Welcome to the autumn edition of the Buyers’ Guide
Directory 2026 Available online
Collective action
Collaboration in various forms is a theme that emerges from the three articles in the Autumn 2026 issue of the Buyers’ Guide.
Whether its institutions working together or systems working together, cooperation takes on competition as the key component in fostering sustainability and resilience. Particularly as library sectors face rising costs, growing demand, workforce shortages and high expectations around digital provision.
In the first article Tom Shaw and Sally Bell from the Open Journals Collective explain that the Diamond open access environment is complex, geographically dispersed and that most initiatives are small-scale. They write that: “As a result, libraries haven’t been able to support diamond at scale, in a way that provides a viable alternative to the major commercial publishers. Until now that is.”
They say that Open Journals Collective “exists to support and ‘supercharge’ existing diamond publishing, to bring it into the mainstream as a large-scale and strategic challenge to the model of the large multinational commercial publishers,” but also that it is “building a culture of collabo- ration and partnership within the Collective, that is in stark contrast to the transactional vendor/ customer relationship in the major commercial world”.
In the second piece Jonathan Hofgartner, head of learning, teaching and assessment at Jisc explores the potential for collective action and collaboration in Further Education. Collaboration and cooperation suggest common goals which could be a challenge when, as Jonathan says, “diversity is one of the defining characteristics of FE” and that “A technology or vendor/supplier proposition that works well for one institution may not align with the needs, scale or budget of another.”
But he said digital infrastructure, productivity tools, cyber security, learner support platforms, specialist curriculum software, library and content services – “all represent important, and often significant, areas of expenditure… where collective demand can improve value, reduce risk or strengthen contractual terms and protections”.
In the last piece researchers from OCLC talk about making systems work together, specifically how improving metadata could put open access and subscription on a level playing field when it comes to discovery. OCLC’s Open Access Discovery study found that users still find open access articles “not very easy to discover or access” and the “problem is not motivation. It is whether OA is operationalised as part of the same end-to-end pipeline as licensed content”.
It also points out that solving this issue is a high priority for institution leaders saying “Rather than being a background detail, metadata now functions as the connective system that under- pins every stage of e-resource management,” adding that “it directly affects measurable value and ROI, risk and compliance around entitlements, and the credibility of the evidence senior leaders use to make funding and platform decisions”.
Rob Mackinlay 5
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