Parallel Session 4 – Sustainable Operation and Development I
Moderator: TBC
Location: Room 2106
4.1) Collaborating to Support Sustainable Open Access across Europe
Presenters: Joanna Ball, DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), Denmark; Niels Saaby Stern, OAPEN Foundation, The Netherlands; Sofie Wennstrom, University of Stockholm, Sweden
Diamond open access is gaining momentum within Europe as a sustainable and equitable alternative to the pay-to-publish model. The Horizon Europe projects, CRAFT-OA, DIAMAS, and PALOMERA have enhanced technical capacity and sustainability of research publications, developed standards and best practices, and addressed policy and funding gaps. In January 2025, the new European Diamond Capacity Hub (EDCH) was launched to provide ongoing resources, tools and support for the diverse community of diamond open access platforms and journals across Europe. The EDCH will be supported on a local level by a growing network of regional and national capacity centres, some of which are based within libraries, providing local expertise and advice to individual journals, publishers, and platforms. An example is the Nordic Capacity Centre for Diamond Open Access, which was created in 2024 to promote collaboration on scholar-led non-commercial publishing in the region.
This wave comes at a time when there is intense financial pressure on libraries across Europe. How can they provide support for diamond open access publishing and infrastructures within stretched budgets?
This presentation will explore how infrastructures and emerging capacity centres can work together to provide sustainable tailored advice and support to diamond open access publishers and journals. We will use the case of two community-led open infrastructures, DOAB and DOAJ, and their early collaborations with the new Nordic Capacity Centre, to look at potential models of collaboration and support.
The session will:
- Share lessons learned from collaboration between the Nordic Capacity Centre and DOAB and DOAJ
- Share insights from a regional initiative regarding stakeholder involvement and the communities’ needs related to support for Diamond Open Access.
- Provide an opportunity for libraries to reflect on their local context and explore how they can collaborate more broadly to support their own institutional publishing
The audience for this session is LIBER library directors and staff interested in supporting a sustainable diamond open access or engaged with diamond open access publishing.
4.2) Adapting Infosphère: Leveraging an OER Information Literacy Platform
Presenter: Miriam Petrilli, EPFL, Switzerland
In the rapidly evolving landscape of higher education, ensuring that students possess robust information literacy skills is crucial. Infosphère – a comprehensive, modular online information literacy training platform originally developed and released under a CC BY license by the Université du Québec à Montréal – provides a dynamic, customizable framework to help learners refine their abilities in navigating complex information ecosystems. Leveraging its status as an open educational resource (OER), EPFL library training team adapted Infosphère’s content to better align with the specific curriculum needs of bachelor’s and master’s students at our institution, EPFL academic contexts, and language and technology specificities.
This presentation will detail the process and rationale behind customization of Infosphère. We will discuss how the platform’s open license facilitated the adaptation and the revision of instructional materials to better address disciplinary nuances and student learning outcomes. By sharing these insights, we aim to highlight how the OER nature of Infosphère not only supported intellectual freedom and pedagogical innovation, but also enabled iterative refinements based on the exchanges with stakeholders.
Attendees will gain practical knowledge about the implementation challenges and opportunities encountered throughout this adaptation journey. We will explore how our team collaborated with subject librarians, pedagogical and IT experts, and internal key players to establish a responsive, inclusive, and transparent development process. Moreover, we will discuss the adjustments needed to ensure that content and navigation patterns were accessible to learners with diverse backgrounds.
This session underscores the transformative potential of openly licensed educational resources, showcasing how tools like Infosphère can be molded to meet local needs while retaining their core mission of cultivating critical information literacy competencies. Ultimately, by embracing the adaptability and scalability of OER-driven platforms, academic libraries can reaffirm their commitment to fostering equitable and meaningful learning experiences for students across all stages of their academic journeys.
4.3) Integrating Open Access Information into the Library Discovery System
Presenter: Lothar Nunnenmacher, Lib4RI (Library for the Research Institutes within the ETH Domain), Switzerland
Open Access (OA) has become the standard model for academic publishing, yet many researchers still face challenges in accessing comprehensive, up-to-date and reliable information on their OA options. Disparities in OA conditions across publishers, journals and article types, along with changes over time, such as quota applications or journal flipping, complicate the discovery process.
While libraries have implemented new systems to address these issues, they often create additional channels of information, which can confuse rather than streamline access for researchers. The Lib4RI Search Tool tackles this issue by integrating OA-related information directly into the library’s discovery system, providing a centralised and user-friendly interface. This tool aggregates search results from multiple scholarly sources and additionally provides researchers with institution-specific information on OA publishing options.
A key feature of the Lib4RI Search Tool is its dedicated journal tab, which not only displays journal accessibility but also provides detailed, up-to-date OA publishing information for individual journals. This includes (a) customized data on institutional Read&Publish agreements, (b) information on Gold OA journals, including APCs and possible funding options and (c) filtered options for Green OA relevant to our local institutional repository. The tool strives for a balance between showing the most relevant information directly while also providing links to further details.
The Lib4RI Search Tool is integrated as a search bar on every page of the library’s website (https://lib4ri.ch), providing easy access to OA information across the site. It is implemented as a Drupal module with a dynamic web page layout designed to display information in real time. Content is populated using JavaScript and APIs from external sources, while the data for institutional Read&Publish agreements can be imported very easily and always up to date via a CSV file. The beta version of the Lib4RI Search Tool went live in September 2022. As an open-source project, its code is freely accessible for further development (https://codeberg.org/Lib4RI). The tool’s functionality is expected to expand through collaboration with other libraries and the creation of a community of contributors.
By simplifying access to OA information, the Lib4RI Search Tool directly contributes to advancing open science. It enhances the visibility of OA publishing options, empowering researchers to make informed decisions about OA publishing pathways, and ultimately contributing to increasing the proportion of academic publications available through Open Access.