Advancing Open: Views from Scholarly Communications Practitioners

"Discussion focused on five key themes that had been determined following preevent consultation with the open scholarship community: ● Open Policy (institutional, regional, national, and international policies) ● Open Workflow and Operations (e.g. day-to-day open scholarship work) ● Open Technology (software and/or infrastructure that supports open scholarship) ● The Human Element — Open People (diversity and inclusion, workload, and community support) ● Open Outreach (open scholarship advocacy)... Areas of focus: 1. Explore a national approach to institutional repositories similar to what has been established for research data as exemplified by the Portage Network initiative. 2. Advocate for federal funding to support shared infrastructure, discoverability and interoperability of institutional repositories. Include small post-secondary institutions in this conversation to determine their capacity to be active participants in, and supporters of, developing this infrastructure. 3. Convene a group of interested and knowledgeable individuals to develop guidelines, toolkits, and workshops to inform scholarly communications practitioners on best practices to decolonize open scholarship and ensure that Traditional Knowledge is served appropriately. This work must be done collaboratively and driven by the expressed needs of Indigenous Peoples and communities and in constant, persistent consultation. 4. Bring together key stakeholders (libraries, scholarly communications practitioners, researchers, funders) to develop a Made in Canada plan for open scholarship in order to build a community-led, non-commercial scholarly communications ecosystem. 5. Convene a wide variety of low-cost and free training opportunities for library staff to help develop scholarly communications skills, with particular emphasis on advocacy and policy approaches to changing institutional culture toward open scholarship, as well as the development of technical skills. 6. Open a dialogue on the role and scope of scholarly communications work. Expand the conversation beyond scholarly communications practitioners to include library staff in resources, collections, liaison roles, copyright, archives, and IT specialties. 7. Devote institutional funds to collaborative open scholarship efforts (regional and national) and bring leaders and practitioners together in these efforts. Prioritize cross-institution resource, expertise and knowledge-sharing. 8. Invigorate the discussion on transitioning funding from supporting traditional collections development to supporting open scholarship — and open collections — at our academic institutions 9. Further nurture the scholarly communications community of practice to foster the exchange of ideas and professional development to support practitioners in the expanding range of open scholarship endeavors. 10. Ensure equity, diversity, and inclusion form the foundation of any future open scholarship initiatives, systems, and developments...."