PKP’s 25th Anniversary interview series celebrates the history of the Project and those involved – Part 1 features Brian Owen.
For a quarter of a century, community partnerships have been key in PKP’s work towards making scholarly publishing a global public good. Getting into the stories behind these relationships, we asked partners and community members to share what drives these relationships.
Part 1 of this series features Brian Owen, former Managing Director of PKP and previously Associate Dean of Libraries at Simon Fraser University.
We are grateful to Brian for taking the time to share his stories of how PKP came to be, how it grew, and how SFU has been a key partner of the Project since long before PKP served as an SFU Core Facility, beginning in 2023.
Let’s start with an introduction. What was your role at PKP and SFU Library?
I was PKP’s Managing Director from 2005 until 2018 and at the same time I was Associate Dean of Libraries at SFU. The former included responsibility for the daily operations and administrative support for PKP’s software development and related activities such as PKP’s Journal Hosting Services.
My “day job” at the SFU Library included responsibility for the library’s computer systems (software and hardware) and an ever changing assortment of other areas – Cataloguing, Acquisitions & Serials, Inter-Library Loan, Data Library, and Special Collections. The combined portfolios made for an interesting mix at times.
How long have you been working in this area? What have some of your milestones been?
My career as an academic librarian since 1979 always focussed on the development, implementation and maintenance of library software and systems, both proprietary and open source; and the application of information technology to creating, maintaining, accessing and preserving information resources.
In the 1990’s, my interests shifted increasingly to dealing with what was known at that time as the “serials crisis,” i.e. the ever increasing cost of subscriptions and their impact on library budgets.
Starting in 1999, I had the opportunity to become involved in the Canadian National Site Licensing Project (later evolved into the Canadian Research Knowledge Network), a Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) funded initiative to negotiate more favourable license agreements with the large academic publishers.
And in the early 2000’s, that led me to PKP because it was addressing the same issue in a considerably more transformative manner — regaining control of the means of journal production and providing free and open access to a much larger public.
What was your first memorable encounter with PKP?
I had the pleasure of getting to know John Willinsky in the early 2000’s when both of us were still at the University of British Columbia. At that time, PKP was essentially John and a graduate student by the name of Kevin Jamieson who had developed the first versions of Open Conference Systems (OCS) and Open Journal Systems (OJS).
Both systems were starting to gain some traction and PKP was evolving from a research project that had produced some very interesting software to something very different – a software suite with a growing user community. I still recall meeting John for coffee in the Fall of 2004 and talking about potential futures for PKP, particularly on ways to grow and sustain open source software like OJS.
Where did that first spark of interest come from regarding working with PKP?
For me it was the confluence of two key concepts – open source and open access – and how PKP presented an opportunity to pursue both of these.
I’d been working on the development and support of “in house” library-based software since the late 1970’s. This earlier development culture shared many of the attributes that were now becoming very popular again with the adoption of open source software development principles.
My involvement in the CNSLP initiative had certainly increased my awareness of the flaws in the scholarly publishing world and the power wielded by a relatively small number of very large commercial publishers. PKP was offering a solution for scholarly journals that could be a game-changer.
Can you describe a time when community relationships helped PKP overcome a challenge in the movement for open source and open access?
Community relationships have been a continuous and critical source of support for PKP and in so many ways. Everything that PKP has accomplished would not have been possible without the immense support we received from so many.
It would be difficult to highlight a single one, instead I’ll attempt to comment on their evolution and diversity.
PKP might not have been more than a very significant research project without the 2005 partnership that was created with the SFU Library and SFU’s Canadian Institute for Studies in Publishing. It was a happy coincidence that the three parties were located in Vancouver, British Columbia while also reflecting some constant themes of PKP’s community relationships:
a.) an enduring commitment to research in scholarly communications; b.) a close connection to the independent scholarly journals publishing environment; and c.) engagement with academic libraries who were taking on new and active roles in supporting scholarly journal production.
The development of close working relationships at the local institutional level was key to PKP addressing basic sustainability requirements. The SFU Library provided a home base for PKP and the University Librarians – Lynn Copeland who initiated the PKP partnership; then Chuck Eckman; and currently Gwen Bird – were always there with 100% support for PKP. This also provided a pathway to critical support from numerous SFU administrative and support departments – Research Services, Finance, HR, Procurement and Legal.
The local institutional connection also provided a springboard to national groups and research support initiatives in Canada. In 2006, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) submitted a proposal to the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) to establish a national online publishing system for Canadian scholarly journals in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
PKP was included as a partner in the Synergies initiative along with Érudit from the University of Montreal – a publishing platform developed for French language journals. This was the start of an enduring relationship between PKP and Érudit to develop open source software and advance open access that has evolved into Coalition Publica and continues to be successful in continuing to secure funding from CFI and Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
The development of these Canadian community relationships, although critical to PKP’s sustainability strategy, were just one national example of what was occurring around the world with PKP’s free and open source software.
Similar endeavours were emerging internationally and involved an even more diverse range of participants, national and regional consortia, research initiatives, other open source projects, and funding agencies. And PKP often had the privilege to become involved in many of these initiatives and benefit from the mutual software development and financial support that was provided.
How does the relationship between PKP and its contributors help improve the quality and reach of open source software and open access scholarship?
The development and maintenance of multi-lingual support for over 50 languages in the OJS software is a powerful example of what open source software and an international user community can accomplish.
Traditional commercial publishing platforms with proprietary software would be hard pressed to emulate this achievement. It is a perfect encapsulation of the strength and power of an open source community where members voluntarily take on the task of providing and supporting multiple language translations.
I’m also reminded of the origin of this multi-lingual functionality in OJS and how it reflects the strengths of open source software development. Around 2007, a software developer and systems support specialist at the Freie Universität Berlin by the name of Bozana Bokan sent a query to Alec Smecher (PKP’s lead developer and essentially our entire development team at that time) about multi-lingual support and if there were plans to improve it.
Alec replied it was certainly on the development list but resources were limited, perhaps Bozana would be interested in contributing some code. Bozana said she’d see what she might be able to do. A few months went by and then Alec received a code “tarball” from Bozana. Bozana’s software contribution provided the foundation for OJS’s multi-lingual support.
Since I retired from SFU and PKP I continue to be impressed by the enhancements for language support, especially around the coordination of updates and tools to improve the process for everyone.
That diversity of language support is also a key component in advancing open access to a larger public by offsetting the language barriers of many traditional scientific and research publications.
In your experience, what have you learned about the nature of community in scholarly publishing?
There are many and very different communities in scholarly publishing so it is difficult to make generalizations that cover all of them. When I was involved in national site licensing projects (aka the Big Deals) I was exposed to many of the large commercial publishers and the scholarly journals they supported.
Many of these were well established, high profile journals with healthy financial income streams through subscriptions and licensing arrangements with vendors. This was a community that viewed open access with concern and certainly had little interest in adopting an open source publishing platform when their needs seemed to be sufficiently met by the proprietary systems used by the large commercial publishers.
Of course, some of these journals have realized there are other important considerations, e.g. editorial freedom, and it is interesting to observe a persistent trend to leave the otherwise comfortable relationships they had and adopt alternative publishing support options.
On the other hand, many of the journals I encountered during my time with PKP were smaller, independent publications who for a variety of reasons were unlikely to find a “home” with a commercial journal publisher.
Their subject area was too narrow with a limited readership base; they were too new and did not fare well with the metrics and discovery services employed by both publishers and authors to determine what was deemed to be “good.” And if they were based outside of North America or Europe they had another strike against them.
These were the journals that saw open source publishing platforms and open access models as a solution to the challenges they faced in the commercial scholarly publishing sphere.
A lot has been written about the success of open source software and how heavily dependent it was on a community that realized it was in their interest to contribute and share their expertise; to work together in teams and groups; to leverage technology in a way that made it easy to surmount locations and time zones; and to realize it did not have to be about a profit margin. Many of the journals that adopted PKP software also possessed that DIY ethic while also participating as a member of a larger community.
Are there any other messages that you would like to share with the community?
I would like to acknowledge the talent and work ethic of the original core members – Alec Smecher, Juan Pablo Alperin, Kevin Stranack, James MacGregor, Michael Felczak, Bozana Bozan, Mark Jordan, Jason Nugent, and of course John Willinsky – of the PKP team that coalesced in those early years after 2005. I don’t mean to diminish the contributions of all of the other members, both past and present, of a considerably expanded network of teams and organizations, but those days were very lean and often scary times for PKP.
There was a risk committing to something without clear prospects of a continuing pay cheque; that existed in a virtual environment; was scrambling to find adequate financial support and develop sustainability strategies, and was continuing to develop software while providing support to a growing user community.
At the same time it was also very exciting and energizing to be part of that PKP team. I’m not sure if it was confidence, or just naivety, that enabled us to confront all sorts or interesting dilemmas and assume we would be able to deal with them.
For me it was the knowledge that everyone on the PKP Team was always up for these challenges and had the collective ability to surmount them. It also speaks volumes when one notices that almost all of these folks are still part of a much expanded PKP team.
About Brian Owen
Since leaving the SFU Library and PKP in 2018, Brian has become an active member of the Britannia Beach Volunteer Fire Department. He is licensed as a First Responder Emergency Medical Assistant, experienced as an Emergency Vehicle driver (including air brake certification), and trained as an External Attack, and basic wildfire/interface, firefighter. He has just finished Internal Attack training and is completing his Company Officer 1 certification.
