Year-End Investments Towards Open Acces

Towards the end of the fiscal year, it is not unusual for libraries and other organizations to find themselves with a small fund left over, that must be spent before year-end. For those who are looking for some ideas of how to leverage this little bit of funding to further the cause of open access, here are four suggestions: a LOCKSS box; server and hardware for hosting open access journals for your faculty; invest in ongoing open access to a very high-quality philosophy encyclopedia through contributing to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosphy OA endowment fund; or, sponsor a workshop or two for faculty on open access publishing, or filling that institutional repository.

Why LOCKSS? Those open access archives and open access journals will need to be preserved. There is more to preservation than buying a LOCKSS box, of course, but if you're planning to get into preservation, buying the box while you have the cash just makes sense.

Server and hardware: with freely available open source software solutions such as Open Journal Systems (OJS) available, once you have the hardware in place, all you really need to support any of your faculty wishing to locally host an open access journal, is a little local expertise. [disclosure: I work for SFU Library, one of the partners in the PKP Project which produces OJS].

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: this a model for open access in perpetuity through the establishment of an endowment fund. This is worthwhile, not only to ensure ongoing open access to the encyclopedia, but to establish proof of concept for the model.

Workshop on Open Access Publishing and Self-Archiving - Suggested Format:
(note: attendees should be able to register for any one session, people might be interested in only one of some of these topics):
Speakers / discussion on:
Open source journal publishing software (e.g. OJS in an afternoon)
Open access business models (perhaps someone from SPARC or Scholarly Exchange?)
(If you have a consultant come for this purpose, perhaps arrange for another day or two for one-on-one consultation with faculty on their journals?)
Processing fee options (OA publisher rep, librarian - especially if library provides support)
Self-archiving: why, and how. Demonstrate the process, provide information on support options.

This post is part of the Transitioning to Open Access series.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.