37 Association of Research Libraries Research Library Issues 302 2021 across an entire library budget—people, collections, technology, and services—are diffuse and difficult to capture. While the academic library community has grappled with “The 2.5% Commitment” over the past five years and wondered whether it was the right target, the community also struggled with how to measure contributions to open services. In 2020, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) undertook a study of its members’ contributions to open initiatives, including services, staff, and infrastructure.8 The study’s findings are instructive for library leaders and for the community: Staff: By far, the largest category of investment is in local staff, with an average of 74% of the libraries’ open investments going toward salaries. On average, respondent libraries have about 7 FTEs working in open activities, scattered across a number of areas: digitized content, scholarly communications, open repositories, and research data management (including staff contributing to the national Portage project). Content: The second largest category of spending on open were funds directed to publishers through several means: consortial licences via the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) or, in Ontario, the regional association Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) via Scholars Portal, institutional membership with open access publishers, and payment of article processing charges (APCs). This amounted to an average of 14% of total open spending, or approximately $3.2 million CAD in total, 80% of which was directed toward licences with open access publishers or platforms. Infrastructure: The rest of the open investments, approximately 12%, were spent on a wide variety of other types of open services, platforms and infrastructures.9
Previous Page Next Page