Extensions: Open Scholarship Policy Observatory, 2021-2024/Introduction

Brittany Amell, with Tanja Niemann, Lynne Siemens, and Ray Siemens

The contents of this volume build on Foundational Observations: Open Scholarship Policy Observatory, 2017-2020. They reflect the last several years (2021-2024) of work on the Open Scholarship Policy Observatory (OSPO) – a hub for information and resources related to all aspects of open scholarship which also includes a collection of policy documents as well as policy analysis. From its inception in 2017, the OSPO has been coordinated by the Canadian Social Knowledge Institute (C-SKI), based in the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab (ETCL) at the University of Victoria, as an initiative of the Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) Partnership’s Policy Cluster, 2020–present, co-facilitated by Tanja Niemann (Érudit) and Lynne Siemens (UVic). It follows and reflects policy developments related to open scholarship in Canada and beyond, analyzing policy changes and their relevance to researchers, information professionals, librarians, faculty, and policymakers. The OSPO was created in recognition of the development of numerous and increasing numbers of open access policies and mandates, as well as confusion about the various routes to open access and which approach works best (Milligan et al. 2019).

While policy is part of a complex of interrelated fields, disciplines, and stakeholder groups, the focus of our work is on the role of policy in the scholarly communication ecosystem. The pieces in this second volume represent a significant amount of work and discussion, with 31 publications spread across four years.

One of the significant themes that arises across this work is the interconnected roles institutions, infrastructure, and policy play in the open scholarship movement. Several pieces (Winter 2022; Winter 2023; Winter and Kern 2023) examine the vital role open scholarship declarations play in driving the open scholarship movement forward through building shared understanding and institutional support around the globe.

The importance of infrastructure, particularly open infrastructure that is community driven, is another important theme that surfaces regularly as well (Amell 2024; Winter 2022; Winter 2022). Winter (2022), for instance, highlights the ‘Designing a Preparedness Model for the Future of Open Scholarship’ report released by Invest in Open Infrastructure. The report utilizes a disaster and emergency preparedness model to highlight risks to scholarly infrastructures in the shorter and longer terms. The report highlights the necessity of community-owned and operated open infrastructure to safeguard the academic community’s priorities, which are often sidelined by commercially driven systems. With some infrastructures at risk of collapse due to funding shortages, the report argues that ensuring content portability and system interoperability has become increasingly urgent. Key challenges include ‘institutional individualism,’ the amount of time needed to develop open source versus commercial solutions, and persistent issues around staffing and maintenance.

As highlighted by Amell (2024), access to open infrastructure plays a key role in the ability for researchers located in lower-income countries to make their work freely available (Else 2024). Often, the goal of this infrastructure is to return control over publication and dissemination to the community, says Kathleen Fitzpatrick in a keynote entitled “Open Infrastructures for the Future of Knowledge Production” delivered to attendees of the Implementing New Knowledge Environments 2024 gathering in Montreal.

Lastly, the volume closes out with three posts that consider open scholarship and open scholarly publishing amongst a tidal wave of generative artificial intelligence tools. Amell (2024) describes the work already underway in the development of policies that respond to generative AI, including the world’s first Artificial Intelligence Act (out of the E.U.) and efforts in Canada to introduce the Digital Charter Implementation Act. Amell (2024) points out that concerns frequently raised and addressed by the difference policies tend to relate to accountability, authorship, transparency, disclosure of use, responsibility, accuracy, bias, safety, confidentiality and privacy, and copyright and intellectual property consistently recur across these statements, policies, and guidelines. Less present are concerns to do with the recommendations raised by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (2023), which include considerations of the broader social and environmental impacts associated with AI use, as well as who has access to generative AI tools and who may not (whether for financial reasons or otherwise). In “Generative AI and Scholarly Publishing,” Amell (2024) brings attention to news from the DOAJ regarding a record surge in the number of retracted articles (over 10,000 in 2023, according to Shen and Ball 2024).

Amell (2024) closes with a provocation, asking what, if any, existing key lessons and insights from the OA movement, discourse, research, and literature might be applied to the evolving landscape of generative AI. Amell (2024) notes that one example might be the FAIR principles for data management and stewardship (Wilkinson et al. 2016; see also Winter 2020). Originally envisioned as a way to support the reuse of scholarly data by ensuring it is findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable, the FAIR principles have been re-interpreted to apply to software, workflows, tools, algorithms, and, increasingly, AI models (Huerta et al. 2023).

Observations presented in this volume are authored by Caroline Winter, Talya Jesperson, Maggie Sardino, JT Kern, and Brittany Amell. Tanja Niemann and Lynne Siemens have provided policy area expertise and leadership, with Alyssa Arbuckle and Ray Siemens serving as overseeing editors, initiating research design from across those in the INKE partnership. Reviewers of, and further contributors to, work published here include Janneke Adema, Juan Pablo Alperin, Virginia Barbour, Jonathan Bengtson, Lise Brin, Bernardo Bueno, Julia Bullard, Leslie Chan, Ian Duncan, Matthew Greenhall, Caitlin Horrall, Inba Kehoe, Shahira Khair, Irina Kuchma, Vincent Larivière, Natalie MacDonald, Shawn Martin, Aaron Mauro, John Maxwell, Gabriel Miller, Jeff Moon, Samuel Moore, Émile Paquin, Jefferson Pooley, Rebecca Ross, Kathleen Shearer, Kate Shuttleworth, John Simpson, Michael Eberle Sinatra, Kevin Stranack, Donald Taylor, Mike Taylor, Simon Van Ballen, Martha Whitehead, John Willinsky, and Annie Wolfe. Tim Sobie has led the technical development and production. French translation of this introduction and these OSPO observations has been led by Olga Ziminova.

For more about the previous volume, “Foundational Observations: Open Scholarship Policy Observatory, 2017-2020,” click here.

Works Cited

Note: Referenced items appearing in this volume, and the earlier collection, are not explicitly noted in this works cited list, but are available via links in the text above.
  • “C-27 (44-1): An Act to Enact the Consumer Privacy Protection Act, the Personal Information and Data Protection Tribunal Act and the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act and to Make Consequential and Related Amendments to Other Acts.” Parliament of Canada. Accessed October 30, 2024. https://www.parl.ca/legisinfo/en/bill/44-1/c-27.
  • Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. 2024. “Open Infrastructures for the Future of Knowledge Production.” Keynote presented at the Annual Gathering of the Implementing New Knowledge Environments Partnership, Montreal, Canada, June 17. https://doi.org/10.25547/6GG1-7B37.
  • Goudarzi, Saman, Katrina Pugh, Vanessa Rhinesmith, Heather Staines, and Kaitlin Thaney. 2021. “Designing a Preparedness Model for the Future of Open Scholarship.” Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5218968.
  • Huerta, E. A., Ben Blaiszik, L. Catherine Brinson, Kristofer E. Bouchard, Daniel Diaz, Caterina Doglioni, Javier M. Duarte, et al. 2023. “FAIR for AI: An Interdisciplinary and International Community Building Perspective.” Scientific Data 10 (1): 487. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-02298-6.
  • Milligan, Sarah, Kimberly Silk, Alyssa Arbuckle, and Ray Siemens. 2019. “The Initial Impact of the Open Scholarship Policy Observatory.” KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies 3 (February): 16. https://doi.org/10.5334/kula.43
  • Wilkinson, Mark D., Michel Dumontier, IJsbrand Jan Aalbersberg, Gabrielle Appleton, Myles Axton, Arie Baak, Niklas Blomberg, et al. 2016. “The FAIR Guiding Principles for Scientific Data Management and Stewardship.” Scientific Data 3 (1): 160018. https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18.
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