The Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services (SCOSS) – helping to sustain the open science infrastructure we have come to depend upon
Martin Borchert1 1UNSW Sydney, Kensington, NSW, Australia
Abstract
SCOSS, led by SPARC Europe since 2017, has the purpose of improving the sustainability of the open science / open access infrastructure which researchers have come to depend upon. Many open infrastructures were developed using project funds. Without adequate and sustained funding, they are at risk of reduced service quality, infrastructure performance, business continuity or commercialisation.
The SCOSS model provides a trusted, community led expert governance model for the calling of proposals for funding from open infrastructures, assessment by panels of experts, crowd funding, and delivering on agreed workplans to improve sustainable outcomes.
Globally, SCOSS has secured €5.3m from 330 pledging institutions to help sustain cross-disciplinary and globally relevant infrastructures, including the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Sherpa RoMEO (JISC), Open Citations, Public Knowledge Project (PKP), Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) & Open Access Publishing Network (OAPEN), Dspace, Redalyc/AmeliCA, arXiv, Research Organization Registry (ROR), La Referencia, and Dryad. The SCOSS infrastructure family is provided with business development support.
In Australia and Aotearoa / New Zealand, SCOSS has partnered with Open Access Australasia and the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) for advocacy and consortium pledging resulting in 20 institutions having pledged $300k over six years, approximately matching the ANZ pledging contribution to SCOSS to the nations’ percentage of global research outputs.
Research institutions, funders and governments in ANZ can consider the benefits of pledging to support prioritised SCOSS infrastructure. ANZ infrastructure providers with a sustainability issue may wish to submit a proposal for SCOSS crowd funding and support.
Biography
Martin Borchert is the University Librarian at the University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney), since 2016, and an open access and open science advocate. He is the inaugural Chair of the Board, Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services (SCOSS), an initiative of SPARC Europe, operating since 2017. Martin was previously the Chair of the Executive, Open Access Australasia (previously AOASG), and Chair of the Group of Eight Librarians.