Cooperative Open University Publishing at Leiden University

A recent series of meetings across faculties organised by the Open Science Community at Leiden University (OSCL) surfaced considerable energy and desire to explore innovative forms of community-run scholarly publishing. Organisations and networks such as OSCL, the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), and the Centre for Digital Scholarship (CDS) serve as common spaces for sharing knowledge and organising mutual forms of support for all researchers and staff members at the university. In concert, Leiden University is uniquely positioned to develop new pathways for publishing scholarship in line with a vision for the future of the university.

As a result, we are issuing a call for participation in an exploratory group to reflect on current opportunities in open publishing, and examine the need for establishing a Cooperative Open University Publishing program at Leiden University. Following responses to the call, we will organise an initial meeting to set an official agenda.

The exploratory group will investigate the following questions:

• What are current innovations in peer community reviewing and publishing, and are they a way to benefit the community in Leiden?

• What digital infrastructure is available to realise a publishing operation run by researchers and staff at Leiden University?

• What social infrastructure is possible to organise stakeholders and manage the labour involved in such a publishing operation?

• How might we represent and propel the mission of Leiden University researchers and staff through scholarly publishing?

All people employed at Leiden University who are interested in joining the exploratory group are encouraged to sign up by emailing Digital Scholarship Librarian Dan Rudmann or the Open Science Community Leiden at [email protected] (managed by Anna van ‘t Veer and Zsuzsika Sjoerds).