How librarians can help widen access to research – live chat round-up

From access to data, resources to support, our panel's thoughts on how librarians are influencing the dissemination of research

Ann Rossiter, executive director of Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL)

Research discoverability is important. One of the main challenges for the library community is how we can collaborate to ensure the research that is increasingly being deposited in institutional repositories is discoverable to users. Not easy, but important.
Open access is a worry. We're going to have to pay twice, for subscriptions and for article processing charges. We are going to need the backing of the academic community to make sure that this doesn't happen.A real win would be to pay a more reasonable price for journals – prices are going up much faster than inflation.
Article Processing Charges are not a bad thing in themselves. There's lots we can do to track costs. I can understand academics' concerns about the relative costs of APCs being used to pressure researchers at the start of their careers to publish in less prestigious journals – I wouldn't want to see that happen. But at least if academics know a little bit more about the economics of this, they can make informed decisions about which publishers / journals are behaving reasonably (or not).

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