Report From “Choosing Pathways to Open Access” Forum Held at UC Berkeley, Participants from Across North America Converge to Move the Needle on Open Access

From UC Berkeley Library News:

The Choosing Pathways to Open Access, or CP2OA, working forum, sponsored by University of California’s Council of University Librarians, convened Oct. 16-17 on the UC Berkeley campus. Participants arrived from more than 80 institutions, nearly 30 states, and four Canadian provinces. The goal was for everyone to engage in action-focused deliberations about a range of open access, or OA, funding strategies, and leave with their own customized plans for how they will repurpose subscription and other funds within their home organization or community — and more broadly, through collective efforts, move the OA needle forward.
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CP2OA was structured around a design thinking model to cultivate discourse and a solutions-based approach. Fourteen facilitators from Europe and the United States — all of whom were expert open access publishers, advocates, and funders — each represented a distinct open access funding “strategy” from within the Pathways toolkit.

Günter Waibel, California Digital Library’s associate vice provost and executive director — who served as the forum’s overall moderator — explained that the design thinking model allowed for “facilitators to help participants identify one or more pathways from the Pathways to OA toolkit that they wished to pursue, then develop institutional and personal action items to move forward on those pathways — and in the process, build connections with potential collaborators.” Progress through the design thinking stages would make that possible as forum sessions moved from emphasizing understanding to focusing on action.

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Commitments to action were decisive and ambitious. Just a few include:

• Formation of a working group to invest collections budgets in open source infrastructure to reduce open access publishing barriers.
• Working toward “big deal” (subscription journal) cancellations.
• Setting aside 5 percent of the library’s budget to support open access publishing (including open access book publishing by the university press, so-called offsetting deals in which open access publishing charges are counted toward the library’s overall subscription payment, and investment in open infrastructure).
• Investment in library-led open access publishing programs.
• A task force to work with scholarly societies to provide funding or guidance to support a “flip” from subscriptions to open access publishing.
• Leveraging metadata within campus research information management (or “profiling”) systems to identify faculty journal editors with whom to collaborate.

Much More in the Complete UC Berkeley Library Report
See Also: Choosing Pathways to OA Suggested Readings List
See Also: University of California Libraries Launch Toolkit to Help Achieve Open Access (March 21, 2018)

Filed under: Companies (Publishers/Vendors), Funding, Libraries, Management and Leadership, News, Open Access, Publishing