The Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA) and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) are pleased to announce the forthcoming launch of the Open Access (OA) Journals Toolkit, scheduled for launch in the second half of 2023. Research Consulting is supporting them in managing the Toolkit development process as well as in liaising with an expert Editorial Board.
In November 2021, with the support of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) and cOAlition S, four ‘task and finish’ working groups were established. The authors facilitated and supported these groups. Each group was responsible for producing tools that will enable library consortia and small independent publishers to negotiate transformative agreements, which is to say, agreements that will enable the publisher to fully transition to open access. The first task and finish group developed shared principles for transformative agreements. The second developed a data template to enable smaller independent publishers to reach agreements with library consortia and libraries, while the third developed example licence agreements. These groups recognized that the implementation of a transformative agreement crosses a complex ecosystem of technology, processes, policies, automated functions and manual functions that relate to contract management, article submission and peer review, content hosting and dissemination as well as financial management. For this reason, a fourth group produced a workflow framework that describes the process in all its phases. The members of these four groups were volunteers from stakeholder communities including libraries, library consortia, smaller independent publishers and intermediaries. This article explains why these tools are needed and the process behind their creation. The authors have combined these tools into a freely available toolkit, available under a CC BY licence.
So many people put a tremendous amount of time into making this toolkit a reality. First are the BIPOC writers, readers, and editors who shared their experiences, knowledge, and training to the shaping of this content. A full list of contributors can be found at the end of this toolkit. We also thank the Coalition for Diversity & Inclusion in Scholarly Communications (C4DISC) and the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) for supporting this work as well as the Knowledge Futures Group for committing resources towards producing this toolkit and hosting it on PubPub, the open-source community-led publishing platform. Additionally we would like to thank the GRAPHEK design team that graciously volunteered their time and skills to create the visual concept for this toolkit. We wanted specifically to share GRAPHEK’s notes on how they envisioned this thoughtful design:
“This concept is based on embroidery as a way to show the resilience of the BIPOC community in academic research and the networking encouraged by the toolkit. When cloth is damaged, embroidery and patches not only repair, they reinforce the cloth to be stronger and more resilient to future wear & tear. Even though each individual goes through their own unique experiences and tribulations, there are connecting threads that create solidarity. By sharing stories, crossing paths, and giving each other the resources necessary to navigate spaces riddled with systemic biases and racism, this toolkit can help BIPOC shape a more just and inclusive field.”
The OER Advocacy Toolkit was created as part of the CAUL Enabling a Modern Curriculum OER Advocacy Project. It was designed as a reference to support academic librarians in advocating for the creation and re-use of open educational resources (OER) at their institution.
The Toolkit contains:
information
resources
checklists
practice-based ideas
for communicating with and advocating to OER stakeholders such as academics, librarians, teaching and learning committees and university executives.
Eve, Martin Paul, Pinter, Frances, Poznanski, Emily, & Grady, Tom. (2022). Opening the Future: How to Implement an Equitable Revenue Model for Open Access Monographs (1.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6907707
Abstract:
COVID-19 has thrown many aspects of university research culture into acute relief. As the reality of the virus dawned and campuses worldwide went into lockdown, publishers scrambled to unpaywall their research. Publishers made topical works and more general material openly available, through their own sites and platforms such as Project Muse and JSTOR. Physical collections became inaccessible and demand for openly accessible research skyrocketed. It is unclear that it is desirable to return to the previous systems of scholarly communication in the book publishing world, in which physical copies may remain affordable, even while e-licensing agreements for libraries are not.
This has been recognised in several recent global policy announcements including the cOAlition S/Plan S guidelines, and the recent UKRI consultation on OA. The latter’s proposed measures include the possibility of zero-embargo green OA, more liberal open licensing, and the long- vaunted requirement for funded monographs to be in scope. This last element built on a longstanding policy history in the UK foreshadowing a mandate for OA monographs.
That said, the path to OA monographs is not free of obstacles. Among the many issues, the most frequently raised is the business model of Book Processing Charges (BPCs) and their apparent unaffordability, mostly due to distributional allocation of library resources. Happily, several recent reports have detailed non-BPC OA revenue and business models that presses could use to transition to OA – one of the most recent being COPIM’s Revenue models for Open Access monographs 2020.
That report describes a variation on the journal ‘Subscribe to Open’ model whereby members ‘subscribe to a backlist, with the revenue then used to make the frontlist openly accessible’. This constitutes a new business model for OA monographs that had not previously been implemented. We implemented this model, dubbed ‘Opening the Future,’ in a partnership between the COPIM project, the Central European University Press (CEUP), and Liverpool University Press (LUP). This model presents a potential route for the mass and sustainable transition to OA of many small-to-mid sized university presses.
This document sets out how we implemented this model, including the documentation of challenges, resources, timetables, and activities. It is intended as a roadmap for other presses that wish to implement an ‘Opening the Future’-esque model. Of course, this document is unlikely to cover everything, but the authors are happy to respond to individual queries where this will prove helpful.
Grady, Tom, Eve, Martin P., & WP3 (2022). COPIM’s toolkit for running an Opening the Future programme at an academic press. Community-Led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs (COPIM). https://copim.pubpub.org/pub/copim-toolkit-for-running-an-opening-the-future-programme
Step-by-step guide for presses that wish to implement an ‘Opening the Future’ model now published
Smaller independent publishers, libraries, and consortia can now more easily enter into Open Access agreements thanks to a set of new tools published by cOAlition S and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP).
Smaller independent publishers, libraries, and consortia can now more easily enter into Open Access agreements thanks to a set of new tools published by cOAlition S and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP).
Welcome to the ENOEL Open Education Benefits Toolkit! It is a set of tools (slides, leaflets, and Twitter cards) prepared by The European Network of Open Education Librarians (ENOEL). The toolkit aims to help raise awareness of the importance of Open Education and it points out benefits for students, teachers, institutions, and society.
All templates are under a CC BY licence, enabling you to use and adapt them to your specific needs. Depending on your circumstances, you may choose to use Twitter cards in your campaign, or add one of the slides in your presentation, or even print out one or more leaflets and hang them on a wall of your local library.
We invite you to pick and choose, adapt and reuse! Help us raise awareness about the benefits of Open Education!
How to use it?
The set contains three types of tools:
1. OE Benefits – ENOEL slides
2. OE Benefits – ENOEL leaflets
3. OE Benefits – ENOEL Twitter cards
Look at the second slide in each deck for a detailed description of how the files are organized and how they might be used. We’d love to hear how you have reused them: oer@sparceurope.org
“CARL has created this Institutional Open Access Policy Template and Toolkit to help prepare those wishing to engage in this activity on their campus.
The tools included in this toolkit are designed to support first efforts to create an institution-wide policy, but can also be helpful in developing faculty- or department-specific policies, or in expanding an institution’s existing policies….”
“The Canadian Association of Research Libraries is pleased to announce the release of its Institutional Open Access Policy Template for Canadian institutions, which is accompanied by a toolkit to help prepare those wishing to develop such a policy on their campus….”