Arlington, VA, USA: The 8th Conference on Open Access Scholarly Publishing (COASP8) was held at the Westin Arlington Gateway Hotel in Virginia on 21st and 22nd September. Organized by the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), the conference brought together publishers, universities, librarians, funders, policy makers and researchers working in the open access domain, to discuss developments, innovations, and best practices in the field. A pre-conference reception was also held the evening before the meeting to promote new collaborations and strengthen existing ones.
Several keynote sessions covering varied aspects of open access publishing featured on the COASP program, encompassing everything from financial sustainability to data management. One of the keynote highlights was a talk given by Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC. Heather leads the strategic and operational activities of the organization, focusing SPARC’s efforts on supporting new models for the open sharing of digital articles, data, and educational resources. She convenes the Alliance for Taxpayer Access and the Open Access Working Group, broad coalitions of university, library, advocacy, and consumer groups that serve as leading voices on U.S. open access policies, including the landmark National Institutes of Health (NIH) public access policy and a White House Directive. Her talk, entitled “It’s Not Easy Being Open” dealt with the challenges facing open access publishers and stakeholders in today’s climate.
Other notable keynote speakers included Hilda Bastian, Chief Editor of PubMed health and PubMed Commons with her presentation “Openness and consequences: Directions in pre- and post-publication peer review,“ and Jerry Sheehan the Assistant Director for Scientific Data & Information at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy with his talk, “Going Open: Access, Data, Science, and Beyond….” Other session types included panel discussions, “Show and Tell” presentations and Lightning Talks, which comprised speakers guiding an audience through their poster presentations.
Kuntan Dhanoya, Vice President of Business Development for Crimson Interactive, who represented Enago at COASP8, said of the meeting: “This installment of COASP tackled many of the key issues currently facing the open access publishing community and also facilitated numerous discussions on how best to build on progress already made by it. With OASPA’s continued dedication to the promotion of open access publishing and the organization of future COASP meetings, we will see more journal publishers adopt open access as a mainstream approach to delivering scientific communications.”
