Barrieren gegenüber kollektiver Förderung von Diamond Open Access in sechs europäischen Ländern

This presentation reports on a recently completed research project, led jointly by the Open Book Collective and Lancaster University, which explores the barriers standing in the way of the expansion of Diamond OA collective funding models in a European context. The research focused on six countries: Germany, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden. This involved in depth interviews with library representatives and other stakeholders in these countries, to understand questions such as what existing collectively funded Diamond OA initiatives libraries already support, the policies that inform their support for open access books, the criteria used to assess Diamond OA initiatives, and the particular local and institutional challenges librarians confront in supporting Diamond OA. This was accompanied by a review of secondary literature as well as recommendations for Diamond OA initiatives. The presentation focuses on the report’s key findings, as well as briefly introducing the work of the Open Book Collective. A key recommendation is the need for Diamond OA initiatives to better understand the precise variations between different national and, in some cases, regional contexts. The report analyses the role of consortia, showing how they play markedly different roles within national contexts. For example, in countries where Diamond OA support is led by a national consortium, librarians can feel less able to themselves lead on supporting new collective funding models, even if they support this work. It also looks at the variations between libraries, especially regarding how responsibility for OA funding operates. For example, in some countries, OA leads within libraries are more likely to have dedicated OA budgets that they themselves control, whereas in other countries, the relevant budget lines tend to be more controlled by subject librarians, whose understanding of Diamond OA and its importance for the scholarly system can be lower than their OA lead colleagues.