Investments in Open: Canadian Research Libraries’ Expenditures on Services, Staff, and Infrastructures in Support of Open Scholarship

"Widespread sharing of research and scholarship is fundamental for addressing many of today’s most important problems. Research libraries have been at the forefront of promoting open scholarship for many years. They play a pivotal role in the creation, management, discovery, and use of scholarship and have been expanding their financial contributions towards open scholarship over time. However, to date, their investments in “open” have not been well-documented, nor have they always been widely recognized by the broader community. In 2019, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) undertook a comprehensive survey of CARL member libraries’ investments in open scholarship in order to have a better understanding of what is being spent by Canadian academic libraries on open services, platforms, content, and infrastructures. The survey found that the total, aggregate spending on open for all 28 responding libraries was $23 million CAD, with an average spend per institution of $827,086 CAD. This represents an average of 3.09% of the total library budget spent on open, ranging from 0.88% to 7.23% across respondent libraries. By far, the largest category of investment is in local staff, with an average of 74% of the libraries’ open investments going toward salaries. On average, respondent libraries have about 7 FTEs working in open activities, scattered across a number of areas: digitized content, scholarly communications, open repositories, and research data management (including staff contributing to the national Portage project). The second largest category of spending on open were funds directed to publishers through several means: consortial licences via the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) or, in Ontario, the regional association Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) via Scholars Portal, institutional membership with open access publishers, and payment of article processing charges (APCs). This amounted to an average of 14% of total open spending, or approximately $3.2 million CAD in total, 80% of which was directed toward licences with open access publishers or platforms. The rest of the open investments, approximately 12%, were spent on a wide variety of other types of open services, platforms and infrastructures...."