Scholarly Communication

Scholarly communication has become expensive, restrictive, and increasingly falls short of realizing its full potential to make scholarly information broadly accessible. The University of California Libraries are committed to working collaboratively with a variety of partners and stakeholders to provide leadership in transforming scholarly communication into a system that is economically sustainable and ensures the widest possible access to the scholarly record.

Part of this commitment to transforming scholarly publishing at a large scale necessitates transitioning away from subscription-based publishing models, and repurposing our investments into sustainable open access (OA) funding models.

In order to make informed and data-driven decisions about which endeavors to pursue at scale, the UC Libraries prepared an analysis of the various approaches to or models for achieving open access, and the actionable strategies that exist to implement each approach. This analysis, compiled in the Pathways to OA documents linked below, was endorsed by the UC Council of University Librarians (CoUL) on 27 February 2018. The Pathways to OA is intended to assist campus libraries and the California Digital Library with individual, and where appropriate, collective decision-making about which OA strategies, possible next steps, or experiments to pursue in order to achieve large-scale transition to OA.

On October 16-17, 2018, the University of California (UC) Libraries hosted a working forum in Berkeley, California, called Choosing Pathways to Open Access (CP2OA). Sponsored by the University of California’s Council of University Librarians (CoUL), the forum was designed to enable North American library and consortium leaders and key academic stakeholders to engage in action-focused deliberations about redirecting subscription and other funds toward sustainable open access (OA) publishing.

The CP2OA Planning Committee prepared a report to CoUL analyzing forum outcomes. The report also synthesizes forum outcomes into recommendations for further collective action by CoUL to advance OA. For more information and additional CP2OA documentation, please visit the Pathways to OA webpage on the Office of Scholarly Communication website.

For more on scholarly communication at the University of California, please visit the Office of Scholarly Communication.

Document Owner: Danielle Watters Westbrook