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LIBER Open Access Working Group: Call for Members
LIBER is launching a Working Group on the implementation of open access and is looking for members to join this new group.
If you are interested, please email liber@kb.nl by 1 June 2016, stating which focus area you are interested in and what you can contribute, building on your knowledge and expertise.
The Working Group will be chaired by Matthijs van Otegem, university librarian at Erasmus University Rotterdam. LIBER encourages applications from across Europe, so that the group reflects its broad European membership base.
The first meeting of the working group will be at the LIBER Annual Conference in Helsinki, on Tuesday 28th, 15.30-17.30.
Working Group Outline
The proposed focus of the Working Group is on the implementation of open access. The OA landscape in Europe shows great variety. Most libraries have started an institutional repository in some form to support green OA. In some countries, this is mainly a bottom up initiative from the library community. In other countries, the government stimulates a full conversion to gold OA. There is no one size that fits all, yet in the transition from a project-based innovative approach to standard research support services there is room for development and cooperation.
LIBER’s strength lies in its membership network. With over 400 research libraries all over Europe LIBER has the ability to make things happen. It has been successful in European projects on open access (eg. Pasteur4OA on OA policies, FOSTER on OA training and OpenAIRE to publish the results of FP7 in open access). Therefore the focus of this new Working Group is on the implementation of open access. In this way LIBER plays to its strength, can further disseminate the results of the EU projects, and can support its members.
Focus Areas
- Licensing & Negotiations About OA – How to make the transition from a subscription based model to OA is a shared concern. Because of non-disclosure agreements it can be hard to get insight in the various ways libraries are trying to make the move. The Working Group could be the platform to exchange knowledge and to support library staff in their negotiations.
- Reap the Rewards of the Repositories – We all have developed institutional respositories. What’s next? How do we reap the rewards of our repositories? How do we increase the coverage of our own academic output? What kind of services can we build on our repositories and how do you do that? We all have attended many presentations about repositories as a project, but far less about the repository as a service.
- Promote OA Policies – Moving beyond the ‘why’ of open access and establishing repositories allows us to take further steps within our institutions. We need clear OA mandates, policies for handling article processing charges, licensing models etc. These can be easily shared and further developed in cooperation among LIBER members.
