Category Archives: oa.consortia

The Data Curation Network – A shared staffing model for digital data repositories

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“As professional data curators, research data librarians, academic library administrators, directors of international data repositories, disciplinary subject experts, and scholars we represent academic institutions and non-profit societies that make research data available to the public….

Data curators prepare and enrich research data to make them findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR). Sharing our data curation staff across DCN partner institutions enables data repositories to collectively, and more effectively, curate a wider variety of data types (e.g., discipline, file format, etc.) that expands beyond what any single institution might offer alone….”

Guest Post: Evaluating Open Access in a Consortial Context – The Scholarly Kitchen

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“OhioLINK has 188 member libraries from 89 higher education institutions plus the State Library of Ohio: 16 public universities, 51 independent university and college libraries, 23 two-year college libraries, 16 regional campus libraries, 8 law school libraries, and 5 medical school libraries. Membership includes three R1 institutions, five ARL libraries, and the Cleveland Clinic. Given the makeup of the institutional membership, sometimes OhioLINK can serve as a microcosm of the U.S. higher educational library market as a whole. (For an OhioLINK-specific analysis of institutional type and library alignment within the context of the University Futures, Library Futures OCLC Research/Ithaka S+R research report, see Constance Malpas’ presentation “University Futures, Library Futures: institutional and library directions in OhioLINK.”)

These are OhioLINK publishing and usage figures for one major STEM publisher in 2018. OhioLINK institutions published approximately 1,000 articles in the 900+ titles for which OhioLINK had a subscription. “Publish” activity from OhioLINK researchers accounted for about 0.4% of the total articles for which members had subscription access. “Read” activity was 1,900,000+ full text downloads. One institution accounted for 34% of all published articles in these titles; another group of three institutions accounted for a further 36% for a total of 70% output from the top four publishing institutions; 22 institutions made up the rest of the publishing activity out of a consortium of 90 institutions. The top four publishing institutions published between 10% and 12% of their articles in any kind of OA form (not by consortial agreement or subsidy, but acting individually either at the institutional or author level.) In total, OhioLINK-affiliated authors paid APCs for approximately 100 OA articles: 80% fully OA journals, 20% OA in hybrid journals….

We would expect any Read and Publish deals from publishers to conform to our particular publishing profile, rather than to a California Digital Library profile or a Projekt Deal profile. For some consortia, such as those composed of mostly private colleges, there is even less publishing activity. There is no standard deal that will fit all consortia; some consortia may not be offered certain OA deals at all, or the OA deals on offer will not be financially viable without significant outside sources of funding. Our collective question is: Given that much of the revenue coming from our members is, and always will be, from “Read” = subscription funding, what are the implications for the future financial burden of “Publish” consortia as more institutions become free riders? How will “Read” institutions/consortia participate in OA funding initiatives?:

OhioLINK Breaks New Ground Creating Central Fund for Open Access Publications with Wiley | Wiley News Room – Press Releases, News, Events & Media

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“OhioLINK, a library consortium serving 118 libraries and 89 Ohio colleges and universities, announced today the signing of a Wiley Open Access Account agreement. A Wiley Open Access Account will enable OhioLINK-affiliated researchers to use a central fund for Article Publication Charges (APC). The partnership reflects both parties’ growing commitment to open research and advancing scholarly communications. OhioLINK is the first North American library consortium to centrally fund the creation and dissemination of open access research….”

Will Transformative Agreements Unravel Library Consortia? – The Scholarly Kitchen

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“Over the past few months we’ve seen increased attention to consortial efforts to reach transformative agreements with publishers. Some recent successes include DEAL/Germany with Wiley, University of California with Cambridge University Press, Springer Nature with Jisc/UK, and Elsevier with UNIT/Norway. It is clear that many library consortia are prioritizing open access publishing in their publisher contracts, which they have stated clearly must be cost neutral or at least cost controlling overall.

Underneath the importance of cost control in the aggregate lies an extremely important question — how is the cost of a transformative agreement distributed within a library consortium among its members? I observe today that cost share distribution within consortia is a substantial risk to the ability of transformative agreements to take hold for the long term and may threaten the cohesion of consortia as well….”

Arizona State Working with Community Colleges in Interactive OER Pilot — Campus Technology

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“Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College is working with three of the largest community college systems in the country to adopt the use of interactive open educational resources. The Consortium for Open Active Pathways, as it’s called, will use technology to increase the availability of college-level educational materials, particularly in healthcare studies, a big component of community college education. The work is being funded by a $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

The other institutions involved are Maricopa Community Colleges in Phoenix, Florida’s Miami Dade College and Indiana’s Ivy Tech Community College….”

ICPSR [Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research]

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“An international consortium of more than 750 academic institutions and research organizations, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) provides leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for the social science research community.

ICPSR maintains a data archive of more than 250,000 files of research in the social and behavioral sciences. It hosts 21 specialized collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields.

ICPSR collaborates with a number of funders, including U.S. statistical agencies and foundations, to create thematic data collections and data stewardship and research projects….”

Transformation from subscription model toward OA publishing model: JUSTICE OA2020 Roadmap

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“JUSTICE has seen that there is no other way to overcome the situation except to consider new models, and has been gathering information about worldwide trends. As part of information gathering, we endorsed the OA2020 Expression of Interest in August 2016, and we have analyzed Japanese financial and publication data to confirm the feasibility of transformation. Creating the JUSTICE OA2020 Roadmap is following this work. Our goal is to clarify the way to go through the transition period until a fully OA publishing model can be realized. Academic institutions, including Japanese ones, have already paid APCs(4) in addition to subscription fees as the cost of scholarly communication, and total amount of these costs have been increasing. If we leave the cost increases unchecked, we will not be able to keep the subscription model (cannot read) or pay for APCs (cannot publish). We need to shift our axis from read to publish to avoid this future, and at the same time, we have to find a model which is able to manage the total cost of publication (subscription fees plus APCs)….”

JUSTICE (Japan Alliance of University Library Consortia for E-Resources)

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“Japan Alliance of University Library Consortia for E-Resources ?JUSTICE?is a consortium created to promote many activities for providing stably and continuously academic information, including e-journal that is essential for education and research activities of the university in Japan. The mission assigned to JUSTICE is to contribute to the enhancement of the nation’s academic information infrastructure by contracting, managing, providing, and preserving e-resources and by training personnel with necessary skills.

JUSTICE was established in April 2011 with the support of the National Institute of Informatics(NII). At present, JUSTICE is comprised of over 500 participating libraries and is the nation’s largest organization of library consortia. “

OASPA Webinar: Implementing a consortial funding model for open access publishing – OASPA

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“OASPA is pleased to announce the fourth webinar in our new Open Scholarship Webinar Series*, in which we are inviting a number of speakers to consider contemporary debates in open research and open access publishing….

The OASPA Open Scholarship Webinar Series is delighted to welcome three pioneers of the Consortial Funding Model of Publishing: Oya Y. Rieger (arXiv Program Director), John Willinsky (Director of the Public Knowledge Project) and Martin Paul Eve (Co-founder of the Open Library of Humanities). Come and find out how to set one up with your publishing (or scholarly communication) initiative….”

YERUN Statement on Open Science | Young European Research Universities Network

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“The Young European Research Universities Network (YERUN) is committed to actively support the transition towards Open Science. The YERUN members agree that this transition requires not only investments in infrastructures and skills-building, but also a cultural shift in the way research is performed and rewarded. As an active member of the EU Open Science Policy platform, YERUN develops alternatives and provides recommendations to making Open Science a reality. However, active leadership and determination are needed to overcome existing challenges and promote a coherent implementation of this transition. In the coming years, the YERUN members will share experiences and resources, pilot (joint) actions and encourage best-practice exchange across the network and beyond. In doing so, YERUN aims to be a pioneer in the transition process.”