Harvard Library: “Strategic Organizational Review Update: Open Scholarship”

From a Harvard Library Post by University Librarian, Martha Whitehead:

As you know from earlier updates on our strategic organizational review, one of our aims is to strengthen the Library’s response to growing expectations for open science, which encompasses not only publications but also data, code and other research outputs. Last fall, we brought the Research Data Management Program (RDMP) into the portfolio of the Assistant University Librarian for Content Strategies, where the Office for Scholarly Communication (OSC) was already placed. The goal in bringing these groups together under the same umbrella was to support the development of common services and infrastructure designed to disseminate all research outputs as openly as possible. Now, we are taking the further step of merging the OSC and RDMP to create a new department with a broader reach.

This change will build on the tremendous successes of both the OSC and RDMP. I would like to thank both teams for the excellent work they have done over many years and for their enthusiasm in joining forces to advance a common set of goals.

The new department will focus on shifting the information landscape towards a more equitable, diverse ecosystem of trustworthy resources, where impactful research is freely available to all who need it. More specifically, its staff will offer and support other units in offering custom support to researchers across the lifecycle of their research outputs; implement the open-access policies adopted by faculty at every Harvard school; advise on the orderly deposit and archiving of research outputs in the most appropriate repository or repositories; promote standards in metadata schema and description practices to enhance discovery; investigate and implement a variety of aspects of new models for scholarly publishing, including services and infrastructure leveraging current repository work; and design forward-looking repository models in collaboration with peers to provide open access to scholarship.

As part of this change, I am delighted to announce that Peter Suber has agreed to serve in a new role as Senior Advisor on Open Access, reporting to the Assistant University Librarian for Content Strategies. Our strategic organizational review coincided with a request from Peter to move to a half-time appointment and step down from his role as Director of the OSC. In his new role, he will use his expertise to advise the Vice President for Harvard Library on issues in open access as well as continuing to affect the external context through external advising. I would like to thank Peter sincerely for his exceptional leadership in advancing open access as Director of the OSC since 2013, and for agreeing to continue to offer his expertise in his new role.

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See Also: Post by Peter Suber

I’m stepping down as Director of the Harvard Library Office for Scholarly Communication. But I’ll stay at Harvard and shift to a new half-time position in July 2022 (“Senior Advisor on Open Access”). My new work will consist entirely of the pro bono consulting for open access that I’ve been doing for years alongside my regular work. I asked for this arrangement and thank the library for agreeing to it.

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Filed under: Academic Libraries, Data Files, Libraries, Management and Leadership, News, Open Access, Publishing