Mountains to climb: Leadership for sustainable change in scholarly communication | Cawthorne | College & Research Libraries News

"As we consider individual and institutional actions in our rapidly changing environment, we must employ a new framework to more effectively dialogue both among ourselves and with outside vendors. Even before the pandemic, exciting conversations and thinking around open scholarship;2 new publishing ventures;3 and individual leaders, systems, and changes in the landscape of scholarly communication were all underway.4 Even more recently, transformational open access agreements have been announced.5...

College and research libraries have some steep mountains to climb as they seek to transform collection spending. In the face of such mountains, who among us is willing to work toward a new culture? Here is the hard truth that faces us: Outside of personnel budgets, library collections stand at the top of our spending. This is the case across all college and research libraries, as a result of our long-standing practice of buying back scholarship from vendors. Constructing and implementing a framework to address this systemic cultural issue will not be easy, I assure you. In fact, we know these mountains well—they appear in economics, in promotion and tenure, and in what we believe is possible. I know, however, that we can and will reach the other side and be ready to conquer new challenges, if we are willing to do the work that matters for all of us...."