Kansas State University

The Scholarly Communications Task Force was formed in September 2019 by Provost Charles Taber, Faculty Senate President Tanya Gonzalez and Dean of Libraries Lori Goetsch to coordinate a campuswide response to education, advocacy and policy around new and emerging models of scholarly communication. 

K-State is one of many colleges and universities grappling with the effects of an unsustainable scholarly communications model. Access to publicly funded research is increasingly facilitated by for-profit corporations that charge excessively high prices to institutions creating the work. Scholars, librarians, universities and advocacy organizations around the world are responding to this serials crisis with the call for open access to publicly funded research and data. The task force was formed to gather stakeholders in the K-State community to review the current landscape of scholarly communication practices on campus and offer recommendations to improve access and direct our institutional participation in the movement toward open scholarship. 

View a PDF of the Scholarly Communication Task Force report and recommendations.

Highlights of the task force's findings include a recommendation to adopt a university open access policy, an educational campaign about open access and scholarly communications, a call to continue to examine and monitor journal publishing practices and support for author pay charges as a transitional means of supporting open access publishing. Next steps include the formation of a small working group to formulate an open access policy and move it through university channels. 

The sponsors want to acknowledge the following task force participants for their excellent work: Daniel Andresen; Doris Carroll; Christopher Culbertson; Huston Gibson; Justin Kastner; Katie Kingery-Page; Brian Lindshield; Mindy Markham, chair; Ryan Otto; Suzanne Porath; Jaebeom Suh; Lisa Tatonetti; and Sheila Yeh. 

For further information, contact Lori Goetsch, at lgoetsch@k-state.edu.