United Kingdom

This presentation will outline our experiences with launching an open textbook publishing initiative at the University of Groningen (Netherlands) in cooperation with the university press and reflect on the learning points of the ongoing project.
The goal of this session is to support and encourage other university presses and libraries with small budgets to start their own open textbook pilots by sharing our lessons learned along the way and showing how rewarding and low-entry, albeit challenging, the process could be.
We will substantiate our point with examples drawn from the experiences of our open textbook authors, ranging from involving students’ input to making use of the interactive features of a publishing platform. We would like to demonstrate that a successful and innovative open textbook publishing pilot can be both low-cost and high-value, with space to experiment and center around authors’ creative ideas, student needs, and open pedagogical practices.

UKSG Annual Conference 2022

Open textbook publishing 101: A quick start to your university&#39;s open textbook initiative.

Open textbook publishing 101: A quick start to your university's open textbook initiative.

technical paper

The UKSG Annual Conference is a major event in the scholarly communications calendar which attracts delegates each year from around the world - librarians, publishers, content providers, consultants and intermediaries. The conference combines high-quality plenary presentations, lightning talks and breakout sessions with entertaining social events and trade exhibition. This year we are delivering Telford both in-person and digitally.

The UKSG Annual Conference is a major event in the scholarly communications calendar which attracts delegates each year from around the world - librarians, publishers, content providers, consultants and intermediaries.

The Open Access Books Network (OABN) is a relatively new kid on the block, but it punches above its weight. Our most significant series so far was the Voices from the OA Books Community, devoted to exploring different aspects of policy for OA books.

During the heated discussions, what were the main areas of consensus and which topics emerged as especially controversial? Which aspects of OA policy for books perplexed the community and provoked more questions than answers? In this session we will hear from session leaders and participants as they paint a nuanced picture of a necessary but complex endeavour: how to directly engage the OA books community in developing policies that will materially affect its future.

Now we’ve heard it all! Engaging the community in shaping OA policy for books.

The shift to a more equitable open access ecosystem requires collaborative work between values aligned stakeholders. Libraries and non-profit publishers often share similar missions, but existing structures on both sides can work to create barriers to collaboration. The system remains configured to work with paid subscriptions or perpetual licensing, alongside print procurement, which can work against implementing OA models. What are the major structural impediments for OA? How can smaller and non-profit presses cooperate with libraries to create OA positive structures? We will use the Jisc Open Access Community Framework, MIT Press’s D2O, and PLoS CAP models as case studies for change.

Structuring Open Access Structures: Libraries partnering with non-profit publishers

The role and place of universities in society are shifting and various initiatives seem to bridge the gap between science and citizens. But the framework, knowledge and possible implementation of these new standards seem diverse and somehow not consistent enough to produce sustainable change. This breakout session aims to frame the field, layout strategic options and dwell into concrete cases.

The moderators are members of the LIBER "Citizen Science Working Group". In this session, we will illustrate the interests, the thrill and the achievements working to improve the academic mission in order to better serve the society.

Policy and strategy: International trends, guidelines and recommendations (Thomas Kaarsted)
Strategy and implementation: Supporting Citizen Science in the UCL Office for Open Science & Scholarship (Kirsty Wallis)
Bridging the gap: SDU Citizen Science Knowledge Center as facilitator between science as society (Anne Kathrine Overgaard)

Bridging universities with society: policy, strategy, and ind practice

Read and publish deals or Transformative Agreements, through which funders and institutions pay for knowledge dissemination rather than access, are a recent pathway toward a more open future. Yet we lack a framework for assessing the combined value of the open publishing and comprehensive read access that these deals provide. Perceived and actual value and price vary according to whether an institution is a major content producer (publish institution) or content consumer (read institution). To assess the value from these differing perspectives, we’ll use top-down data from Delta Think’s OA Data & Analytics Tool and bottom up data from Our Research’s Unsub.

Towards a model for assessing the value of transformative agreements for both "read" and "publish" institutions

There are two main aspects to the AI for academic publishing in use today: the algorithm, and the corpus. Somewhat surprisingly, most attention has been focused on algorithms, yet the corpus may be even more important, from the point of view of potential bias. There is already plenty of experience within the library at measuring the take-up and effect (and limitations) of digital tools. Using some real-life case studies, this presentation gives suggestions for assessing AI tools compared with current manual processes, and considers how use cases can help identify new ways of deploying of AI.

How to evaluate AI tools - and how the library can help

With momentum for Open Access (OA) books on the rise, there have been calls by various stakeholders to open up the library and develop OA book infrastructures to further support the transition to OA for books. One of the key infrastructures for OA books is the OAPEN Library that helps stakeholders tracking usage of OA books. During this session we will show how OAPEN can provide usage data for different stakeholders and seek to explore additional kinds of data that libraries may find useful to inform their OA book strategies and decision-making processes to support OA book publishing initiatives.

Tracking the open access book: what data do research institutions and libraries need in support of their strategies around open access books?

Jisc has led on a strategy (known as 'Plan M') to improve the efficiency of the library data ecosystem in the UK. This session will contextualise the objectives of the plan, give an update on progress, and look ahead to the opportunities that may be afforded if a more open bibliographic data ecosystem can be realised that empowers novel research, learning and teaching. A key part of the session will report on the outcome of a negotiation between Jisc and OCLC to facilitate a national WorldCat licence.

Brokering a National Data Agreement – Lessons Learnt and Future Opportunities

This Breakout session explores the work of UoN Libraries’ Read & Publish Group (R&P Group) in reviewing and managing Transitional Agreements (TAs), balancing budgetary costs and providing access to resources whilst also maximising publishing opportunities for our researchers. 

University of Nottingham Libraries are committed to supporting Plan S principles and adopting Transitional Agreements (or Transformative Agreements). There is an inherent tension between the Read and Publish aspects of TAs, and a new approach was required was to manage these very different and sometimes competing priorities in a challenging and competitive research and teaching environment.

Transforming decision-making in the library: The University of Nottingham perspective on Read and Publish agreements

A new transformative model is needed because conventional Read & Publish agreements do not best serve the needs of libraries and publishers in transforming budgets and revenues, respectively, from subscriptions to Open Access. Nina Schönfelder will present the “smooth transition model”, an advanced model, which is responsive to the progress in the transition. Anke de Looper & Marten Stavenga will present its implementation by a commercial publisher, highly specialized in linguistics. Their transformative agreement offers a gradual shift from subscription-based to publication-based charges for both publisher and libraries. The offer as well as the uptake by libraries will be discussed

A new model for transformative agreements and its implementation by a small publisher: Enhancing a smooth transition to open access

Octopus is an innovative open platform where the scientific community can freely read, review, and register ideas and findings. Launching next month, it will enable researchers – of every seniority, institution, and location – to immediately establish a claim on their work and get fair credit for everything they do.

The platform will closely integrate with existing research tools and systems, such as ORCID, but with incentives for good research practice, constructive peer review, and collaborative working, it is also designed to create a new culture of collaboration and recognition which improves access to research and rewards best practice in every aspect of the scientific process.

This is an opportunity to learn more about the project and its aims, and to see an early demo of the platform prior to launch.

Open textbook publishing 101: A quick start to your university's open textbook initiative.

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Now we’ve heard it all! Engaging the community in shaping OA policy for books.