CUNY OA Meetup 1-18-12

CUNY OA Meetup 1/18/12

Attendees: Alycia Sellie (Brooklyn), Jill Cirasella (Brooklyn), Marcos Wasem (GC), Lee Hachadorian (GC), Cynthia Tobar (GC), Stephen Klein (GC), Matt Gold (NYCCT/GC), Polly Thistlethwaite (GC), Maura Smale (NYCCT)

SK: Is there ever a reason to put up walls? Are there detrimental affects on the associated institutions (e.g. academic presses) if we go OA?

JC: usually academic presses are separate

MG: remember that there are usually not *requirements*, that is, OA doesn’t preclude payment

JC: there are costs to the OA model too, and different models for meeting those costs (authors/publication fees are one way, can write those fees into grants); cost coverage at point of publication rather than via subscription

MW: OA journals at CUNY don’t charge fees or require subscriptions, live on the GC’s servers

AS: lots of possibilities for an education campaign

CT: handout/one-sheet to promote, what are CUNY schools doing? What about other NYC institutions

SK: campaign to address creator, another to address user

MG: also need to wage a social campaign, help faculty and grad students learn about what OA is

CT/PT: people are craving information, need to explain to them

MG: identify advocates, both within libraries and other faculty and grad students

PT: Is there a list of OA publishers?

JC: OASPA (http://www.oaspa.org/) OA scholarly publishing association — list of vetted members (publishers)

JC: can’t say it enough: peer review and OA are completely separate and unrelated

PT: need to understand the different models and the shifting economics

JC: need to move beyond costs for libraries to widen this outside of libraries, because others don’t care as much about those issues as librarians do

LH: remember that not all of the campuses have access to the same journals! perhaps we can leverage this too — cost is an issue, perhaps even more apparent at an institution like CUNY

AS: don’t leave out the costs, just translate it

JC: worth broaching 2 roads: publishers are OA, or authors self-archive

LH: how to check policies? http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/

AS: more resources! the OA @ CUNY site on the Commons: https://openaccess.commons.gc.cuny.edu/ — we are happy for more input!

MS: admits to a smidge of frustration that it can be difficult to get folks inside the library and across the colleges interested in/passionate about OA

MW: how can the libraries support OA projects? help them be more visible, indexed, etc? how can we get institutional support?

JC: DOAJ isn’t as complete as it could be, unfortunately (http://www.doaj.org/)

PT: we could pressure the database publishers to make their OA journal holdings better

MG: Commons is working on ways to allow people to attach scholarship to their profiles, follow researchers, notifications, etc.

MS: UFS is organizing an advisory committee to advise the Office of Library Services on policies and procedures for creating an institutional repository, meetings starting soon

AS: what do we want this group to be/do?

CT: would be great to have more people, the Open CUNY folks, etc.

MW: support for archiving, preserving, indexing journals (Open Journal Systems install at the GC)

JC: has also been talk about wanting a CUNYwide installation of OJS so that all of the campuses could use it

SK: though there are concerns about sustainability w/OJS

JC: communicating with grad students, it might not be on their radar right now but they are being trained to join the faculty, so should get in there now to promote open access

PT: get to the methods classes, part of information literacy

LH: need an OA evangelist at each campus? convince the institution to have an OA statement, etc. be the point person for OA at each school

AS: advocate or list of advocates at each school; have a social interaction, too

SK: cocktail party?

JS: scholarly communications librarian/officer is a common job title in libraries lately, so list of advocate(s) could help

PT: add info to dissertation libguide (everyone HAS to read that)

LH: go for the grad students when they are submitting to journals

JC: remember to mention impact, increasing the impact of our work, we can add this to our conversations

CT: digital collections, what campuses have digitized and who has access, also digital projects students are working on

(OA hero, champion…)

SK: how to proceed? Flyer? Website?

AS: when we’re going to meet again, how we’re going to communicate
what do we want this group to be, how do we want to accomplish it?

SK: what do we want to say, how do we want to say it?

LH: what are our ideal goals? what are our goals for CUNY?

(bring in enemies, too!)

CT: reach out to faculty too who may be somewhat afraid of OA

LH: bring in a high profile speaker to discuss?

SK: send a brief survey to see who’s familiar with/publishing in OA at the university?

AS: propose: continue to have meetings, and at each meeting we have a brief presentation or teach-in about a specific topic — educating while also having a social meetup; can try to have them on a somewhat regular, predictable basis (with a fancy flyer!)

JC:reminds us that VA Commonwealth changed tenure + promotion guidelines to reflect importance of open access: http://www.library.vcu.edu/blog/news/2010/12/vcu-faculty-senate-passes-reso.html

Other resources we might want to use:

http://svpow.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/the-obscene-profits-of-commercial-scholarly-publishers/

Remember the Commons site: https://openaccess.commons.gc.cuny.edu/

and Commons group: https://commons.gc.cuny.edu/groups/oapn/

 

NEXT MEETING: Friday February 17th, 3-5pm

@ the Mina Rees Library at the CUNY Graduate Center
Room C196.05 on the concourse level (the room is located at the back of the computer lab on the lower level of the library–folks should remember to bring CUNY ID and enter on the 1st floor, then go down a level and back into the corner of the floor).