currently make decisions about investing in infrastructure.
Develop a Census of Infrastructure that will make visible the current set of platforms, systems, and applications that comprise the system of scholarly publishing
Create a Map of the Scholarly Publishing System that visualizes the results of the census
Write a set of Case Studies of Infrastructure Providers that provide insight into what is required for long-term sustainability for this infrastructure
Conduct a Survey of Investment in Infrastructure by colleges and universities that will document the current state of investment

Develop a Report that synthesizes the materials from our activities and provides recommendations on promising directions to sustain and grow investment in this infrastructure, and if warranted, how to sustain the specific work of this project….

The project begins in September 2018 and concludes in February 2020….”

The Plan – Towards a Scholarly Commons

Posted on by

“To do so, the project will undertake the following activities:

Write a Literature Review that situates this work within the current research on scholarly publishing.
Conduct Focus Groups that will provide insight into how libraries currently make decisions about investing in infrastructure.
Develop a Census of Infrastructure that will make visible the current set of platforms, systems, and applications that comprise the system of scholarly publishing
Create a Map of the Scholarly Publishing System that visualizes the results of the census
Write a set of Case Studies of Infrastructure Providers that provide insight into what is required for long-term sustainability for this infrastructure
Conduct a Survey of Investment in Infrastructure by colleges and universities that will document the current state of investment

Develop a Report that synthesizes the materials from our activities and provides recommendations on promising directions to sustain and grow investment in this infrastructure, and if warranted, how to sustain the specific work of this project….

The project begins in September 2018 and concludes in February 2020….”

Invest in Open Infrastructure: An Interview with Dan Whaley – The Scholarly Kitchen

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“Dan Whaley from the Invest in Open initiative answers questions about what IOI is doing, and sets a broad context for the global effort….

Open infrastructure is the solution to all this.  For me, open infrastructure is simply shorthand for technology in which the incentives to collaborate and work together are built in by design. That includes elements like open source software, open APIs, open data and open standards, but more fundamentally it’s a mindset in which your reward — either personal or organizational — comes from working together as a community for the benefit of all.  

As someone who is product focused, a question I always try to ask is what is the best user experience, regardless of who owns which piece? Does what we’re implementing actually make it easier for people to accomplish their goals? Closed systems often make decisions simply for the sake of preventing or restricting access that create terrible experiences and result in lower utility. Open systems do this too sometimes, but at least the inherent motivations are more likely to be aligned….”

Will the revolution be open? May 17, 2018 Webinar Registration – Zoom

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“Will the revolution be open? This is an important question and the jury is out. In this webinar series we examine what it will take for the academic library community to develop the human, technical and financial resources that will be required to support an open future for global scholarship. The Elsevier purchase of Bepress was for many a wake-up call. It indicated that much of the infrastructure academic libraries rely on to manage and make content openly accessible was at risk of being monopolized by proprietary interests, just as scholarly journals have been. While the problem is clear — academic libraries need to control the infrastructure they depend on to make scholarly content open and discoverable and accessible. It seems clear that the level of support now provided is barely adequate at best, and that the academic library community faces a collective action problem that makes the necessary investments difficult. How to escape the current situation is not clear. In this webinar series the problem will be considered from both North American perspectives and those from outside of North America — in the hope of devising a way forward to create the infrastructure necessary to support a global open scholarly commons.

Join us on Thursday, May 17 at 12:00 ET for “The 2.5% Commitment: Investing in Open.” This webinar will focus on the David Lewis’ proposal for a 2.5% investment in open infrastructure and how it aims to make visible the investments academic libraries make in open infrastructure and content. It will also review actions that have taken place in the past nine months to advance these ideas. For background on the “Invest in Open Initiative” see the initiative website at: https://scholarlycommons.net and a recent College & Research Library News article describing the initiative at: https://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/article/view/16902.

Time May 17, 2018 12:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)”

The Tool – Towards a Scholarly Commons

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“We’ve posted a public version of the early version of our tool for measuring your investments in Open. Feel free to make a copy of it to calculate your local institutional investments….

To get a sense of where we are heading with this, you can read a draft specification that we’ve written for a system more robust than a google spreadsheet….”

2.5% for Open: An inventory of investment opportunities – Google Docs

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“David Lewis recently proposed (see https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/handle/1805/14063 ) that libraries devote 2.5% of their total budget to support the common infrastructure needed to create the open scholarly commons….
In the early stages of exploring this idea, we want to come to some agreement about what would count as such an investment, and then build a registry that would allow libraries to record their investments in this area, track their investments over time, and compare their investments with like institutions. The registry would also serve as a guide for those looking for ideas for how to make the best investments for their institution, providing a listing of all ‘approved’ ways to invest in open, and as a place for those seeking investment to be discovered. As a first step towards building such a thing, we are crowdsourcing the creation of the inventory of ways to invest. Below you’ll find, organized by Lewis’ categories, a wide range of investments that many of us already make….” 

Open and Shut?: Achieving the BOAI Vision: Possible Actions for Realization

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“A great deal of water has passed under the bridge since 2002, but as 2017 draws to an end what should the stakeholders of scholarly communication be doing now to fully realise the vision outlined at the Budapest meeting?…Today I am publishing the response I received from Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, Professor/ Coordinator for Information Literacy Services and Instruction in the University Library and affiliate faculty in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.”