Scholarly publishing model alternatives and UMD Libraries’ related services

UMD Libraries’ Digital Scholarship Librarian, Terry Owen gave a comprehensive overview of the open access movement: history, OA (Open Access) development trends, alternatives to scholarly publishing (e.g. Libraries as publisher). Discussion points included:… Continue

PACT members continued their discussions about MIT’s licensing principles and they reviewed Harvard’s policies. The debate centered around the merits of stating that UMD supports the MIT and Harvard principles versus writing a UMD-specific set of policies and principles. Issues included the need to:

• … Continue

PACT members continued the discussion about UMD's licensing practices and status of "big deals" and transformative agreements, namely ….:

●      Perpetual access and its effect on pricing and licensing - access to a small subset of journals, negotiated with publishers, sometimes… Continue

UMD Libraries' licensing practices

Collections Strategies and Services associate dean, Dan Mack, provided an overview of the current UMD position, ‘big-deals”, and factors to be considered when negotiating contracts. 

UMD is a land-grant institution required to provide public access to materials. The Libraries must also be ADA compliant and accommodate disability access. We… Continue

Guest: Jeff Mackie-Mason, University Librarian and Chief Digital Scholarship Officer at UC Berkeley, co-chair of the UC negotiation team. 

Negotiations on transformative agreements began in 2018 and are a major priority for the University of California. They spent two years drawing up a strategic plan and building a coalition of support from the libraries, faculty, and upper administration. The university president and all chancellors are also in… Continue

Guests: Rebecca Mugridge, Dean of University Libraries, and Mary Van Ullen, Director of Collections from the University at Albany, SUNY [see SUNY Libraries reach agreement with Elsevier | University Libraries]

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Elaine Westbrooks, Vice Provost Libraries, UNC Chapel Hill joined this online meeting. She gave an overview of activities at UNC Chapel Hill since her start date of August 2017.

Meetings were held with UNC undergrads, graduate students, faculty, the fundraising board, faculty board members, and campus administration with a focus on transparency. The faculty Library board (a diverse advisory group made a big impact) was pivotal. … Continue

The inaugural meeting of UMD PACT (Publishing Access Contract Terms) began with members introducing themselves and sharing their experiences in scholarly publishing and open access. Members include several campus faculty members in addition to library faculty with knowledge of, and expertise in, this area. 

The group agreed to focus initially on information gathering and expressed interest in learning about the University of California’s… Continue