[GOAL] [SCHOLCOMM] Fostering Bibliodiversity in Scholarly Communications: A Call for Action

[Kathleen Shearer]

Glen,

You are woefully misrepresenting the OSI “community” to the world.

As someone that was invited and attended one OSI meeting (and then was added to the mailing list), that does not imply that I am part of the OSI community. Nor does in mean that I participated in the development of this document.

It is disingenuous to state that all of the people who once attended one of the OSI meetings are supportive of what you are doing.

I actually disagree with your plan and take great exception to your use of my name and organization on the website. I’m sure that I am not the only one.

When you talk about your community, you should be referring to only the people who have signed on to the plan. I see there are only a few individuals and organizations that have endorsed it so far.

Best, Kathleen



Kathleen Shearer
Executive Director
Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR)
www.coar-repositories.org



> On Apr 21, 2020, at 11:14 AM, Glenn Hampson <ghampson at nationalscience.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi Sam, Peter,
>  
> Thanks so much for your emails. I’m sorry for the delay in responding---we’re a half a world apart and I’m just getting my morning coffee 😊
>  
> You ask a number of important questions. I’ll try to respond concisely, and then just please let me know (directly or on-list) if you need more information:
>  
> <image005.jpg>High level: OSI’s purpose was (and remains) to bring together leaders in the scholarly communication space to share perspectives. A good number of the OSI participants (plus alumni and observers) have been executive directors of nonprofits, vice-presidents of universities, vice-presidents of publishing companies, library deans, directors of research institutes, journal editors, and so on. Also represented are leaders in the open space, and leaders of “born open” journals and efforts who are household names in this space. You can see a rather outdated (sorry) list of OSI partcipants, alumni and observers at http://osiglobal.org/osi-participants/ <http://osiglobal.org/osi-participants/>; a graphic is also pasted here (which may or may not survive the emailing). About 18 different stakeholder groups are represented in all---covering 250+ institutions and 28 countries---on a quota system that gives the most weight to university representation.
>  
> The intent here was not at all to bypass grassroots activism. Quite to the contrary, the intent was to cut to the chase---to bring together the leaders in this space who could speak most knowledgably about the issues and challenges at hand, and work together directly (instead of through intermediaries) to find common ground. We are always adding people to the group. If you’re interested in participating, please just say the word. 
>  
> Going forward: OSI’s work has been rich and fascinating. But OSI may not end up being in charge of Plan A---tbd. This plan represents the best thinking and recommendations of OSI, but whether these recommendations go anywhere is going to depend on Plan A signatories. You’re right---no plan, however well-intended, can be foisted on the rest of the world unless it is truly inclusive. That’s been a primary concern of everyone in OSI since day 1---that even though this is a remarkably diverse group, it simply isn’t set up to be a policy making body and inclusive as it is, still doesn’t include enough representation from researchers and from all parts of the globe. It’s a wonderful deliberative body, but we can’t decide anything amongst ourselves, which is alternately enlightening and frustrating. It’s going to take a different deliberative mechanism to create common ground policy (which is why we’re also supporting UNESCO with their roadmap effort---they have the tools and minister-level involvement to make policy). Our hope is that Plan A signatories will lead this effort---we’ll know more in the coming months about whether we have enough signatories to do this, whether we have the budget, etc. The “financial” tab on the Plan A site describes what we’ll be able to do with various levels of funding.
>  
> That’s my short answer. Does this help? I’m happy to elaborate---probably off-list unless there’s a groundswell of support for having me send another 5000 word email to the list 😊
>  
> Thanks again for your interest and best regards,
>  
> Glenn
>  
>  
> Glenn Hampson
> Executive Director
> Science Communication Institute (SCI) <x-msg://183/sci.institute>
> Program Director
> Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI) <x-msg://183/osiglobal.org>
> <image006.jpg> <x-msg://183/osiglobal.org>
>  
>  
>  
> From: Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk <mailto:pm286 at cam.ac.uk>> 
> Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2020 3:21 AM
> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <goal at eprints.org <mailto:goal at eprints.org>>
> Cc: Glenn Hampson <ghampson at nationalscience.org <mailto:ghampson at nationalscience.org>>; The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi2016-25 at googlegroups.com <mailto:osi2016-25 at googlegroups.com>>; scholcomm <scholcomm at lists.ala.org <mailto:scholcomm at lists.ala.org>>
> Subject: Re: [GOAL] [SCHOLCOMM] Fostering Bibliodiversity in Scholarly Communications: A Call for Action
>  
>  
>  
> On Tue, Apr 21, 2020 at 10:48 AM Samuel Moore <samuel.moore15 at gmail.com <mailto:samuel.moore15 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>  
> I share Sam's concerns.
>  
>> I’d be interested to hear more on the 'high-level' focus of your group and whether you see it as antagonistic to non-high-level approaches. Put another way, are you not simply looking for common ground between the groups who are already in charge of scholarly communication (policymakers, commercial publishers, senior figures, etc.) to the exclusion of those operating at the margins?
>>  
> I agree,
> I am concerned about several demographics:
> * citizens outside academia
> * young people
> * the Global South.
>  
> I am an old white anglophone male so I cannot speak other that to P.urge that the initiative is taken by different demographics.
> I also think the effect of the capitalist publishing industry, whether closed or Open Access has been hugely detrimental. To the extent that I can carry the views of others , I believe these views are shared by many.
> 
> P.
>>  
> 
>  
> -- 
> "I always retain copyright in my papers, and nothing in any contract I sign with any publisher will override that fact. You should do the same".
>  
> Peter Murray-Rust
> Reader Emeritus in Molecular Informatics
> Unilever Centre, Dept. Of Chemistry
> University of Cambridge
> CB2 1EW, UK
> +44-1223-763069
>  
>  
> Hi Glenn,
> 
> Thanks for sharing this report with the list. I may need to read this again in more detail, but one thing I don’t quite understand is the focus on ‘high-level experts’. You write:
> 
> ‘There has never been an inclusive, global effort to bring everyone together first—broadly, at scale and at a high, policy-making level—to identify common ground needs and interests, then collectively brainstorm options, and only then design specific policies and solutions that work within this globally operational and sustainable framework’
> 
> I’ve always felt that one of the more exciting things about open access has been the influence of grassroots and activist strands of advocacy, or those that specifically foreground local and diverse contexts instead of broad-scale, top-down and policy-based approaches. Are you able to say a bit more about what ‘high-level’ means here and how your approach would preserve these contexts without imposing your common-ground solutions onto them? 
> 
> The reason I’m asking this is because your report mentions my work on openness as a ‘boundary object’, which is a term developed by Star and Griesemer to describe concepts that have both a shared flexible meaning and a nuanced local meaning that allow the possibility of cooperation between local groups. I argued that open access is one such boundary object because it means many things to different people but is broadly recognisable across contexts. However, the problem with introducing boundary objects into the policy sphere is that they become regulated and homogenised, simply because it is difficult to preserve local contexts in a global setting. This kind of homogenisation tends to benefit those with more power (in this case large commercial publishers operating at scale) at the expense of the bibliodiversity that Kathleen is arguing in favour of nurturing. 
>  
> I’d be interested to hear more on the 'high-level' focus of your group and whether you see it as antagonistic to non-high-level approaches. Put another way, are you not simply looking for common ground between the groups who are already in charge of scholarly communication (policymakers, commercial publishers, senior figures, etc.) to the exclusion of those operating at the margins?
>  
> Thanks!
> 
> Sam
>  
> 
> -- 
> Dr. Samuel A. Moore
> Research Fellow
> Centre for Postdigital Cultures
> Coventry University
> https://www.samuelmoore.org/ <https://www.samuelmoore.org/>
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