Open, Just, & Sustainable Project: April 2020 Report

Abstract

In an increasingly digital and open-access world, libraries and other scholar communities must reconsider what we mean by the term “value”. The open access (OA) movement and sites such as SciHub and Research Gate have increasingly uncoupled access to scholarship from wealth and academic connections, disrupting the traditional value propositions of publishers and libraries alike. In response, dominant publishers (e.g., Elsevier, Wiley) and publisher-adjacent corporations (e.g., Clarivate, Digital Science) are extracting behavioral data and further entrenching themselves in institutional rankings, hiring and funding decisions, and teaching and learning practices. In turn, libraries must reexamine how their relationships with publishers and their relationships with their parent institutions. The Open, Just, and Sustainable (OJS) Project aims to help the SCELC consortium of libraries explore related concerns, questions, and opportunities. The April 2020 report analyzes publicly-available SCELC documents, a member-librarian survey results, and a November 2019 focus group with the Product Review Advisory Committee