Open Scholarship – a campus win-win game

Abstract

Five critical success factors for open scholarship in a university setting are discussed with reference to the world of sports and games: 1. Open Scholarship needs a lot of buy-in from many role players. 2. Open access advocates need to create value propositions for these role players based on what they need and what is important for them. 3. Appropriate answers to the numerous concerns and misgivings that have been raised by researchers, managers and readers all over the world can be found on the Internet. By being proactive these concerns can be overcome before they become barriers to participation. 4. Open Scholarship is multi-faceted: successful universities should prepare themselves to participate in all aspects or at least, if they do not have the resources, keep track of developments in all areas and ingenious applications if they want to be known as serious supporters of open access. 5. In the last century the spirit of sharing, which has always been a hallmark of scholarship, has been undermined by the commercialization of the publishing industry and the fierce competition between researchers creating a scarcity mentality. OA reminds us that research progress is best served by acknowledging that there is abundant information to be shared with everybody all over the world.