Six months past an initial funding appeal, the Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services (SCOSS) has surpassed a key half-million Euro milestone having received pledges for funding totalling 680,700 Euros. The initiative, which intends to provide a framework for libraries, policymakers and other stakeholders to collectively fund and stabilise a vital infrastructure of freely available open science services, selected the Directory of Open Access Journals and SHERPA/RoMEO as beneficiaries of this pilot call for community funding.
SCOSS came about due to a growing recognition of the need to strengthen and secure critical services that enable Open Access and Open Science.
Thus far, SCOSS has attracted the support of dozens of forward-thinking institutions in Europe, Australia and North America. Among these institutions leading the charge are national libraries, individual university libraries, national library consortia, as well as funding organisations. In Australia and New Zealand, more than 64 percent of all universities have pledged funding via the Council of Australian University Libraries (CAUL consortium). This is the kind of commitment the coalition hopes to see develop internationally.
Awareness of SCOSS, and likewise interest in becoming a part of the funding network, is growing. In Europe in particular, which continues to be at the forefront of Open Science policy development, multiple consortia level deliberations are currently underway.
According to Lars Bjørnshauge, managing director of DOAJ, SCOSS as a collaboration is the critical step between recognizing the importance of these services — and actually acting to help sustain them.
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