Slides from the ACRL 2021 conference panel presentation "Open access investment at the local level: Sharing diverse tactics to improve access and affordability." Panelists include: - Sam Teplitzky, Open Science Librarian, UC Berkeley - Timothy Vollmer, Scholarly Communication & Copyright Librarian, UC Berkeley - Sharla Lair, Senior Strategist, Open Access & Scholarly Communication Initiatives at LYRASIS - Tom Narock, Assistant Professor of Data Science at Goucher College - Justin Gonder, Senior Product Manager, Publishing, California Digital Library. Panel topic: Improving accessibility, inclusivity, and affordability of scholarship is a central tenet to realizing a more equitable higher education system. Many decisions about open access investments take place at administrative or consortial levels, but librarians frequently field requests for access, resources, or partnerships at the local level through their relationships with students, researchers, and faculty. An open access investment working group was established at UC Berkeley Library in late 2019 to bridge this gap between larger scale strategic investment and local decision making. The group proposed a set of criteria to guide library investments in sustainable open access projects. With this group’s work in the foreground, the panel will share real-world examples of where and how academic libraries decide to invest in open access resources. Panelists will discuss commonalities and differences in strategies and give attendees examples they can apply in their own roles.

1. Open access investment at
the local level
Sharing diverse tactics to improve access and affordability
SLIDES:
http://ucblib.link/acrl2021_oa

2. Learning Objectives
● Describe key open access investment considerations and processes from the
perspective of an academic library, a non-profit and an open project.
● Understand priorities, workflows, and collaboration opportunities
● Participants will take home strategies and best practices for approaching
open access investment conversations at their own institution.

3. Bios
● Sam Teplitzky (moderator), Open Science Librarian, UC Berkeley
● Tim Vollmer (presenter), Scholarly Communication & Copyright Librarian, UC
Berkeley
● Sharla Lair (presenter), Senior Strategist, Open Access & Scholarly
Communication Initiatives at LYRASIS
● Tom Narock (presenter), Assistant Professor of Data Science at Goucher
College
● Justin Gonder (presenter), Senior Product Manager, Publishing, California
Digital Library

4. ● Align with UCB Library Priority:
Advance Open Access Scholarship
● Large UC ecosystem of OA
● “Establish criteria, policies, and
processes to advance open access
investment decision-making —
including by developing criteria to
guide Library investment in
sustainable open access
publishing.”
Photo by Susan Gold on Unsplash
UC Berkeley Open Access
Investment Working Group

5. What we did
1. Developing the criteria
2. Deciding on process & workflow
for review
Photo by Girl with red hat on Unsplash

6. Selector survey Desk research Thematic grouping
1. Developing the criteria

7. OA Investment Criteria
Impact
● specific positive disciplinary
impact
● provide indicators of faculty
impact and/or student success
● provides or improves access to
unique content or services not
otherwise available
Sustainability & governance
● contribute to sustainability of an important
project/initiative
● mission-driven to serve scholarly
researchers and/or the public interest
● commitment to advancing social justice
and diversity
● Not-for-profit
● demonstrates operational and financial
stability, or has a plan to do so
● provides disclosure and transparency in
finances and governance
● open access to content/data/software
under open licenses
● meets or exceeds relevant technical
standards
UCB focused
● supports UCB mission and Library
strategic priorities and values
● endorsed or led by academic
community members, especially UCB
scholars
● supports/promotes reputation &
visibility of UCB scholarship
● reduce access barriers to the UCB
community
● reduce financial barriers, with savings
passed on to UCB community
● meets or exceeds existing UCB
infrastructure requirements

8. 2. Process for review
Workflows Evaluation table

9. Photo by Susan Gold on Unsplash
Optimistic outcomes
● Increase support for OA
● Improve communication of values
and requirements between library
and OA providers
● Share information and education on
OA to library workers, faculty,
university community
Thanos Pal on Unsplash

10. Open Access
Community Investment
Program
Sharla Lair |

11. The Problem
● Increase in OA programs
● One-off OA investments
● Lack of sufficient information
● Administrative hurdles
“The open content landscape is
massive and unwieldy.”
From OA in the Open: Community Needs and
Perspectives (2018) https://osf.io/preprints/lissa/g972d

12. Open Access
Community
Investment Program
(OACIP)
● Connects multiple stakeholders
● Experimental and incubation space
to test new models
● Centralizes administration and
funding at multiple scales
● Includes bespoke programs, output
from smaller publishers, and niche
scholarly output
● Enables flexibility and equity in
investment
● Encourages mission matching

13. OACIP: The Pilot
Pilot tests:
● Criteria
● Infrastructure
● Outreach
● Participation
Pilot Partners:
● LYRASIS + TSPOA
● Two Journals:
○ Environmental Humanities (Duke
University Press) - $30,000 Goal
○ Combinatorial Theory (eScholarship
Publishing) - $25,000 Goal

14. OACIP: The Future
Universal hub that connects multiple stakeholders at multiple scales

15. EarthArXiv.org
A preprint server for Earth and Planetary Sciences
- online since October 2017
- 2,043 contributions (as of March 2021)
- accept both preprints and postprints
- c. 1600 downloads monthly

16. Earth Science categories Planetary Science categories

17. EarthArXiv.org
community driven – everybody can get involved!
Volunteer Advisory Council and Moderation Crew

18. EarthArXiv.org
moderation policy
What does EarthArXiv accept?
• Research articles
• Review papers
• Case studies
• Technical notes (e.g. new instrumentation
or analysis methods)
• Confirmatory studies
• So-called ‘null’ results (i.e. results that not
supporting a hypothesis)
• Dataset description papers
What does EarthArXiv not accept?
• Papers reading as a personal
attack, airing of grievances, or
insulting to a group/class of
people. Racist and derogatory
language will not be tolerated
• Commentaries and opinion pieces
• Posters (cf. ESSOAr)
• Theses and course projects
(see www.thesiscommons.org)
• Software articles

19. EarthArXiv.org
moderation policy
Publication and hosting of your paper
• Upon moderation, EarthArXiv agrees to publish
your paper by assigning a DOI
• EarthArXiv is not a journal and does not evaluate
the scientific quality of a paper.
• EarthArXiv will provide free online hosting of
your paper as long as it is operational
Fraud and Plagiarism
EarthArXiv takes fraud and plagiarism very
seriously.
Should the Board deem fraud or plagiarism
to have occurred, the paper will be
immediately removed from EarthArXiv

20. https://eartharxiv.org/kftsv/
● Initially, postprints outnumbered preprints
● By the end of year 1, EarthArXiv was (and remains) predominantly preprints
● EarthArXiv averaged 40 submissions per month in its first year

21. Since the first year...
● Monthly submissions have
increased from 40 to ~70
● As of Fall 2019, 71% of the
authors at EarthArXiv are
distinct
● This is slightly above other
COS-based preprint
communities which cluster
between 57–69%

22. As determined by author assigned keywords (last updated 2019)

23. Join us, follow us!
@eartharxiv
Make your work BETTER!
Preprints lead to feedback
& improve your work

24. The transition to California Digital Library:
• Became official in October 2020
• Working with Birkbeck University,
London / OLH team, CDL launched
an MVP preprint server on the
open source Janeway platform.
• More importantly, CDL’s vision for
open access and open governance
aligned with EarthArXiv
https://medium.com/@jamesheathers/why-i-love-pre-prints-9d727eeb22b8
Publishing pre-prints sends a message I
want to send.They say I am willing to
talk. They say I want to participate in
open culture. Please read my stuff.

25. Discussion

26. Resources
● UC Berkeley Open Access Investment Working Group Report:
http://ucblib.link/oaiwg-report
● Open Access Community Investment Program (OACIP)
○ OACIP Webpage: https://www.lyrasis.org/content/Pages/oacip.aspx
○ Press Release about Pilot Project: https://tspoa.org/2020/12/09/announcing-the-open-access-community-investment-program/
○ Kennison, R., Ruttenberg, J., Shorish, Y., & Thompson, L. (2019, September 11). OA in the Open: Community Needs and
Perspectives. https://doi.org/10.31229/osf.io/g972d
● EarthArXiv - eartharxiv.org
SLIDES: http://ucblib.link/acrl2021_oa

27. Contact
Tim Vollmer: tvollmer@berkeley.edu
Sam Teplitzky: steplitz@berkeley.edu
Sharla Lair: Sharla.Lair@lyrasis.org
Tom Narock: Thomas.Narock@goucher.edu
Justin Gonder: Justin.Gonder@ucop.edu