Seeding for a not-for-profit community-led OA books ecosystem

This blog post traces the efforts undertaken during the past 24-36 months to foster collaboration between like-minded open not-for-profit infrastructures active in OA book publishing, leading to the inception of the OPERAS Open Infrastructures for OA books Working Group.

Accessibility, Archiving, and Open Metadata - A Copim Publishers’ Workshop

Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: [WEBINAR] Creating Community-Driven Pathways to Equitable Open Scholarly Publishing - Leading the way. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.

The three EU-funded projects CRAFT-OA, DIAMAS & PALOMERA work towards an equitable future for scholarly communication, with the scholarly community at the centre. In this third instalment of the cross-project webinar series, the projects will present how they aim to help realise that vision by putting a spotlight on some of the projects’ outputs: CRAFT-OA empowers journal platforms and publishing service providers to upscale, professionalise, and reach stronger interoperability with other scientific information systems, by providing services and tools. They will present the OpenAIRE publisher dashboard, which aims to empower publishers with the tools and resources to enhance their visibility and impact within the Open Science community. DIAMAS develops common standards, guidelines and practices to build capacity for the Diamond publishing sector. They will share recent project outputs that will become components of the European Diamond Capacity Hub, including assessment tools, and guidelines, to strengthen and grow Diamond publishing. PALOMERA set out to provide actionable recommendations and concrete resources to support and coordinate aligned funder and institutional policies for Open Access books. They will showcase the progress to date on these project goals. Participants will have the chance to join a discussion with the three projects and be able to explore ways to further engage with their outcomes. Register for this webinar to be part of this conversation and help us shape the future of Open Access as a community! DISCLAIMER: The meeting will be recorded for future dissemination; maximum 500 participants.

Modelling Between Digital and Humanities: Thinking in Practice

This volume presents an exploration of Digital Humanities (DH), a field focused on the reciprocal transformation of digital technologies and humanities scholarship. Central to DH research is the practice of modelling, which involves translating intricate knowledge systems into computational models. This book addresses a fundamental query: How can an effective language be developed to conceptualize and guide modelling in DH?

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Copim and SCONUL: exploring practical problems and potential strategies to fund equitable OA book publishing. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar.

SCONUL and Copim Open Book Futures invite you to join a webinar featuring UK library leaders from a range of institutions to explore the difficulties of funding open access books, and how different libraries have developed strategies to tackle these challenges. There is a growing shift towards open access (OA) for books, with policies such as UKRI mandating OA publication and a number of OA presses springing up at different universities. But when some institutions are not eligible for funding, and budgets are under increasing pressure, can libraries support this shift to open access for books? If so, how might it be done? The challenges include: budget constraints, a lack of adequate funding (or byzantine administration to access it), scant institutional buy-in higher up the chain, and even “we don’t know where to start”. When one-off Book Processing Charges (BPCs) cost too much to be practical, what other options are available? This session will begin with a frank discussion of the challenges of supporting OA for books, before featuring case studies of how some different libraries have devised solutions and potential routes to OA for books. These include exploring collective programmes, in which each library pays a small amount to jointly fund OA initiatives; setting up an institutional outlet of one’s own; new strategic policies and ringfenced OA budgets, and more. This webinar will create a forum for discussion, and equip attendees with advice and practical strategies, with case studies from a range of libraries in the UK that have begun to make important steps in this direction. Speakers: 1. Chaired by Andrew Barker - Library Director, Lancaster University 2. Phil Brabban - Library Director, Coventry University 3. Dominic Broadhurst - Head of Content & Discovery at The University of Salford 4. Anna Clements - Director of Library Services & University Librarian, University of Sheffield

Higher Education for Good: Teaching and Learning Futures

After decades of turbulence and acute crises in recent years, how can we build a better future for Higher Education? Thoughtfully edited by Laura Czerniewicz and Catherine Cronin, this rich and diverse collection by academics and professionals from across 17 countries and many disciplines offers a variety of answers to this question. It addresses the need to set new values for universities, trapped today in narratives dominated by financial incentives and performance indicators, and examines those “wicked” problems which need multiple solutions, resolutions, experiments, and imaginaries.