November 28, 2023
Reporting from Charleston: Open Access has finally crossed the Atlantic!
The last time our Head of Business Development, Martin Jagerhorn went to the Charleston conference was in 2019, pre-pandemic. Back then everything was different, and for those of us, working in the scholarly communications industry, it feels like we were living in a different world. When we recall Kumsal Bayazit’s first talk as Elsevier Publishing’s new CEO, change was definitely in the air. At the time, many wondered if she was only trying to reshape this particular publisher’s image by using new words or if she presented a new vision of becoming more inclusive, open, collaborative, and transparent. Without going into the details of how things have changed for Elsevier, the industry, and the Charleston conference, 2023 delivers on this vision. From a rare mention of Open Access in 2019, it was the topic in almost every single session throughout this year’s conference.
The OA focus was combined with a significantly more international flair with many more participants and presenters from overseas. To us as a company, focusing on open access management made us very happy and enthusiastic about the future of our industry! During the first day of the conference, Vivi Billesoe, our head of marketing and communications, met with multiple scholarly communications librarians at our exhibition stand. Vistors to our stand had questions about ChronosHub and how they can manage their rapidly growing number of OA agreements, APC payments, and articles that now need to be compliant with federal research funders’ OA policies, boosted by the Nelson OSTP memo putting many of them on a par with the conditions we are used to from funders in Europe and Plan S.
In the following days, we enjoyed the many engagements during sessions, breaks, and evenings in the wonderfully warm and sunny Charleston. A big kudos to Annual Reviews, who now own the conference, and who managed the weather gods to perfection! In the days after the conference, the temperature dropped by 15 degrees and the skies opened.
Even if you couldn’t enjoy Charleston in person this year, you can join the conference online this week. Especially on Friday, don’t miss out on our case study about Open Access Management challenges and solutions in Finland! We hope to see you there, online or in person at many other excellent events awaiting us during 2024!
Martin leads our collaboration with institutions, publishers, research funders, and technology partners across the ecosystem engaged in scientific and academic publishing.
