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Sustainable and Equitable Scholarly Publishing: A New Vision for Open Access Monographs in the Humanities and Social Sciences
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Sustainable and Equitable Scholarly Publishing: A New Vision for Open Access Monographs in the Humanities and Social Sciences
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Segment:0 .
All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Go ahead and get started. Um, I'll do some introductions here in just a couple of minutes, but hopefully you're here in the right place. This is going to be looking at sustainable and equitable models for open access, e-book publishing.
And what we're going to cover today is kind of have our panelists that are going to review some of the challenges that they're facing across with publishing and with libraries and with open access ebooks. I'm going to bring a store perspective of the involvement we've had on business model with path to open, and we'll cover in some of the opportunities that we've seen with supporting open access publishing, but also some of the challenges, the sustainability of it, the equity of it for small to medium sized publishers to participate.
So we're going to kind of focus in on what these challenges have been and what some models and path open in particular began to get developed to try to overcome some of these working with library community and with publishers, along with jstor, to put together a proposed solution model. So I'll do the introductions for myself first. Then I'm going to pass it over to the panelists to introduce themselves. John Linehan with jstor.
I've been with jstor for about 11 years. My current role is in responsibility for published content. So that's all the licensed and open content that's published on jstor from texts, from images. The responsibility of publishing that was in global outreach prior and was at proquest for about 10 years before that. We're going to do a little fun facts, so I convince the panelists to do a fun fact.
So you get to know a little bit about us in different ways. And when doing that, at least you remember you might forget everything. But remember that one fun fact, like Charles watkinson, for example, is afraid of pineapples if you miss the last one. So always busting his chops now about his fear for pineapples. So we learn a little bit. So for me, the fun fact would be I'm going to use a different one than I did last time when on surfing in, I was a surfer and surfing in California.
I had a shark encounter where it came up, knocked me off my hit my leg and my board and did everything you weren't supposed to do. I panicked and freaked out and paddled in and watched this big shark just kind of cruising right along the coastline afterwards. So scared to death. It scared me to death, but always was afraid of sharks. I still surf, but I still was crazy.
Encounter for me. So I'll turn it over to you. OK next. Oh, Holly. OK I'm Holly Mercer. I'm senior associate dean at the University of Tennessee Knoxville libraries. And I am kind of representing the University library perspective and the University.
A small University press perspective. Perspective because ut press is part of the libraries. Um, my fun fact is that I played a majorette in two episodes of the soap opera one life to live. Thank you. Thanks hi, everyone. I'm Sarah McKee.
I am here from acls, which, for those of you who may not know, is the American Council of Learned Societies. And that functions as an umbrella organization for a number of humanities, um, scholarly societies. So like the American Historical Association or modern Language Association or two of their, their biggest members. But it goes down to two much smaller members as well. And has recently, um, shifted a bit from its core focus on grants and fellowships to scholars to thinking about higher education issues that they might be able to help intervene in some way by bringing together all the constituencies that are a part of acls.
So I'll talk a little bit more about that as part of them later in the presentation. Um, and no one can follow Holly's fun facts. Um, so I just decided to talk about my dog, as I often do. I have a 12 pounds dog named Fritz who barks at airplanes. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us this afternoon. My name is Beth fugett from the University of Washington Press.
We're a medium sized press, one of about 160 University presses in the Association of University presses. And my comments today are going to focus largely on open access at University presses like ours, the situation is quite different among other kinds of presses. Um, let me think. I had no fun fact at all up until this past weekend when I did something that was a lot of fun. I took a three day biking camping trip with a two-year-old and his mom.
So that was really a great time. Thanks and clearly for me, I'm terrible at names. And Kate McCready was in the last one and I'm like, had Kate in my mind for this conversation and you're all looking at me going, Kate, there's not Kate here. So really sorry about that. Obviously bad with names. I'm sorry.
Um, great way to start it. So for, for the agenda, um, we're, we're again, we're going to cover like a current situation where path to open started as a concept about over a year ago. And I remember first time in a coffee shop with Charles over at Charleston, and we started talking a little bit about it. And there was a lot of discussions with and with James Shulman.
And then it kind of developed into something where we talked about it further, including with jstor and with libraries going all right there. There's a lot of issues and challenges between with the authors, with publishers and how libraries support it and what happens, how expensive it can be and what happens to with University presses the concerns of bibliodiversity we're going to talk about. So we're going to summarize this the best we can to short meeting.
We could talk just about the situation for an hour and then we'll get into what some of the data kind of points out to be like. Oh, OK. It makes sense. Like what happens when something is really open? Evidence shows we need to be doing something better and more, and then we're going to open it up to a few questions so you can kind of hear direct from the panelists about what their challenges are or what they see as potential opportunities.
And hopefully that'll lead to a good Q&A session where we're asking questions of each other and digging into some of these things a little bit different together as a group. So so current situation. Most of the stuff you're probably familiar with and you probably think about this trip over this chair, obviously you'll think about this in some more detail. From from those of you if you're in or there are any librarians here at all.
OK so you're probably the same thing that, you know, you're encountering. You're constantly I've been working in a library space for over 20 years, always being asked to do more with less all the time, whether it's less funding, less staff or constantly, and reallocations that we're going to see from funding that would be over to stem, that would be coming from humanities.
So harder to even find funding and support that's going to come in there in the humanities space and social sciences, and then there are these great open access initiatives and programs that are coming up, but they're not really a great scale for small to medium sized publishers. They're focused on larger publishers, um, the kind of, in many cases from a commercial presses and doesn't really give an opportunity for some of these small to medium presses to join.
And you talked with the University presses, sales are going down, so they're constantly under pressure generating revenue. And that focus is then efforts towards larger subject areas that they think they can actually sell books in. And then that has that impact on that bibliodiversity subject area is no longer get published in because they're focused on what they can do to generate revenue. And then with an offer space.
The author side of that is concerns about their scholarship, like how broad and global is their scholarship. Libraries are not funding and purchasing the books, readers are not accessing it, and they see very limited exposure to what they're publishing and the scholarship they have readers not associated to an institution that has the money to buy. Sorry, those doesn't get access to these books.
They don't have a way to get to those. And we'll look at some data that show what happens and what's different when those readers actually can get access to that content. So I'm going to turn it over to Sarah to talk about the concerns on bibliodiversity. And one of the emphasis about what we were trying to really accomplish here with this program.
Sarah Yeah. Thanks, John. This illustration here was created by Charles watkinson, who's been invoked several times already, the director of the University of Michigan press, to help illustrate that path to open does attempt to offer a scalable funding model that prioritizes equity and bibliodiversity. So this map shows the locations of around 100 presses in the United States and Canada that bear the name of their parent institution.
A majority of these are smaller University presses that bring a regional perspective to their publishing programs that would not be represented elsewhere in the scholarly record. And we know that preserving this bibliodiversity is a core concern for the values led libraries and funders that support open access. From my perspective and my work with scholars who are considering all their publication options for publishing monographs, which in many cases, they've been working on for years, I hear considerable concern about narrowing options for them.
For example, you know, to John's point that he was just making, I've heard multiple stories of highly influential book series that are closing down because the sales are not high enough to justify their continuance. And this creates disruption within particular fields of study and repercussions in what students might decide to pursue or what they're advised to pursue. It also creates an equities in which scholarship that already enjoys a high profile continues to be supported, while emerging fields of study are not given the chance to gain a foothold or are held to unrealistic sales standards for something that's just getting off the ground.
So from a financial standpoint, of course it makes sense for publishers to move away from something that's underperforming. But from the standpoint of knowledge production, it falls short. So one of the aspects of path to open that as a promoter of humanities scholarship really appreciates is this active attempt to promote and protect bibliodiversity because we see how that leads to a more robust humanities infrastructure.
Thank you, sir. So, Christina, I you like data, so you'll like a couple of these next slides. So this is the part that really was compelling. So in particular for me, I've been in the books program at jstor since it launched in 2012, and one of the reasons that was to help launch the program. And one of the things that really started to see a difference for me is when we moved to open access in 2016 and start a publishing open access books, how different those books were being used.
And we'll touch I'm not going to put into a lot of detail at different parts around the world where it really has impacted. But you'll see when we look at the impact across various countries. So in 2022 we had 22 million item requests, counter five measurement for usage of a book, and we had 9,000 open access books. There's 120,000 licensed books.
Those 9,000 open access books accounted for 11 million item requests, half the overall book usage on the program for just 9,000 books. And what we also noticed is that when we were selling these are books just regular selling, 120,000, they get published. About 6,000 new copyright yearbooks are getting published and sold. The average number of countries significantly increased between now if you make it open, these books are getting used in other countries that under a license model and what they're purchasing, they're not getting access to these books, but they use them.
And when we have open access books, countries like the Philippines, Malaysia, India and China, they're at the top 20 of countries of use of open access books. Many countries throughout Latin America. When you look at what's licensed, it's down towards the bottom because they don't have an infrastructure and funding capability to buy these open access books.
So this was just looking at the comparison there. And this number is compelling, but you probably figure that's the case. And jstor. There are 14,000 institutions who license something from jstor. So we know the IP ranges and information of 14,000 institutions that participate in jstor, but only about 1700s of them buy books at some level, one book over some period of time.
But over 13,000 of them have engaged with and used and incorporated the ebooks when they're open access at their institution. And this is a little bit different from a data point, but this is looking over six years. We've converted 1,000 books. So these are books that went through a normal sales channel. And then over time, the publisher secured rights, authors gave permissions, and we converted these books to open access.
And it's looking at what the difference here is for this. And you're going to talk to many publishers who will say, you know, like especially during the time with covid, when a lot of publishers made all their books open, they found out, wow, there's a real big demand for these books when we're not really getting sales. But you open it up, there's a big demand here. How do we do this in a better scale? So looking at this data, it's like we took these are the same books that you looked at the same period before going open 1 or two years and looked at 1 or two years after going Open Usage increased 5,500% And that's a big difference of saying they're actually these books immediately get used and discovered.
They get used across over 134 countries on average as opposed to 14 countries when they were just licensed. And you look at what the institutions that are using it 26 times more usage from institutions of the books and they're open access compared to license. So kind of said, we've got to be able to do more of this. I would be taking this data. I was going to publishers. I was like, let's look at what these books have aren't selling.
Like you haven't sold anything. There's generating no usage for them. Let's work to get these books open because it gives it a new life. But we want to focus on current copyright your books to how do we get those to a path to be open more quickly? So we came together, Sarah and I in particular, in a group, and we meet every other week and we have a group or and working across within library feedback and community.
And Sarah is going to talk a little bit later about how we're building a community to really expand this more. And this whole setting is about trust and transparency. And so that's a key thing, is like getting information out, making sure everyone's aware of it, getting feedback and developing it through a community. But in this case, what happens to support the funding is that we went to the Ithaca board and secured the upfront funding of $5,000 per title.
Publishers are going to need more than this on the book, but it's a guaranteed then upfront stipend that provides a $5,000 support for the books that get published in the program. And so that way, University presses don't have to worry. Well, I can't publish in this area because I'm worried about the revenue side. There will be guaranteed revenue for the publishers of what they're publishing.
Then libraries are accessing content through a paid subscription model, and I'll go into the detail a little bit further that provides the funding back to what was provided up front, and that just comes at scale. There's close to 14,000 institutions who access jstor. We provide a jstor classification scale. So from a very small community college to a large can participate to access books, and they support a broader open Access Initiative moving forward.
Um, authors then start to see the data because this is all about making sure that data gets sent out, writing up reports, sending information out. We're working to create easy ways. We use a lot on Tableau like dashboard views and that making sure those are open access but open access reporting so everyone sees the impact of what happens when this content is available, authors can start to see a change of the impact of their scholarship and readers can see more and more books that are becoming available to them in an open access environment and know when they're going to be open access.
And this just gives a little detail about the program. So, so to date, there are 36 University presses that have joined path to open. Um, so we expect that number will continue to grow. But 36 are in the program today. There's 100 titles that have been selected in this first for 2023 that will be released in October and through the duration of the pilot. We're looking at this as a pilot because what we're starting with right now may not be what we find we need to do as the community evaluates this, as we look at what funding needs are, as we look at how long a delayed open Access Initiative needs to be for authors, the goal is at the end of that 2026 period, we've released 1,000 books.
Those 1,000 books have an open access period that will occur. And hopefully at the end of this pilot, we have a program that's sustainable where it grows to more books being published every year, more contributions from libraries and more publishers joining the program. It's managed to a library subscription, simply try to go to the same workflows that libraries have in place.
Now, it's not recreating a new workflow process, but the data is important. How do we get the data to the University president, to the dean, to the acquisitions librarian, that they're getting value at their own institution and they're supporting a broader initiative? So last thing here, and then I'm going to turn it over to Sarah to talk about the community. Is the books that were published a big area.
That I've made this mistake many times and I kept using high quality and I'm never try not to ever say that because I'd say that to the press is everything is high quality. It's a peer review process. So say, OK, I want to make sure I don't say high quality, but libraries are viewing it this way. They're like, we don't want to feel like we're putting money in supporting something that our books to the publishers don't think they're going to be able to sell.
And so they put them into this program to get the funding. We support it, and then we find books that don't get used at our institution. So needed to find the right balance for it. So we've spent a lot of time talking to libraries and going what would be a good way in between. The publishers don't want a library to tell them what they should publish because that defeats the whole purpose that we've been talking about.
But where do we find a place in the middle? And so how can we use data to help us with that? So in this methodology process, we looked at what are the top subject areas when a book is licensed and when a book is open and when a book converts to open. We saw some of those earlier slides, so we put a ranking to each title that get submitted from a publisher to find out which ones actually go into the program, how they rank against that.
We also look at all of the engagement of users on the platform, meaning what search terms are they using, what topics do they engage in? Where do they not have content available to their search terms and topics on jstor? Because we're missing content. It's not there. But these are books that are actually going to be published that are directly aligned with what users are looking for.
They're actively engaged globally for looking for this content. So that moves into a ranking process and a methodology. So when a library participates in the program, we know that they're getting their own direct value to faculty and students. And then knowing by looking at data, they support a broader good in the end. So we're hoping that data and openness and transparency of that data kind of helps build a trust into this model.
So, Sarah, turn it over to you to talk about community. Thanks, John. So, as I mentioned, has long supported its mission is to support humanistic scholarship. And it's done that mainly through its grant and fellowship programs for many years, which support individual scholars from graduate students all the way up to late career scholars across a wide array of humanities disciplines.
But in recent years has begun to explore other ways to support the humanistic community by using its connections to various constituencies. So it includes those Fellows and grantees, scholarly societies, humanities deans and other organizational affiliates, including some library and publishing organizations to launch new initiatives that foster conversations around some of the most pressing issues in higher Ed. And so one of the areas they've identified is the changing landscape of scholarly publishing as affecting everybody within this ecosystem.
And so we've taken a particular interest in open access publishing as a way to expand the reach of humanistic research and to demonstrate its relevance. So that focus is what's bringing us to the path to open initiative in the first place. And of course, as John has outlined, you know, jstor has made a tremendous investment in and commitment to this program.
But we also recognize that there are know, this is a new model and it raises some complicated questions along the way. And so acls has really offered to create a forum for the path to open community as it evolves. It may take the form of an advisory board, a working group. We're not entirely sure what the end result will be. We're just now starting that process. But what we're really looking for is a community that allows for transparency and conversation and analysis of what we're learning during the three years of the plot of the pilot.
So the community will bring together libraries and publishers, but also scholars and administrators, not only to help the scholars and administrators better understand open access, but to help the scholarly communications community understand the needs of the scholars themselves, because, as you know, they're very often not a part of these conversations. So more details about that are coming soon.
There's a URL on the slide that we hope you'll check out. There's a mailing list that you can sign up for. And so we hope that you'll stay in touch as this community continues to develop. Thank you, sir. So now let's jump over to questions here for panelists to provide some insight for. So first question, what do you feel are the pressing challenges preventing more scholarly monographs from being published as open access?
And Beth, we'll start with you. I'm going to start off as, again, a medium sized University press. Our experience is probably not atypical. We've been publishing open access books for about 45 years, but they still make up a very small part of our program. We've got about 50 books now that are available. I should say.
There's a lot of diversity among University presses, though, and our experience is not necessarily universal. There are other presses that are fully open. Access already solved some of these challenges in other ways, but think it's not atypical among smaller, medium sized presses. So one thing I have to say at the start is that one of the biggest challenges that we're facing is the funding model that supports the publication of scholarly books at University presses.
The model was established decades ago at a time when the presses could count on selling 2000 copies of books to academic libraries. And so the assumption was that we could cover the costs, the labor costs, the other costs of publishing books through these sales that John mentioned. I'm sure that you all know that's no longer the case, but the funding model hasn't evolved in step with these changes.
For example, most University presses of our size still receive very little support from our universities at that, Washington is only about 10% of our budget. So what this means is that we're, most of us are heavily reliant on sales in order to carry out our mission and publish our books. And so we are extremely cautious about anything that we fear might undercut sales. And there's concern that open access publication might there's some promising data that's been coming out suggesting that open access publication might not have as big of an impact with many of its peers.
But there's still little known about the impact over time. So, as I say, the current funding model is a problem for this reason. It's also a problem in other ways too, as a result of the underfunding. I will say that of University presses. Most of us have limited capacity to take on new initiatives. And again, this is especially true among small and medium sized presses.
We don't have the bandwidth to develop the new processes that are required to publish open access book. As John mentioned, as I'm sure you know too. There are a number of important initiatives to support a monographs and they've been growing in recent years too, but they tend to be somewhat piecemeal and don't cover everybody.
For example, there's an important meeting in Harvard University in Cambridge University in which the institutions needed funds to. To make all these books openly available. But some institutions are not so wonderful to offer of the institutions, and particularly.
The conservatives have a wonderful intelligence program that supports scholars who visit fellowships. So there has been a program that's open to everybody. And we have always wanted to be one of these buckets. We see what and when the announcement now we're reading the other side simply a lack of knowledge about.
And the advantages. Think about that. Um, the exception to the basic open access rules are published differently from other books. And in these cases, there may be more resistance and concerns around tenure and promotion issues, often not from the authors themselves are concerned about what their colleagues say.
So these are a few of the many challenges that we. There? oh, sure. Thank you. I would echo everything that Beth just said. Obviously, we need an equitable funding model that's equitable for both publishers and a diversity of publishers and for the authors.
Um, and, you know, it would be wonderful for that to happen on a broad scale, you know, reaching out to these deans, to provosts, to finding funding, to inject some, some more funding into the humanities infrastructure, I think, is something that really needs to happen. Um, another important challenge again, as Beth mentioned, is the widespread misunderstanding or just confusion among humanities scholars about the way open access works.
And actually I've been hearing enough in this conference to understand that it's true amongst scientists as well. So it's not just in the humanities that these problems exist. And yes, the concern, you know, this lingering concern that even if the book has been published by a reputable press, it's somehow not getting the same level of editorial attention or peer review. So really trying to dispel some of those myths.
But I'll also mention the prestige factor here. It's a huge concern for scholars and it makes sense, you know, it affects their careers and really direct ways. So even if an author really wants to publish open access, they often won't. If they can't do it with the publisher that's most respected in their field, full stop. So that's the highest priority for most authors. And that won't change, I think, even for the ones who do have sort of an advocacy approach to open access, at least at certain points in their career, it will still come down to the publisher.
I think we also need to be very attuned to scholars concerns over how to make some forms of scholarship available in respectful and thoughtful ways, open access, especially research by about and for marginalized communities. And this is actually something I'm hearing in other parts of this conference as well, which is really heartening. But there can be implications for making some kinds of content more highly visible, both for the communities that a particular work examines as well as for the author and in particular in this, you know, political climate, you know, there are implications for faculty in certain states, for example.
So we do have to be very unfortunately attuned to some of that. And, you know, and finally, even the question of things like third party materials for humanities scholars become pretty difficult in certain disciplines like art history, for example. The costs of clearing permissions just prohibit it. That's even true without open access, you had open access to it.
It becomes really, really difficult. So there are certain disciplines where, you know, open access almost feels unattainable in some cases. So all this to say the implications of open access for scholars go well beyond the funding and distribution models that we tend to focus on in these kind of forums. And too often the authors are left out of the conversation and debates about best practices for open access.
And so while questions of scale may not resonate for them, they're very much focused on their individual books. You know, I still think that they deserve a seat at the table. And that's something that I would like to really work on a little bit as part of the Open Project. But in return, I think that there greater understanding and their advocacy for open access might help move the needle on that funding.
I just talked about, you know, the provost and the deans need to be hearing it from the faculty as well as from the publishers and libraries. So Yeah. And I'll keep this short because I could just reiterate what's already been said, but smaller University presses have been slower to implement an e-book strategy, much less an open access strategy.
And it's not so much about a lack of interest in open access as it is just a lack of resources to make that change. And and the University of Tennessee press is, I think, a good example. For the last 10 or more years, they've willingly given their out of print titles to the library so we could make them available in our repository.
So they're willing to participate but need but need a path to do that. So, um, tome was already mentioned toward an open monograph ecosystem, and programs such as tome don't serve authors from smaller or less well funded institutions, not to mention unaffiliated authors. And so at Tennessee University of Tennessee, faculty authors have benefited from participating from Tennessee's participation in tome.
But the ut press has not benefited. Um, and there is a lack of awareness of open access as an option, I think, among authors. and a lack of incentives. And this was already mentioned by Sarah. At my institution. There's still a real focus on print, and the reward structure favors print.
Even when there is acknowledgment that open access can mean more readers. Right Thank you. Um, we're going to jump here to the next question, but just to kind of summarize some of that. So I think before we look at and get some feedback on how the half the open seems to help solve some of the challenges you outlined, some consistent themes obviously come around funding that was clear across the board.
Um, I think also the recognition from authors and challenges that they have around open access and in some cases it's just providing more knowledge and information around that. And that that has been something, whether it's international or even domestic here in the United States. And many of you are international here. Um, it's communicating to the authors.
I've had like just the last few months so many conversations with publishers and information to the authors about what open access means, the timing around that, like what the implications of it are, or what a C by license even is. So like there's things that there's just a lack of familiarity with it. So our hope is with this transparency and information that's there, that unfamiliarity goes away and there's a stronger trust that builds.
So and I'm going to start then Sarah will mix it up a little bit, asking you on where you feel that path to open helps kind of solve some of the challenges that you were mentioning there. Yeah Thank you, John. Um, well, I mean, I think that this I'll go back to the, the community that is hoping to foster here or to help to foster.
And I think that's kind of unique. I mean, not that there's not communities around these other initiatives, but I think one that's actively considering how the model works. And how it affects all the participants, including the authors, and not just analyzing the program after the fact is maybe something that could distinguish path to open and help us to mitigate some of these problems that we've raised.
Um, and it also it just and I think we've already touched on some of this already, but it really lowers the barrier for so many smaller presses to be able to participate and for so many more authors to be able to participate if they don't happen to be coming with the. So for tome, I don't know if we mentioned the number at all, but the subvention amount, the grant amount was $15,000 per book.
So that is prohibitive at a lot of institutions. And so, you know, we had and Beth may have mentioned this, I think, you know, 60 some University presses who said that they wanted to participate in tome and only 20 some actually were able to. And it was really just the function of matching up the press with the author who could come with the funding. And I think we had expected the opposite to be true at the outset of tome that there would be more universities signing on with the funding and fewer presses who were interested.
So that was actually not true. And I think there are plenty of authors who would have really appreciated that. Um, and so I participated in tome in my previous position at Emory University. And even as those faculty were very appreciative, I think there was also a little bit of self-consciousness about it, knowing that colleagues at other institutions in their field would not have access to that kind of funding.
So it was a little bit of a double edged sword there. So that's I think that barrier lowering that barrier for so many more authors and publishers is really a defining characteristic of path to open that I'm very optimistic about. Sure, Holly. Um, you have two open works for presses of all sizes and also libraries of all sizes. And, and it shows real promise because it is a more equitable model for funding open access.
And I frankly believe that just having jstor behind it, this is it's established. And so authors, libraries know store and think of it as something that is stable and is there to preserve scholarship. And so when ut press said, hey, we've been asked about participating in this pilot, should we do it?
And what they heard back was resoundingly, yes, it is definitely it's a pilot. There's you know, what's the risk in trying it out and and, and so, Yeah, we're very pleased to be a part. Yeah, I'd say that path to open directly addresses each of the challenges that I mentioned.
It provides some guaranteed funding up front, which still only covers a small share of our costs. But our hope is that in addition to sales and other funding that we can piece together, it will enable us to successfully publish the books that we're putting into the program. With open access editions available in the not too distant future.
It's a collaborative initiative. You know, we talked about the challenges that small, medium sized presses have with capacity, so it will give us the opportunity to work together, to learn from each other, to share our experiences and solutions to things, also to take advantage of the shared infrastructure that jstar is providing for it. To get everybody involved in this conversation, as Sarah mentioned together, into the room talking about how we can create a sustainable future.
And I think that the advocacy that can come out of that will also be extremely important. Probably most important for us is that it's an equitable model for authors. You know, as others have said, it doesn't depend on support from author institutions. So authors from smaller or less resourced institutions, authors from the global South can all take advantage of it.
So that's really important, especially as a publisher that's been, you know, trying to publish more and open access, but realizing that what we've been doing hasn't been equitable in this way. And then the other thing that's really important to us is that the books are published just like other books on our list, and that they go through the same obviously the same peer review process as all of our open access books have, but also through the very same production and marketing processes.
So this helps to alleviate concerns among authors or their colleagues that the books are somehow, you know, different or less valuable than other kinds of books. All right. Thank you. So the last question here, will, and then we're going to open it up to some questions here for the audience, hopefully even gathering some here to get us engaged on this side.
But so looking at what are the key motivators to support publishing of open access ebooks? I'm going to I'll start this one and then I'm going to turn it to Holly. And I think the main thing is for me, mission for store is, is really providing access to scholarship, to content, to support education and doing that in a financially affordable way. And that's the goal of that.
So it's one of the reasons I came to this company and to me, coming from a faculty background and knowing and seeing the impact it has and going to these parts of the world like to try to incorporate and get content set up at some of these institutions, like in India where you're not having computer and infrastructure around there, but there can get access to stuff on their phone. There's like ways of doing it. It's like, let's get the content out there.
It'll change the way that they view and learn and increase knowledge and scholarship. And it's not what we all want. I mean, why would we not want to improve the knowledge in the world? So to me, any way that we can get more content freely available is a huge motivator for hopefully not just for me, but for everybody. So turn it over to you.
And so last year, in 2022, ut libraries adopted a set of principles for providing access to research and scholarship. This really drives how we in the library spend our money, how we negotiate licenses, and really how we think about ourselves as a library at a land grant University where we have an access mission. And so removing barriers for all readers is a core value for us.
The University of Tennessee press, as a division of the libraries, therefore also shares that value of open access. But both the library and the press need to figure out how to do this sustainably. And open access can introduce monographs that are included in path to open to new readers. So it increases that bibliodiversity because it makes more work available to more readers.
And and so I think that this is one way to try to address that sustainability issue while also helping us achieve our, our goal of, of providing access to as many people as we possibly can.
Um, so in terms of the scholars that is really trying to support, you know, in the humanities community, many scholars are really very interested right now, increasingly so in public, facing scholarship, publicly engaged scholarship. And I think open access can do a whole lot to support that, you know, making those resources available in various ways, as Holly just said, to many, many more readers, both within and outside of academia.
And they want to make that work affordable to scholars in a variety of circumstances. So people in parts of the world that are underserved by our current system, and those who are not affiliated with a robust research library. And then and then I think most authors are really interested in lowering costs for students. I mean, we're all aware of that situation and how expensive it is for students to go to school, much less to purchase the.
And to John's point, you know, that that's all very, very important to the scholars that is supporting. Um, for me, I, um, I just think a big motivator for me though, is just realizing how much we need to adapt to the fact that the internet happened. You know, the internet happened in my adult lifetime. I remember before and after. And it's here and it's not going away. And so we really well in my.
Yeah, OK. There are other scenarios. Yes um, but to me the lack of vetted, thoughtful information online is pretty terrifying. I mean, it just creates a vacuum that I don't think any of us want. And we've already seen the problems with misinformation, disinformation, um, you know, chatgpt inventing sources and, you know, so I think the more of the, of the content that we work so hard to produce, you know, actual sources that could be online is just a really important thing for the Humanities community and the scholarly community generally to show up for and to be a part of that.
If we're absent, we can't help to mitigate any of those issues. Um, and so, you know, I understand that could sound pretty naive. You know, you can put an esoteric humanities book online that's not going to solve everybody's problems. However, I think at scale, and this is one of those parts of, you know, where I do like to think about it at scale. You put a lot of this material out there.
I think it will find its readers. And, you know, people come to these books when you make something open access, it finds readers, you know, that would not have found it otherwise, who have their own particular reasons for being interested in it, beyond the reasons that the scholar might have written it or who they were trying to reach. So I think that we can trust in that. And so to me, that's actually a really big motivator for why do any of this to think about that?
Um, and I think that we need to do a better job of, of connecting, of making bridges between this scholarship and the public at large, you know, I'm pretty persuaded by the argument that there should be public access for publicly funded research. But I also in my own life, my friends and my family, they don't know about open access unless I you know, they ask me what my job is and I try to explain it.
So I think there's so much work for us to do in terms of building those bridges to the public. And I would love to see that continue to happen with open access and really just think that what motivates everybody is, you know, these opening of dialogues at the global level with public communities is just very exciting and energizing aspect of open access.
Yeah, I have to echo what my colleagues here said. You know, above all, I think it's an equity issue, a question of whether scholarship should be restricted to people who are affiliated with research universities or have the means to pay for it or should be freely available to everyone. You know, Sarah mentioned esoteric humanities monographs, and some of them are but one of our recent which we love, but one of our recent open access books had to do with issues of climate change in Bangladesh.
So really important work that people need to have access to both, you know, both here in the global North and in the global South so that scholars can work together in order to address some of the global challenges that we're facing. You know, another big motivator for us as a University press is that we work really hard to produce our books. We put a lot of time and effort into them, and so we want them to have as much reach and impact as they possibly can.
And the statistics that John gave earlier about that increased reach, as I said, we've been publishing open access for about almost five years now, and some of that has been flipping backlist books open. And we saw the same, you know, statistics that he shared about the much greater use and especially the much more widespread use in countries all around the world. So that's a very strong motivator.
And then although, as I mentioned, a lot of authors haven't thought much about open access, an increasing number of them have and are also concerned about questions of equity of scholars who worked in different countries, want to make sure that the colleagues that they worked with and the students they might have worked with there have access to their research as well. So so meeting authors, kind of growing interest in this way of publishing and making their work available is an important consideration for us.
All right, we're, I'll wrap up here just to say, first of all, Thank you for the panelists mean the ability to put the insight and hopefully you all looking at on the library publisher and from the community setting with acls and with scholars is an insight and some of those challenges that clearly are some of the reasons and motivations for even thinking of the open or any models that we're all trying to find solutions for.
So appreciate the insights to it and the time that I know is spent to put that together. And again, this is a starting point. I think what we liked about it as a path to open is it is a path. It's not defined it. We're we're defining it along the way. But we have an end goal, which is like what we're talking about now is what motivates us and what we want to try to see as an end result.
And that path really then is consistent upon feedback that you all are contributing. So we get a sustainable plan. My hope mean long term goals is that everything gets published in a way that has a direction for open access, and we've created a sustainable way to make it happen. It won't happen tomorrow, but it will happen over time if we're committed to it. So I'm going to pause there.
I want to open up to see if there's any questions and feedback that we can go through with the panelists around here. It looks like there's a mic we can start with. You want to sit down but or come up to the mic, whichever works for everybody. But so about 10 minutes. So start with some questions. Sure Thank you, everyone.
Um, so I have two questions. One of them is sort of a more practical question about path to open and the role of that's anticipated for authors in path to open in the pilot. Um, because, you know, I understand the relationship between the libraries and the presses, but if an author is, is there a role for them to self advocate for inclusion of their book or I mean, you talked about the different metrics to see whether it's a topic that actually people are searching for in jstor.
And so how does the authors, you know, own wishes get factored in? So that's the practical question. And then the broader question, I guess, for the panel as a whole is, you know, so much of what we're talking about here at this conference is like the need to have research that's trustworthy come out in a timely manner. And the three years is a long period.
And I think that's know, we haven't heard a lot about the three years. And I just and obviously, you know, subscribers will have the access to that content and others won't. But that means anyone without an institution won't. And so I wonder just in terms of whether this model, if it provides a sustainable funding model, which is exciting for monographs, whether there is an idea of self-archiving or preprints or kind of way as being part of that.
So that the content can get out in some format to readers who maybe would otherwise have to wait three years. And you know, if you're publishing a book on climate change, I'm working with an author on a book right now that's about popular culture. I mean, three years will really date some of the stuff that's in that. So, yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Thank you. Right Yeah. OK I'll start with a couple of those. I think that as far as the author input and I know the press has been addressed this some more, but I think an important part of that is the first 2023 was a little bit harder because it was really press for time. But even when we had 155 titles submitted to 100, authors did have an input in there because the many of the publishers came back and said, well, even we went through the analysis.
There's a reason with this book and expectation and author making a case that we actually had a chance to modify some of what gets released. The same would happen with the 300. So every press is going to have a range between about 5% to 15 books that will be able to get published to get to 300. And that number will change if it grows. So we're going to have an earlier period where authors will come back to the press, have more author input, and especially with what Sarah saying in the building of that community, that goal is that we set what that right collaboration is.
So authors voice is really loud and what actually is part of what's published. And on the three year embargo period, I have no idea if that is the right embargo period, delayed access period or not. Um, it was sort of established through like the NIH grant and something that's like, oh, there's a period here that seems to work. Authors are comfortable with that.
It gives enough time without impact of tenure. So we are starting with that because it felt authors can get more comfortable with the concept of open access and participating, as we said. But that could change in a year or two years. My hope is as we're getting information out, more familiarity. Libraries are coming back and saying we want things to go quicker.
They do the other way around. This, though, that we're building on the store side. There has to also be better interlibrary loan capabilities, which we don't currently have on the jstor side. So to me, it was a key initiative. We have to build better capabilities of full book download capability and make it real simple. So you want to get to that book and your user somewhere you can find where to get it and you can get access to it right away.
And there can be a full book download to give that capability. And some of this was a shared author community. So we want to give make sure that all the publishers and all authors have access to all the content and have that open. So each publisher has their own access to the books to send to the scholars and to send that information out on their own as well.
So hopefully we'll keep moving in that direction. I don't know if anyone else had any input to please. So this is something that we've only talked about and don't know if it will be feasible. But JSTOR does have experience in a different area of making collections available at no cost or at reduced rates to people in low and lower income countries. So hopefully this is one of the things that we might be able to talk about as the pilot continues as a way of getting the work out to people who might not otherwise have access to it even in those first few years.
And that is something, Sarah, I don't know if you want to I part of the building, the community or working group is we're trying to what can we do with that? Because we're this isn't a JSTOR thing. It's it's, it's not successful if it's a JSTOR initiative, it's the infrastructure part. So we're trying to look for guidance to say, oh, here's what the community saying we should be doing this should be available to like a J store.
We have the African Access Initiative. So any academic institution in Africa has free access to JSTOR. We do that already with our initiatives in many countries around the world have free access and we set up infrastructure for them to be able to access and do research for that. There's no reason if the community or the board decides, hey, this is what should happen, that we don't do that 100% It's like we're just early and we're not there yet.
But I hope that's where we end up. Yes Yeah. We'll work on it. And we try to inform them.
Choose these. So we have look at the specific issues of. To be honest, we put it out there for more projects and this organic organic choices being made. If the project is eligible. And what I've noticed with, for example, the firms that we work with, technology match is when I talk to my bearings were in the committee, we choose these.
And suddenly there's this very specific wish for certain things, for certain research. And everything that flows through that channel of knowledge is actually gets actually gets chosen. Has a very specific profile. So that's where your diversity simply washes away, because there's a very specific wish for trending properties. And we hear environmentalism, for example, was one of those or gender.
So I just wonder where how did you how does that work? Because you actually ask you to choose subjects for this. What that affect the university? I'm just. So does anyone want to comment on that first? Do you want me to? If you want me to.
That would be great. Yeah, well, I'm just going to acknowledge that that is a really important question, and I think it's one that we intend to take up in this community forum where there will be more than publishers at the table. Right and to really, we've talked a good bit about, you know, the underrepresented fields, the books that don't get the kind of attention that they deserve.
And so I think there's a balance between that and then making sure and we also at the same time want to make sure that libraries feel like they're getting the books that they want, you know, that they're excited to see moving through. So we're just going to have to, to think this through. Um, and until, you know, such time as we can as you know, to John's great vision of, you know, at some point all the scholarship will be open access and that might have I don't know some things to say there might be cases where a publisher might not want to make a particular book open access for particular reasons, um, you know, that are more related to funding models and things won't get into all of that, but or into sales potential I guess.
But in terms of the topics that are being covered, I think we really do want to figure out ways to cover a diversity of fields and disciplines and not just the trendy topics. and that the community will play a role in that. I don't know. Do you want to say anything else? OK sure.
Yeah I'll make it a quick think for on this end of it too. It was really important for us. We looked at how do we do best support for hbcus, for tribal colleges, for some of these, especially some small international presses that that's a key on the aspect of diversity. And that means additional funding and support needs to go into some of these areas. We've done a lot of this already in Latin America and working with groups like larp and salam and then finding ways of funding some of that content to be direct as open access.
So that's really going to be important part. And it's a balance. It's like I'm talking about, oh, like, you know, we're looking at some of this data or so because I also know that libraries are funding it and it has to be a balance between they're showing institutional value. That's what I keep hearing. We need to be able to still show to our University and for funding capability, we're seeing direct immediate value to our own institution that justifies recurring spend that we're going to do.
So I'm like, got to have that balance plus open up enough space in between. That's like, let's make sure we're focusing on bibliodiversity. Let's not lose scite of that as the goal of the program. So it's really that balance at 300 titles, it gets harder when you get to 500 or 1,000 titles, then it becomes a lot easier. But my hope is that's what comes out of this pilot.
That you want to say. You good? OK I think we're at any I think we were past time. Was there any question if so, we can wrap up. But please, we'll put our contact information, send emails. Keep keep reaching out to us. We want to keep engagement. I really want to make sure we get a chance to hear from all of you, whatever your thoughts are in ways that you think we can be making improvements, please let us know.
Thank you, everyone, for your time. Thank
Segment:0 .
All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Go ahead and get started. Um, I'll do some introductions here in just a couple of minutes, but hopefully you're here in the right place. This is going to be looking at sustainable and equitable models for open access, e-book publishing.
And what we're going to cover today is kind of have our panelists that are going to review some of the challenges that they're facing across with publishing and with libraries and with open access ebooks. I'm going to bring a store perspective of the involvement we've had on business model with path to open, and we'll cover in some of the opportunities that we've seen with supporting open access publishing, but also some of the challenges, the sustainability of it, the equity of it for small to medium sized publishers to participate.
So we're going to kind of focus in on what these challenges have been and what some models and path open in particular began to get developed to try to overcome some of these working with library community and with publishers, along with jstor, to put together a proposed solution model. So I'll do the introductions for myself first. Then I'm going to pass it over to the panelists to introduce themselves. John Linehan with jstor.
I've been with jstor for about 11 years. My current role is in responsibility for published content. So that's all the licensed and open content that's published on jstor from texts, from images. The responsibility of publishing that was in global outreach prior and was at proquest for about 10 years before that. We're going to do a little fun facts, so I convince the panelists to do a fun fact.
So you get to know a little bit about us in different ways. And when doing that, at least you remember you might forget everything. But remember that one fun fact, like Charles watkinson, for example, is afraid of pineapples if you miss the last one. So always busting his chops now about his fear for pineapples. So we learn a little bit. So for me, the fun fact would be I'm going to use a different one than I did last time when on surfing in, I was a surfer and surfing in California.
I had a shark encounter where it came up, knocked me off my hit my leg and my board and did everything you weren't supposed to do. I panicked and freaked out and paddled in and watched this big shark just kind of cruising right along the coastline afterwards. So scared to death. It scared me to death, but always was afraid of sharks. I still surf, but I still was crazy.
Encounter for me. So I'll turn it over to you. OK next. Oh, Holly. OK I'm Holly Mercer. I'm senior associate dean at the University of Tennessee Knoxville libraries. And I am kind of representing the University library perspective and the University.
A small University press perspective. Perspective because ut press is part of the libraries. Um, my fun fact is that I played a majorette in two episodes of the soap opera one life to live. Thank you. Thanks hi, everyone. I'm Sarah McKee.
I am here from acls, which, for those of you who may not know, is the American Council of Learned Societies. And that functions as an umbrella organization for a number of humanities, um, scholarly societies. So like the American Historical Association or modern Language Association or two of their, their biggest members. But it goes down to two much smaller members as well. And has recently, um, shifted a bit from its core focus on grants and fellowships to scholars to thinking about higher education issues that they might be able to help intervene in some way by bringing together all the constituencies that are a part of acls.
So I'll talk a little bit more about that as part of them later in the presentation. Um, and no one can follow Holly's fun facts. Um, so I just decided to talk about my dog, as I often do. I have a 12 pounds dog named Fritz who barks at airplanes. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us this afternoon. My name is Beth fugett from the University of Washington Press.
We're a medium sized press, one of about 160 University presses in the Association of University presses. And my comments today are going to focus largely on open access at University presses like ours, the situation is quite different among other kinds of presses. Um, let me think. I had no fun fact at all up until this past weekend when I did something that was a lot of fun. I took a three day biking camping trip with a two-year-old and his mom.
So that was really a great time. Thanks and clearly for me, I'm terrible at names. And Kate McCready was in the last one and I'm like, had Kate in my mind for this conversation and you're all looking at me going, Kate, there's not Kate here. So really sorry about that. Obviously bad with names. I'm sorry.
Um, great way to start it. So for, for the agenda, um, we're, we're again, we're going to cover like a current situation where path to open started as a concept about over a year ago. And I remember first time in a coffee shop with Charles over at Charleston, and we started talking a little bit about it. And there was a lot of discussions with and with James Shulman.
And then it kind of developed into something where we talked about it further, including with jstor and with libraries going all right there. There's a lot of issues and challenges between with the authors, with publishers and how libraries support it and what happens, how expensive it can be and what happens to with University presses the concerns of bibliodiversity we're going to talk about. So we're going to summarize this the best we can to short meeting.
We could talk just about the situation for an hour and then we'll get into what some of the data kind of points out to be like. Oh, OK. It makes sense. Like what happens when something is really open? Evidence shows we need to be doing something better and more, and then we're going to open it up to a few questions so you can kind of hear direct from the panelists about what their challenges are or what they see as potential opportunities.
And hopefully that'll lead to a good Q&A session where we're asking questions of each other and digging into some of these things a little bit different together as a group. So so current situation. Most of the stuff you're probably familiar with and you probably think about this trip over this chair, obviously you'll think about this in some more detail. From from those of you if you're in or there are any librarians here at all.
OK so you're probably the same thing that, you know, you're encountering. You're constantly I've been working in a library space for over 20 years, always being asked to do more with less all the time, whether it's less funding, less staff or constantly, and reallocations that we're going to see from funding that would be over to stem, that would be coming from humanities.
So harder to even find funding and support that's going to come in there in the humanities space and social sciences, and then there are these great open access initiatives and programs that are coming up, but they're not really a great scale for small to medium sized publishers. They're focused on larger publishers, um, the kind of, in many cases from a commercial presses and doesn't really give an opportunity for some of these small to medium presses to join.
And you talked with the University presses, sales are going down, so they're constantly under pressure generating revenue. And that focus is then efforts towards larger subject areas that they think they can actually sell books in. And then that has that impact on that bibliodiversity subject area is no longer get published in because they're focused on what they can do to generate revenue. And then with an offer space.
The author side of that is concerns about their scholarship, like how broad and global is their scholarship. Libraries are not funding and purchasing the books, readers are not accessing it, and they see very limited exposure to what they're publishing and the scholarship they have readers not associated to an institution that has the money to buy. Sorry, those doesn't get access to these books.
They don't have a way to get to those. And we'll look at some data that show what happens and what's different when those readers actually can get access to that content. So I'm going to turn it over to Sarah to talk about the concerns on bibliodiversity. And one of the emphasis about what we were trying to really accomplish here with this program.
Sarah Yeah. Thanks, John. This illustration here was created by Charles watkinson, who's been invoked several times already, the director of the University of Michigan press, to help illustrate that path to open does attempt to offer a scalable funding model that prioritizes equity and bibliodiversity. So this map shows the locations of around 100 presses in the United States and Canada that bear the name of their parent institution.
A majority of these are smaller University presses that bring a regional perspective to their publishing programs that would not be represented elsewhere in the scholarly record. And we know that preserving this bibliodiversity is a core concern for the values led libraries and funders that support open access. From my perspective and my work with scholars who are considering all their publication options for publishing monographs, which in many cases, they've been working on for years, I hear considerable concern about narrowing options for them.
For example, you know, to John's point that he was just making, I've heard multiple stories of highly influential book series that are closing down because the sales are not high enough to justify their continuance. And this creates disruption within particular fields of study and repercussions in what students might decide to pursue or what they're advised to pursue. It also creates an equities in which scholarship that already enjoys a high profile continues to be supported, while emerging fields of study are not given the chance to gain a foothold or are held to unrealistic sales standards for something that's just getting off the ground.
So from a financial standpoint, of course it makes sense for publishers to move away from something that's underperforming. But from the standpoint of knowledge production, it falls short. So one of the aspects of path to open that as a promoter of humanities scholarship really appreciates is this active attempt to promote and protect bibliodiversity because we see how that leads to a more robust humanities infrastructure.
Thank you, sir. So, Christina, I you like data, so you'll like a couple of these next slides. So this is the part that really was compelling. So in particular for me, I've been in the books program at jstor since it launched in 2012, and one of the reasons that was to help launch the program. And one of the things that really started to see a difference for me is when we moved to open access in 2016 and start a publishing open access books, how different those books were being used.
And we'll touch I'm not going to put into a lot of detail at different parts around the world where it really has impacted. But you'll see when we look at the impact across various countries. So in 2022 we had 22 million item requests, counter five measurement for usage of a book, and we had 9,000 open access books. There's 120,000 licensed books.
Those 9,000 open access books accounted for 11 million item requests, half the overall book usage on the program for just 9,000 books. And what we also noticed is that when we were selling these are books just regular selling, 120,000, they get published. About 6,000 new copyright yearbooks are getting published and sold. The average number of countries significantly increased between now if you make it open, these books are getting used in other countries that under a license model and what they're purchasing, they're not getting access to these books, but they use them.
And when we have open access books, countries like the Philippines, Malaysia, India and China, they're at the top 20 of countries of use of open access books. Many countries throughout Latin America. When you look at what's licensed, it's down towards the bottom because they don't have an infrastructure and funding capability to buy these open access books.
So this was just looking at the comparison there. And this number is compelling, but you probably figure that's the case. And jstor. There are 14,000 institutions who license something from jstor. So we know the IP ranges and information of 14,000 institutions that participate in jstor, but only about 1700s of them buy books at some level, one book over some period of time.
But over 13,000 of them have engaged with and used and incorporated the ebooks when they're open access at their institution. And this is a little bit different from a data point, but this is looking over six years. We've converted 1,000 books. So these are books that went through a normal sales channel. And then over time, the publisher secured rights, authors gave permissions, and we converted these books to open access.
And it's looking at what the difference here is for this. And you're going to talk to many publishers who will say, you know, like especially during the time with covid, when a lot of publishers made all their books open, they found out, wow, there's a real big demand for these books when we're not really getting sales. But you open it up, there's a big demand here. How do we do this in a better scale? So looking at this data, it's like we took these are the same books that you looked at the same period before going open 1 or two years and looked at 1 or two years after going Open Usage increased 5,500% And that's a big difference of saying they're actually these books immediately get used and discovered.
They get used across over 134 countries on average as opposed to 14 countries when they were just licensed. And you look at what the institutions that are using it 26 times more usage from institutions of the books and they're open access compared to license. So kind of said, we've got to be able to do more of this. I would be taking this data. I was going to publishers. I was like, let's look at what these books have aren't selling.
Like you haven't sold anything. There's generating no usage for them. Let's work to get these books open because it gives it a new life. But we want to focus on current copyright your books to how do we get those to a path to be open more quickly? So we came together, Sarah and I in particular, in a group, and we meet every other week and we have a group or and working across within library feedback and community.
And Sarah is going to talk a little bit later about how we're building a community to really expand this more. And this whole setting is about trust and transparency. And so that's a key thing, is like getting information out, making sure everyone's aware of it, getting feedback and developing it through a community. But in this case, what happens to support the funding is that we went to the Ithaca board and secured the upfront funding of $5,000 per title.
Publishers are going to need more than this on the book, but it's a guaranteed then upfront stipend that provides a $5,000 support for the books that get published in the program. And so that way, University presses don't have to worry. Well, I can't publish in this area because I'm worried about the revenue side. There will be guaranteed revenue for the publishers of what they're publishing.
Then libraries are accessing content through a paid subscription model, and I'll go into the detail a little bit further that provides the funding back to what was provided up front, and that just comes at scale. There's close to 14,000 institutions who access jstor. We provide a jstor classification scale. So from a very small community college to a large can participate to access books, and they support a broader open Access Initiative moving forward.
Um, authors then start to see the data because this is all about making sure that data gets sent out, writing up reports, sending information out. We're working to create easy ways. We use a lot on Tableau like dashboard views and that making sure those are open access but open access reporting so everyone sees the impact of what happens when this content is available, authors can start to see a change of the impact of their scholarship and readers can see more and more books that are becoming available to them in an open access environment and know when they're going to be open access.
And this just gives a little detail about the program. So, so to date, there are 36 University presses that have joined path to open. Um, so we expect that number will continue to grow. But 36 are in the program today. There's 100 titles that have been selected in this first for 2023 that will be released in October and through the duration of the pilot. We're looking at this as a pilot because what we're starting with right now may not be what we find we need to do as the community evaluates this, as we look at what funding needs are, as we look at how long a delayed open Access Initiative needs to be for authors, the goal is at the end of that 2026 period, we've released 1,000 books.
Those 1,000 books have an open access period that will occur. And hopefully at the end of this pilot, we have a program that's sustainable where it grows to more books being published every year, more contributions from libraries and more publishers joining the program. It's managed to a library subscription, simply try to go to the same workflows that libraries have in place.
Now, it's not recreating a new workflow process, but the data is important. How do we get the data to the University president, to the dean, to the acquisitions librarian, that they're getting value at their own institution and they're supporting a broader initiative? So last thing here, and then I'm going to turn it over to Sarah to talk about the community. Is the books that were published a big area.
That I've made this mistake many times and I kept using high quality and I'm never try not to ever say that because I'd say that to the press is everything is high quality. It's a peer review process. So say, OK, I want to make sure I don't say high quality, but libraries are viewing it this way. They're like, we don't want to feel like we're putting money in supporting something that our books to the publishers don't think they're going to be able to sell.
And so they put them into this program to get the funding. We support it, and then we find books that don't get used at our institution. So needed to find the right balance for it. So we've spent a lot of time talking to libraries and going what would be a good way in between. The publishers don't want a library to tell them what they should publish because that defeats the whole purpose that we've been talking about.
But where do we find a place in the middle? And so how can we use data to help us with that? So in this methodology process, we looked at what are the top subject areas when a book is licensed and when a book is open and when a book converts to open. We saw some of those earlier slides, so we put a ranking to each title that get submitted from a publisher to find out which ones actually go into the program, how they rank against that.
We also look at all of the engagement of users on the platform, meaning what search terms are they using, what topics do they engage in? Where do they not have content available to their search terms and topics on jstor? Because we're missing content. It's not there. But these are books that are actually going to be published that are directly aligned with what users are looking for.
They're actively engaged globally for looking for this content. So that moves into a ranking process and a methodology. So when a library participates in the program, we know that they're getting their own direct value to faculty and students. And then knowing by looking at data, they support a broader good in the end. So we're hoping that data and openness and transparency of that data kind of helps build a trust into this model.
So, Sarah, turn it over to you to talk about community. Thanks, John. So, as I mentioned, has long supported its mission is to support humanistic scholarship. And it's done that mainly through its grant and fellowship programs for many years, which support individual scholars from graduate students all the way up to late career scholars across a wide array of humanities disciplines.
But in recent years has begun to explore other ways to support the humanistic community by using its connections to various constituencies. So it includes those Fellows and grantees, scholarly societies, humanities deans and other organizational affiliates, including some library and publishing organizations to launch new initiatives that foster conversations around some of the most pressing issues in higher Ed. And so one of the areas they've identified is the changing landscape of scholarly publishing as affecting everybody within this ecosystem.
And so we've taken a particular interest in open access publishing as a way to expand the reach of humanistic research and to demonstrate its relevance. So that focus is what's bringing us to the path to open initiative in the first place. And of course, as John has outlined, you know, jstor has made a tremendous investment in and commitment to this program.
But we also recognize that there are know, this is a new model and it raises some complicated questions along the way. And so acls has really offered to create a forum for the path to open community as it evolves. It may take the form of an advisory board, a working group. We're not entirely sure what the end result will be. We're just now starting that process. But what we're really looking for is a community that allows for transparency and conversation and analysis of what we're learning during the three years of the plot of the pilot.
So the community will bring together libraries and publishers, but also scholars and administrators, not only to help the scholars and administrators better understand open access, but to help the scholarly communications community understand the needs of the scholars themselves, because, as you know, they're very often not a part of these conversations. So more details about that are coming soon.
There's a URL on the slide that we hope you'll check out. There's a mailing list that you can sign up for. And so we hope that you'll stay in touch as this community continues to develop. Thank you, sir. So now let's jump over to questions here for panelists to provide some insight for. So first question, what do you feel are the pressing challenges preventing more scholarly monographs from being published as open access?
And Beth, we'll start with you. I'm going to start off as, again, a medium sized University press. Our experience is probably not atypical. We've been publishing open access books for about 45 years, but they still make up a very small part of our program. We've got about 50 books now that are available. I should say.
There's a lot of diversity among University presses, though, and our experience is not necessarily universal. There are other presses that are fully open. Access already solved some of these challenges in other ways, but think it's not atypical among smaller, medium sized presses. So one thing I have to say at the start is that one of the biggest challenges that we're facing is the funding model that supports the publication of scholarly books at University presses.
The model was established decades ago at a time when the presses could count on selling 2000 copies of books to academic libraries. And so the assumption was that we could cover the costs, the labor costs, the other costs of publishing books through these sales that John mentioned. I'm sure that you all know that's no longer the case, but the funding model hasn't evolved in step with these changes.
For example, most University presses of our size still receive very little support from our universities at that, Washington is only about 10% of our budget. So what this means is that we're, most of us are heavily reliant on sales in order to carry out our mission and publish our books. And so we are extremely cautious about anything that we fear might undercut sales. And there's concern that open access publication might there's some promising data that's been coming out suggesting that open access publication might not have as big of an impact with many of its peers.
But there's still little known about the impact over time. So, as I say, the current funding model is a problem for this reason. It's also a problem in other ways too, as a result of the underfunding. I will say that of University presses. Most of us have limited capacity to take on new initiatives. And again, this is especially true among small and medium sized presses.
We don't have the bandwidth to develop the new processes that are required to publish open access book. As John mentioned, as I'm sure you know too. There are a number of important initiatives to support a monographs and they've been growing in recent years too, but they tend to be somewhat piecemeal and don't cover everybody.
For example, there's an important meeting in Harvard University in Cambridge University in which the institutions needed funds to. To make all these books openly available. But some institutions are not so wonderful to offer of the institutions, and particularly.
The conservatives have a wonderful intelligence program that supports scholars who visit fellowships. So there has been a program that's open to everybody. And we have always wanted to be one of these buckets. We see what and when the announcement now we're reading the other side simply a lack of knowledge about.
And the advantages. Think about that. Um, the exception to the basic open access rules are published differently from other books. And in these cases, there may be more resistance and concerns around tenure and promotion issues, often not from the authors themselves are concerned about what their colleagues say.
So these are a few of the many challenges that we. There? oh, sure. Thank you. I would echo everything that Beth just said. Obviously, we need an equitable funding model that's equitable for both publishers and a diversity of publishers and for the authors.
Um, and, you know, it would be wonderful for that to happen on a broad scale, you know, reaching out to these deans, to provosts, to finding funding, to inject some, some more funding into the humanities infrastructure, I think, is something that really needs to happen. Um, another important challenge again, as Beth mentioned, is the widespread misunderstanding or just confusion among humanities scholars about the way open access works.
And actually I've been hearing enough in this conference to understand that it's true amongst scientists as well. So it's not just in the humanities that these problems exist. And yes, the concern, you know, this lingering concern that even if the book has been published by a reputable press, it's somehow not getting the same level of editorial attention or peer review. So really trying to dispel some of those myths.
But I'll also mention the prestige factor here. It's a huge concern for scholars and it makes sense, you know, it affects their careers and really direct ways. So even if an author really wants to publish open access, they often won't. If they can't do it with the publisher that's most respected in their field, full stop. So that's the highest priority for most authors. And that won't change, I think, even for the ones who do have sort of an advocacy approach to open access, at least at certain points in their career, it will still come down to the publisher.
I think we also need to be very attuned to scholars concerns over how to make some forms of scholarship available in respectful and thoughtful ways, open access, especially research by about and for marginalized communities. And this is actually something I'm hearing in other parts of this conference as well, which is really heartening. But there can be implications for making some kinds of content more highly visible, both for the communities that a particular work examines as well as for the author and in particular in this, you know, political climate, you know, there are implications for faculty in certain states, for example.
So we do have to be very unfortunately attuned to some of that. And, you know, and finally, even the question of things like third party materials for humanities scholars become pretty difficult in certain disciplines like art history, for example. The costs of clearing permissions just prohibit it. That's even true without open access, you had open access to it.
It becomes really, really difficult. So there are certain disciplines where, you know, open access almost feels unattainable in some cases. So all this to say the implications of open access for scholars go well beyond the funding and distribution models that we tend to focus on in these kind of forums. And too often the authors are left out of the conversation and debates about best practices for open access.
And so while questions of scale may not resonate for them, they're very much focused on their individual books. You know, I still think that they deserve a seat at the table. And that's something that I would like to really work on a little bit as part of the Open Project. But in return, I think that there greater understanding and their advocacy for open access might help move the needle on that funding.
I just talked about, you know, the provost and the deans need to be hearing it from the faculty as well as from the publishers and libraries. So Yeah. And I'll keep this short because I could just reiterate what's already been said, but smaller University presses have been slower to implement an e-book strategy, much less an open access strategy.
And it's not so much about a lack of interest in open access as it is just a lack of resources to make that change. And and the University of Tennessee press is, I think, a good example. For the last 10 or more years, they've willingly given their out of print titles to the library so we could make them available in our repository.
So they're willing to participate but need but need a path to do that. So, um, tome was already mentioned toward an open monograph ecosystem, and programs such as tome don't serve authors from smaller or less well funded institutions, not to mention unaffiliated authors. And so at Tennessee University of Tennessee, faculty authors have benefited from participating from Tennessee's participation in tome.
But the ut press has not benefited. Um, and there is a lack of awareness of open access as an option, I think, among authors. and a lack of incentives. And this was already mentioned by Sarah. At my institution. There's still a real focus on print, and the reward structure favors print.
Even when there is acknowledgment that open access can mean more readers. Right Thank you. Um, we're going to jump here to the next question, but just to kind of summarize some of that. So I think before we look at and get some feedback on how the half the open seems to help solve some of the challenges you outlined, some consistent themes obviously come around funding that was clear across the board.
Um, I think also the recognition from authors and challenges that they have around open access and in some cases it's just providing more knowledge and information around that. And that that has been something, whether it's international or even domestic here in the United States. And many of you are international here. Um, it's communicating to the authors.
I've had like just the last few months so many conversations with publishers and information to the authors about what open access means, the timing around that, like what the implications of it are, or what a C by license even is. So like there's things that there's just a lack of familiarity with it. So our hope is with this transparency and information that's there, that unfamiliarity goes away and there's a stronger trust that builds.
So and I'm going to start then Sarah will mix it up a little bit, asking you on where you feel that path to open helps kind of solve some of the challenges that you were mentioning there. Yeah Thank you, John. Um, well, I mean, I think that this I'll go back to the, the community that is hoping to foster here or to help to foster.
And I think that's kind of unique. I mean, not that there's not communities around these other initiatives, but I think one that's actively considering how the model works. And how it affects all the participants, including the authors, and not just analyzing the program after the fact is maybe something that could distinguish path to open and help us to mitigate some of these problems that we've raised.
Um, and it also it just and I think we've already touched on some of this already, but it really lowers the barrier for so many smaller presses to be able to participate and for so many more authors to be able to participate if they don't happen to be coming with the. So for tome, I don't know if we mentioned the number at all, but the subvention amount, the grant amount was $15,000 per book.
So that is prohibitive at a lot of institutions. And so, you know, we had and Beth may have mentioned this, I think, you know, 60 some University presses who said that they wanted to participate in tome and only 20 some actually were able to. And it was really just the function of matching up the press with the author who could come with the funding. And I think we had expected the opposite to be true at the outset of tome that there would be more universities signing on with the funding and fewer presses who were interested.
So that was actually not true. And I think there are plenty of authors who would have really appreciated that. Um, and so I participated in tome in my previous position at Emory University. And even as those faculty were very appreciative, I think there was also a little bit of self-consciousness about it, knowing that colleagues at other institutions in their field would not have access to that kind of funding.
So it was a little bit of a double edged sword there. So that's I think that barrier lowering that barrier for so many more authors and publishers is really a defining characteristic of path to open that I'm very optimistic about. Sure, Holly. Um, you have two open works for presses of all sizes and also libraries of all sizes. And, and it shows real promise because it is a more equitable model for funding open access.
And I frankly believe that just having jstor behind it, this is it's established. And so authors, libraries know store and think of it as something that is stable and is there to preserve scholarship. And so when ut press said, hey, we've been asked about participating in this pilot, should we do it?
And what they heard back was resoundingly, yes, it is definitely it's a pilot. There's you know, what's the risk in trying it out and and, and so, Yeah, we're very pleased to be a part. Yeah, I'd say that path to open directly addresses each of the challenges that I mentioned.
It provides some guaranteed funding up front, which still only covers a small share of our costs. But our hope is that in addition to sales and other funding that we can piece together, it will enable us to successfully publish the books that we're putting into the program. With open access editions available in the not too distant future.
It's a collaborative initiative. You know, we talked about the challenges that small, medium sized presses have with capacity, so it will give us the opportunity to work together, to learn from each other, to share our experiences and solutions to things, also to take advantage of the shared infrastructure that jstar is providing for it. To get everybody involved in this conversation, as Sarah mentioned together, into the room talking about how we can create a sustainable future.
And I think that the advocacy that can come out of that will also be extremely important. Probably most important for us is that it's an equitable model for authors. You know, as others have said, it doesn't depend on support from author institutions. So authors from smaller or less resourced institutions, authors from the global South can all take advantage of it.
So that's really important, especially as a publisher that's been, you know, trying to publish more and open access, but realizing that what we've been doing hasn't been equitable in this way. And then the other thing that's really important to us is that the books are published just like other books on our list, and that they go through the same obviously the same peer review process as all of our open access books have, but also through the very same production and marketing processes.
So this helps to alleviate concerns among authors or their colleagues that the books are somehow, you know, different or less valuable than other kinds of books. All right. Thank you. So the last question here, will, and then we're going to open it up to some questions here for the audience, hopefully even gathering some here to get us engaged on this side.
But so looking at what are the key motivators to support publishing of open access ebooks? I'm going to I'll start this one and then I'm going to turn it to Holly. And I think the main thing is for me, mission for store is, is really providing access to scholarship, to content, to support education and doing that in a financially affordable way. And that's the goal of that.
So it's one of the reasons I came to this company and to me, coming from a faculty background and knowing and seeing the impact it has and going to these parts of the world like to try to incorporate and get content set up at some of these institutions, like in India where you're not having computer and infrastructure around there, but there can get access to stuff on their phone. There's like ways of doing it. It's like, let's get the content out there.
It'll change the way that they view and learn and increase knowledge and scholarship. And it's not what we all want. I mean, why would we not want to improve the knowledge in the world? So to me, any way that we can get more content freely available is a huge motivator for hopefully not just for me, but for everybody. So turn it over to you.
And so last year, in 2022, ut libraries adopted a set of principles for providing access to research and scholarship. This really drives how we in the library spend our money, how we negotiate licenses, and really how we think about ourselves as a library at a land grant University where we have an access mission. And so removing barriers for all readers is a core value for us.
The University of Tennessee press, as a division of the libraries, therefore also shares that value of open access. But both the library and the press need to figure out how to do this sustainably. And open access can introduce monographs that are included in path to open to new readers. So it increases that bibliodiversity because it makes more work available to more readers.
And and so I think that this is one way to try to address that sustainability issue while also helping us achieve our, our goal of, of providing access to as many people as we possibly can.
Um, so in terms of the scholars that is really trying to support, you know, in the humanities community, many scholars are really very interested right now, increasingly so in public, facing scholarship, publicly engaged scholarship. And I think open access can do a whole lot to support that, you know, making those resources available in various ways, as Holly just said, to many, many more readers, both within and outside of academia.
And they want to make that work affordable to scholars in a variety of circumstances. So people in parts of the world that are underserved by our current system, and those who are not affiliated with a robust research library. And then and then I think most authors are really interested in lowering costs for students. I mean, we're all aware of that situation and how expensive it is for students to go to school, much less to purchase the.
And to John's point, you know, that that's all very, very important to the scholars that is supporting. Um, for me, I, um, I just think a big motivator for me though, is just realizing how much we need to adapt to the fact that the internet happened. You know, the internet happened in my adult lifetime. I remember before and after. And it's here and it's not going away. And so we really well in my.
Yeah, OK. There are other scenarios. Yes um, but to me the lack of vetted, thoughtful information online is pretty terrifying. I mean, it just creates a vacuum that I don't think any of us want. And we've already seen the problems with misinformation, disinformation, um, you know, chatgpt inventing sources and, you know, so I think the more of the, of the content that we work so hard to produce, you know, actual sources that could be online is just a really important thing for the Humanities community and the scholarly community generally to show up for and to be a part of that.
If we're absent, we can't help to mitigate any of those issues. Um, and so, you know, I understand that could sound pretty naive. You know, you can put an esoteric humanities book online that's not going to solve everybody's problems. However, I think at scale, and this is one of those parts of, you know, where I do like to think about it at scale. You put a lot of this material out there.
I think it will find its readers. And, you know, people come to these books when you make something open access, it finds readers, you know, that would not have found it otherwise, who have their own particular reasons for being interested in it, beyond the reasons that the scholar might have written it or who they were trying to reach. So I think that we can trust in that. And so to me, that's actually a really big motivator for why do any of this to think about that?
Um, and I think that we need to do a better job of, of connecting, of making bridges between this scholarship and the public at large, you know, I'm pretty persuaded by the argument that there should be public access for publicly funded research. But I also in my own life, my friends and my family, they don't know about open access unless I you know, they ask me what my job is and I try to explain it.
So I think there's so much work for us to do in terms of building those bridges to the public. And I would love to see that continue to happen with open access and really just think that what motivates everybody is, you know, these opening of dialogues at the global level with public communities is just very exciting and energizing aspect of open access.
Yeah, I have to echo what my colleagues here said. You know, above all, I think it's an equity issue, a question of whether scholarship should be restricted to people who are affiliated with research universities or have the means to pay for it or should be freely available to everyone. You know, Sarah mentioned esoteric humanities monographs, and some of them are but one of our recent which we love, but one of our recent open access books had to do with issues of climate change in Bangladesh.
So really important work that people need to have access to both, you know, both here in the global North and in the global South so that scholars can work together in order to address some of the global challenges that we're facing. You know, another big motivator for us as a University press is that we work really hard to produce our books. We put a lot of time and effort into them, and so we want them to have as much reach and impact as they possibly can.
And the statistics that John gave earlier about that increased reach, as I said, we've been publishing open access for about almost five years now, and some of that has been flipping backlist books open. And we saw the same, you know, statistics that he shared about the much greater use and especially the much more widespread use in countries all around the world. So that's a very strong motivator.
And then although, as I mentioned, a lot of authors haven't thought much about open access, an increasing number of them have and are also concerned about questions of equity of scholars who worked in different countries, want to make sure that the colleagues that they worked with and the students they might have worked with there have access to their research as well. So so meeting authors, kind of growing interest in this way of publishing and making their work available is an important consideration for us.
All right, we're, I'll wrap up here just to say, first of all, Thank you for the panelists mean the ability to put the insight and hopefully you all looking at on the library publisher and from the community setting with acls and with scholars is an insight and some of those challenges that clearly are some of the reasons and motivations for even thinking of the open or any models that we're all trying to find solutions for.
So appreciate the insights to it and the time that I know is spent to put that together. And again, this is a starting point. I think what we liked about it as a path to open is it is a path. It's not defined it. We're we're defining it along the way. But we have an end goal, which is like what we're talking about now is what motivates us and what we want to try to see as an end result.
And that path really then is consistent upon feedback that you all are contributing. So we get a sustainable plan. My hope mean long term goals is that everything gets published in a way that has a direction for open access, and we've created a sustainable way to make it happen. It won't happen tomorrow, but it will happen over time if we're committed to it. So I'm going to pause there.
I want to open up to see if there's any questions and feedback that we can go through with the panelists around here. It looks like there's a mic we can start with. You want to sit down but or come up to the mic, whichever works for everybody. But so about 10 minutes. So start with some questions. Sure Thank you, everyone.
Um, so I have two questions. One of them is sort of a more practical question about path to open and the role of that's anticipated for authors in path to open in the pilot. Um, because, you know, I understand the relationship between the libraries and the presses, but if an author is, is there a role for them to self advocate for inclusion of their book or I mean, you talked about the different metrics to see whether it's a topic that actually people are searching for in jstor.
And so how does the authors, you know, own wishes get factored in? So that's the practical question. And then the broader question, I guess, for the panel as a whole is, you know, so much of what we're talking about here at this conference is like the need to have research that's trustworthy come out in a timely manner. And the three years is a long period.
And I think that's know, we haven't heard a lot about the three years. And I just and obviously, you know, subscribers will have the access to that content and others won't. But that means anyone without an institution won't. And so I wonder just in terms of whether this model, if it provides a sustainable funding model, which is exciting for monographs, whether there is an idea of self-archiving or preprints or kind of way as being part of that.
So that the content can get out in some format to readers who maybe would otherwise have to wait three years. And you know, if you're publishing a book on climate change, I'm working with an author on a book right now that's about popular culture. I mean, three years will really date some of the stuff that's in that. So, yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Thank you. Right Yeah. OK I'll start with a couple of those. I think that as far as the author input and I know the press has been addressed this some more, but I think an important part of that is the first 2023 was a little bit harder because it was really press for time. But even when we had 155 titles submitted to 100, authors did have an input in there because the many of the publishers came back and said, well, even we went through the analysis.
There's a reason with this book and expectation and author making a case that we actually had a chance to modify some of what gets released. The same would happen with the 300. So every press is going to have a range between about 5% to 15 books that will be able to get published to get to 300. And that number will change if it grows. So we're going to have an earlier period where authors will come back to the press, have more author input, and especially with what Sarah saying in the building of that community, that goal is that we set what that right collaboration is.
So authors voice is really loud and what actually is part of what's published. And on the three year embargo period, I have no idea if that is the right embargo period, delayed access period or not. Um, it was sort of established through like the NIH grant and something that's like, oh, there's a period here that seems to work. Authors are comfortable with that.
It gives enough time without impact of tenure. So we are starting with that because it felt authors can get more comfortable with the concept of open access and participating, as we said. But that could change in a year or two years. My hope is as we're getting information out, more familiarity. Libraries are coming back and saying we want things to go quicker.
They do the other way around. This, though, that we're building on the store side. There has to also be better interlibrary loan capabilities, which we don't currently have on the jstor side. So to me, it was a key initiative. We have to build better capabilities of full book download capability and make it real simple. So you want to get to that book and your user somewhere you can find where to get it and you can get access to it right away.
And there can be a full book download to give that capability. And some of this was a shared author community. So we want to give make sure that all the publishers and all authors have access to all the content and have that open. So each publisher has their own access to the books to send to the scholars and to send that information out on their own as well.
So hopefully we'll keep moving in that direction. I don't know if anyone else had any input to please. So this is something that we've only talked about and don't know if it will be feasible. But JSTOR does have experience in a different area of making collections available at no cost or at reduced rates to people in low and lower income countries. So hopefully this is one of the things that we might be able to talk about as the pilot continues as a way of getting the work out to people who might not otherwise have access to it even in those first few years.
And that is something, Sarah, I don't know if you want to I part of the building, the community or working group is we're trying to what can we do with that? Because we're this isn't a JSTOR thing. It's it's, it's not successful if it's a JSTOR initiative, it's the infrastructure part. So we're trying to look for guidance to say, oh, here's what the community saying we should be doing this should be available to like a J store.
We have the African Access Initiative. So any academic institution in Africa has free access to JSTOR. We do that already with our initiatives in many countries around the world have free access and we set up infrastructure for them to be able to access and do research for that. There's no reason if the community or the board decides, hey, this is what should happen, that we don't do that 100% It's like we're just early and we're not there yet.
But I hope that's where we end up. Yes Yeah. We'll work on it. And we try to inform them.
Choose these. So we have look at the specific issues of. To be honest, we put it out there for more projects and this organic organic choices being made. If the project is eligible. And what I've noticed with, for example, the firms that we work with, technology match is when I talk to my bearings were in the committee, we choose these.
And suddenly there's this very specific wish for certain things, for certain research. And everything that flows through that channel of knowledge is actually gets actually gets chosen. Has a very specific profile. So that's where your diversity simply washes away, because there's a very specific wish for trending properties. And we hear environmentalism, for example, was one of those or gender.
So I just wonder where how did you how does that work? Because you actually ask you to choose subjects for this. What that affect the university? I'm just. So does anyone want to comment on that first? Do you want me to? If you want me to.
That would be great. Yeah, well, I'm just going to acknowledge that that is a really important question, and I think it's one that we intend to take up in this community forum where there will be more than publishers at the table. Right and to really, we've talked a good bit about, you know, the underrepresented fields, the books that don't get the kind of attention that they deserve.
And so I think there's a balance between that and then making sure and we also at the same time want to make sure that libraries feel like they're getting the books that they want, you know, that they're excited to see moving through. So we're just going to have to, to think this through. Um, and until, you know, such time as we can as you know, to John's great vision of, you know, at some point all the scholarship will be open access and that might have I don't know some things to say there might be cases where a publisher might not want to make a particular book open access for particular reasons, um, you know, that are more related to funding models and things won't get into all of that, but or into sales potential I guess.
But in terms of the topics that are being covered, I think we really do want to figure out ways to cover a diversity of fields and disciplines and not just the trendy topics. and that the community will play a role in that. I don't know. Do you want to say anything else? OK sure.
Yeah I'll make it a quick think for on this end of it too. It was really important for us. We looked at how do we do best support for hbcus, for tribal colleges, for some of these, especially some small international presses that that's a key on the aspect of diversity. And that means additional funding and support needs to go into some of these areas. We've done a lot of this already in Latin America and working with groups like larp and salam and then finding ways of funding some of that content to be direct as open access.
So that's really going to be important part. And it's a balance. It's like I'm talking about, oh, like, you know, we're looking at some of this data or so because I also know that libraries are funding it and it has to be a balance between they're showing institutional value. That's what I keep hearing. We need to be able to still show to our University and for funding capability, we're seeing direct immediate value to our own institution that justifies recurring spend that we're going to do.
So I'm like, got to have that balance plus open up enough space in between. That's like, let's make sure we're focusing on bibliodiversity. Let's not lose scite of that as the goal of the program. So it's really that balance at 300 titles, it gets harder when you get to 500 or 1,000 titles, then it becomes a lot easier. But my hope is that's what comes out of this pilot.
That you want to say. You good? OK I think we're at any I think we were past time. Was there any question if so, we can wrap up. But please, we'll put our contact information, send emails. Keep keep reaching out to us. We want to keep engagement. I really want to make sure we get a chance to hear from all of you, whatever your thoughts are in ways that you think we can be making improvements, please let us know.
Thank you, everyone, for your time. Thank
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