September 23, 2019
Notable scholar to address open access publishing at K-State
Kevin L. Smith, dean of libraries and courtesy professor of law at the University of Kansas, will present "Whither scholarly communications, or, has the open access movement really failed" on Monday, Sept. 30 at 3:30 p.m. in the K-State Student Union Wildcat Chamber.
In 2014, financial analyst Claudio Aspesi raised the question of whether the continuing financial health of major commercial academic publishers indicated that the open access movement had failed. Since then some publishers have embraced this idea with the New England Journal of Medicine publishing an editorial earlier this year explaining how the open access experiment has failed.
Yet openness is booming throughout the scholarly communications ecosphere. This presentation will consider the tensions we face in a complex and rapidly evolving environment and suggest some ways we can help to guide that evolution in regard to institutional repositories, publishing models, copyright and licensing, and open educational resources.
Smith is highly regarded in the field of scholarly communications. Before joining KU, he was the director of copyright and scholarly communications at the Duke University Libraries for 10 years. Smith is the author of numerous articles and books on the impact of copyright law and the internet on scholarly research including "Owning and Using Scholarship: An IP Handbook for Teachers and Researchers" published in 2013 and "Coaching Copyright" with Erin Ellis published in 2019.
His talk is a part of K-State Libraries' Publishing, Access, and the Future of Academic Publishing series, which explores the serials crisis and actions the K-State community can take.