Open Access in Practice – FinELib Speaks About Transparency and Publisher Negotiations - LIBER

"One of the primary goals of LIBER’s Open Access Working Group is to help libraries to share their experiences with Open Access. By exchanging information, we can better understand what works, what the challenges are, and find ways of speeding up the transition from subscription-based systems to Open Access (OA). This shift is an international matter that the sector is tackling in different ways. The working group is diverse and is made up of librarians from 18 different countries, each representing an institution with a unique perspective and strategy for approaching the shift to open scholarly communication. The variety of viewpoints has strengthened and invigorated us, resulting in the 5 Principles For Negotiations with Publishers. These broad guidelines are meant for anyone who aims to approach publishers with solutions for making the shift to OA, and they are the result of the working process in our group. As a next step, we agreed that it would be worthwhile to talk to member libraries about the practice of being involved such negotiations.

We are therefore pleased to present the first in a series of interviews in which working group members talk about their experiences of open access initiatives. In this interview, Anu Alaterä, License Manager at the Finnish National Library Consortium (FinElib) shares her thoughts (interview by Sofie Wennström, Stockholm University Library, Secretary of the Open Access Working Group).

What does transparency mean for you and your institution?

Transparency means to me that people have access to facts, figures and information which in turn gives them possibilities to study, analyze and make conclusions about the question at hand. In the context of licensing and open access agreements, important facts are the ones that we’ve agreed on with the publishers, including financial information but also data about articles published and information about processes related to publishing...."