Our distinguished keynote speaker this year will be Josh Bolick, Head of the David Shulenburger Office Of Scholarly Communication & Copyright at the University of Kansas (KU). With Maria Bonn and Will Cross, he co-edited Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Knowledge (ACRL, 2023) and co-founded the Scholarly Communication Notebook (SCN). A former presenter for the Open Education Network and OER Research Fellow, he advocates for open access, authors’ rights, open education, and issues related and is interested in OER as a vehicle for expanding scholarly communication knowledge and expertise.
From 2016-2022, he led open education programs at KU and remains engaged in open education advocacy in a variety of ways. He is published in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, the Journal of Copyright in Education and Librarianship, PeerJ, and PLOS Biology, as well as other venues. Josh holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and a master’s in library and information studies from Florida State University. In his free time he enjoys cycling, horror, and culinary adventures, especially tacos and barbecue.
In his keynote speech, "Open but Not Finished: What We've Won and the Work Ahead," Bolick will summarize the shift to open, examine emerging and lingering challenges, and consider how the Open Movement can continue progress toward more open research and teaching culture:
While advocating for openness can feel like a struggle (and it often is), we’ve also achieved a lot over the last 20+ years. Open access scholarship and open educational resources and practices are normalized to a large degree, and that’s worth celebrating. Still, there are significant challenges to further growth, including in hiring, annual review, promotion and tenure, and other evaluation practices and the reward structures that shape and inform them. In this talk, I will summarize the shift to open and what we’ve won, examine emergent and lingering challenges, and consider what we can do to continue pushing for more open research and teaching cultures, with a focus on collaboration and support.
