Abstract

Joshua Chalifour will explore one of many ways that academic libraries can support researchers in adopting open practices. He will focus on the value of improving literacy in open licensing. Drawing from his experience as Digital Scholarship Librarian and founding member of Concordia's Open Science Working Group, he will discuss how open licensing bolsters the scholarly ecosystem and extends into public and private sectors. The rights granted through open licences have ramifications for peoples' information seeking, research, creation, and sharing practices, which underpin open scholarship. Although applying and using open access licences appears simple on the surface, people frequently misunderstand what these licences assert. Libraries can serve as catalysts for cultural change, providing essential technical and practical support for open scholarship. One way in which libraries support this is through an information literacy approach that helps people make sense of potential outcomes through conscientious decision-making around licences.