The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is funding 24 projects that are working to make Open Access the standard for scientific publishing in academic and research practice. The aim of the programme is to create a "living Open Access culture". An important aspect of such a shared culture is the networking of the various projects. Therefore, the KOMET team met with representatives from the other projects for a one-day workshop in early October 2024. The networking event included presentations from all the projects in six clusters. We felt right at home in the "Openness of data, sources and tools" cluster, where the team members Tom and Zeynep presented our plans and current state of work, see our slides here on Zenodo. After a delicious lunch, participants broke into several groups for a World Café-style discussion on topical issues such as collaborative infrastructures for scholarly publishing or going beyond Open Access for the benefit of the general public.
The event was a success for us. We took the opportunity to network with old and potential collaborators and to improve our understanding of the overall state and needs of the German Open Access community. Particularly as we have our own bubble of technologically minded and enthusiastic infrastructure builders, it was good to connect with representatives from publishers and libraries who need to maintain their services while transitioning to new publishing and funding models. The broader discussion of issues for a vibrant and lived Open Access culture gave us new ideas for our work and can hopefully provide useful input for future calls for proposals by BMBF.
See also our event thread on Mastodon: https://openbiblio.social/@komet/113230860298249330