Frontiers will, once again, be at the Charleston conference in South Carolina, USA this November and we’d love to see you there. As a diamond sponsor of the event, we’ll be leading and participating in a range of sessions outlined below.   

Credit: Frontiers

Looking ahead to the conference Thomas Romano, global head of sales at Frontiers said: “Frontiers is excited to exhibit once again at this year’s Charleston conference. Our Institutional Partnerships team looks forward to reconnecting with librarians and consortia directors to learn more about your specific open access initiatives and goals, and to discuss pathways and models through co-creation that will remove the publishing burdens from researchers.” 

You can email us at institutions@frontiersin.org for more information or to arrange a meeting or just drop by and see us at booth 142. 

Join us at the following events at Charleston: 

Tuesday 7 November, 11:30am – 12:00noon, Salon 1 Galliard Center Shaping the future of open access through co-creation A vendor information session led by Thomas Romano, Global Sales Manager, Frontiers and Frank Hellwig, Frontiers. 

The transition towards a fully open access publishing landscape is essential to accelerate the scientific innovations urgently needed to solve the major global challenges we face (climate change, global health, socio-economic inequalities, AI technologies, etc.). In this presentation, we will briefly introduce you to Frontiers and our core mission, as well as our library services, workflows, and business models. We will focus on how our values align with partner institutions, consortia, and funders and how we work to understand changing institutional needs and to shape sustainable solutions that support the transition towards institutionally contracted OA models (APC and non-APC). This includes the processes we use for co-creating innovative OA workflows, and management and reporting tools that aim at increasing efficiency, transparency, and planning reliability while reducing administrative time and costs. 

Wednesday 8 November, 1:15pm-2.15pm, Grand Ballroom 2, Galliard Center How transitioning and fully open access publishers respond to immediate public access mandates, and what librarians can gain from it Discussion with Sarah Norris, Scholarly Communication Librarian, University of Central Florida, Nick Newcomer, Vice President of Sales & Marketing, IGI Global, Michael Ladisch, University of California Davis and Frank Hellwig, Frontiers Media SA 

Due to changes in information and communication technologies enabling zero-marginal-cost copying of information in (global) interconnected computer networks, the opportunity of better scholarly publishing models has arisen. Public and open access (OA) mandates at institutional, funder, national and international level have been catalysts (and crowbars) for changes to take advantage of this opportunity. In part for that reason scholarly publishers are undergoing changes to flip their publishing models to provide open or public access. Twenty years after the first public/open access mandates, immediate/gold OA today makes up 45% of journal articles globally, and major policy makers like the US OSTP and the Council of the EU require not only immediate public/open access to scholarly articles but also set more specific criteria for publishing models such as transparency, sustainability, open research data, and equity. Considering this unprecedented scale of OA, further-reaching OA mandates, and these new policy criteria, this panel brings together scholarly communication librarian(s), a transformed publisher, and a born OA publisher to discuss: how different publishers are responding to these changing conditions; and how librarians can stay abreast of these changes, what they think about them, and what they can learn and gain from them. After a short introduction to the policy context and an overview of types of publishers and types of publishing models, the goal of the panel is to have a lively discussion on the core theme of the panel and to envision future publishing models and types of library-publisher collaborations, realizing the opportunities at hand to the fullest. 

Wednesday 8 November, 2:40pm-3:20pm, Gold Ballroom, Francis Marion Hotel The OSTP Public Access Guidance: After One Year, What We’ve Learned and Where We Go Next With Thomas Ciavarella, Frontiers Media SA Daniel Sepulveda, Senior Vice President; Former U.S. Ambassador on Information Technology, Platinum Advisor, Torsten Reimer, Dean of the University Library, University of Chicago, Michele Avissar-Whiting, Program Officer, Howard Hughes Medical Institute 

The Nelson Memo — the August 2022 OSTP guidelines on immediate public access to federally funded research — has landed heavily, if not totally unexpectedly, in scholarly, governmental, and academic circles. Interpreting the guidelines has given rise to a succession of listening sessions, requests for information, and public comment periods. And with a new report from Coalition S lamenting the sluggish state of journal transformation, it’s no exaggeration that the transition to open access has reached a new level of decision-making, head-scratching, and finger-pointing. As a follow-up to the 2022 Charleston session (“The OSTP Public Access Guidance: Headlines, Details, and Impact”), this conversation brings together librarians reflecting the views of federal agencies, universities, and consortia, along with funder representatives and policy advocates. We’ll review not only the scope and limits of the Nelson Memo but the early successes of implementation as well. And we’ll focus on the next steps and challenges that key stakeholders should consider in 2024. 

Thursday 9 November, 11:15am – 11.55am, Grand Ballroom 1, Galliard Center What have you done for me lately?  Changing Library-Publisher Relationships in an evolving OA World With Lori Carlin, Chief Commercial Officer, Delta Think, Young Lee, Marketing and Library Relations Manager, Berghahn Books, Sharla Lair, Senior Strategist, Open Access and Scholarly Communication Initiatives, Lyrasis, Allison Langham-Putrow, University of Minnesota Libraries, Julia Kostova, Frontiers Media SA 

An increasing focus on new OA models is changing the way that libraries and publishers work together. A few years ago, it might have seemed like the relationship would be simplified, but that has not proved to be the case. From negotiating and tracking traditional licenses and subscriptions, efforts has shifted to more complex agreements, including membership or discount models, Subscribe2Open arrangements, and support for other diamond models. A lot of the required work hasn’t gone away—as there is still a need to demonstrate that library resources are spent well—and new criteria such as demonstrated impact on campus have been added into the mix. From their side, publishers must still provide usage reports, note DEI benchmarking and progress, all the while committing to the protection of research integrity through numerous new policies around data management, Conflicts of Interest, and the ongoing battle to detect bad actors. Undoubtedly, times have changed, but the importance of libraries and publishers working hand in hand remains. Join us to learn what mechanisms are still working nicely and what still needs more work to get things right!