The Open Access Interviews

The Open Access Interviews are a series of interviews conducted by journalist Richard Poynder with leaders, thinkers, and practitioners of the Open Access Movement. The Open Access (OA) Movement seeks to ensure the immediate, free and unrestricted online access to digital scholarly material, notably research articles published in refereed journals.

The interviews are mainly published on the blog Open and Shut? In some cases, the full interview is available as a downloadable PDF file. The interviews are being published under a Creative Commons licence. This licence permits you to copy and distribute the interviews as you wish, so long as you credit Richard Poynder as the author, do not alter or transform the text, and do not use the interviews for any commercial purpose.

The Interviews:

2020

• Community Action Publishing: Broadening the Pool (November 2020)
• Unbundling the Big Deal: An interview with SUNY’s Shannon Pritting (July 2020)
• PLOS CEO Alison Mudditt discusses new OA agreement with the University of California (February 2020

2019

• The OA Interviews: K. VijayRaghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser, Government of India (October 2019)
• The Open Access Interviews: Edith Hall (August 2019)
• The OA interviews: Arianna Becerril-García, Chair of AmeliCA (May 2019)
• eLife and my unanswered questions (April 2019)

2018

• The OA Interviews: Peter Mandler (December 2018)
• The OA Interviews: Frances Pinter (November 2018)
• The OA Interviews: Arul George Scaria (November 2018)
• "It is for publishers to provide Plan S-compliant routes to publication in their journals." (October 2018)
• The OA Interviews: Virginia Steel, Norman and Armena Powell University Librarian at UCLA (July 2018)
• OA Big Deals: VSNU embraces greater transparency (July 2018)
• The OA Interviews: Taylor & Francis' Deborah Kahn discusses Dove Medical Press (June 2018)
• Six questions about openness in science (May 2018)
• North, South, and Open Access: Jeff MacKie-Mason responds from California (May 2018)
• North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with Mahmoud Khalifa (April 2018)
• North, South, and Open Access: Mahmoud Khalifa responds from Egypt (April 2018)
• North, South, and Open Access: The view from California with Jeff MacKie-Mason (April 2018)
• The Intellectual Properties of Learning: John Willinsky discusses his new book (March 2018)
• The OA Interviews: Ashley Farley of the Gates foundation (February 2018)
• Q&A with FinELib, the consortium of Finnish Universities, Research Institutes and Public Libraries (January 2018)

2017

• Realising the BOAI vision, by disengaging from voluntary servitude. Q&A with Florence Piron, a professor in the Department of Information and Communication at Laval University in Quebec (December 2017)
• Realising the BOAI vision: Peter Suber's Advice (December 2017)
• Realising the BOAI vision: A view from the global South. Q&A with Dominique Babini, open access advisor at the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) (December 2017)
• Realising the BOAI vision: The view from PLOS. Q&A with PLOS CEO Alison Mudditt (December 2017)
• Open Access and its Discontents: A British View from Outside the Sciences. Q&A with Richard Fisher, former Managing Director of Academic Publishing at Cambridge University Press, and currently Vice-Chair of Yale University Press, a Non-Executive Director of Edinburgh University Press, and Academic and Policy Correspondent of the Independent Publishers Guild (December 2017)
• Achieving the BOAI Vision: Possible Actions for Realization. Q&A with Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, Professor/ Coordinator for Information Literacy Services and Instruction in the University Library and affiliate faculty in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (December 2017)
• Open Access: What should the priorities be today? Q&A with Danny Kingsley, Deputy Director of Scholarly Communication & Research Services, and Head of the Office of Scholarly Communication, at Cambridge University (December 2017)
• The OA Interviews: Judy Ruttenberg, ARL Program Director for Strategic Initiatives/Co-Director of SHARE (October 2017)
• Q&A with PLOS co-founder Michael Eisen (October 2017)
• The Open Access Interviews: Justin Flatt on the Self-Citation Index (September 2017)
• The Open Access Interviews: Rusty Speidel, The Center for Open Science (August 2017)
• The State of Open Access: Some New Data (August 2017)
• The Open Access Interviews: Jutta Haider (May 2017)
• The OA interviews: Philip Cohen, founder of SocArXiv (March 2017)

2016

• Q&A with CNI's Clifford Lynch: Time to re-think the institutional repository? (September 2016)
• The OA Interviews: Michaël Bon, Founder of the Self-Journal of Science (May 2016)
• The Open Access Interviews: Sir Timothy Gowers, Mathematician (April 2016)
• Michał Starczewski interviews Richard Poynder for the Otwarta Nauka site (March 2016)
• The OA Interviews: Kamila Markram, CEO and Co-Founder of Frontiers (February 2016)
• The OA Interviews: Mikhail Sergeev, Chief Strategy Officer at Russia-based CyberLeninka (January 2016)

2015

• The OA Interviews: Toma Susi, physicist, University of Vienna (December 2015)
• The Open Access Interviews: ScienceOpen’s Alexander Grossmann (November 2015)
• The Open Access Interviews: F1000 Founder Vitek Tracz (September 2015)
• When email marketing campaigns go awry: Q&A with Austin Jelcick of Cyagen Biosciences (August 2015)
• Open peer review at Collabra: Q&A with UC Press Director Alison Mudditt (August 2015)
• The Open Access Interviews: John Willinsky (May 2015)
• The Open Access Interviews: Publisher MDPI (April 2015)
• The Life and Death of an Open Access Journal: Q&A with Librarian Marcus Banks (March 2015)
• Open Access and the Request Eprint Button: Q&A with Eloy Rodrigues (March 2015)
• The OA Interviews: Alison Mudditt, Director, University of California Press (March 2015)

2014

• The Open Access Interviews: Dr Indrajit Banerjee, Director of UNESCO’s Knowledge Societies Division (December 2014)
• The Open Access Interviews: Richard Savory, Jisc Licensing Manager (December 2014)
• The Open Access Interviews: Dagmara Weckowska, lecturer in Business and Innovation at the University of Sussex (September 2014)
• The Open Access Interviews: Paul Royster, Coordinator of Scholarly Communications, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (August 2014)
• The Subversive Proposal at 20 (June 2014)
• The Open Access Interviews: Deputy Director General of the Bureau of Policy at the National Natural Science Foundation of China (June 2014)
• Open Access in India: Q&A with Subbiah Arunachalam (June 2014)
• Interview with Steve Pettifer, computer scientist and developer of Utopia Documents (June 2014)
• Working for a phase transition to an open commons-based knowledge society: Interview with Michel Bauwens (May 2014)
• Interview with Kathleen Shearer, Executive Director of the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (May 2014)
• Interview with Jean-Gabriel Bankier, President & CEO of bepress (April 2014)

2013

• Open Access in Serbia: Interview with Biljana Kosanović (September 2013)
• Developing a unified rule for openness: Interview with Alek Tarkowski (May 2013)
• Open Access in Poland: Interview with Bożena Bednarek-Michalska (April 2013)
• The OA Interviews: Johannes Fournier, speaking for the Global Research Council (March 2013)
• Interview with Executive Director of Rockefeller University Press Mike Rossner (March 2013)
• The OA Interviews: Professor Jack Meadows (February 2013)
• The OA Interviews: Ashry Aly of Ashdin Publishing (January 2013)

2012

• The OA Interviews: Harvard’s Stuart Shieber (December 2012)
• Interview with the Scholarly Kitchen’s Kent Anderson (November 2012)
• The OA Interviews: Ian Gibson, former Chairman of the UK House of Commons Science & Technology Committee (October 2012)
• Open Access in the UK: Reinventing the Big Deal (October 2012)
• The OA Interviews: Ahmed Hindawi, founder of Hindawi Publishing Corporation (September 2012)
• Budapest Open Access Initiative reaffirmed and refreshed (September 2012)
• OA advocate Stevan Harnad withdraws support for RCUK policy (July 2012)
• The OA Interviews: Martin Hall, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Salford, and member of the Finch Committee on OA (July 2012)
• Jeffrey Beall, University of Colorado Denver (July 2012)
• Audrey McCulloch, ALPSP Chief Executive (July 2012)
• Keith Jeffery, UK Science & Technology Facilities Council (July 2012)
• The UK Publishers Association comments on the Finch Report (June 2012)
• The Finch Report: UCL’s David Price Responds (June 2012)
• Interview with Carlos Rossel, Publisher at the World Bank (April 2012)
• Interview with Claudio Aspesi: Where is Plan B? (March 2012)
• Michael Eisen, co-founder of the Public Library of Science (February 2012)
• Alicia Wise, Director of Universal Access, Elsevier (February 2012)
• Jan Velterop, CEO, AQKnowledge (February 2012)
• Frances Jayakanth of India's National Centre for Science Information (January 2012)

2011

• OMICS Publishing Group's Srinu Babu Gedela (December 2011)
• InTech’s Nicola Rylett (October 2011)
• Wellcome Trust’s Robert Kiley (August 2011)
• WebmedCentral’s Kamal Mahawar (August 2011)
• Interview with Open Access advocate Peter Suber: Leader of a Leaderless Revolution (July 2011)
• Open Access by Numbers (June 2011)
• Bernard Rentier, Rector of the University of Liège (June 2011)
• The Demise of the Big Deal: Interview with Claudio Aspesi (March 2011)
• Vitek Tracz interview re-published with update (January 2011)

2010

• Interview with Jordan Hatcher on free and open licensing (October 2010)
• The Impact of Open Notebook Science: Interview: With Jean-Claude Bradley (September 2010)
• Preserving the Scholarly Record: Interview with digital preservation specialist Neil Beagrie (August 2010)
• Reed Elsevier: Need for a progressive divestiture? Interview with Claudio Aspesi (June 2010)
• The Changing Face of Academic Presses: Interview with Northwestern University's Sarah Pritchard (June 2010)
• The OA Interviews: Sciyo's Aleksandar Lazinika (February 2010)
• Interview with Stevan Harnad (February 2010)

2009

• Eberhard Hilf, veteran German OA advocate (October 2009)
• Matthew Cockerill, Publisher, BioMed Central (October 2009)
• Hélène Bosc, convenor for the EuroScience Working Group on Science Publishing (March 2009)
• Tom Hill, Publisher Libertas Academica (January 2009)

2008

• Tim Hill, Publisher, Dove Medical Press (November 2008)
• Annette Holtkamp, Information Professional, DESY (September 2008)
• Leslie Chan, Associate Director, Bioline International (June 2008)
• Matthew Honan, Editorial Director, Bentham Science Publishers (April 2008)
• Bill Mortimer, Research Support Librarian, Open University (April 2008)
• John Wilbanks, VP Science Commons (February 2008)
• Professor Carlos Brebbia, director of WIT Press (February 2008)
• Peter Murray-Rust, advocate for Open Access & Open Data (January 2008)
• Alma Swan, OA advocate (January 2008)

2007

• Peter Suber, de facto leader of the Open Access Movement (October 2007)
• Stevan Harnad, OA advocate and archivangelist (July 2007)
• Leo Waaijers, Manager of SURFshare in the Netherlands (April 2007)

Earlier

• Harold Varmus, Nobel Laureate and co-founder of open access publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS ONE)
• Vitek Tracz, founder of open access publisher BioMed Central
• Tony Hey, corporate vice president for technical computing at Microsoft
• Melissa Hagemann, Program Manager of the Open Access Project at George Soros' Open Society Institute
• Chris Surridge, managing editor of PLoS ONE
• Professor Richard Roberts, chief scientific officer at New England Biolabs, Nobel laureate, and Fellow of the Royal Society
• Alma Swan, co-founder and director of UK-based scholarly publishing consultancy Key Perspectives (KPL) [Part 1]
• Alma Swan, co-founder and director of UK-based scholarly publishing consultancy Key Perspectives (KPL) [Part 2]
• Catherine Candee, director of publishing and strategic initiatives in the Office of Scholarly Communication at the University of California (UC)
• Professor Subbiah Arunachalam, leading Indian OA advocate and distinguished fellow of the Chennai-based M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) [Part 1]
• Professor Subbiah Arunachalam, leading Indian OA advocate and distinguished fellow of the Chennai-based M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) [Part 2]
• Josiah Ober, professor of classics at Princeton University
• Put Up or Shut Up: Interview with Springer CEO Derk Haank (Information Today, November 2004)
• Change Is Very Exciting: Interview with Blackwell Publishing President, Bob Campbell (Information Today, September 2003)
• Mark McCabe, assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Information Today, December 2002)
• Stevan Harnad, OA advocate and archivangelist (Financial Times, July 2001)

More interviews will follow. Please note that while these interviews are made freely available to all, they are written by a freelance journalist who makes his living from writing. To assist him to continue making work available in this way you are invited to make a voluntary contribution. The suggested figure is $10 per interview, but feel free to contribute as you think appropriate. This can be done quite simply by sending a payment via PayPal quoting the email address richard.poynder@btinternet.com. It is not necessary to have a PayPal account to make a payment.

If you point anyone else to the interviews please consider directing them to this page, rather than directly to the individual interviews. If you would like to republish any of the interviews on a commercial basis, or have any comments on them, please email the author at richard.poynder@gmail.com.