This has been an ‘event-full’ year for OASPA. Besides returning to an in-person conference after a 5-year hiatus, hosting a discussion on the impacts of Plan S and co-organising an online event for book publishers in East Africa (resources coming soon), we also launched OASPA’s Wayfinder series: online seminars demonstrating, via examples, more inclusive models of open access (OA) across a wide spectrum of approaches.
When we launched the series, we did not know how the Wayfinders would be received, or if anyone would be interested. We now look back on four wayfinder sessions, 2000+ registrations and nearly 1000 participants joining us live – with many hundreds of post-hoc views.
There are so many more cases of inclusive OA publishing to be inspired by and there weren’t enough months in the year, or enough seminar slots, to showcase and cover all the examples that we would have liked to. So, yes, OASPA’s Wayfinders will continue into 2025.
As we come to the concluding weeks of 2024, and as we know the series will live on into next year, it’s worth reflecting on why we chose the name ‘wayfinder’. If you look it up online, the term has many meanings and uses, from a way of life for Indigenous Peoples to navigational systems in spaces like museums, and from ocean-voyaging mastery by Pacific Islanders to a service run by the National Health Service/NHS in England.
Whether modern-day signage, or ancient navigational methods and philosophies, what we see in ‘wayfinding’ includes: giving importance to community; caring about all users; questing and finding pathways; enabling access; seeking and connecting.
‘Wayfinding’ in OA
The OASPA Wayfinders series was launched to show, not tell; to demonstrate how OA publishing (and a transition to OA) is being achieved in ways that are more inclusive, in ways that are motivated to do better by many of the world’s scholars, and in ways that minimise disadvantage in OA publishing. There is room for improvement in all approaches to OA, and no one route can be a single ‘right way’, of course. So, the Wayfinder sessions bring to life conversations and examples about a wide range of routes and models delivering OA.
What ground has been covered? And what’s next?
Between them, the four Wayfinder sessions of 2024 have showcased ongoing approaches to broadening participation in OA publishing:
- Wayfinders #1 – Introducing OASPA’s Wayfinders: increasing equity in OA
- Wayfinders #2 – Building equity from a per-publication-charge context
- Wayfinders #3 – Dominant OA models revisited
- Wayfinders #4 – The Subscribe to Open (S2O) deep-dive
From repository-enabled OA to a pay-what-you-can-afford system, and from collective action to APC waiver funds, institutional membership pilots, and government funded OA, we heard that making OA publishing more inclusive is a common goal across a range of publisher types. The series showcased ways in which 14 different organisations – not-for-profits, charities, private companies, society publishers, university presses and aggregators – are working to make OA publishing less exclusive.
Many themes were covered and some touched on repeatedly, including questions about finding funding for inclusive OA, avoiding payment barriers to include more authors, “enlightened self-interest” to support OA, considering if each and every institution “needs to pay” and the importance of clarity in describing OA offerings. We thank all our speakers, and hope these conversations spark thinking, cross-pollinate ideas, and provide food for thought, across various OA publishing contexts.
Next year the Wayfinder series will cover more on collective action (including more strategies for OA books); the perspectives of those who pay for, fund and invest in OA publishing; open infrastructures and the many faces and facets of Diamond OA.
If you think we are missing a topic, please let us know.
We are supremely grateful to the Royal Society of Chemistry for sponsorship that has enabled OASPA’s online events (including the Wayfinder series) in 2024.
Our access models; our own wayfinding effort
As we think about inclusion and broad participation in OA publishing, it runs in parallel to OASPA’s own access models, and we are on a wayfinding journey of our own. All OASPA online seminars, (including our Wayfinder series) are free for anyone to register and attend live, or to catch-up on video playback.
Throughout 2024, attendees from over 80 countries have attended our Wayfinder sessions, with representation from all continents. On average, each Wayfinder event has welcomed attendees from over 300 unique organisations, with ~40% attendance from academic libraries and ~30% from publishing organisations. We are committed to increasing participation in all of our events, and hope to increase the country count in line with all online seminars where we see over 100 countries represented.
OASPA wants to keep our online seminars, including the Wayfinder sessions, payment-free for all attendees, allowing us to welcome whoever is interested, wherever they may be. If you are moved to help support OASPA’s programme of online seminars by sponsoring or donating in 2025, please contact Bernie.Folan@oaspa.org for details.
