CRKN’s Content Strategy Committee (CSC) is pleased to share its Assessment Guidelines for Open Access (OA) Publishers. These guidelines outline criteria for the financial sustainability, academic quality, and operational practices under which open access models and resources proposed by vendors and publishers will be assessed. The CSC will use the guidelines during negotiations to assess whether proposals from vendors and publishers meet with member goals and objectives on open access.
Following the publication of CRKN’s updated Licensing Principles in 2021, the CSC identified the need for a set of guidelines to support their assessment of open access proposals from content providers outside of the traditional subscription environment (for example, Subscribe to Open, Diamond OA, OA infrastructure and services). With the increasing number of open access models and providers, and with the goal of ensuring that new and existing open access agreements are aligned with CRKN’s member-driven strategic plan and Licensing Principles, this set of guidelines will assist CRKN in assessing and prioritizing collective support for OA opportunities.
“The success of CRKN’s updated Licensing Principles in guiding our negotiations has been proven. By formalizing guidelines to assess OA opportunities in a similar way, we can build on this success in a clear and transparent manner,” commented CRKN Executive Director, Clare Appavoo. “The Assessment Guidelines for Open Access Publishers will serve the CSC and staff as we consider new and varied OA proposals that meet the needs of our membership and achieve our strategic goals.”
To lead the development of the assessment guidelines, a sub-group of CSC members (Alison Ambi – Memorial University of Newfoundland; Ian Robson – Queen’s University) was struck and was augmented by the addition of Scholarly Communication Librarians from CRKN member institutions (DeDe Dawson – University of Saskatchewan; Lindsey MacCallum – Mount Saint Vincent University). The sub-group conducted both an environmental scan of similar work that has been undertaken at other consortia and institutions, as well as a survey of CRKN members that was undertaken in 2021. The results of the survey were shared with members at the 2021 CRKN Conference and formed the basis of the guidelines that have now been approved and adopted by the CSC.
“This set of guidelines, inspired by the work of our colleagues across the library sector and strengthened with CRKN member input, will support CRKN as it takes bigger and bolder strides into open access licensing,” said Ian Robson, member of the CSC’s open access sub-group. “With librarians and researchers increasingly looking towards many different models of OA resources to meet their needs, these guidelines will ensure that CRKN is able to make the best decisions in the OA sphere.”
The Assessment Guidelines for Open Access Publishers are available on the CRKN website.
For more information, please contact Francesca Brzezicki, Communications Specialist, at fbrzezicki@crkn.ca.