Opening up about Open Access: interview with Brigitte Shull

Q: What stage do you think Open Access has reached today?

A: I’m so glad that it’s no longer “why” for Open Access, but “how”. A large cross-section of the publishing industry had to keep on making the case for OA and the process seemed endless. Now we can direct our energies exclusively towards building a more open future. I’m also pleased that there is a much greater appetite for collaboration now: there’s real recognition that we need to find fairer ways of implementing OA and taking it forward. Transformative Agreements were great for kick-starting the process, but we always knew they were transitional.? I hope we can build on the foundation TAs have given us to create an elegant, true and sustainable Open Access model. I’m listening to the conversations about Diamond OA and S20 with interest. The APC economy has a narrow focus and we need to carve out some room for the value proposition of research publishing to evolve. Publishing open content works best alongside initiatives both to drive the impact of research and to improve capacity for it.

Q: Why do you like to make the distinction between Open Access and Open Research?

A: Technically, Open Access is a business model. Open Research is a broader term, which I believe embraces a range of practices and principles. I find the distinction useful because a different set of activities is needed to publish content Open Access than to support openness when preparing preprints, data, code, protocols, etc. Open Research also supports best practice principles such as transparency, reproducibility, and the use of PIDs.

Q: You’ve been immersed in Open Access for a whole decade. What do you consider the main milestones in the progress of OA have been in that time?

A: It’s been so exciting to contribute! The amount of content available OA is astonishing, more than I could have imagined? ten years ago. For me, the most significant major milestone has been the formation of OA2020, an ambitious programme which organised institutions into redirecting subscription spend to OA models. It has unlocked so much of the open content that is available today. The release of Plan S was also a pivotal moment, because it spurred a massive response from institutions, funders who did not belong to cOAlition S and publishers. Also high on my list is the launch of the preprint server arXiv, a watershed moment that created a new model for sharing research and inspired new scholarly communications models and types of platforms.

Q: What do you regard as your greatest personal achievements during this time?

A: I am proud to have played a role in helping to make open more than 50% of the research articles published by Cambridge University Press. I also consider the launch of Cambridge Open Engage, an open research platform, to be a personal achievement. My team and I thought carefully about how an open platform might serve a wider range of researcher needs: for instance, hosting grey literature, supporting preprints, enabling more open forms of scholarly collaboration. And I had a lot of fun co-chairing last year’s AUPresses OA Committee and learning about the very different flavours of openness across the university press landscape.

Q: There is a growing feeling that the undoubtedly sound arguments I favour of OA have been a little sidetracked by politics. What is your own view? How do you think tensions can be resolved?

A: As I’ve already said, there is more collaboration now than ever before, so I am optimistic! Tensions are inevitable, but there are some heartening examples of different groups working together to address the complex arising issues. For example, the multi-stakeholder working group set up to look at alternatives to APCs; the recently-convened workshops on equity in Open Access; the upcoming Global Equity in Open Access Publishing event which will bring together institutions and funders. I believe that tensions can be mitigated if the various stakeholders accept true stewardship of Open Research by focusing on it as a tool for creating value in the research enterprise.

Q: Could you give us a brief account of your own career? How did you come to be involved in Open Access projects?

A: I was a book editor when I first started working in the OA space. We were trying to support our authors to comply with funder policies. I viewed OA as an author service when I started working on it, but I quickly became a much more vocal advocate. As manager of a portfolio of books and journals at Springer Nature, I gained insights from funder engagement, author surveys and feedback from librarians. When I started at Cambridge University Press, my role wasn’t explicitly focused on OA, but it very quickly it became a big part of my job. I have a vivid memory of travelling to Cambridge for an Academic Board strategy “away day”. I gave a presentation on the external landscape surrounding OA. It was meant to be a call to (more) action and it wound up being a catalysing set of discussions. After that, OA quickly became a pillar within the overall strategy for Cambridge Academic – and I had my work cut out for me!

Q: Looking into your crystal ball, how do you think OA will develop in the future? How will it achieve sustainability in the long term – in books as well as other published formats?

A: For journals, I think Diamond OA models will occupy a more central role. They are more sustainable than Transformative Agreements and they tackle the issues of access to content and how to publish it at the same time. Getting the model adopted more widely is still a challenge: but it’s not insurmountable if enough institutions rally behind it. Books are trickier: collective subscription models may be the way forward. We need a greater range of book models than for journals because of bibliodiversity (and hopefully in support of bibliodiversity!). Thinking beyond business models, I believe the OA movement will continue to join forces with the research reform movement. Imagine the disruption if what “counts” for tenure were to shift dramatically! While the publishing industry is starting to pay more attention to the work of research offices, relationships are not yet deep; but given the amount of funding at stake, it seems inevitable that in the future research offices will focus beyond OA compliance.

Q: Do you plan to keep on working on OA projects yourself? If so, how will you do this?

A: I hope to! I can contribute in a variety of ways: through serving on a committee or a working group; by taking part in panels and discussions; by acting as adviser to publishers working through various challenges on the road to open. I read as much as I can on the subject and attend events…in fact, I still need to finish watching the recordings of OAI13 that happened last week. Part of the reason I’ve enjoyed working on OA is because the space is constantly evolving. It keeps me on my toes!

[the interview was conducted by Linda Bennett]