Opening Access, Closing Gaps: Rethinking the Collection Development Strategy for Open Scholarship

This poster showcases the development and implementation of a new collection development strategy for the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences (TSHD), with a particular focus on fostering open scholarship and supporting the shift from traditional publishing models to open access. This assumes collection development as an integral part of scholarly communication, recognizing that investing in open access is central to library collections and contributing to a more inclusive and equitable publishing landscape.

The collection strategy aims to gradually shifting funding away from ‘closed’ content towards open access models. This is aligned with the newly adopted Tilburg University Open Science Framework, which expects publications to be open and encourages academics to participate in publishing activities not driven by profit motives. In the short term, the strategy focuses on open access book publishing, due to the collection needs of TSHD, an institution rooted in humanities and social science research, but also where there has been an underrepresentation of open access publishing.

The research methodology integrated co-design principles with stakeholder engagement, blending qualitative faculty feedback with quantitative tracking of resource allocation. This iterative process ensures that the strategy aligns with the evolving needs of TSHD’s academic community. Collaboration with faculty and research support staff has ensured that the strategy is user-centered and reflects the values of openness, equity, and societal impact. Additionally, the strategy embraces bibliodiversity. The ongoing iterative process has enabled continuous alignment of expectations between library services and academic staff, ensuring that the strategy remains responsive to changes in the research environment.

Data collected on new open access initiatives include both qualitative input (faculty feedback) and quantitative measures (financial monitoring of budget allocation and uptake of funding for open access infrastructure, initiatives and book processing charges). This includes the number of new open access initiatives supported (14 new initiatives), and a 14% increase in investment in open access content compared to the previous year. This investment has mostly been channeled into open infrastructure, collective funding models, memberships with open access publishers, the coverage of the production costs of the diamond open access university press, and the set-up of a book fair open access fund.

The practical implementation of the strategy has adopted the approach of balancing proprietary and open access content, paying attention to reading needs and faculty publishing practices. This has resulted in maintaining some of the ongoing expenses, but, when considering new investments, prioritizing community-driven open access initiatives. By strategically integrating the collection development framework with researchers' publication strategies, this approach not only identifies sustainable venues for researcher’s scholarly output but also contributes to the long-term viability and impact of open access publishing. Additionally, the centralized nature of the collection development budget has facilitated its practical implementation.