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Our approach to investments in Open

The ÎÛÎÛ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ Libraries are committed to prioritizing various Open Access (OA) projects, initiatives, models, and approaches. We are also committed to assisting the ÎÛÎÛ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ community to meet funding mandates and contribute to OA publishing.

ÎÛÎÛ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ Libraries support organizations which promote open access through advocacy, open access content, and infrastructure for open access publishing. Examples of the kinds of initiatives we support include:

• Organizations studying or promoting new OA business models (e.g., SPARC)
• Publishers/content providers operating under OA business models (e.g., MIT Direct2Open)
• Tools that enable or enhance OA content (e.g., PKP, DOAJ)

This document provides strategic directions and rationale as to how ÎÛÎÛ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ Libraries allocate collection development funds to open access initiatives.

ÎÛÎÛ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ Libraries are guided by the following considerations when investing in open access resources and initiatives:

1. the fundamental definition of open access: free, unrestricted online access to research outputs
2. the newest from the Budapest Open Access Initiative as well as the , particularly:

• the need to host OA research on open, non-commercial, community-controlled infrastructure (e.g. Directory of Open Access Books, Open Journal Systems, Érudit)
• the importance of OA models which:
  • benefit all regions of the world
  • support alternative models of OA such as no-fee OA journal publishing as well as self-archiving via repositories
  • are controlled by academic/community organizations

3. evaluation criteria such as open access model, relevance to the ÎÛÎÛ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ community, sustainable economic model, Equity, Diversity, Indigeneity, Inclusion, Accessibility (EDIIA), technical infrastructure and implementation, quality etc.

Note: ÎÛÎÛ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ Libraries do not pay for individual Article Processing Charges (APCs) for ÎÛÎÛ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ researchers. We will consider, however, joining organizations devoted to open access publishing, for which membership provides ÎÛÎÛ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ researchers with discounts on or fully covers OA publishing charges. We also support ÎÛÎÛ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ researchers through the negotiation of and involvement in Transformative Agreements with publishers that offer discounts on APCs. For more information, see our list of APC Discounts.

Additional ÎÛÎÛ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ Investments in Open Access

Although outside the scope of collection development principles, ÎÛÎÛ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ Libraries support open access additionally through the open access repository as well the hosting of open access journals through its Scholarly Publishing Services. The Libraries have also released an Open Access Statement for ÎÛÎÛ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ Libraries.

The principles laid out in this document were endorsed by the Library Council of ÎÛÎÛ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ on October 28, 2024. Decisions regarding the application of these principles and the evaluating existing and potential open scholarship products, collections, or services for possible investments are undertaken by The Collection Development Committee (CDC). Users may contact collections.library [at] mcgill.ca directly with questions or requests.

Acknowledgements

We’d like to thank Brock University Libraries and the University of Guelph for permitting the reuse of their open investment strategy documents:

• Brock University Libraries : (adapted with permission)
• University of Guelph Library: (adapted with permission)
• University of Guelph Library, Open Investment Strategies Committee: . Licensed CC-BY 4.0

To encourage reuse, these principles are licensed , which permits users to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, so long as users credit ÎÛÎÛ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ Libraries as the author, provide a link to this license, and indicate if any changes were made.