We are thrilled to announce that registration is now live for the Choosing Pathways to OA working forum.

 

We have updated the forum website, www.cp2oa18.com, with additional details on travel, accommodations, accessibility, and more—and will be building these out more robustly over the next few weeks.

 

While we develop the forum schedule more precisely, we have in the interim added additional information about forum structure, which we’d like to call your attention to here:

 

The forum structure and agenda will be based on design thinking to cultivate discourse and a solutions-based approach. The goal is to facilitate participants’ abilities to understand and assess which OA strategies might be appropriate for repurposing spends at their own institutions, to engage participants in exploring insights shared by others about the implications of implementing those strategies, and to support participants in outlining or developing their own action plans for their institution or author community.

 

As the forum will not include presentations in the traditional sense, but instead will be based around discourse, we are engaging facilitators rather than speakers to help guide discussions on given OA publishing strategies. Please check the Facilitators page of our website in the coming weeks for more information.

 

This overall information-sharing and discussion-centered format strives to achieve a balance between deeper engagement with the OA strategies and meaningful opportunities to frame or advance along next steps–including through alignment or partnership with similarly-interested institutions or communities.  As we also hope is clear from the Pathways toolkit and our About page, the forum will give voice to strategies within all OA approaches, with the understanding that each institution or author community might wish to support a range of strategies and approaches.

 

If you have any questions, please contact schol-comm@berkeley.edu.

Sincerely, 

The CP2OA Planning Committee

Rachael Samberg (UCB) Co-chair

Maria Gould (UCB) Co-chair

Allegra Swift (UCSD)

David Schmitt (UCSD)

Anneliese Taylor (UCSF)

Stephen Kiyoi (UCSF)

Donald Barclay (UCM)

Lisa Schiff (CDL)

Mat Willmott (CDL)

Sherri Barnes (UCSB)

Eunice Schroeder (UCSB)

John Renaud (UCI)

Mike Wolfe (UCD)

*******

The Premise: 

 

Many within the scholarly community have been trying to achieve a large-scale transition to open access (“OA”) to scholarly literature for nearly twenty years. To date, only around 15% of peer-reviewed journal articles are published in fully open-access journals. At this rate, realizing a full OA scholarly universe could take decades. If we within the research community are going to accelerate progress toward free readership for all, we must make critical choices about how we spend our money in supporting OA publishing.

 

To advance data-driven decision-making on these issues, in March 2018, the University of California (UC) libraries and the California Digital Library released the Pathways to Open Access toolkit. The Pathways toolkit analyzes the many approaches and strategies for advancing the large-scale transition to OA, and identifies possible next action steps for UC system-wide investment and experimentation.

 

We also designed the Pathways toolkit to be a practical resource for other institutions wrestling with the same choices. Now, we invite you to join us in this decision-making process to create localized plans suitable for your own institution or community.

 

The Call: 

Participate in a two-day working forum focused on action-focused deliberations about redirecting subscription and other funds toward sustainable open access publishing.

The Details:

 

Who:   North American library or consortium leaders and key academic stakeholders are invited to substantively deliberate and develop plans for how they will repurpose budgets and subscription spends to support a transition to open access publishing.

 

The forum seeks to engage participants with relevant decision-making responsibilities involving subscriptions, licensing, collection development, publication policy, research funding, and other strategic areas. This may encompass more than one individual attending on behalf of an institution or community.

 

When:  October 16-17, 2018

 

Where: UC Berkeley (Berkeley, California)

 

What: A two-day working forum that inclusively engages participants in deliberations of OA approaches and strategies--with an eye toward empowering local decision-making. Diverse views on pathways for transitioning to open access are encouraged. The forum will be governed by a public statement of diversity and inclusion spanning from the planning process through the event itself. We are exploring ways to make portions of the event available remotely for those unable to attend in person.

 

Participants will have a meaningful opportunity to:

1.     Understand actionable mechanisms and opportunities for advancing the transition to OA

2.     Engage in facilitated, substantive exchange on the pragmatics of each of these strategies

3.     Accelerate their own action initiatives based upon the discussions

After first-day discussions, attendees will have dedicated time to further consider, align with, or plan for implementing various strategies, suitable for their institutions or communities.

For a preview of the panoply of OA approaches (Green, Gold Non-APC, Gold APC) and funding strategies that will serve as a basis for discussion and decision-making, please see the UC Libraries’ Pathways to OA toolkit.

How much:

 

This working forum is free to attend. No registration fees will be charged, and invited speaker travel and lodging will be covered by the University of California Libraries. Attendance includes breakfast, lunch, snacks, and one dinner.

Additional details and a registration form are forthcoming.

Questions in the meantime may be directed to: schol-comm@berkeley.edu.

---

Jeff MacKie-Mason

University Librarian

Chief Digital Scholarship Officer

Professor, School of Information and Professor of Economics

UC Berkeley 

www.jeff-mason.com