Open SEAS: Open Sustainable and Equitable Access to Scholarship

What is the value of “open” to you? If your answer is something like, “Well, I do like when I can easily find and access an article…” then let me introduce you to a whole hidden world of open infrastructure that is operating “under the surface.”

While Google Scholar is certainly wide-reaching with its army of web-crawling bots and search algorithms, it may get more credit than it deserves for making research articles findable and available for you to use–as it also harnesses the power of a hidden open infrastructure that makes your finding and reading “the article you’ve been looking for” possible. It turns out that the article

• was findable because of open metadata standards used, 
• may be retrieved from another system through the use of an open API (application programming interface), and
• may be housed in a repository built on open source software. 

Depending on choices of the article's creator and publisher, the article may have also benefited from the use of open authoring tools (think citation and annotation tools) and open publishing tools.

Just like when we turn on a faucet and expect water to flow out, I think most of us do not think about all of the hidden infrastructure of pipes that brings that clean water, ready for use, from its source. So too, many of our interactions with scholarly research on the web are thanks to a hidden infrastructure of “open.” 

What is Open Infrastructure?

Let’s step back and define, what is meant by “open infrastructure”? Infrastructure can be defined as underlying technology and systems. “Open” is a little squishier, but generally, describing something that is available for all to participate in and access. With “open infrastructure” this can also incorporate aspects of shared community governance with a focus on providing open access content, in addition to the open source software that it is built on.

What are these “open infrastructure tools"? Take a look at Invest in Open Infrastructure: Infra Finder as a non-exhaustive list and resource to discover open tools. IOI leads the way to document and investigate the value and breadth of open infrastructure in the research ecosystem. Their 2024 State of Open Infrastructure Report looks at current states, trends, and influences such as interdependencies between infrastructures (for example, a persistent identifier can be part of the metadata that is shared by an open repository via open protocols…)

A “Public Good”

While we often treat the city water supply and infrastructure as a “public good” that is freely available, city fees and taxes are the true funding source for this resource that often “just works.” I think that open infrastructure in research is also often treated as a “public good” without thought to how that resource stays maintained. It is not until our favorite open tool moves to a fee structure out of necessity, or disappears completely, that we realize that open≠free. A cost remains in maintaining the infrastructure.

While many infrastructures get their footing through large grant funders, the move to sustainability beyond grant funding becomes a major challenge. Some infrastructures stay afloat through community support for continuous maintenance and development (eg DSpace repository), some have institutional support (eg OJS publishing software), others work as a nonprofit entity gathering support from a variety of sources such as contributions (Dryad) and through service revenue models that supplement the infrastructure platform (PREreview).

How Do YOU Use Open Infrastructure?

As you embark on your next research project, I hope this simple analogy sets off some lightbulbs for you–and maybe helps you to start seeing what was once invisible to you. For instance, three Macalester affiliates, Dan Trudeau, Bill Moseley, and Paul Schadewald, co-edited the open access book Gleanings from the Field: Food Security, Resilience, and Experiential Learning, which was published by a scholar-led open access publisher, Lever Press. The open infrastructure includes Fulcrum, a community-based, open-source publishing platform, which:

• builds on the Samvera and Fedora open repository frameworks and architecture
• utilizes a DOI open persistent identifier
• integrates open metrics and metadata through OAPEN
• is indexed in DOAB, a community-driven discovery service for scholarly, peer-reviewed open access books

The Macalester Library supports open infrastructures as they benefit our community and also help to transform the publishing ecosystem by creating and maintaining infrastructures that shift access and publishing control back to scholars and scholarly societies. Library staff work to identify and actively engage with the not-for-profit organizations providing open infrastructures. More on Open Access Guide: Open Access Initiatives We Support.

Now that we have opened the hatch and unearthed some of the hidden open infrastructures of the research ecosystem, what are your uses of the open infrastructure? What is the value of “open” to you? How do you use or participate in the open infrastructure system?

These days I find myself yearning for uplifting stories—stories of people making connections and working in community on like-minded goals, of how their efforts blossom into something meaningful and useful. You, too? Then read on—

Something to celebrate

First, join me in extending kudos to three Macalester affiliates on Gleanings from the Field: Food Security, Resilience, and Experiential Learning—Dan Trudeau, Professor and Chair Geography Department; Bill Moseley, DeWitt Wallace Professor of Geography/Director, Food, Agriculture & Society Program; and Paul Schadewald, Senior Project Manager at Bringing Theory to Practice (formerly with Macalester Civic Engagement Center). They edited and co-authored chapters in this newly released open access title from Lever Press.

Gleanings from the Field is the culmination of their collaborative efforts to create ongoing, cross-campus and organizational connections through the development of a learning community–focused on food security and experiential learning:

We ultimately developed a program to bring together participants from different small liberal arts colleges in the ACM consortium, provide frameworks for understanding food security and experiential learning, and support each participant in designing an experiential learning activity related to food security and incorporating it into their curriculum.

At the end of the day, students across institutions benefit from the collective learning undertaken by their instructors and shared in this open access monograph. A collection of essays, together, these demonstrate multiple approaches to integrating experiential learning into the undergraduate curriculum, helping students to think about real-life pathways to solving issues of food security.

How did this become an open access book?

In fact, the connections that lead to this book being published and freely available on your screen spans out years earlier in a connected community-initiated story…

The story starts in the early 2010’s with a group of library directors lamenting about the state of publishing and the barriers to access of academic scholarship. Individuals from the Oberlin Group of Librariesconsortia (this includes the Macalester Library) had an idea that liberal arts colleges could be at the forefront of supporting and creating innovative open access publishing of quality scholarly work.

At one of the consortial meetings, one of the Library Directors boldly proposed:

…that the Oberlin Group establish an open access press, devoted to the production of peer-reviewed books, rigorously edited and distributed in electronic form without fees.

The idea was that small liberal arts colleges generally don’t have the capacity to support a publishing program on their own like the university presses of larger institutions. However, perhaps shared support and efforts could generate a press that would reflect the values and scholarly output of the liberal arts institutions.

Years of planning and consultant research resulted in a business plan in 2015 that established Lever Press—the only open access press led collectively by a group of North American academic libraries. Read more about its history in How Librarians are Advancing Open Book Publishing at the Lever Press.

How is this different? 

The state of open access publishing is messy, to say the least. While open access publishing models open up access for readers, some continue to perpetuate inequities integrated into scholarly publishing and create barriers through fees charged to scholarly authors. Macalester Library is delighted to be one of the supporting institutional members of this open access model that breaks down barriers for both readers and authors. It democratizes the publishing process by centering the scholars, their work, and their institutions—instead of profit margins.

This is what Gleanings from the Field editors had to say about working with the folks at Lever Press:

Working with Lever Press was an outstanding experience. From the outset, their team clearly communicated expectations and formatting guidelines, and they were fully supportive of our project's goals. The peer review process was efficient and provided constructive feedback. After acceptance by the editorial board, production proceeded on schedule, characterized by clear communication from various members of the Lever Press team and meticulous attention during copy editing. Throughout, the team was responsive to our input and collaborated closely with us to produce a final product we are proud of. The book itself is visually appealing, and the open-access version is user-friendly and effectively incorporates digital media. We highly recommend working with Lever Press.

-Dan Trudeau, Professor and Chair, Geography Department

Lever Press was an absolute pleasure for us to collaborate with on this project. They grasped the importance of our initiative, facilitated a smooth peer review process, and ensured that we had a great publication in the end with quality copy editing and marketing. We especially appreciated the open access aspect that Lever Press offered as it was important for us to reach the broadest possible audience.

- William Moseley, DeWitt Wallace Professor of Geography

Want to be part of this story arc?

Today, Lever Press continues to build capacity with 7 book series and 38 titles—10 of which were published just last year. Membership counts at 48 institutions and growing. In whole, the Lever Press titles have been accessed over 40,000 times in over 150 countries—all for free! See more usage data at Lever Press Impact & Dashboard.

If you are interested in learning more, check out Lever Press’ full list of titles, consider participating in the editorial board, or find out more about publishing with Lever Press and their proposal guidelines.