ATG Interviews Joanna Ball Managing Director, Directory of Open Access Journals By Tom Gilson (Associate Editor, Against the Grain) <gilsont@cofc.edu> and Katina Strauch (Editor, Against the Grain) <kstrauch@comcast.net> ATG: Joanna, in succeeding Lars Bjørnshauge, DOAJ Founder and Managing Director, you’ve got some big shoes to fill. We suspect that has placed high expectations on you as you take on your new responsibilities. How do you plan to meet the challenge? JB: Lars is in many ways synonymous with DOAJ, and his achievements are remarkable. He started DOAJ back in 2003 as a list of just 300 OA journals and then developed the service into what it is today: a “household name” of open access infrastructure that spans the globe in terms of both its network of volunteers and influence. The new Managing Director role which I’ve taken on is intentionally very different from the role which Lars has played in the organisation. It’s essentially a new role created with the purpose of leading DOAJ into the next phase of its development as it comes of age: ensuring that there is a solid financial base on which we can operate, and that the service and organisation continues to grow and develop in line with the changing needs of the Open Access community. A smooth transition of leadership is of course critical for the organisation, and I am really pleased to be working closely with Lars in his new role as DOAJ advisor over the coming months to ensure that we capture and transfer the tremendous corporate knowledge he has built up, as well as setting up more sustainable systems for the organisation that are not so dependent on one individual. In terms of my approach so far, I have spent the first months getting to know the organization, the large global network that DOAJ makes up — ambassadors, volunteers, staff, the Advisory Board, Council, and other stakeholders — and doing a lot of listening! Over the coming months, I will be working closely with the DOAJ management team to develop a strategy for the organisation going forward. ATG: You have had senior management experience in a number of UK academic libraries. How has that experience prepared you to take on your new role with DOAJ? What is it about leading DOAJ that compelled you to seek the position? JB: In recent years, I’ve had more senior management roles both at the University of Sussex Library and here in Denmark at Roskilde University Library, part of the Royal Danish Library. That has given me experience working at a strategic level, leading larger teams, and managing budgets, which is of course important for the role at DOAJ. Open Access has also been an important theme throughout my career. I was first captivated by the concept of Open Access at a presentation I saw while working at libraries within Cambridge
Against the Grain / June 2022
(UK) back in the early 2000s. As with so many librarians, Open Access fits with the underlying values that attracted me to the profession in the first place, around opening up of knowledge to improve society. It wasn’t until I moved to the University of Sussex Library in 2009 and took on a role to manage our services to researchers that I started working directly with OA: organising Open Access Week events, developing Open Access workflows, advice services and policies, and ensuring that OA content was discoverable by library users. My experience has also included implementing research data management services, leading projects to experiment with new forms of Open book publishing and, since moving to Denmark, leading the University of Roskilde’s Open Science group. More recently, I have advocated for the cultural change that needs to happen within research libraries to reimagine themselves around open, rather than purchased or subscribed, content. In practice, this has also involved establishing funds from within library budgets to support Open infrastructures, fundamental to a successful transition to open access. DOAJ is of course one of the most important and well-established Open infrastructures, so joining the DOAJ team in many ways felt like a natural next step in my career. I’ve also been involved with UKSG for several years, first as a member and then Chair of the Editorial Board for its Open Access journal, Insights, and more recently as a Trustee and now Chair of the Board. This introduced me to more collaborative relationships with publishers and working at the intersection between libraries and publishers, a really exciting and enabling arena. This is, of course, exactly where DOAJ sits as an organisation — a key infrastructure which enables the open scholarly communications system to function and move forward. I am driven by a need to make a difference and to progress — the feeling of treading water is almost painful for me. It’s such an exciting time for Open infrastructures: there’s real momentum and acceptance of their critical role in the research communication ecosystem. On the other hand, there’s still so much to be done. The library-aligned infrastructure providers are still in a precarious position, and many are living a handto-mouth existence. There’s a mismatch here which needs to be addressed. ATG: You’ve said that you are looking forward to working with the DOAJ team to ensure that DOAJ is both sustainable and develops in line with the “needs of the wider scholarly community.” Can you elaborate? What does sustainability look like? How do you define the “needs of the wider scholarly community”?
<https://www.charleston-hub.com/media/atg/>
53
