Leading By Example: The Idealis highlights expert-curated open access LIS research | ACRLog

"Enter The Idealis, a new overlay journal of high-quality, open access library and information science scholarship, intended to elevate open access publications, and encourage others to publish and self-archive their work as OA. The journal officially launched on March 15th with its first collection area, scholarly communications, and will continue collection development into other areas of librarianship (such as archives, critlib, OER, liaison librarianship, etc.).

Librarians, as it turns out, are not so great at publishing in open access outlets, or self-depositing their research in open repositories. In fact, Library Pipeline’s Green Open Access Working Group estimates 91% of published LIS literature is toll access. 91%. This glaring irony is something I experienced firsthand after completing my MLIS and began working in an academic library at an institution that did not have a library school, which meant no subscriptions to LIS journals. I had several research projects continuing on from work launched during graduate school, as well as a slew of new research ideas I was excited to delve into now that I had a full-time, fully-supported position. Yet despite having studied open access issues, and been privy to conversations citing this issue, it was not until I tried to conduct LIS research myself as a professional in the field that I became aware of how painfully prevalent toll access articles are in our discipline.   

This disconnect is especially ironic in terms of scholarly communications research. “I have always been puzzled by scholars who write about open access and openness but then publish in gated journals,” said Nicky Agate, one of The Idealis co-founding editors. “What if making your work freely available to the greatest possible audience, wherever they live or work, and whatever their financial situation, was valued more highly than publishing in such-and-such journal? The current reward system in academia doesn’t credit people for how open their work is, but perhaps it should; to me, The Idealis is a gesture towards that possible future.”

Projects like the Green Open Access Working Group take a grassroots approach2 to tackling this issue, by having volunteers (like me) directly email authors of recently published (paywalled) articles to see if they’d be willing/able to make a copy available openly, and at the very least, encourage them to think about journal policies and any related authors’ agreements in the context of open access next time they publish. The group also contacts editors of the same toll access journals to share info about the project. This process is not as contentious as you might expect, and has received indications of support from various LIS journals, as the Working Group outlines in this 2016 article written by Stacy Konkiel, chair of Library Pipeline’s Advisory Board, and Idealis co-founder."