Open Scholarship

The Libraries of the Big Ten Academic Alliance are committed to using their combined voice and buying power to participate in the transformation of the current scholarly ecosystem into one that is more equitable, inclusive, and sustainable

Areas of Focus

Our work is focused on advancing open access by building a sustainable, scalable, trustworthy, and just open knowledge ecosystem. We aim to responsibly steward our resources by directing our effort and attention to systems that efficiently and sustainably fund the progress of scholarship, science, learning, and creative arts. This includes establishing open scholarship agreements and encouraging use of the authors addendum as part of publishing agreements when needed. 

We are engaged in opposing systemic racism and other forms of inequity and oppression that affect our institutions, the scholarly publishing industry, and our society. This means including, elevating, and designing for diverse voices and perspectives by investing in systems, processes, and methods that intentionally include historically marginalized voices in the scholarly conversation and promote social justice. 

Learn more about our open scholarship strategy and efforts to shift towards academy-owned scholarly publishing.

Sustaining Values and Scholarship 

In 2019, the Provosts of the Big Ten Academic Alliance issued a statement in support of an open knowledge ecosystem, which the libraries have taken to heart as part of our core mission within the rich research and teaching fabric of our institutions.

Simply stated, past knowledge fuels new knowledge, advancing global progress and individual growth. However, our systems of sharing knowledge no longer work in support of our academic enterprise. 

…We believe the academic community must take action to better recognize and to rebalance the contributions that authors, institutions, and publishers make. Most importantly, the values of the academy toward the advancement of knowledge must prevail.