“Some of the popular open access transition strategies, mostly promoted by publishers, manage to achieve more open access. But they lack much of what we need: making publishing accessible for everyone, lowering the costs of publishing, coping with an increasing number of publications, reducing the dependency on commercial publishers, transparency of procedures and costs, and a sustainable and irrevocable flipping of journals to open access [undefined]. The goal of achieving open access as the standard in academic publishing has been set for years now. Who do we trust with accelerating the speed of the transition while assuring the inclusiveness, transparency, and sustainability of  the publication system? Clear principles must be reconciled with the will to break new ground. Libraries are in a good position to shape this transition to open….

Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB) has the mandate to provide both academia and industry with information from natural sciences and engineering. The library is strongly committed to openness in its mission. Measures include providing access to scholarly literature, deploying infrastructure, and conducting research. In terms of open access, TIB is deeply involved in defining concepts and tools that actively help shape the transition to full open access. In this post, I will give a short overview of the current activities of TIB….

At TIB, there are four major strategies underway, all based on the clear commitment to help shape the transition:

We established a library publishing service, TIB Open Publishing, to offer professional publishing services for non-APC, scholar-led open access journals and conference proceedings.

We developed our leading role in traditional library consortia by establishing models for open access consortia, e.g. through the KOALA project.

We contribute to collectively funded open access publications and systematically integrate this into our acquisition budget.

We help sustain open infrastructure for the open access landscape….”