Good morning!

I'd like to share news of some recent milestones in the OA2020 Initiative<https://oa2020.org/mission/> and extend an invitation to participate in a unique learning opportunity hosted by the Max Planck Digital Library.

OA2020 was established at the Berlin 12 conference in 2013 as a pro-active challenge to the current publishing system in which subscription prices continue to increase year after year, hybrid offerings put additional cost pressure on institutions and, despite many laudable efforts over the past 15 years, nearly 85% of scholarly outputs are still locked behind paywalls on publication. It is a global alliance of institutions and organizations committed to adopting practices to accelerate the transition to open access. While continuing to support the development of other open access strategies, OA2020 aims to:


·        Transform the core of today's scholarly journals from subscription to OA publishing in accordance with community-specific publication preferences.

·        Pursue this transformation process by converting resources currently spent on journal subscriptions into funds to support sustainable OA business models.

·        Engage all parties involved in scholarly publishing, in particular universities, research institutions, funders, libraries, and publishers in transformative actions to achieve a rapid and efficient transition for the benefit of scholarship and society at large.
Since the Berlin 13 conference last March, at which we learned of three University of California campuses signing the OA2020 Expression of Interest<https://oa2020.us/>, five further entities of national scale have endorsed the OA2020 global initiative, joining scores of higher education and research institutions from 27 counties and 5 continents who share the OA2020 vision of making today's scholarly journals open, fully re-usable and economically sustainable:


·        CAPES, Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior, the national funding agency within the Ministry of Education in Brazil, responsible supporting the advancement of the nation's faculty and researchers



·        swissuniversities, the Rector's Conference of Swiss Higher Education Institutions


·        SANLiC, the South African National Library and Information Consortium


·        The Qatar National Library


·        SUHF, the Association of Swedish Higher Education

If your institution does not already participate in the OA2020 Initiative, I encourage you to join our alliance and endorse the OA2020 Expression of Interest<https://oa2020.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/Expression%20of%20Interest%20with%20signform.pdf>.

Signatories are encouraged to take steps in their pledge to repurpose funds currently spent on journal subscriptions to support sustainable OA business models and, in this regard, I am pleased to extend an invitation to participate in the OA2020 Transformation Workshop which will be held at the headquarters of the Max Planck Digital Library in Munich, Germany 12-14 September 2017. This intensive workshop is designed to provide librarians with the skills to create and implement their own OA2020 Transition roadmap, covering topics such as data analytics, strategic planning, negotiation strategies, transitional agreement management and electronic resource workflow efficiencies. Places are limited; further details can be found here<https://oa2020.org/news/>.

Please contact me with any queries or comments.

Cheers,

Colleen

Colleen Campbell
OA2020 Partner Development
Max Planck Digital Library
+49 160 9725 1536
@ColleenCampbe11
https://oa2020.org<https://oa2020.org/>

After 15 years of working toward Open Access, 85% of scholarly outputs are still locked behind paywalls upon publication. Join OA2020<https://oa2020.org/mission/> to accelerate the transition.


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