Knowledge Exchange news

Welcome to the first Knowledge Exchange (KE) newsletter of 2020.

The year has started well, so far publishing two reports and a blog post, as well as organising the first gathering of the new Open Scholarship Expert Group and the first meeting of the year for our Open Access Expert Group.

Unfortunately, due to the Corona virus outbreak, we had to cancel a promising, fully booked workshop for the first time in our history. KE will continue its activities, using virtual approaches, until it is safe again to meet in intensive workshops and organisations no longer advise to avoid international travel and gatherings.

Recently Published

KE FORCE2019 Workshop report ‘Open Scholarship and Collective Action’

In 2017, KE developed the Open Scholarship Framework, to map the considerations for Open Scholarship across a variety of scales, phases and arenas. At a pre-conference workshop of the FORCE2019 conference (Edinburgh, October 2019) we engaged with a wider group of 77 experts to test and review the validity of the Framework focusing on FAIR data aspects, Plan S developments, and infrastructure considerations.

Attendees confirmed that the Framework is a very useful diagnostic tool to analyse and discuss the benefits and challenges of Open Scholarship. No changes to the framework were proposed and helpful observations and suggestions were made. When using the framework, special attention must be given to the wide variety of meso-level actors, as well as to distinct, sometimes hidden factors at the arena-level: legal issues, power differentials, and time considerations.

Find out more and download the report from the Knowledge Exchange website.

Openness Profile: Defining the Concepts

The newly published report 'Openness Profile: Defining the Concepts' provides an extensive overview of strategies, barriers, and community needs regarding new evaluation approaches geared to openness. Exploring how the Openness Profile can enable desired openness and fairer assessment in research, research conductors and research supporting professionals were interviewed. They provided views on strategies, mandates, skills, community norms, appraisals/evaluations, non-individual profiles, barriers, incentives, and feedback on the OP concept itself.

We found that the Openness Profile could serve in performance reviews, informing decision making or creating incentives/metrics at their organization. Interviewees revealed that there is a frustration with current incentive structures and cultural inertia is very common; openness is not currently discussed in detail in interviewees' personal evaluations.

You can find out more and read the report on the KE website.

Cancellation of KE Openness Profile Stakeholder Workshop

Our next steps for this work included a stakeholder workshop, planned to take place in Leiden, Netherlands on 31 March and 1 April 2020. Unfortunately we have had to take the decision to cancel the workshop, due to the corona virus outbreak.

This is a disappointing development as all relevant stakeholders required to make the Openness Profile work 'in practice' had signed up, as well as initiatives considering engaging in proof-of-concept activities that would pave the way for implementation of the Openness Profile.

The KE leads, Expert leads and Task & Finish group for this work will meet soon to explore how we can continue to move forward with this work.

Monitoring agreements with Open Access elements

A blog post by KE expert and KEG member Frank Manista of Jisc finalizes our monitoring activity and highlights the most recent work around the transition to Open Access in KE countries.

The blog post ‘The Knowledge Exchange and Transitional Open Access for Smaller Publishers’ summarizes developments in five of the six KE countries in the light of the ambitions for a transition to Open Access and requirements formulated in Plan S, with a focus on Small and Medium size publishers.

To read the blog, titled ‘The Knowledge Exchange and Transitional Open Access for Smaller Publishers’ go here on the Jisc website.

The KE activity on monitoring OA has been running since 2017. It has added new valuable information to qualify negotiations with publishers for consortia and institutions, as well as a standard template for publishers to implement aligned with the ESAC recommendations.

Find out more and read other results from this project on the KE website

Our Work

KE Open Scholarship Expert Group kick off meeting

In January 2020 the Open Scholarship expert group met face-to-face for the first time. This group will, like the Open Access expert group does for OA, exchange on developments, propose and initiate new activities and monitor the progress of work done in the area of Open Scholarship.

The current members of the Open Scholarship expert group are Ari Asmi (University of Helsinki, Finland), Pascal Aventurier (IRD, France); Katie Drax (University of Bristol, UK); Karsten Kryger Hansen (Aalborg University Library, Denmark), Emmanuelle Morlock (CNRS, France), Hilda Muchando (Jisc, UK), Jessica Parland-von Essen (CSC, Finland); Daniel Röwenstrunk (University Paderborn, Germany); Sally Rumsey (Jisc, UK); Heidi Seibold (LMU München, Germany); Laurents Sesink (Leiden University library, Netherlands); Clifford Tatum (CWTS, Netherlands) and Lorna Wildgaard (Royal Library, Denmark).

The KE lead and co-lead for this group are Frank Manista (Jisc, UK) and Josefine Nordling (CSC, Finland).

At their first meeting the OS expert group discussed recent KE activities, KE’s Strategic Priorities and exchanged OS developments in their respective countries. They also addressed areas that future KE work may touch upon, e.g. tools within the research compendium and persistent identifiers as components for an open infrastructure.

We hope to announce new activities, initiated by this group, in the second half of 2020.

New activities starting for the KE Open Access Expert Group

After having completed a range of activities in 2019, the Open Access expert group identified two topical areas for activities that will be starting in 2020: ‘Reproducible Research Outcomes’ and ‘Small publishers and the transition to Open Access’.

The current Open Access expert group members are: Serge Bauin (CNRS, France); Juliane Kant (DFG, Germany); Frank Manista (Jisc, UK); Birgit Schmidt (Goettingen State and University Library, Germany); Anne Thorst Melbye (University of Southern Denmark); Arja Tuuliniem (National Library, Finland); Jeroen Sondervan (Utrecht University, Netherlands); Saskia Woutersen (Leiden University Library, Netherlands); Mafalda Marques (Jisc, UK); Antti-Jussi Nygard (The Federation of Finnish Learned Societies, Finland); Jean-François Lutz (CNRS, France) and Kate Amos (Jisc, UK).

The lead and co-lead for this group are Karin van Grieken (SURF, Netherlands) and Anna Mette Morthorst (DeIC, Denmark)

A proven concept within KE is that once a topical area has been identified, a Task and Finish group of experts is formed that will further scope, conduct and complete the activities.

We will aim to bring you further details on our new Open Access activities will be included in our next newsletter.

Other News

DeiC joins KE as Partner Organisation for Denmark

We are happy to announce that in January 2019, the Danish e infrastructure Cooperation (DeiC) replaced The Danish Agency for Science and Higher Education (DAFSHE) as the Danish partner in Knowledge Exchange.

DeiC is a national organisation, that coordinates Danish digital infrastructure as an umbrella for Danish universities with the vision to increase the use of e-Science.

Knowledge Exchange welcome DeiC as an excellent partner to represent Denmark and continue Danish participation in KE.

KE invited to Stakeholders meeting on OA and SSH in Horizon Europe

We gladly accepted an invitation by Jean-François Dechamp, DG Research & Innovation of the European Commission, to participate in a discussion how Open Scholarship can become the modus operandi for doing research, with open access to scientific publications as a key-element.

The mandate for Open Access in Horizon Europe was discussed in conjunction with topics that are particularly relevant to the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) fields, such as types of licenses for works in long formats (e.g. monographs).

On behalf of Knowledge Exchange, Jeroen Sondervan (Utrecht University, Netherlands) of the KE OA expert group attended the discussion on 4 February, 2020 in Brussels, together with representatives of stakeholders such as DARIAH EU; ALLEA; EASSH; OPERAS; OASPA; OAPEN and DOAB.

We are pleased and proud that our continuing work to support Open Access and Open Scholarship is recognised and our knowledge and views acknowledged.

Take care and stay healthy,

The purpose of Knowledge Exchange is to exchange knowledge, build expert networks and cooperate between partners, with special a focus on Open Access and Open Scholarship. KE has an open eye for emerging opportunities to enhance and support an open higher education and research infrastructure.

Feedback or comments on this newsletter? You can contact us at office@knowledge-exchange.info or visit our website