The editors of Library Resources & Technical Services (LRTS) are pleased to announce the publication of a special January / April 2024 double issue on open access. We’re pleased to share with you the first issue of the calendar year, with these peer-reviewed articles:
Editorial: Open Access: One Goal, Many Pathways / Rachel E. Scott, Michael Fernandez
How better to celebrate the one-year anniversary of Library Resources & Technical Services (LRTS) becoming fully open access than an issue chock-full of insights, experiences, practices, and data on open access in library settings? The work published in this issue aligns with several of the obstacles we encountered in making LRTS open and available to all. Namely, despite two decades of growth, open access publishing remains fraught with misconceptions, unrealized benefits, and logistical challenges. In library settings, open access poses opportunity and uncertainty in equal measure and brings to light competing demands for resources. The complexities and expenses associated with open access have led to the perceived and material exclusion of many, including librarians—which of course has considerable implications for equity. This issue highlights the work of librarians who have not been sidelined by challenges, but rather embraced them to investigate how open access does—or does not—align with institutional goals, budgets, and workflows.
Partners in Progress: Publishers and Librarians Support Open Access Publishing / Joseph Lerro, Rachel E. Scott
There is a tendency to discuss open access (OA) publishing as though it is monolithic. Those of us engaged in the work of researching, preparing, and negotiating, however, know OA agreements are as unique as the community they serve. Open access agreements are created based on local needs, with the input of a variety of stakeholders, and require flexibility on the part of the publisher and institutional client. Open access agreements represent a partnership, and ideally one that furthers the goals of both parties. This discussion between Joseph Lerro, Open Research Business Development Manager with Taylor & Francis, and Rachel Scott, Associate Dean for Information Assets at Illinois State University (ISU) and Editor of Library Resources & Technical Services, explores one such partnership that led to an innovative, social-sciences focused OA agreement. By sharing our experiences as publisher and librarian, our hope is to add complexity to discourse that has pigeonholed transformative agreements. The following prompts and our responses to them frame the considerations we brought into the partnership, reiterate our shared goals, and highlight some takeaways that we hope will be of interest to those newer to negotiating OA agreements.
Opening Up: A Global Context for Local Open Access Initiatives in Higher Education / Chelsee Dickson
Open access policies and mandates can be a useful tool in persuading faculty at higher education institutions around the globe to produce and share open scholarship. But are such policies widely written, accepted, and adopted? Leveraging information found on the Registry of Open Access Repositories Mandatory Archiving Policies, this paper analyzes open access policies at higher education institutions worldwide. The data indicate that Europe holds the most policies, while fewer policies have been enacted in the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and Asia due to a myriad of barriers. Overall, better strategies to promote open access are needed, and such strategies may not necessarily take the form of an open access policy. My own investigation of global open access policies has informed my practices with respect to open access. In this paper, I demonstrate how librarians acting as policy entrepreneurs can assist with the promotion of open access at their institutions and then conclude with suggestions, solutions, and pathways beyond policy adoption to promote and advocate for open access.
Are Transformative Agreements Worth It? An Analysis of Open Access Publication Data at the University of Kentucky / Ben Rawlins
Open access publishing is continuing to grow as funders such as cOAlition S, National Institutes of Health, and the White House implement mandates and requirements that publicly funded research be made immediately available for public consumption. Publishers have adopted open access as a business model through transformative agreements that combine subscription and publishing fees. However, it is unclear whether these agreements are beneficial for libraries. This article discusses a project by the University of Kentucky Libraries to gather and analyze open access publication data to aid in the evaluation of transformative agreement proposals. This article also discusses how the University of Kentucky compares to peer institutions in the Southeastern Conference and other benchmark institutions regarding open access publishing output. Additionally, this article discusses downsides of transformative agreements and highlights promising alternatives.
A Census of Institutional Repositories at Regional Public Universities / Sierra Laddusaw
This study reports on the implementation of institutional repositories (IRs) at regional public universities (RPUs) in the United States and its territories. The author investigated repository platform choice, operation style, and content. More than half of RPUs have implemented an IR. The author discusses how these findings align with trends in previous research and explores the unique aspects of IRs at RPUs—particularly the prevalence of student works and special collections materials. For over two decades, institutional repositories (IRs) have been used at institutions of higher education to collect, preserve, and share the scholarly works of an institution. During that same time there have been an increasing number of studies looking at who has implemented an IR, the most popular IR platforms, and type and number of objects deposited in IRs. While some studies have looked at small or teaching-focused institutions, most of these studies have focused on IR implementations at large research-focused institutions.
Exploring a Read and Publish Agreement: The Three-Year Taylor & Francis Pilot / Maureen P. Walsh, Gene R. Springs, Anita K. Foster
The Ohio State University Libraries (University Libraries) entered into a three-year read and publish pilot agreement with Taylor & Francis in 2020—the first read and publish agreement for The Ohio State University and the first such deal for Taylor & Francis in the Americas. This study provides an overview of University Libraries’ motivations behind the agreement, the lessons we learned implementing and supporting the agreement, and the open access publishing outcomes of the pilot agreement that ended December 2022.
Breaking the Mold of Promotion and Tenure Polices that De-Incentivize Open Access Publishing: A Case Study of an LIS Faculty / Sarah W. Sutton
For almost thirty years, academic librarians have encouraged their faculty peers and patrons to publish in open access (OA) journals and other venues. Despite these efforts, one of the most difficult barriers to OA still exists: academic faculty at US higher education institutions lack strong incentives to publish in OA venues. This article describes one library school’s adoption of a faculty promotion and tenure policy—with evaluative criteria—that strongly and clearly supports OA publishing. The author concludes with recommendations for further research on how academic rewards systems can better incentivize OA publishing, as well as how to effectively develop and implement such policies.
Behind the Curve but Moving Ahead: Advocating for an Open Access Policy as a Late-Stage Adopter / Savannah Lake, Elizabeth Siler, Jeff McAdams, Kate Dickson
Open access policies are a well-established practice within the scholarly communications landscape; numerous research universities passed policies more than ten years ago. However, some institutions remain without an open access policy. Such institutions occupy an ambiguous position, as they fortuitously benefit from the ample literature and best practices on open access policies–yet they also face entrenched issues, such as inadequate staffing, siloed research support, and a campus culture averse to open access, which have put them behind the curve on adopting an open access policy in the first place. This study traces the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s recent work developing and advocating for an open access policy, offering a framework other research institutions can follow as later adopters.
Developing Open Access Resource Management Principles in a Consortial Environment: A University of California Model / Erica Zhang, Cynthia Johnson
In the summer of 2021, the University of California (UC) migrated to a new integrated library system, called the Systemwide Integrated Library System project (SILS), which for the first time brought all ten UC campuses, two regional storage facilities, and the California Digital Library (CDL) together into one shared library system. With new potential for increased collaboration and cooperation, SILS leadership groups identified consortial open access (OA) resource management as a key opportunity in the new system, in alignment with UC’s priorities around discovery and access to library collections, as well as UC’s commitment to open access and transforming the scholarly communication landscape. This article discusses the formation of the UC Open Access Resource Management Task Force (OARMTF), a group charged to investigate what it would mean to consortially manage OA resources. Specifically, this article focuses on the OARMTF’s work setting out principles for OA resource management, which the authors hope may serve as a useful case study for other institutions or consortia interested in developing principles around OA resource management, as well as encourage more discussion and research into best practices for consortial management of OA resources.
Growing an Institutional Repository: Leveraging a Citation Database as a Tool for Sourcing Deposits and Conducting Outreach / Savannah Lake, Stephannie Regenauer
Many institutional repositories continue to struggle with low engagement. A combination of factors is often at play, including overburdened faculty, confusion about copyright, and lack of awareness. Adding to these barriers on the researcher side are resource constraints on the administrative side, with many libraries citing limitations in budget and staffing for institutional repositories. Atkins Library at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte sought to address these issues by strategically leveraging citation and copyright information that already existed in Web of Science to grow their institutional repository, Niner Commons. Keeping user needs and staff limitations top of mind, Atkins Library launched a project to reframe the approach to increasing participation with the repository: instead of continuing to expect users to deposit works on their own, the library developed a service in which staff could quickly and sustainably deposit works on behalf of users.
Shifting the Collection Development Mindset: Moving from Traditional Journal Subscriptions to Transformative Agreements / Rachelle McLain, Hannah McKelvey
This article discusses the experiences of two librarians at Montana State University in negotiating, executing, and managing seven transformative, or read & publish, agreements. The authors offer their perspectives of transformative agreements and share the hurdles and wins they have had along the way, to help others decide if these types of agreements make sense to implement at their own libraries.
Navigating Open Access and Transformative Agreements: A Case Study of the University of Maryland / Alexander Dodd
“What should we be doing as a public institution when it comes to open access and transformative publishing agreements?” Most large US research institutions are facing this question, including the University of Maryland, College Park. This article explores this issue by looking at the University’s publishing landscape from a high level. It then dives deeper into three recent transformative agreements the University library has entered, investigating pricing, usage, and publishing data for a nonprofit society publisher, a for-profit commercial publisher, and, finally, a university press. The goal is to better understand how these agreements intersect with university-sponsored scholarship, library budgets, and the implications for the academic publishing landscape.
Book Review: The Complete Guide to Open Scholarship / Erin Wentz
Victoria Martin’s The Complete Guide to Open Scholarship is a timely book. The United States recently celebrated 2023 as the “Year of Open Science.” Institutions continue to adjust to changing expectations since the onset of COVID-19. Increases in remote work, hybrid classes, and general societal and economic challenges in the past few years have spurred greater interest in ease of access to materials. People want to be able to access content with little fuss from wherever they are. The open scholarship movement facilitates those desires. This book provides a brief overview of that movement.
