There is growing recognition that we need to strive for more than just openness as we chart the future for scholarly communications. A model that simply flips from subscriptions to article processing fees is highly problematic, as it will result in significant barriers to participation for authors in less well-resourced institutions, particularly those in developing countries. Additionally, there is little evidence that a transformation to article processing charges will reduce the already over-inflated prices related to publishing, nor will it lead to a more transparent, community-driven system.
While most institutional efforts have been focused on negotiating transformational agreements with publishers, COAR is working on a longer term, more innovative vision, which we are calling the "global knowledge commons". We envisage a the global knowledge commons as a community-governed ecosystem, based on a foundational content layer that is managed by a distributed network of institutions and research organizations, on which are built value-added domain, national and international service layers. In order to achieve this aim, COAR is currently identifying the social, technical and policy building blocks of the knowledge commons. To this end, it has been assembling a global coalition of organizations that share a common vision.
This talk will provide an overview of the model for a global knowledge commons, introduce the major partners that have become involved so far and discuss strategies for how best to make progress at scale.
