OSI Participants, Alumni & Observers

The individuals invited to participate in OSI are mostly high-level leaders from scholarly communication stakeholder groups like commercial publishers, government policy organizations, research universities, libraries and library groups, non-university research institutions, and private and public funding agencies. The idea behind this VIP club is to shorten the telephone cord—to have direct conversations between decision makers in scholarly communication so the obstacles to reform can be overcome more easily. In all, about 450 leaders have participated in OSI in some capacity since 2015.

As a public and publicly-funded effort working on behalf of the international scholarly communication community, it is vital for us to be transparent about who is helping with this effort, but also to avoid the appearance that everyone who has participated in OSI at some point is currently engaged. The most accurate description of our work is that it has progressed in stages, with different experts contributing help and perspectives at different points. Over time, the observations and recommendations of OSI have evolved from and built upon this group effort more so than from the contributions of any one individual or institution.

In order for outside observers to better understand what the individuals in OSI have contributed over time, the table below identifies various types of engagement for each individual. Everyone on this list, to the best of our knowledge, has engaged in some capacity over the last five years, where engagement also includes “simply” remaining on the OSI list (which can mean reading an overwhelming volume of emails at times). Since 2015, 60 individuals out of these 450 invitees have been removed from the public version of this list because they neither engaged actively (via conferences, the listserv, etc.) nor appeared to be receiving OSI emails (although this may not be the case—some executive assistants have been assigned the task of monitoring this list, in which case these names have been removed in error; out of abundance of caution, however, since we aren’t certain whether these individuals are still in OSI, we have removed their names from public view). An additional 18 individuals are not listed in the below table by request. Half are not listed because they have retired and wanted to reduce their email load; the other half are not listed due to conflicts of interest with their organizations or philosophical reasons.

It is important to also note the following about this list:

1. Of the approximately 370 individuals listed below, not everyone engages regularly with OSI, or currently, or at the same time, or even at all, which is why we refer to this group as “participants, alumni and observers.” In the past we’ve variously referred to the individuals who comprise OSI as members, delegates and participants, but this proved to be too imprecise. In an OSI survey (n=58) conducted in August 2017, approximately half of respondents preferred the term “participant” (compared to 29 percent who preferred “member” and 12 percent who preferred “delegate”). Internally, we refer to each other as “OSIers.”
2. All OSIers have been invited to participate in OSI with a clear description of what is being asked of them—an invitation to help OSI is not the same as an invitation to participate in a one-off conference. Some of these individuals have participated regularly since 2015, some just listen to the listserv and contribute on or off-list occasionally, and a few mostly just listen. All of these individuals, however, have been willing to participate when called upon (for input, feedback, assistance, etc.), either publicly or privately, for which we are very grateful.
3. Being included in this list does not necessarily indicate support (by the individuals or institutions listed) for OSI’s specific positions or actions.
4. There is no hierarchy within OSI whereby contributing to a paper is more important than attending a conference or contributing occasionally to listserv conversations. OSIers are volunteering their time, perspective, resources, influence and immense expertise to help improve the global future of scholarly communication. While we encourage everyone to participate, we are grateful for whatever contributions these individuals are able to make.
5. On a related note, having no check marks by a name does not suggest an absence of activity. It may mean only occasional listserv participation, or occasionally replying to direct inquiries from the list. However, the individuals without check marks are indeed receiving OSI emails and in that sense they are still “active” observers in OSI.
6. Finally, please note that titles and institutions change—individual titles and institutional affiliations were accurate at some point during each individual’s active participation in OSI, but especially for currently active participants, these titles may now be out of date. In the case of some retirees, their titles may have changed from an institutional one to something like “former,” “emeritus,”  “scholarly communication consultant” or “scholarly publishing consultant.”

About 18 stakeholder groups, 27 countries and 250 institutions are represented by OSI participants, alumni and observers, many in an official capacity (for instance, library deans who have been asked by their chancellors to represent the interests of their university). The stakeholder distribution within OSI as of end-2019 (before reconciling this list down to 370-ish participants) is approximately as follows:

Table Key:

A = OSI 2016 delegate (193 total)
B = OSI 2017 delegate (113 total)
C = OSI2018 summit delegate (26 total)
D = 2014-18 steering committee member (12 total)
E = 2019-20 summit group participant (18 total)
F = Conference organizing volunteer (18 total)
G = Author, editor or reviewer of non-conference paper (28 total)
H = Other volunteer (outreach, sponsorships, committee service, etc.) (52 total)
I = Regular contributor to listserv conversations (27 total)