AIMS

Open Access Network: be informed, join and take action

The Open Access Network (OAN) is a transformative model of open access (OA) publishing and preservation that encourages partnerships among scholarly societies, research libraries, and other institutional partners to support the creation and distribution of research, scholarship and affordable education.

The OAN was launched in 2015 as a not-for-profit organization that provides strategic and operational guidance to its members (individuals, organizations, societies, publishers, libraries, higher education communities and other institutions) working together to develop a fair and open funding approach to fully sustain the infrastructure needed to support the full life-cycle (from publishing to archiving) of different forms of research output.

Hence, the OAN tackles head-on the challenge of sustainable OA publishing and preservation that is complementary, not competitive, with other OA funding approaches. All in all, the OAN intends to Make Knowledge Public, which could be possible if technical and/or policy-based solutions to knowledge commons management, or rather the knowledge infrastructure:

  1. addresses a vertical community including an interdependent set of producers and consumers of knowledge;
  2. provides substantial incentives for individuals in that vertical community to contribute;
  3. is built upon community-specific extensions of more general-purpose infrastructure.

The OAN’s plan allows all the partners in the scholarly communication ecosystem to begin to work together to agree on best practices, not only for infrastructure, metadata, etc., but for their business approaches as well.

Because the OAN’s goal is to provide a financial mechanism (based on an annual or multi-year payment made by stakeholders) to support sustainable infrastructure for all types of research outputs, the projects supported by the OAN can be as varied as the scholarly activities that produce them.

The OAN’s model will enable scholarly societies and university presses to develop the strategies they need to continue to provide their members with services useful and meaningful without reliance on subscription revenue.

The OAN also aims to help individuals and institutions address the challenges of lifelong learning, education and research understanding that acquisition of knowledge should not be  restricted to the classroom and that application of that knowledge should not be limited to the workplace. Today, open educational resources is a necessity for strategic capacity development at the different levels.

What could the OAN do for you?

Considering that research and scholarship are increasingly global and collaborative, the OAN’s plan is not bound by national borders and can be adapted by any country looking for an equitable and sustainable OA model. What the OAN funding model may look like outside the United States will depend a great deal on the scholarly communication practices in place there.

How could you get involved?

  • Become an open-access advocate.
  • Publish in a reputable OA journal or with an OA-friendly publisher.
  • Participate regularly in the scholarly conversation, both face to face and via social media.
  • Join the OAN and encourage your personal and professional networks to join as well. The OAN has created a membership program that any individual, institution, library, scholarly society, foundation, organization, or company can join.
  • Help your colleagues and campus administrators better understand the OAN issues.
  • Coordinate messaging with the OAN and with other local, national, and international OA advocates.
  • Organize and participate in OA events.

If you are interested in learning more about OAN’s approach to making OA sustainable or would like to participate in one of OAN’s pilot projects, please  Contact the OAN at any time.

Be Informed (OAN):

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

Take Action (OAN): 

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

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