Open Access and Licensing Options In Academic Libraries

Good Practices: Principles and Perspectives
October 1st 2015, at Ministry of Education, Science and Sport of the Republic of Slovenia

The first topic (OA Policies) will be focused on discussing practices /and approaches?/ of western countries that enable their authors to publish in OA, and, consequently, facilitate their better visibility among world academic communities (via citations and other new metrics). In the world flooded by new journals, books and other scientific online content, it is becoming more and more important to step out of the crowd with published outputs. Making content available worldwide via OA is very important, but the results may vary, depending on your policy on OA.

Gold Route? Green Route? How will these routes affect your overall journey? What are the milestones along these routes? How to plan your journey and flag your institution on the new map of scientific partnerships, using OA?

The second topic, Modern Procurement Techniques for e-Content will deal with tips on how to better negotiate licenses with publishers.The world of scientific publishing should not be divided by barricades between buyers and sellers. Scientific publishers and research organizations have a lot in common. Yet, negotiating big and favourable deals has become harder over the years. What is a Big Deal, in the first place and how big is Big? What is the role of current subscriptions and what will bring about access to bigger collections?

Taking part in active debate on these issues with the experienced JISC Collections team (serving all UK Higher Education and Further Education institutions and Research Councils that receive direct funding from the UK funding bodies) will certainly result in positive backwash effects

We had all 3 major stakeholders involved in these two topics:

• ✓ Governmental institution from Slovenia,
• ✓ Professionals from libraries, licensing organizations and libraries consortia,
• ✓ Publishers.

Each of them contributed with valuable perspectives which threw light upon current developments and trends.

It was a great opportunity:

• ✓ to discover how Open Access is provided in other countries, what the challenges are and which solutions have been applied,
• ✓ to share ideas and interact with experienced professionals from abroad on both topics of the symposium,
• ✓ to establish a step-by-step agenda for the coming months on how to effectively implement an OA Policy within your organization.
• ✓ to get an insight into publishers’ views on both OA and licensing issues.

The economics of OA has or will have a big impact on your organization’s budget. This impact will take place no matter whether you will implement an OA Policy or postpone any OA actions. Induce a positive impact! Use this chance to learn from acknowledged experts on best practices and to pick the best solutions which will work for you.

The symposium will be followed up during the coming months by informative sessions with individual organizations, helping them to take further steps in implementing their OA policy and – by request – to help better negotiate their content deals.