5 June 2025, 15.00-16.30 CET
(2m-3.30pm BST)
Webinar hosted by Gold Leaf, sponsored by De Gruyter Brill
The open access movement made exponential progress in the past decade, but in the last year international, national and local difficulties have slowed its momentum. The squeeze on university finances caused by the removal of government support and / or declining student numbers; the doubt cast on the value of higher education by certain influential politicians; and the geopolitical unrest created by simultaneous outbreaks of conflict in several key world regions have so diminished library budgets that librarians cannot always prioritise open access initiatives, despite almost universal agreement that support for OA should continue. How can the momentum be maintained? Two industry leaders, both strong OA advocates, share their views.
Speakers are:
Dominic Mitchell, Deputy Director and Platform Manager at DOAJ; Chair of the Board of Directors for the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and Chair of the Committee for Think.Check.Submit (TCS)
Niels Stern, Managing Director of the OAPEN Foundation and Co-Director of DOAB
The webinar is sponsored by De Gruyter Brill and will be moderated by Linda Bennett of Gold Leaf. Registration is free of charge.
For more details and to book your place on the seminar, click here.
Who should attend
Academic librarians; public librarians; publishers; members of librarian support groups; members of consortia and trade associations; academics and students interested in sustainability; environmentalists.
Dominic Mitchell is Deputy Director and Platform Manager at DOAJ. He is Chair of the Board of Directors for the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and Chair of the Committee for Think.Check.Submit. (TCS) He has previously worked with HighWire Press, USA, and BMJ Group, UK. He has been with DOAJ for 12 years, helping the organisation grow into the unique global and trusted service that it is today. His work with DOAJ is nicely complemented by his work with OASPA and TCS, giving him a well-rounded view of the challenges faced by publishers, librarians and researchers as they try to work with open access and open science.
Niels Stern is the managing director of the OAPEN Foundation and co-director of DOAB. He began working in scholarly book publishing over twenty years ago. Next to publishing he has worked in policymaking with a focus on open access and in the library sector as the director the national library consortium in Denmark. He is a member of several boards and committees related to scholarly publishing.
Gold Leaf 