The Conversations We’re Having

In a recent post to the Scholarly Kitchen, Kent Anderson warns of dire consequences to researchers, readers of scholarly literature, and particularly librarians, if OA is allowed to continue to advance unquestioned. Most stirringly, he implies that “(OA) threatens to defund libraries and marginalize their librarians and staffs” while claiming that most librarians are unwilling to discuss this publicly.

The newly released ARL report “New Roles For New Times: Transforming Liaison Roles in Research Libraries.” However, outlines the changing role of subject liaisons within the reality of a rapidly changing scholarly communication landscape. It seems then that Librarians are acutely aware that the scholarly communication landscape is changing and are actively thinking about their roles going forward.

The disconnect here stems from the fact that OA is a deceptively simple term. On the surface, OA is a result– a work is open access if it is available online free of subscription and most copyright barriers.  This result can be accomplished via many different pathways, however, which gives rise to a more diverse and open scholarly communication system.

In Anderson’s piece, though, the term “OA” is typically used to refer to gold open access with an author-pays funding model.  If OA is considered to be only gold and author pay, one might see the potential threat of libraries being defunded and marginalized.  However, Gold OA is far from the totality of OA, and according to Peter Suber, “in fact most OA journals (70%) charge no author-side fees at all.”

A more robust interpretation of OA as a variety of components within a diverse scholarly communication system gives rise to:

 “New roles in research services, digital humanities, teaching and learning, digital scholarship, user experience, and copyright and scholarly communication are being developed at research libraries across the country, requiring professional development and re-skilling of current staff, creative approaches to increase staff capacity, the development of new spaces and infrastructure, and collaborative partnerships within libraries, across campus units, and among research institutions”

With this view, one might make the case that far from marginalizing librarians, an increasingly diverse scholarly communication system  provides the profession with a remarkable potential for growth and innovation.