Chris Bourg, MIT From launching Open CourseWare 20 years ago to passing one of the first faculty open access policies in the US in 2009, MIT has a long history of supporting & advancing openness in education & scholarship. In recent years, open advocates at MIT have increasingly incorporated a focus on equity in our efforts, based on a belief that equitable opportunity to contribute to scholarship is as important to the integrity & usefulness of scholarship as is open & equitable access to read & use scholarly products. Chris will talk about progress & potential for understanding, advancing, & sustaining open & equitable scholarship at MIT & through collective action with other institutions.

2. Advancing openness and
equity in scholarship
A view from MIT
Chris Bourg, Director of Libraries
@mchris4duke

3. Agenda
• My agenda for Openness & Equity in science
• MIT Context
• Open Access TF 2019
• MIT Framework
• CREOS
• Collective Action
• NASEM Roundtable
• HELIOS
• Final thoughts & provocations

4. Science as
“democratic practice”
“The value (of science) derives primarily from the transparency and
public representation of its methods, by displaying the grounds of
our claims and the sources of our evidence.
This makes knowledge production a collaborative activity, a public
civic engagement with others, other scholars and audiences.”
Silbey, Susan S. 2013. “What makes a social science of law”

5. Why Open Science?
• Accelerates discovery & problem solving
• Creates data for AI/ML
• Facilitates replication and integrity
• Enhances public trust in science
• Contributes to knowledge equity
• Enables citizen science

6. MIT Open Access Task Force
“To solve the world’s toughest challenges, we must lower the barriers
to knowledge,” says Maria Zuber, vice president for research. “We
want to share MIT’s research as widely and openly as we can, not
only because it’s in line with our values but because it will accelerate
the science and the scholarship that can lead us to a better world. I
look forward to seeing the Institute strengthen its leadership position in
open access through this task force’s work.”
MIT convenes ad hoc task force on open access to Institute’s research, July 2017

7. MIT OATF: Recommended principles
To affirm that control of scholarly communications should
reside with scholars and their institutions:
• Scholars should retain copyright & reuse rights
• Scholarly outputs should be open to read
• Data, code, etc. should be open for validation &
replication

8. Recommended principles (cont.)
• Scholarly outputs should be available for computational
analysis
• Scholars should have the right to openly share
preprints with no restrictions on future publication
choices

9. OATF Recommendations
• Extend OA policy to all MIT authors
• Create OA monograph policy
• Support for sharing code, data, & educ materials
• Department-level plans for open research and education

10. Principles in Action:
MIT Framework
• Principles that prioritize openness and equity
• Endorsed by MIT leadership
• 200 external endorsements
• 10+ signed contracts, 1 impasse

11. Principles in Action:
MIT Framework
• No required opt-out of MIT or external funder policy
• Rights retention
• Auto-deposit to institutional repository
• Computational access
• Cost transparency
• Pay for services, not content

12. CREOS:
Center for Research on Open and Equitable
Scholarship
• Library based research center
• Focus on:
• Incentives and barriers
• Impacts
• Economic models
• Library researchers, visiting scholar, postdocs, students

13. NASEM Roundtable on Aligning
Incentives
• Representatives from multiple stakeholder groups
• Universities
• Funders
• Agencies and others
• Provide a toolkit of resources
• Open science imperative & success stories
• Signaling language and rubric
• Good practices primers

14. Departments and Disciplines
54 Departments, 36 Institutions, 14 Disciplines
“How do we make sure that the open science policies we
implement here will align with what our peers are doing in
their own departments? ”
“It would totally suck if we made our people do open stuff that
made it harder for them to get work elsewhere. ”

15. HELIOS: Higher Education Leadership
Initiative for Open Scholarship
• 77 colleges/universities, with senior
leader commitment
• From conversation to collective action
• Mutually reinforcing vectors

16. Final thoughts and provocations
“Equitable opportunity to contribute to scholarly literature is as
important for the integrity and usefulness of scholarship as is the open
accessibility to read.”
- MIT Libraries and Faculty Committee on the Library System on UC-Elsevier Deal

17. Final thoughts and provocations
• Amazing progress considering we have asked the least powerful
stakeholders (libraries), to take on the most powerful (publishers), with
an eye to ‘minimizing burden on authors’
• Requires collective action by and with faculty and university leadership
• Coordinated across disciplines and across universities

18. Final thoughts and provocations
Must align all the incentives for scholars and
their institutions towards open
Carrots, sticks, and sermons