Category: Strategy

Learning from Libraries’ Growing Experience with Unbundling

The advocacy organisation SPARC recently arranged a webinar showing four North American libraries’  experiences in moving away from so called ‘big deals.’ These licencing arrangements bundles lots of journals together in big packages rather than selling journals separately

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ9onZEUKw8

 

There were many interesting things to digest, particularly in how these libraries still managed to provide access to content researchers needed to get to despite have no subscription with the publisher

 

In particular

 

1) These libraries saved a lot of money. By cancelling its contract with Elsevier, MIT saved 2.7m USD per year and spend only 300k USD in providing access to articles via other means. Without significant opposition from faculty.

 

2) The importance of doing this ‘with faculty’, and not ‘to faculty’. The process of working with the research community and making this a shared endeavour was vital. Without communication and cooperation, the resistance in universities would have been much higher.

 

3) The context in the Netherlands is different. The Dutch large-scale deals are read and publish, whereas MIT etc are talking about unbundling deals that are read-only. Taking a new approach in the Netherlands is not only about rethinking the read part of these deals, but the publish part of our deals as well.

 

4) Secondly, in the Netherlands the large deals are all via the library consortium UKB, and managed by Surf. Working in a consortium provides economic benefits for members, but it also makes changes more difficult. Buy in is needed across the universities.

Innovating Scholarly Communication: TU Delft’s new fund for open publishing

At TU Delft Library, we’re taking bold steps to address the evolving landscape of scholarly communication. We are committed to advancing open access that not only shared knowledge, but is financially sustainable and supports innovation in scientific publishing.

 

This is why we are excited to introduce the Scholarly Communications Fund.

 

As we have written elsewhere, the current publishing environment is ripe for transformation. Many researchers and institutions, including UNESCO, the European Union, and the League of European Research Universities, are advocating for more equitable and open research dissemination. In alignment with these global movements, we aim to champion alternatives that offer greater autonomy and fairness in sharing research outputs.

 

A significant part of our strategy is the protection and promotion of small, non-commercial publishers, who play a crucial role in maintaining diversity and inclusivity in scientific communication. Equally important are the members of a bubbling ecosystem of new ideas for publishing – whether that be for testing the Publish, Review, Curate business model; exploring new forms of aggregation, or systems that help recognise new forms of intellectual input to research output. (For a non-comprehensive list of such infrastructures, see the list below)

 

Our Scholarly Communication Fund is designed to support both these immediate and long-term innovations in publishing. By investing in Diamond OA platforms and open infrastructures, we aim to provide more inclusive and sustainable publication options for our authors.

 

It is expected that there will be two routes for spending the money in these funds – just as with ‘traditional’ collections within the library. The first will be via nominations from individual TU Delft researchers. Such researchers may have, for example, a pre-print archive they wish to support, or they may wish to ‘flip a journal’, turning it from a closed to an open access model.

 

The second will be via the Scholarly Communications and Publishing team of the TU Delft Library, who have strategic oversight of the budget for all licences and collections. As other blog posts have indicated, the team will continue to engage with faculties – this ensures the choices are reflective and responsive to the wishes of the researcher community

 

Further details and guidance will be provided when budgets for 2025 are finalised.

 

Non-comprehensive list of possible venues for TU Delft Scholarly Communications Fund

This list from 2024 is purely indicative of the type of organisations that the TU Delft Scholarly Communications Fund could support

It does not express any specific support from TU Delft.

 

Arc Humanities Press Knowledge Unlatched Practical Action
ArXiv Language Science Press Programming Historian
American society for microbiology S2O Lens.org PsyArXiv
AUP S2O Amsterdam Univ Press LYRASIS PubPeer
BioRxiv Manifold Public Knowledge Project (PKP)
CEU Press (Opening the Future) MathOA PubPub
ChemRxiv Mattering Press (see ScholarLed) Punctum Books
CLOCKKS MediArXiv ResearchEquals
COPE MedRxiv ScholarLed (consortium)
COPIM Meson Press SciPost
Digizeitschiften MIT Direct2Open SIAM
DOAB/OAPEN Open Book Collective Science Open
DOAJ Open Book Publishers SCOAP3
DSPACE Open Citations SCOSS
EDP Sciences (Astronomy & Astrophysics) Open Library of Humanities Sherpa/Romeo
EduSources Open Science Framework (OSF) Sidestone Press
EngrXiv OpenEdition SIGMA
https://scirev.org/ Openjournals STORK
JOTE (Journal of Trial and Error) OPERAS T&F Open Pilot
Journal of City Climate Policy & Economy ORCID Zenodo
Journal of Open Source Software Peer Community In (PCI)
PeerJ