It’s Not Easy Being Open…

Heather JosephExecutive Director, SPARCOASPA Annual Conference

September 21, 2016

The Open Access Movement is a social change movement.

The Budapest Open Access Initiative

www.boia.org

“An old tradition and a new technology have converged to

make possible an unprecedented public good.“

- The Budapest Open Access Initiative - www.boai.org

“The public good is the world-wide electronic distribution of

the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free

and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers,

students, and other curious minds.”

The Budapest Open Access Initiative - www.boai.org

Lots of different stakeholders.Lots of different goals, strategies,

tactics.  

So…why are we still here? 

 

 

I’m betting we’re all aiming for “Success…”  

 

But What Does Success Actually Mean to Us? 

 

Still Requires Massive and Profound

Culture Change 

 

Example:  

Library Goal: “Democratize Access to

Knowledge.”

MIT Library reorganized it’s activities: Collection Budget is

now a part of - and essentially in service of - the Library’s Scholarly

Communication’s Program.

“I like to think of this change as voting with our collection dollars…”

- Ellen Finnie

Chris Bourg, MIT Library Dean

Greg Eow, MITAssociation Dir. For Collections

Ellen Finnie, MITScholarly Comms.Lead

“Depending on how we spend them, our food dollars can either go to

support a food industry devoted to quantity and convenience and

‘value’ or they can nourish a food chain organized around values—values like quality and health.”

-Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food

A truly “big flip” – Values vs. Value

Individual Actions Alone Won’t Carry the Day…

Collective Action + Collective Impact.

Collective Impact

Conditions of Collective Impact

http://www.collaborationforimpact.com/collective-impact/

Not just “Open” for Open’s Sake…

…But Open “in Order to...”

Opening access to research articles in order to…speed up progress towards curing Parkinson’s disease.

Opening access to research data in order to...prevent a Zika pandemic.

Opening access to textbooks in order to...make college more afordable to all students.

Open in order to: Create a research

communications ecosystem with the public good at the

center.

“Opening access to articles in order to…????”

It’s Not Easy Being “Open…”

Thanks.

Heather JosephExecutive Director, SPARCheather@sparcopen.org

www.sparcopen.org

“In the Open” Blog post on MIT:

http://intheopen.net/2016/03/what-organic-food-shopping-can-tell-us-about-transforming-the-scholarly-

communications-system/