CILIP is the UK's library and information association. In this presentation to the London Museums, Archives and Libraries Group (MLAG), CEO Nick Poole explores CILIP's current position on Open Access alongside future opportunities and challenges.

1. CILIP and Open Access
Nick Poole, CEO, CILIP (@NickPoole1)
Thursday 14th December
These slides online at http://www.slideshare.net/cilip

2. “The objects of the Institute shall be to
work for the benefit of the public to
promote education and knowledge through
the establishment and development of
libraries and information services and to
advance information science.”
CILIP Royal Charter 1898
A modern, progressive professional
association supporting our sector through
a time of opportunity and change
CILIP Constitutional Documents (amended 2014)

3. Information Professionals
Librarians
Public
Librarians
School
Librarians
Library
Managers &
Assistants
Health
Librarians
Govt
Librarians
Data
Librarians
Academic &
Research
Librarians
Subject
Librarians
Other
Librarians
Information Managers
Information
Architects
Information
Governance
Managers
Information
Scientists
Information
Rights
Managers
Data
Protection
Officers
Taxonomy
Specialists
Analysts
Cyber-
security
Managers
Web
Managers
Knowledge
Managers
Change
Managers
Knowledge
Architects
Knowledge
Advisers
Chief
Knowledge
Officers
KM
Facilitators
Data
Professionals
Data
Scientists
Machine
Learning
Specialists
Data
Analytics
Managers
Artificial
Intelligence
Specialists

4. Our professional ethics
Libraries are trusted institutions because they are run by professionals.
Professionals are trusted because their practice is shaped by their core ethics.
CILIP Ethical Principles1:
 Concern for the public good in all professional matters, including respect for diversity within society, and
the promoting of equal opportunities and human rights;
 Commitment to the defence, and the advancement, of access to information, ideas and works of the
imagination;
 Equitable treatment of all information users;
 Impartiality, and avoidance of inappropriate bias, in acquiring and evaluating information and in
mediating it to other information users.
1 CILIP Ethical Principles in context

5. Committed to Article 19
Art 19. Universal Declaration of Human Rights1
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes
freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
ICHRP.org Universal Declaration of Human Rights

6. IFLA Policy on Open Access
 IFLA is committed to the principles of freedom of access to information and the
belief that universal and equitable access to information is vital for the social,
educational, cultural, democratic, and economic well-being of people,
communities, and organizations.
 Open access is the now known name for a concept, a movement and a business
model whose goal is to provide free access and re-use of scientific knowledge in
the form of research articles, monographs, data and related materials. Open
access does this by shifting today's prevalent business models of after-publication
payment by subscribers to a funding model that does not charge readers or their
institutions for access. Thus, open access is an essential issue within IFLA's
information agenda.
IFLA Declaration & Clarification on Open Access

7. What’s our objective?
The movement in support of Open Access is driven by the belief that knowledge
grows through use.
It is implicitly connected to the disruption brought about by democratising access to
information through technology. This disruption is forcing all institutions and systems
predicated on the control of access to information to reassess the dynamic and
economic model which supports them.
It is part of a wider movement (usually identified by the signifier ‘open’) to move from bounded
institutions (those which seek to contain as much value as possible within a defined institutional
boundary) to generous institutions (those whose central design principle is maximising value to
the community by maximising the exchange of intellectual resources).
The ‘rules’ for these new models are broadly synonymous with the rules of the Commons.

8. MLAG & the Commons
By their nature, museums, libraries and archives are bonded on a fundamental level
to the stewardship of and promotion of engagement with the Commons
Our policies and practice ought to be driven by our mission. If our mission is to
maximise learning and the exchange of knowledge to drive social, economic and
cultural good, then the optimal model for implementing that vision is the Commons.
“Through this work, I try to demonstrate that the Commons is not just an abstract set of ideas,
but a very real and tangible means of building a lasting, scalable, transparent, and relevant
culture sector for the 21st century.”
- On the Challenge of Protecting Collections for All. Onthecommons.org (25.05.2013)

9. 5 challenges to Open Access
The social and economic case for Open Access as a means of maximising the value
of research as a ‘Knowledge Commons’ is well-made. Real challenges are practical:
1. Market forces – quality is a ‘cost’. It requires the input of labour and in the case of research at several
points along the supply chain. If it is to be sustainable, the economic cost of this labour must be balanced
by a sustainable input of resources without ‘double dipping’;
2. Costs cannot be erased from a system – you can’t ‘wish the costs away’, they have to be accounted for.
The real question is ‘who pays’ and at what point in the supply-chain. The distinction between ‘green’
and ‘gold’ OA is a decision about where costs should fall in order to promote a stable equilibrium;
3. The disruption is recent and ongoing – markets take a long time to adjust to global disruption. The
‘market’ for the supply and exchange of research in a post-digital era has not yet had time to reach a
stable equilibrium;
4. Ecosystem-wide thinking requires trust – there are two ways in which an ecosystem adjusts to new
stimuli: competition or collaboration. Collaboration requires trust, connections and mutuality of goals.
Competition demands that someone should lose.
5. A combination of ‘global’ & ‘local’ thinking – Open Access is both a macro-economic issue and a specific
local institutional one. There’s a need for an effective combination of policy, regulation & implementation

10. Where do we go from here?
It is 5 years since the recommendations of the Finch Report were adopted by HM
Government. This is a good moment to reassess how the model is working and at
what level intervention is required.
 Gold OA not widely adopted elsewhere in Europe – others have not rushed to follow the UK Government
preference for ‘gold’ OA, which requires significant pump-priming;
 Pump-priming does not seem to be working – the structured intervention of Research Councils in effect
to subsidise Gold OA does not appear to be triggering a natural move toward a sustainable economic
model;
 Librarians face increasing costs – the increasing cost of access to journal subscriptions and other
resources is presenting significant challenges to our sector in fulfilling our responsibilities to information
users;
 Mass-digitisation & mass-curation – the provision of access at scale leads to new challenges of quality-
control, curation, enrichment and engagement at scale. Because the current economic model
underpinning OA is artificial there is a point beyond which it cannot scale (because economic intervention
is no longer viable)

11. CILIP activities
CILIP is currently implementing our 5-year Action Plan, which includes:
 Engagement with different actors across the ecosystem – building dialogue with content providers,
researchers, academic institutions, publishers and policymakers;
 Promoting dialogue on Copyright & IP policy – supporting and engaging with the Libraries and Archives
Copyright Alliance (LACA) and UK IPO on related policy;
 Building partnerships across the sector – particularly with organisations with key expertise in this area
including SCONUL and soon (hopefully!) JISC;
 Supporting best practices in individual institutions – promoting dialogue across the sector including
exchanging solutions and approaches;
 Strengthening the ethical basis of our policies – undertaking the Ethics Review to ensure we have a
defensible (and viable) position that is driven by core ethics;
 Looking to our own policies and practice – CILIP does not currently make all content available for Open
Access. We need to ensure that our own policies reflect the practice we promote.

12. A new professional association
for a new generation of
Information Professionals
www.cilip.org.uk/join