The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) has committed $170,000 in new investments to three community‑led open scholarly infrastructure initiatives: the Open Journal Collective (OJC), OAPEN, and the LYRASIS Open Access Community Investment Program (OACIP). The funding reflects CRL’s focus on sustainable, community-governed infrastructure that supports equitable access to research without financial barriers.
CRL has long collaborated with research libraries to build, preserve, and provide access to shared collections. As scholarly communication evolves, the organization is extending this collaborative model by investing in community‑owned infrastructure that enables research, publishing, and long‑term access to scholarship.
Jacob Nadal, President of CRL, noted that these investments demonstrate how collective action allows libraries to achieve outcomes that would be difficult individually. He emphasized that the CRL network continues to build on its tradition of shared investment to sustain access to research materials.
The funding supports three initiatives. CRL will serve as an institutional supporter of the Open Journal Collective, which sustains diamond open access journals through collective library investment. It will also contribute to OAPEN, which provides unrestricted access to more than 40,000 peer‑reviewed scholarly books in the humanities and social sciences. In addition, CRL will participate in OACIP, a collaborative framework that enables libraries to collectively sustain open scholarly infrastructure and publishing initiatives. Through this program, CRL’s support will help maintain three years of access to nine diamond open access journals across multiple disciplines.
These investments align with CRL’s broader strategic direction, complementing collaborative licensing, collection development, and preservation with targeted support for shared scholarly infrastructure. The initiative reinforces the value of collective action and contributes to a more sustainable future for scholarly communication.
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