Negotiating for open publishing: Freeing journal articles from paywalls by Chris Banks

About the speaker

Chris Banks (FRSA) has worked in libraries since 1985, including spending over 20 years at the British Library. Since 2013 she has served as Director of Library Services at Imperial College London. She is a member of the UUK/Jisc Content Negotiations Strategy Group, Chair of its Content Expert Group, and a member of the team currently negotiating for a new UK agreement with the publishing giant Elsevier. In non-pandemic times she sings with the London Philharmonic Choir.

About the talk

COVID-19 has thrown a spotlight on the need for open rapid reproducible sharing of scientific knowledge and yet this open means of dissemination is still not the norm and instead, the outputs of publicly funded research are too often found behind costly paywalls, accessible only via the libraries of the wealthier institutions. Chris will describe the transition that is underway which will enable more publicly-funded research to be freely and globally accessible at a fair price that recognises the value that can be added by publishers.