SPARC Europe joins Open Book Futures (OBF) project to increase access to OA books

“We are pleased to announce our participation in the recently launched Open Book Futures (OBF) project, funded by Arcadia and the Research England Development (RED) Fund.

Open Access (OA) publishing has transformed how scholars and the wider public access academic content. However, despite the many benefits of OA, the number of OA books published each year is still relatively low compared to OA journal articles. In response to this challenge, the OBF project was launched with the intention of significantly increasing and improving the quantity, discoverability, and accessibility of academic content, ensuring it is freely and easily available to not only scholars but also the general public. The intention is to build on the pioneering work conducted within the Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM) project….”

SURVEY-A-THON Series – DIAMAS

DIAMAS is also organising a series of survey-a-thons to assist participants with completing the survey in different languages, you can see information about these events here: http://diamasproject.eu/survey-a-thon-series/. 
SPARC Europe and LIBER will host a joint one in English on 26 April 2023, 10 CEST. Please register here.

 

Survey of Open Repositories in Europe

“The aim of this survey is to gain a better understanding of the repository landscape in Europe in order to develop a relevant and effective strategy to strengthen repositories in the region…. 

The survey is being undertaken by OpenAIRE, LIBER, SPARC Europe, and COAR as part of their Joint Strategy to Strengthen the European Repository Network. Results of the survey will be presented in a report in summer 2023. Aggregate, anonymised data will be deposited into the Zenodo repository. No personal information will be shared beyond the survey analysis team and contact information will be used for internal purposes only.

The survey is open to any open research / scholarly repository based in Europe and should be completed by a person who is responsible for managing the repository….”

SPARC Europe highlights of 2022

“Some key highlights for 2022 were:

We properly got into our new facilitator role to support the Council for National Open Science Coordination in 2022 by managing a range of knowledge-exchange conversations with scores of national OS policymakers from across Europe.
The DIAMAS Project — ‘Developing Institutional Open Access Publishing Models to Advance Scholarly Communication’ began in the autumn of 2022. As one of 23 project partners, we will lead the work on supporting the sustainability of institutional publishing, and we are excited about managing engagement for the project.
For more equity in Open, we made headway on reforming copyright for Open Access through a new project, Project Retain, where we worked hard to gather insights into the rights retention and open licensing policies of institutions of Higher Education, funders, and publishers.
The Open Access Books Network (OABN), which we helped build and co-coordinate, became an OPERAS Special Interest Group (SIG). This new organisational move will bring more stability to this important network.
Our European Network of Open Education Librarians (ENOEL) continued to grow, strengthen, advocate, and develop Open Education (OE) across the continent.
We are proud to announce that SCOSS – together with over 300 libraries worldwide – has so far helped raise 4.85 million EUR to sustain Open Science Infrastructure. One-third of these pledgers are recurrent! We are so grateful that even in hard economic times, libraries are investing in open infrastructure….”

OpenAIRE, LIBER, SPARC Europe and COAR Launch Joint Strategy to Strengthen the European Repository Network – COAR

“Open science is ushering in a new paradigm for research; one in which all  researchers have unprecedented access to the full corpus of research for analysis, text and data mining, and other novel research methods. A prerequisite for achieving this vision is a strong and well-functioning network of repositories that provides human and machine access to the wide range of valuable research outputs. Repositories also support much needed bibliodiversity in the system as they collect a diverse range of content types, domains and languages, and are fundamental for achieving Europe’s desired changes to research evaluation, whereby “assessment of research, researchers and research organisations recognises the diverse outputs, practices and activities that maximise the quality and impact of research”.

Currently, Europe has one of the most well-developed networks globally with hundreds of repositories hosted by universities, research centres, government departments, and not-for-profit organisations. However, there are significant variations across the European repository landscape with differing levels of support and funding; and, while some countries have strong national coordination, others do not. In a practical sense, this means that some repositories have access to the resources they need to provide a well-functioning service, while others find it a challenge to maintain up-to-date software platforms and suitable staffing levels….

To that end, today OpenAIRE, LIBER, SPARC Europe, and COAR are launching a joint strategy aimed at strengthening the European repository network. Through this strategy we are committed to working together – and with other relevant organisations – to develop and execute an action plan that will reinforce and enhance repositories in Europe. As a first step, we will undertake a survey that will enable us to have a better understanding of the current repository landscape and identify priority areas of action. The survey will be available in February 2023.”

New Project. DIAMAS, building capacity for OA diamond publishing

The institutional OA diamond publishing sector can be challenged by fragmentation; its visibility can be limited, its service of varying quality, and its sustainability is not always secure. A new European Commission-funded project, DIAMAS, aims to build capacity amongst institutional publishers in Europe to address some of these challenges. It will run for 30-months and started on 1 September with 23 partners collaborating. SPARC Europe is one of the project’s partners.

Knowledge Rights 21 – 21st Century Access to Culture, Learning & Research

“The programme Knowledge Rights 21 (KR21) is focused on bringing about changes in legislation and practice across Europe that will strengthen the right of all to knowledge. It is built on a conviction that knowledge is essential for education, innovation and cultural participation, and that everyone should have the possibility – in particular through libraries, archives and digitally – to access and use it….

New project for SPARC Europe to reform rights retention and open licensing policies in Europe – SPARC Europe

“SPARC Europe has been selected to deliver the first project sponsored under the Knowledge Rights 21 (KR21) programme. KR21 seeks to strengthen access to knowledge in particular through libraries and archives. It is focused on bringing about changes in legislation and practice across Europe that will strengthen rights to knowledge.

This is aligned to the SPARC Europe strategy and speaks to four of our strategic goals: 

Strengthen Open Access, Open Scholarship / Open Science and Open Education policy in Europe and align where possible;
Advocate for open in research and education;
Strive to enable more equity in Open so that all those who wish to publish and share research and education resources openly are better enabled to do so; and 
Promote diversity in publishing Open research and education.

SPARC Europe will lead research to develop a stronger understanding of rights retention and open licensing policies in Europe, with an ambition to reform the way institutions and authors manage their publishing rights to enable Open Access and access to knowledge for all. A key goal is to simplify the rights retention procedures, encourage the adoption of open licences, and better empower authors so that they and their fellow researchers, teachers and students can further benefit from the research they share. …”

OPERAS’ Assembly of the Commons

In classical governance schemes, there is a separation of powers that leads funders and policy-making authorities to discuss and make decisions on their side with no or just indirect consultation of the community. We, at OPERAS, did not want that. The OPERAS AISBL governance scheme traverses the different layers of the organization, such as management, strategy, policy, and support. Furthermore, it establishes the levels of engagement of the different types of stakeholders in the development of the OPERAS Research Infrastructure. 

The Assembly of the Commons (AoC) is one of OPERAS’ governance bodies and it gathers all Ordinary Members of the infrastructure. It is convened at least once a year and the OPERAS’ second Assembly of the Commons took place virtually on May 11th, 2022 from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM CET. It had a double objective of discussing the work completed in the Special Interest Groups over the course of the previous year and electing the two representatives of the OPERAS community: Vanessa Proudman and Mark Huskisson.

You can find more information about the meeting, the vision and the representatives below.

Participants of the Assembly of the Commons (May 11, 2022)

Pierre Mounier, OPERAS’ coordinator, opened the Assembly of the Commons by giving a short overview of the meaning of the AoC and its place in the governance of OPERAS.

As a multi-stakeholder organization, OPERAS is governed through several assemblies that represent the diversity of stakeholders engaged in their development. The Executive Assembly (EA) gathers the core members of OPERAS. These are the organizations that are more committed than others to the development of the infrastructure, and they are responsible for (1) organizing their national communities, (2) leading the Special Interest Groups, and (3) taking the decisions related to OPERAS on a monthly basis. The General Assembly (GA) gathers the national authorities such as the ministries and research communities and the supporting members. It convenes once a year and approves the budget and global strategy of the infrastructure. The Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) advises us on scientific matters. The Coordination Team (OCT) manages the infrastructure on a daily basis.

The Assembly of the Commons (AoC) represents the community in its entirety and gathers all Ordinary Members. At the same time, the AoC is the addition of all the Special Interest Groups and their participants. We named the AoC as such in reference to the theory of Elinor Oström. According to her, goods are better governed collectively by a community than individually as private property. Those goods that are better governed as commons are some material goods such as forests, fisheries, and grazing lands, but also immaterial goods such as knowledge and its infrastructure. Therefore, we see the AoC as the assembly of all those people who take care of the tools, services, and platforms, and have the know-how that enables product sharing and knowledge dissemination.

After this highlight on the importance of the Commons for the infrastructure, the participants of the meeting had the opportunity to choose their delegates. The two candidates, Vanessa Proudman and Mark Huskisson, introduced themselves and engaged in a debate with the participants.

Vanessa Proudman is Director of SPARC Europe with 20 years of program management experience in facilitating access to knowledge in Europe and advocating for change to increase more equitable access to knowledge. 

Over the years her focus has been on Open Access, Open Science, Open Culture, and Open Education working with many leading universities and libraries worldwide. Research and knowledge exchange are her vehicles to inform, connect and advocate for change in these areas. Her focus has been to increase Open international, national and regional policy-making and practice in Higher Education in Europe. She has extensive experience in setting policy with a view to put this into action whilst connecting the specificities of policymaking with OS practitioners and vice versa to ensure effective OS implementation. Creating a more level-playing field in Europe to enable more equal opportunities to engage in Open Science and Open Education is also key to her work. By gaining an understanding of the needs of the research and OS support community through research activities and knowledge exchange, Vanessa Proudman will seek to ensure that an evidence-based approach is used to support the SSH community on its road to making open the default. 

Mark Huskisson is responsible for Business Development at the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), the developer and stewards of OJS, OMP, and OPS. PKP develops open-source software systems that manage the complete scholarly publishing workflow for journals, monographs, and preprints, and conducting scholarly communication research on questions of open access and open science.

Having worked in academic and scholarly publishing for thirty years, Mark Huskisson has developed and nurtured a collaborative and supportive network in commercial publishing houses, libraries, learned societies, and the rapidly growing scholarly communication technology ecosystem. Working at the nexus of the huge PKP community gives insight into the challenges and huge opportunities available to the open community if successful collaboration and sustainable pathways can be identified and secured. This new post offers a strategic benefit for learning and knowledge exchange between the OPERAS network and global OJS community.

During the debate, the candidates answered some questions from the community:

How do you see OPERAS in the open access landscape? (Pierre Mounier, OPERAS)

What is really unique about OPERAS is that it is a comprehensive and interconnected infrastructure community for the SSH, which does not exist in such a form for other subject domains. This is a great strength. OPERAS can and needs to inform the broader OA community and its decision-makers about the importance of the SSH domain so that we don’t dance to the tune of STEM and larger commercial publishers. There’s a lot of diversity and innovation in scholarly communications going on in this domain. And OPERAS can concretely demonstrate this to the whole community by presenting the work done by its various Special Interest Groups.

Vanessa Proudman

How do you see the European landscape? (Pierre Mounier, OPERAS)

There are a number of challenges across the continent and one is that there is not a single Europe in terms of access and ability to participate in academic publishing due to a number of barriers that the OPERAS Interest Groups are tackling. With large publishers dictating the narrative toward profit and focusing primarily on the wealthier, more powerful economies, the commercial STM sector has often defined models and development within the community despite the needs and demands – and often to the detriment – of SSH researchers and longform research outputs. So, to identify sustainable pathways in SSH across Europe, we need a more coordinated response to the OA challenge that is specific and tailored to research and publishing in the humanities and social sciences. And whilst there has been a huge development of open access and open science initiatives across the continent, they are often undertaken in national, regional, or commercial contexts. OPERAS offers a way to connect and coalesce the energy and drive of these initiatives, continually informed by the working groups (SIGs) to potential enormous effect.

Mark Huskisson

Regarding the multilingual dimensions of SSH, how might we defend and promote this dimension in OPERAS? (Olivier Bouin, RFIEA)

I have an international background and personally do not value any language over another. I believe that it is important to ensure that we share our knowledge in different languages particularly to embrace and respect the wide cultural and multilingual offering in Europe . In SPARC Europe, we created a tool that was translated into 16 languages by the community. Within OPERAS, perhaps we could create such multilingual resources, too.

Vanessa Proudman

What’s your vision about OA books in the global landscape? (Agata Morka, Sparc Europe)

I spent many years working with monographs in publishing and with leading libraries around the world and – as we transitioned from print to electronic media – the expereinces learned with Journals transitioning more easily and rapidly to digital influenced and determined the conversation around books. Even though the cases and contexts were not entirely analogous. And this has slowed the ability to foster and nurture a succesful and flourishing OA book ecosystem. One core challenge, which OPERAS members are solving and improving, is discovery and it is important for SSH in Europe and beyond that we share learning and solutions for the community and society as a whole. To bring a cohesive solution for different organizations that deal with OA books.

Mark Huskisson

The election counted with the participation of 23 organizations-member. Each organization voted once and anonymously. They could vote for both candidates, for one of them or for neither. With 83.33% and 54.17% of votes, respectively, Vanessa Proudman and Mark Huskisson became co-chairs of OPERAS’ Assembly of the Commons. Besides chairing the AoC during their 2-year mandate, the representatives shall also participate in the General Assembly once a year to represent the voice of the community. Otherwise, the General Assembly is composed of representatives of national councils and ministries of the European Countries and supporting members.

During the second part of the AoC, the leaders of the different Special Interest Groups presented the work done and some perspectives for the future.

  • Advocacy

Sona Arasteh (MWS), leader of this SIG, explained the meaning of advocacy, focusing on how it is a broader concept than lobbying. This SIG works as a kind of mediator, advocating for other SIGs. Currently, the group is advocating for the Tools and Platforms SIG.

  • Best Practices

The Best Practices SIG, led by Jadranka Stojanovski Zadar University), is currently working on a White Paper that will focus on the following topics: diamond journals, repositories altering scholarly publishing (preprints), research data in SSH, editorial and publishing policies, peer review, metadata quality, rights and licensing, research assessment, accessibility, and usability.

  • Common Standards and FAIR Principles

Iraklis Katsaloulisfocus (EKT), leader of this SIG along with Haris Georgiadis (EKT), explained that focusing on Common Standards & FAIR Principles is important as it offers a framework for collaboration, convergence, and integration towards enabling interoperability in SSH. Regarding future perspectives, this SIG intends to act as a bridge between the technical and procedural aspects of open science.

  • Multilingualism  

Delfim Leão (University of Coimbra), leader of the Multilingualism SIG, focused on some challenges regarding this topic: perceive multilingualism as a strong manifestation of bibliodiversity in SSH; avoid the risk of turning English, broadly used as a lingua franca, into lingua unica in terms of scientific and scholarly communication; enhance balanced multilingualism in innovative solutions. On the horizon, this SIG plans to achieve a full design and feasibility study to support the development of a translation service for OPERAS.

  • Open Access books Network

OABN is a new OPERAS SIG coordinated by Agata Morka (Sparc Europe), Lucy Barnes (Open Book Publishers), and Tom Mosterd (OAPEN/DOAB). The SIG advocates for open access book publishing, collates news, views, and developments specifically relevant to OA books, and connects a global community in the form of blogs, events, workshops, and other activities.

  • Open Access Business Models

 Graham Stones (Jisc) and Frank Manista (Jsic) lead this SIG that is currently working on focusing on collaborative models in OA book publishing. The previous White Paper (2021) presented an initial analysis and early observations of the study. The next step is to produce an in-depth analysis (a new version of the White Paper). Future questions to be explored include a better understanding of the publishers who do not take part in collaborative funding models and identifying the recommendations for OPERAS and other stakeholders.

  • Tools and Platforms

Formerly called Tools Research and Development, this SIG is coordinated by Céline Bartonat (CNRS) and Arnauld Gingold (CNRS). The SIG has focused on defining tools according to their functions, users, and nature. It deals with challenging issues such as a variety of functions and usage, the diversity of contexts and users, and its dynamic and chaotic environment.

Following this presentation, the participants joined breakout sessions for each of the Special Interest Groups.


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CoNOSC Member needs report published

SPARC Europe took on the facilitation of the Council for National Open Science Coordination (CoNOSC) late last year. To kick-start its efforts and plan the work ahead, it investigated the needs of CoNOSC members. We are pleased to publish this report today. 

The report investigates the needs of national policymakers, presenting key takeaways from interviews with CoNOSC members’ representatives – national OS coordinators, ministry officials, research funders and other policymaking decision-makers.

SPARC Europe conducted interviews with 30 representatives from 18 different European nations during January and February 2022, as well as with the Deputy Head of the Open Science Unit from the European Commission, which attends CoNOSC as an observer. The interviews were designed to identify what activities and areas would provide the most significant value through collaboration at CoNOSC without duplicating any current efforts. 

Based on responses, the report identifies the priority areas for CoNOSC as follows:

Data management
Policy monitoring
Research assessment
Copyright and licensing
Open Access funding
Bibliodiversity

 

Equity and diversity in Open Access. National and regional OA publishing platforms Webinar

This SPARC Europe’s webinar brought together voices from Croatia, France, Finland, the Netherlands, and Spain. Experts from these countries talked us through their initial influences and motivations for establishing national and regional platforms. They shared their perspectives on building and running national and regional OA publishing platforms and spoke about how they had evolved over time through presentations. A panel discussion touched upon challenges they had encountered and shared the lessons they had learned when joining forces and collaborating. They also talked about their future plans to increase collaboration be this locally or internationally. This webinar focused on the following topics: 1. What community-governed, publicly-funded not-for-profit national and regional OA publishing platforms are already set up in Europe 2. Which opportunities and challenges come with setting up a national or regional OA platform and collaborating with smaller publishers 3. What the best practices for national and regional OA platforms are, as seen by experienced experts in the field

See the slide deck here: https://zenodo.org/record/5776490

Open Education in European Libraries of Higher Education (2021 report). | Zenodo

“This report summarises the results of a survey of European libraries on Open Education (OE) and Open Education Resources (OER) prepared by SPARC Europe. It was done in consultation with the European Network of Open Education Librarians (ENOEL). 

Launched in May 2021, the survey, which targeted academic librarians across Europe, garnered over 230 responses from 28 countries. This report is the 2021 version of the 2020 report under the same title, which was the first of its kind. The 2021 report is framed by the UNESCO Recommendation on OER.

The survey questionnaire can be found here: https://zenodo.org/record/4892450

The survey dataset can be found here: https://zenodo.org/record/5734988 …”

SPARC Europe’s Report on Open Education in European Libraries of Higher Education

SPARC Europe has just released a long-awaited report Open Education in European Libraries of Higher Education. This report is the 2021 version of the 2020 report under the same title, which was the first of its kind. The 2021 report is framed by the UNESCO Recommendation on OER.

The report, authored by Gema Santos-Hermosa, Vanessa Proudman and Paola Corti is a result of research conducted earlier this year. The authors analyzed responses to a survey of European libraries of Higher Education on Open Education (OE) and Open Educational Resources (OER). The survey focused particularly on the work being carried out by academic libraries in Europe to implement the UNESCO Recommendation on OER. It saw over 230 responses from 28 European countries.

Equity and diversity in Open Access. National and regional OA publishing platforms. Dec 02, 2021 @ 3pm (CET) | SPARC Europe

When? Thursday, 2 December 2021, 3-4.30PM CET

Where? Please register here.

For whom? This webinar is open to all, including RFOs and other funders, RPO, including universities and other academic institutions, societies, infrastructure providers, OA advocates, and researchers.

It is crucial that we help community-led Open Access (OA) Diamond publishing to flourish in the coming years, also since diversity, inclusivity and equity are at the heart of this publishing model. This webinar will raise awareness of some of the community-governed, publicly-funded not-for-profit national and regional OA publishing platforms. 

In recent years we have seen a growing number of national OA publishing platforms being set up across Europe. Some countries are centralising OA publishing efforts, from well-established projects like Croatian HRCAK and the Finnish Journal.fi to newcomers like Openjournals.nl in the Netherlands. This session brings together voices from Croatia, France, Finland, the Netherlands, and Spain. Experts from these countries will talk us through their initial influences and motivations for establishing national and regional platforms. They will share their perspectives on building and running national and regional OA publishing platforms and speak to how they have evolved over time through presentations.

A panel discussion will touch upon challenges they have encountered and share the lessons they have learned when joining forces and collaborating. We will also ask them about their future plans to increase collaboration be this locally or internationally. There will be a good time for questions from the audience during a Q&A session.