Hi everyone,

Thanks for a great meeting today. As it turns out we couldn’t triangulate a date for next month’s meeting, so here’s a Doodle poll with March meeting possibilities. Please vote, and also feel free to suggest other dates/times, too!

http://www.doodle.com/iqixemmmc5eznn6s

Best,
Maura

Hi everyone,

Thanks for a great meeting today. As it turns out we couldn’t triangulate a date for next month’s meeting, so here’s a Doodle poll with March meeting possibilities. Please vote, and also feel free to suggest other dates/times, too!

http://www.doodle.com/iqixemmmc5eznn6s

Best,
Maura

[Jill Cirasella (she/her)]

Maura, I think this is a visionary idea. You visionary thinker, you!

[Beth Evans]

Maura’s idea: “What if we brought all of these components together into one big open system for scholarly communication at CUNY? An institutional repository to gather and preserve the scholarly output of the university, plus journal and book publishing platforms to enable us to publish scholarly work, too. Textbook and other course resources created by CUNY faculty for CUNY students. A CUNY Press, perhaps?”

Moving on this takes us down four paths where some work has already been done. We have a number of things we can build on or use as a starting point.

1. Journals – OJS at the grad center and elsewhere; partner with/convince non-OJS CUNY journals (e.g., Centro Journal) to make the switch

2. Book Press – Get Feminist Press (Hunter) on board; provide them with models (OA, hybrid OA); see what else is going on with CUNY publishing. Here’s a peculiar, rather empty document that might be worth investigating: http://inside.jjay.cuny.edu/compendium/assets/PDFs/JohnJay/IA.003%20-%20The%20CUNY%20Press.pdf

3. IR – Publicize active systems in CUNY (e.g., Lehman) and get faculty to pledge future participation at a time when a robust CUNY system is in place. Especially identify faculty publishing already in IR’s related to their disciplines.

4. Textbooks – Pilot with any in place. Jill did a panel with a faculty in math at Brooklyn College who seems to have gotten one going. Find others.

We have good starting points if we want to propose such a many-headed hydra.

Beth

[Matthew K. Gold (he/him)]

I’m down with a lot of this. My only concern, I guess, is that an “open scholarly communications platform” is exactly how we tend to describe the CUNY Academic Commons (not only what it is, but what we want it to grow to be). Of course, I wouldn’t presume to say that the Commons has any kind of exclusive purchase on scholarly communications at CUNY (!), but I do think we’ve demonstrated an ability to build out a successful open scholarly communication platform and I’d be interested in thinking through how the system you describe might take advantage of it in various ways.

[Stephen Klein]

@Maura=>definitely visionary.

[Darrow Wood]

Haven’t we all heard via the grapevine that for 2012-13 CUNY Central may once again bestow on our libraries handsome sums for … drumroll … textbooks? Yes, we have. And not withstanding that many of us hope for ample wriggle room so as to patch up oft neglected monographic collections, is it not clear that CUNY finds adequate resources when it wants to? Such as for an effort on behalf of students a la Temple but bigger and better and with real PR clout?

[Jill Cirasella (she/her)]

In addition to all the open access publishing options that CUNY could offer/host, maybe CUNY could add to this cluster of projects a fund for helping faculty publish in OA journals published by others — i.e., a fund to help cover OA article publication fees. Quite a few colleges/universities have funds like this, and some have even signed something called the Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity (http://www.oacompact.org/), which commits the institutions to “the timely establishment of durable mechanisms for underwriting reasonable publication charges for articles written by its faculty and published in fee-based open-access journals and for which other institutions would not be expected to provide funds.” (Note: I believe all the schools that signed this will only pay fees for publishers that are members of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), which does not include predatory OA publishers, and also only for publishers that are willing to waive fees for those who cannot afford them.)

A lot more CUNY-generated research would end up in green OA journals if CUNY could pay the publication fees!

[Jill Cirasella (she/her)]

OOPS! I meant: “A lot more CUNY-generated research would end up in *GOLD* OA journals if CUNY could pay the publication fees!”

I was temporarily colorblind.

[Alycia Sellie (she/her/they)]

All really good, inspiring thoughts, y’all!

I wonder if there could also be a CUNY fund (or whether our textbook $$ could be diverted) to create free/open source software that could support such a thing as Maura is suggesting? As Jill describes above, it could be a fund in support of development to work on/collaborate on this CMS (or whatever it will ultimately be)?

I’m interested in exploring our dreams of what we would like this system to be more rather than trying to make it fit into what (software) already exists–but I admit as a non-techie I might be suggesting that this become a much larger project?

And in terms of what Matt describes about CAC, could this be something that works with the Commons instead of replacing it?

Lots of food for thought for the next meeting!

[Stephen Klein]

@alycia I am not sure if we need to build an open source software platformbecause there are ones that already exist (for example: http://calibre-ebook.com/) . I feel, it is more important to get folks on-board and establish clearly defined commitments, procedures and workflows because even if you build does not necessarily mean folks would use.

[Maura A. Smale (she/her)]

+1 to Alycia’s comment, this has been a great discussion!

Like Alycia, I’d hope that we could build something that would work with the Commons. We could use the IR as the “bucket” — the place to store files, which we need regardless as a place for us to deposit articles, files, etc. published in venues outside of whatever CUNY system we’re building. Then there could be several systems that work with/overlay the IR. I think the profiles and other social networking features of the Commons make that a natural to work with the IR. And I know there’s some publishing happening here too — the excellent JITP, for example — but might there also be a place for an OJS installation that everyone at CUNY could use that wasn’t on the Commons? And PKP’s Open Monograph Press or other solutions for books and textbooks (perhaps something like PressForward or Anthologize)? Each of these systems could perhaps use the IR to store/manage/preserve files, and give folks flexibility for how they wanted to publish their stuff.

Re: possibilities for funding open textbooks, would that be something we could request from the Student Tech Fee?

I also agree with Jill that an OA publishing fund would be of great value for encouraging open access publications by faculty.

[Madeline Cohen]

Policy Guidelines for the development and promotion of Open Access. UNESCO (2012)

UNESCO issued this publication to demystify the concept of Open Access (OA) and to provide concrete steps on putting relevant policies in place. The Policy Guidelines can be used by individuals as a basic text on Open Access and related policies. The publication will be useful to both the beginners as well as experienced in the world of Open Access, and will assist the decision-makers, administrators and research managers to focus on OA policy development.

I recommend reading at least parts of this report, especially Section 2, Approaches to Open Access, which talks about “gold” and “green” OA. There’s a lot in here on repositories. What I liked is the clear language and inclusion of pros and cons. I just skimmed some sections but I think this is a worthwhile document for understanding OA.
Here is the link to download the report:
http://tinyurl.com/7j83jyy

[Jill Cirasella (she/her)]

Wow, this is great, Madeline. Not insignificant to read, but I’ve added to the top of my to-read list!