The Bloomington Faculty Council (BFC) Libraries Committee and IU Libraries hosted two successful town halls in Spring 2021.

Elsevier Negotiations (3/31/2021)

The first town hall provided updates on the Elsevier negotiations. IU Bloomington Libraries Associate Dean for Collection Development and Archival Collections, Marion-Frank Wilson, led the Town Hall in partnership with Ruth Lilly Dean of University Libraries, Carolyn Walters, followed by a lively Q&A hosted by Ilana Stonebraker, co-chair of the BFC Libraries Committee. Frank-Wilson provided a detailed overview of the current landscape in which the negotiations were taking place, including rising costs, journal bundling in Big Deal packages, and open access publishing.

Going forward IU Libraries will move to have a title-by-title subscription with Elsevier rather than a Big Deal package, to better manage expenses while retaining and retain access to all of the journals most frequently used by faculty. The IU Bloomington negotiating team decided this after extensive consultation with academic departments and subject-specialist librarians as well as data analysis of usage statistics and considerations of perpetual access rights.

Open Access Town Hall (4/28/2021)

The second town hall focused on the Bloomington Faculty Open Access Policy and how the Libraries support the policy.  IU Bloomington Libraries Associate Dean for Research and Learning Services, Erin Ellis led the discussion, introducing the various options available at IU Bloomington to make scholarly work publicly accessible in general and facilitate compliance with the BFC Open Access Policy in particular. Frank-Wilson then summarized the current landscape within which open access publishing agreements were being negotiated with major publishers, and introduced two new publishing arrangements with Cambridge University Press and PLOS, negotiated through the BTAA. These agreements, which cover 2 PLOS journals and over 300 Cambridge University Press Journals, allow IU Bloomington faculty to publish open access without article processing charges.

Willa Tavernier, Open Scholarship Librarian in the Scholarly Communication Department, followed with a presentation describing how the library systems support the Bloomington Faculty Council Open Access Policy. She detailed how faculty can comply with the policy when filing their annual report in the Digital Measures Activity Insight system and responding to requests for information from IUScholarWorks. She briefly outlined how faculty can also comply by taking advantage of the repository platforms for depositing peer-reviewed manuscripts and pre-prints or publishing open access with IUScholarWorks Journals or a variety of publishers under discounted or free-to-publish arrangements available through IU Libraries. Rounding out the presentations, Karen Stoll Farrell, Head of IU Bloomington Libraries Scholarly Communication Department, discussed how the Scholarly Communication Department supports open scholarship through various initiatives like its CV Service. She then discussed strategic directions for the coming year, including plans to launch IU DataCORE, a data repository currently under development.

The librarians also shared the following helpful links during both sessions:

• Mutinous librarians help drive change at Elsevier
• What's the Big Deal
• The Biggest Big Deal - The Scholarly Kitchen
• Six Questions (with Answers!) about UC's and Elsevier's New Transformative Deal
• Open Access: Policies: Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty & Academic Affairs
• Open Access Article Publishing Fund: Internal Funding Opportunities
• Library Research Guides: Open Access Publishing Support
• IUScholarWorks Open: Deposit articles in compliance with BFC OA Policy
• IUScholarWorks | Indiana University Institutional Repository
• PLOS Publishing FAQs
• Upcoming Webinar (May 10, 2021): Publish OA with Cambridge University Press
• Open Scholarship | Scholarly Communication at IU Libraries
• Open Scholarship | CV Service
• CV Service | Dr. Ruth Clifford Engs - Presentations, Publications & Research Data
• IU DataCORE
• Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem: Internal Funding Opportunities
• Indiana University Press: Open Indiana