Institutionalization and Collaboration as a Way of Addressing the Challenges Open Science Presents to Libraries: The University of Konstanz as a National Pioneer

The rise of Open Science (OS) and the academic community’s needs that come with it bring about a range of challenges for academic libraries. To face these challenges, the University of Konstanz has created a competence unit called Team Open Science in the Communication, Information, Media Center (KIM) - a joint unit of library and IT infrastructure. The Team creates synergies within itself and across the library. In December 2023, it involved 12 staff members specialising in open access (OA), research data management (RDM), open educational resources (OER) and virtual research environments (VRE). It collaborates closely with other KIM departments. This submission shall serve as a best practice example for the impact of OS on research libraries and, beyond that, the impact of research libraries on universities.

To enhance and foster OS, the Team provides individual consultations, services and office hours for researchers. Here, it collaborates closely with other librarians like subject specialists and the Team University Publications. Along similar lines, the KIM offers institutional repositories for publications (KOPS) and research data (KonDATA). Beyond that, the Team provides solutions to host OA journals and analyses researchers’ VRE needs to decide on implementation options. In sum, the Team is the central OS contact point for the entire university, underlining the major role the library holds in making institutional impact.

Furthermore, the Team had the leading role in creating the University of Konstanz’ OS Policy, one of the first ones passed by a German university. This policy stands out because it encompasses various OS domains. It demands, among other things, that text publications be made OA and that research data be managed according to relevant subject-specific standards. If permissible and reasonable, it demands that research data should be made publicly available at the earliest possible time. Along these lines, the policy has a large impact on how the library handles closed access books and subscription-based journals. As a consequence, OA is pursued wherever possible, leading to the highest OA quota of all German universities. In that sense, the Team is a crucial driving force of OS in the University of Konstanz, which ties in with the library’s major role of open research transformation.

Beyond the University of Konstanz, the Team is involved in a range of national and international projects collaborating with other libraries. On a national level, they lead the project open.access-network which provides an information platform for researchers and librarians and connects the German-speaking OA community through events like bar camps. The project KOALA-AV supports libraries in establishing consortial solutions for financing Diamond OA publications. Moreover, the Team is involved in the federal state initiative for RDM in Baden-Württemberg (bwFDM). Here, the Team is in charge of forschungsdaten.info, the German-speaking countries’ leading RDM information platform, which will be offered in English within the next years. Internationally, the Team cooperates with librarians and other OS professionals from the European Reform University Alliance (ERUA) and the European University for Well-Being (EUniWell), establishing formats for best practice exchange, such as monthly OS Meet-Ups.