Last week, I had the privilege of serving as the keynote speaker for “Seeking Sustainability: Publishing Models for an Open Access Age.” This virtual event was originally developed as a pre-conference for the annual UKSG conference, which like so many events was cancelled to help fight the global pandemic. This piece is a reconstruction of my remarks, highlighting the main points that are on my mind as I think about open access, business models and sustainability. My slides are available via my university’s repository.
My Multiple Perspectives
I come at this topic from a number of perspectives. I have a long career in academic libraries and have worked at a community college, a comprehensive university, and a research university. Each had its financial challenges. It has never been possible, in my experience, to purchase, license, or otherwise make available all of the content that the campus community needs. In all of my librarian positions, I have also held a tenure-line faculty appointment and so I have traveled the path to tenure and promotion. My current institution has an open access mandate for faculty.
I was president of the Association of College and Research Libraries when it flipped its flagship journal, College and Research Libraries, to a diamond open access model, choosing to subvent the journal from other revenue sources rather than implement article processing charges. Long ago, I served as editor of Research Strategies, a journal that was owned by Pergamon Press and then acquired by Elsevier. I am currently the editor of Library Trends, which is owned by my university, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, and consists solely of special issues, which are available for free reading in my university’s repository after a two-year delay.
Please select this link to read the complete article from The Scholarly Kitchen.