This document summarizes a presentation about making open access the default in scholarly communication and implications for libraries. The key points are: 1) Open access promises to remove barriers to access, reduce costs, and increase research impact, but is not yet the norm due to obstacles like assessment systems rewarding prestige publications and a culture that does not incentivize open practices. 2) Libraries can help by advocating for policy changes, educating researchers, and reallocating resources from licensing to supporting open infrastructure and services. 3) Significant changes are needed as the system transitions to open access as the default, including collaboration between libraries and reallocation of resources, in order to ensure libraries remain relevant in the future scholarly ecosystem

1. Making Open the Default in Scholarly
Communication, and the Implications
for the Future of Libraries
QQML 2016
London, 24-27 May 2016
Lars Bjørnshauge
SPARC Europe

2. 20 years of experience as Library
Director in Denmark & Sweden
Advocating Open Access since 2002

3. Agenda
• SPARC Europe?
• Open Access
– Where are we now?
– Promises & Obstacles
• Libraries
– Challenges and opportunities

4. What can libraries do?
• Libraries have played a very important role in the
promotion of Open Access and the wider Open
Agenda!
• But we are not there yet! We need to do more!
Throughout my presentation I will use this icon –
to highlight, what libraries can do to help

5. OA terminology
• Green Open Access
• Embargo
• Gold Open Access
• Hybrid Open Access
• APC
• OA-policy
• OA-mandate

6. SPARC Europe’s vision
“Driving to make more research accessible to all,
and striving to make Open the default in Europe:
For the academic community, education,
industry, and for society.”
Making Open the default

7. We influence
• Europe’s research policy makers at the EC,
European Council, national research
funders
• The European academic library community
• Europe’s research communities including
research administrators and senior
university management, associations of
universities

8. Our members

9. Key Goals
• To support pan-European and national
Open Scholarship agendas in the areas of
– Open Access to publications,
– Open Peer Review,
– Open Data
– Open Educational Resources
– And research evaluation & research integrity

10. Open Access is all about…
Changing an unsustainable scholarly
communication system in ways that
it can serve science, our societies
and the people on a global scale

12. Real Open Access is…
Immediate (no embargo) access to
published content – especially
scholarly articles!

13. The promises of Open Access
• Open Access can:
– remove access barriers
– reduce participation barriers
– create a truly global scholarly communication
system
– reduce the total costs
– increase the impact of research on research,
societies and the people!

14. OA and the Ethos of the Profession
Open Access can finally make core elements of
the ethos of the library profession come true:
Instead of being gate-keepers for prohibiting
“unauthorized users” accessing publicly funded
research,
libraries can provide information free to all for
reading, re-use and re-mix.

15. Open Access is inevitable!
• Libraries and librarians have been
instrumental in setting the OA ball in
motion!
• But we are not there yet!!
• The Scholarly Communication System is
undergoing dramatic change – if not
disruption.
• But what about libraries? – more later!

16. OA has got momentum
• steady growth in the proportion of new research
papers are made freely available via repositories or
published in open access journals
• thousands of repositories and
• at least 9.000 quality open access journals,
• more than thousand institutions and research
funders have signed the various OA declarations
• hundreds of open access policies and mandates in
place

17. OpenDOAR

19. Data: ROARMAP: http://roarmap.eprints.org/ (data point February 2015)

20. OA-policies

21. What can libraries do to help?
• Set up Institutional respositories and make
them work!
• Provide support for university based
publishing
– Platforms
– OA-journals
– OA-monographs

22. What can libraries do to help?
• Support new OA-publishing models
• Lobby for
– OA-publications funds to support APC-
payments (where applicable)
– Stronger OA-mandates, that deliver!

23. Why is it going so slowly??
• Obstacles – and how libraries can help!
1. Research Assessment and Reward Systems
2. The Academic Culture
3. Money/Resources

24. What pays off in the current system??
• As a Researcher:
• Publish in quality prestige journals – go for the High Impact
Factor journals and you will be rewarded (promotion, tenure
and grants)
• Don´t bother to much about whether or not
• your results are actually accessible for the widest
possible audience
• your data are archived and open
• your software is documented and available
• your research is actually reproducable
• For your career it doesn´t really matter that much!
• As an Institution:
• Attract the researchers above and the institution will
receive more grants

25. Research Assessment
• Research assessment systems have to change
• Often based on the Journal Impact Factor (JIF)
– subject to manipulation, gaming and fraud
– Researchers are NOT primarily rewarded for
WHAT they publish, but WHERE they publish
–
– : inform about the terrible consequences of
using the JIF, promote additional metrics

26. The Culture of the Academy
• The Culture of the Academy needs to change too
• The concept of Academic Freedom is often used
as an excuse for publishing in the “prestige”
journals.
• Academic freedom applies to what you are
researching, what you are investigating, the methods
you apply etc.
• Based on your agreement with your institution and
the grants you get, you will do your research.

27. The Culture of the Academy
• It is often argued that your decisions as to where
you publish, how you publish, the rights and
permissions you give to readers/users etc
belongs to your academic freedom.
• “It is my academic freedom to decide where to
publish”!
• I disagree!

28. Academic Responsibility
• Applies to how you share your research, your
findings, your data, your software!!
• We need stronger mandates from research
funders and research institutions
• Research funders and research institutions should
be very specific as to how they expect
researchers to disseminate their findings!
• Responsible researcher conduct is to share
results, data and software in the open

29. It should have been open in the
first place!
If your papers, your data and your
software are not in the open, it
should not count!

30. How can Libraries help to Change the
Culture?
• Work for stronger OA mandates
• When educating students and younger
researchers - promote responsible
behaviour, which is
• Sharing your research in the Open!

31. Money/Resources #1
• Prepare for the dramatic changes that will come!
• When Open becomes the norm in the next 10 years, it will
disrupt many aspects of academic library operations
• Libraries will have to re-consider their value proposition
• Better to be proactive than reactive!
• Better to disrupt than being disrupted.
• With the advent of ”Open as the Default” pressures on
library budgets will only increase!

32. Money/Resources #2
• Even the richest libraries cannot license all the content
that their researchers need!
• “Despite price increases academic libraries have
continued to purchase as many scholarly journals as they
possibly could”
• “Have decreased their book purchasing”.
• “The time has come to simply stop!”
• Quotes: David W. Lewis: Library budgets, open access, and the future
scholarly communication (2008!!)-
http://crln.acrl.org/content/69/5/271.full.pdf+html

33. Money/Resources #4
• Significant reallocation of resources is needed!
• “The central truth for libraries and the campuses they
support is that scholarly communication based on
subscription journals is no longer affordable” - Lewis
• Acquiring and providing content:
– your unique collections: digitize them, make them
visible, bring them into the flow – to the benfit of all!
– the content, that ”everyone” license: collaborate on a
higher level (consortia) – reduce overhead costs – give
in on autonomy and control! Lorcan Dempsey

34. Money/Resources #5
• Discovery tools: bring them up on a higher
level – regional, national. Lorcan Dempsey
• Todays students, tomorrows researchers
want web-scale solutions – hardly
institution based tools. Attracted to Google
Scholar (fragile), SciHub (illegal)
• Collaborate to provide community owned
tools!

35. Money/Resources #6
• Reallocate staff:
• Collaborating on content and tools can free
staff resources to support implementation
of the Open
• New positions: data curation manager,
scholarly communications officer, publisher

36. Wrap up #1
• We have won the discussion about Open
Access!
• Libaries and librarians have played an
important role in this!
• Open (Access) is inevitable!
• The question is how it will be
implemented!

37. Wrap up #2
• Libraries need to change significantly!
• Incremental change is not sufficient!
• Libraries need to significantly reallocate
(staff) resources!
• Much more committed collaboration on a
higher level based on trust rather than
control is needed !

38. The Library: the Heart of the University
The Library, the skills,
kompetence, systems and
services:
the Blood of the University

39. Libraries have a bright future
if they can re-engineer themselves
quickly!
Can you do that?

40. Yes, you can!
Provided that you collaborate much
more committed,
Give in on autonomy and control &
Are bold and brave!

41. Thank you for listening
By the way:
Join SPARC Europe:
http://sparceurope.org/submission-form
Support DOAJ:
https://doaj.org/supportDoaj
Or
Contact me: lars@doaj.org