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~~ #ScalingSmall #OAbooks ~~ I'm at @COPIMproject's end-of-project conference (scalingsmall.pubpub.org/) for the next couple of days. I'll be tweeting any stray thoughts or useful information in this thread.
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#ScalingSmall Janneke Adema is introducing the conference and the Copim project highlighting how we've tried to address many of the urgent needs around open access book publishing.
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#ScalingSmall 'Scaling Small' refers to an alternative organising principle for governing community-led publishing projects based on mutual reliance, care, and other forms of commoning. A response to a commercial publishing environment based on large-scale growth. We eschew this.
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#ScalingSmall Instead of a few large publishing bodies like Wiley or Elsevier, we want to see a network of small, flexible, and bibliodiverse presses that provide resilience through resource sharing, openness, and collaboration.
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#ScalingSmall Copim has been addressing this for 3 and a half years by addressing the hurdles in OA books infrastructure, creating new community-owned infrastructures, and establishing networks among community-owned and scholar-led initiatives and presses.
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#ScalingSmall We treat publishing and the authorship of books as a relational practice emphasising the connections and communications between the people that produce scholarly work.
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#ScalingSmall Copim has produced several major outputs: the @OpenBookCollect, the Opening the Future revenue model, @Thoth_metadata, and the Experimental Publishing Compendium (which I'll be launching and presenting tomorrow!).
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#ScalingSmall @samoore_ is the first keynote panellist this afternoon and is discussing 'scaling small' and the limits of openness.
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#ScalingSmall "COPIM thus represents monograph publishing scaled ‘small’ through its invitation to cooperate on the development of an OA publishing ecosystem that has global reach but preserves local contexts." doi.org/10.16997/wpcc.918
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#ScalingSmall Like Adema, Moore emphasises the sociality at the heart of Scaling Small and at the heart of Copim's infrastructures, revenue models, and publishing research. It's about connection and networks not growing individually at the expense of everyone else.
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#ScalingSmall Amanda Ramalho is now presenting discussing SciELO Books and how they support the communication infrastructure of open science research.
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#ScalingSmall Finally on this keynote panel, we have Philippa Grand from University of Westminster Press giving the perspective of an open institutional publisher. What is further needed in developing the non-commercial scholarly monograph publishing infrastructure?
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#ScalingSmall Grand emphasising the importance of metadata and discoverability for open access books. While Copim is addressing this through the development of Thoth, an open metadata platform for OA books, Grand says we must also remember non-monograph and non-text outputs.
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#ScalingSmall A strong focus in Grand's keynote on ethics, principles, and values. Appealing to our values helps with grassroots efforts to bring scholars onboard with smaller OA presses since ethics are... ahem... not core to the business model of larger scholarly publishers.
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#ScalingSmall On a personal note, it's been so incredible to work on @COPIMproject these past two years or so because ethics are openly acted upon in a way that hasn't been done in any of my previous roles. Openness, open access, and open source principles all informing practice.
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#ScalingSmall Working on Copim has felt like an escape from how openness is generally discussed in UK HE: in the context of neoliberalism. See this paper that Kevin Sanders and I wrote for a perspective on this lack of ethical praxis in the UK. doi.org/10.20944/preprints202001.0240.v1
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#ScalingSmall Some discussions about the rewards systems of academia and how these are systematically mixed in with the use and promotion of commercial publishers. We need to address these rewards systems and the 'publish or perish' systems of neoliberal power.
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#ScalingSmall Peer reviewing is not the most prestigious scholarly activity to do and so diverting your labour away from peer review for commercial publishers and towards open presses is a no-cost way to redivert your labour in a meaningful way.
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#ScalingSmall The official drinking game for Copim's end-of-project conference involves drinking a shot of rough tequila when someone mentions 'REF' and drinking a shot of smooth whisky when someone namechecks @martin_eve.
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#ScalingSmall Moore linking grassroots outreach to scholars with how the university has been systematically defunded over the past decades and how we need to link to union activity, thoughtfulness of our labour, and collective organising.
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#ScalingSmall Grand points out how the grassroots nature of OA has been lost with the push for a top-down approach to OA being "imposed" by funders and government. Again, see my paper with Sanders on this appropriation of 'open' language by neoliberalism. doi.org/10.20944/preprints202001.0240.v1
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#ScalingSmall We're now hearing from Joe Deville, project lead on the upcoming Open Book Futures project, on infrastructuring and the @OpenBookCollect. Infrastructures as "experimental material-semiotic practices".
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#ScalingSmall @samoore_ has kindly shared his talk here: @samoore_/1649078046522064900
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#ScalingSmall Some interesting discussion around the idea of an Ethical Publishers Charter focusing on how small scholarly publishers can behave ethically thinking about the relations to reader and scholar communities and labour.
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#ScalingSmall John Sherer opens his talk by saying he's optimistic about the future of the monograph as an academic form. It's open access and Covid driving this optimism and driving the increased usage of monographs.
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#ScalingSmall Sherer notes that we need to get better at demonstrating usage of open access monographs. Better outreach and promotion!
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#ScalingSmall My @CovUni_CPC colleague, Janneke Adema, now talking about the models for community governance that Copim has looked at over the project and how this informed the governance model for @OpenBookCollect.
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#ScalingSmall Adema talks about good governance as considering situatedness, formality, process, and diversity. All important considerations for establishing any community-led organisation. Also need clear definition of who your community is.
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#ScalingSmall Links to Copim's research reports on community-led governance by @samoore_, @Openreflections, @Silcrow_, and @JudithFathallah: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4730686 doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6535459 doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7801215
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#ScalingSmall Copim's end-of-project conference returns from 1500 BST to discuss open infrastructure for scholarly publishing, digital archiving and preservation, and I'll be helping to launch the Experimental Publishing Compendium. Join us, won't you? scalingsmall.pubpub.org/
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#ScalingSmall We are back with Vincent van Gerven Oei of scholar- and queer-led open access press @punctum_books introducing a panel on open infrastructure for smaller book publishers.
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#ScalingSmall There is no open access without open infrastructure.
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#ScalingSmall @Thoth_metadata is an open source metadata platform which allows small presses to openly disseminate bibliographic metadata in multiple formats (including, most recently, Marc21!) to wherever book metadata is needed.
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#ScalingSmall Thoth disseminates metadata via open APIs so that anyone can use the data to develop a website or web application built on the book metadata. They're now working on integration with third-party platforms including, hopefully, the Ex Libris Alma Community Zone.
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#ScalingSmall My colleagues and I in Copim's experimental publishing work package are now presenting our research into experimental publishing and launching a Compendium that can help scholars looking to do innovative publishing work.