Advancing Open Discussion Questions
This form offers an opportunity to scholarly communications practitioners in Canada to provide feedback on the questions generated from the Advancing Open event in May 2019. Responses from the entire community are welcome, regardless of whether an individual was able to attend Advancing Open or not. Please respond to as many of the questions below as you like.

All responses to this form are anonymous, unless you voluntarily leave your name and contact details below for further follow up by the ORWG Task Group for Community Building & Engagement. If you do leave your contact information, your responses will be kept anonymous during any reporting of results.

Other opportunities to provide feedback on the Advancing Open summary include emailing Ann Barrett, a ORWG Task Group for Community Building & Engagement member, at ann.barrett@dal.ca.
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Open Policy
Advancing Open takeaway: Current OA policies--from national funding agencies to localized university policies--aren’t enough to enact change: we must address the current culture of scholarship and the cultures of our institutions (locally, regionally, nationally).
What needs does Canada have that aren’t covered in Plan S?
How do we define the roles among national stakeholders, and what should their relationships to practitioners entail?
How do we approach conversations about integrating OA into tenure and promotion and collective agreements?
If every university with APC funds redirected that fund to another Open initiative, where should that money be redirected?
Open Technological Infrastructure  
Advancing Open takeaway: Many expressed a desire to deliberately reduce duplicated effort and focus efforts on collaborative initiatives, but current open technological infrastructure requires significantly increased support from the federal level in Canada. Sustainable approaches to discoverability and interoperability are ongoing concerns; some practitioners proposed a universal national infrastructure, while others are in favour of a coordinated system.
How can small institutions contribute to OS technology even though they have fewer resources to support large-scale initiatives?
How to ensure all researchers benefit/are served by a national infrastructure?
What resources can be leveraged to start meaningful work on national infrastructure?
How can we connect scholarly communications and IT in a meaningful and sustainable way?
How can we ensure barriers to equality in infrastructure are removed in new and existing systems?
Open People
Advancing Open takeaway: Scholarly communications professionals feel overworked and lacking the supports necessary to work effectively and efficiently. Burnout and turnover undermine local and collaborative OA efforts. The community is seeking strategies for developing an understanding of how to decolonize the Open movement and ensure that respect for and inclusion of Indigenous peoples and Traditional Knowledge is prioritized in our work.
What kind of system would we build if we started over anew, with respect for indigeneity at the centre of our work?
How can we advocate for greater support for OA and scholarly communications within our institutions, and at regional and national levels?
Open Education and Outreach
Advancing Open takeaway: OA has not yet become embedded into the culture of academia; it is frequently an afterthought within institutions and much integration of OA in the Canadian academy still needs to be done. A cultural shift is necessary to centre OA within academia, which will require increased resources allocated to OA, including staff, time, and money. Open Education and Outreach would be strengthened by organizational leadership participation and engagement in promoting open models of scholarly discourse and determining local strategies that will be most fruitful.
How do we manage library resources in a more effective manner that support and further OA? (e.g. redirecting low-ROI traditional collection investments and redirecting those funds to OA initiatives)
Can we create educational OA materials that scholarly communication practitioners can share nationally?
Can we create educational OA materials that scholarly communication practitioners can share nationally? How can the community best share those materials?
Open Workflows and Operations
Advancing Open takeaway: Scholarly communications practitioners feel a lack of structure and common objectives within the field make it difficult to be an effective practitioner. The fragmented nature of repositories means practitioners are often isolated, and duplication of work (“reinventing wheels”) is common. Practitioners reported a strong sense that library budget allocation practices do not often incorporate OA or engage the expertise of scholarly communication librarians, and instead privilege traditional “just in case” methods of resource acquisition. Participants also expressed that library budget processes, for the most part, do not prioritize the innovative tools and unique digital collections that provide the OA movement in Canada with its strongest value propositions.
What does the job of scholarly communications entail? How do we as a community define it?
What does measurable success look like in scholarly communication?
Can we use a national system to centralize some of our day-to-day tasks and decrease duplication of effort? What would that look like?
Are library schools teaching Open models of dissemination?
How do we address precarity in scholarly communications, and ensure research dissemination is seen as essential to institutions?
Closing Plenary Discussion
The plenary facilitated all-participant discussion was a closing event for participants to share their opinions on how we need to move forward together, considering the discussions and ideas they encountered at Advancing Open and in their own opinion.

Advancing Open takeaway: Current OA outreach and education approaches have not created an informed user base among faculty or the general public. Barriers to growth of OA include lack of resources to support scholarly communication practitioners, persistent misunderstandings of OA, and a lack of collective strategies, vision, and leadership.
Should we aim to make current publishing models Open, or try to rebuild the system?
How can we make OA essential to all parts of the library?
How can we make OA easier to understand and implement?
Leadership in Canadian scholarly communication
Advancing Open organizers held two ‘discuss anything’ unconference time slots and both times this was offered, entirely separate groups of participants both discussed the possibility of a national association of scholarly communications practitioners. We report these conversations separately below.

Advancing Open takeaway: Scholarly communication practitioners are interested in forming an association of professionals but have some reservations about what the association can and/or should be.
What existing models of associations and/or governance would be appropriate for scholarly communication practitioners?
How do we ensure inclusion of all scholarly communication practitioners, including those outside of academia (do we want members outside of academia?)
What kind of leadership would or should an association provide?
Would you like to discuss these issues further? (optional)
If you are interested in potentially being contacted by the ORWG Task Group for Community Building & Engagement for further follow up on your responses, please leave your name and email address below (your responses will be kept anonymous during any reporting of results).
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