Open Scholarship Committee (OSC)

Current Members

Standing members

  • Allison Langham-Putrow (Co-chair)
  • Danya Leebaw (Co-chair)
  • Sunshine Carter
  • Emma Molls
  • Amy Riegelman
  • Nancy Sims
  • Nichole Chisholm (Duluth)

Sponsors

  • Jody Gray, Associate University Librarian for Research
  • Angie Ohler, Associate University Librarian for Collections and Content Strategy

Towards Open Access at the University of Minnesota

The Collections Strategic Steering Committee and OSC drafted a statement of principles on open access and what paths the University Libraries support.  It is available on the Libraries website via z.umn.edu/TowardsOA.  We gave a brief presentation about it at Assembly in September 2021. The Senate Library Committee wrote a statement of support, which was endorsed by a number of other faculty senate committees.
 
In 2023, OSC wrote a number of blog posts on our space on Continuum explaining the philosophies behind it.

Resources

Investments in open access

See https://www.lib.umn.edu/services/open-access/oa-partnerships an up-to-date list of the investments the Libraries make in open access efforts. The page is organized to align with the Towards OA statement, with investments in equitable models and open infrastructure first. The final section lists partnerships between the Libraries and publishers that reduce or waive publication fees. Contact [email protected] with any questions.

Open Access Publishing Fund ("APC Fund")

A brief history of how the fund was established, how it evolved, and how we decided to close it.
Draft messaging for responding to questions about the closing of the Open Access Publishing Fund and/or author requests for Library support for article processing charges (APCs). 

Read & Publish Agreement Questions

The Libraries has a number of read & publish agreements, primarily through the BTAA. These agreements do not align with our statement of OA principles. 

As of February 2024, the Cambridge University Press and PLOS Community Action Publishing agreements have not been renewed. The BTAA is currently negotiating.

For questions about the agreements or for authors seeking funding for the Libraries to pay their article processing charges, OSC has created a document of Responses to questions about OA agreements. For additional help, refer users to [email protected].

Cambridge University Press Read & Publish agreement questions

Open Access Policy

Basic information about the policy is on the OSC site, and a bit more detail is available in the FAQ that accompanies the Policy itself.  The Libraries were heavily involved in the drafting process for the policy, and remain involved in regular reviews.
An author may request a waiver of the policy. If an author is asking questions about whether they'd need one, Libraries staff members may want to review some of the related considerations with them.

"Predatory" publishing

OSC wrote a blog post on predatory publishing at https://www.continuum.umn.edu/2022/02/predatory-publisher-a-boogeyman-in-the-open-access-world/ that you can use to help answer questions from authors.
 
This article from COPE provides a summary of the topic of "predatory publishing".  It provides a definition, identifies key issues, describes its impact (on authors and on other publishers), and proposes ways of addressing it. It includes a 16-point list of warning signs of fake journals. 
 
Think, Check, Submit has recently (April 2020) created a tool for assessing book publishers. The Canadian Association of Research Libraries created this helpful infographic on assessing journals.
 
Within this page is a link to learning objects created by the Research Service Coordinators.  They provide examples of solicitations from journals seeking articles and conferences seeking presenters. 

"How-to" for making research open access

This image outlines a number of paths authors can take to make their research products open access.  It may be too abrupt for your purposes (contact [email protected] if you would like us to work on refining this image!)