Open Access and Open Data: Japanese visitors at TIB
On 31 January 2025 we welcomed two guests from Japan to the TIB. Chifumi Nishioka is an associate professor at Kyoto University and a member of the working group organized by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) in order to discuss the future of scholarly communication. She was accompanied by Mami Hayashi of Chuo University Library. They were on the way to attend the Berlin Open Access Conference and stopped over in Hannover to learn about TIB’s activities concerning open access and research data management.
The Japanese guests together with TIB colleagues at the TIB Science/Technology site.
From left to right: Franziska Altemeier, Nina Düvel, Janna Neumann, Chifumi Nishioka, Mami Hayashi, and Stefan Schmeja.
From Open Access strategies and services to consortia and contracts
Six colleagues from different departments of TIB met with the Japanese colleagues to give short overviews of their topics and to discuss them with our guests. Stefan Schmeja and Nicola Bieg presented open access strategies and services in general as well as the coverage of publication costs in agreements with publishers (for example within TIB’s Consortia). The guests had indicated specifically that they wanted to learn about the impact of the DEAL agreements on Leibniz University Hannover (LUH) and the double role of TIB as university library and national library for science and technology in supporting DEAL. While we noticed similar approaches to open access, there are also differences: Whereas Japanese science policy has put the focus on green open access so far, in Europe diamond open access is favoured in policies on the European, national and institutional levels, including the open access policies of TIB and LUH.
Research data management at TIB
Research data management was the second topic of interest. Johannes Hunold introduced the Grman National Research Data Infrastructure NFDI in general, the role of TIB in NFDI and NFDI4Chem in particular. Janna Neumann talked about the Research Data Management Services for LUH which include training and consultation and the institutional data repository. Finally, Franziska Altemeier and Nina Düvel presented the Joint Lab Future Libraries & Research Data, which is an institution at the intersection of TIB and Hanover University of Applied Sciences and Arts (Hochschule Hannover, HsH) supporting the implementation of research data management at HsH and Universities of Applied Sciences in general.
The visit ended with a tour of the library. We were very happy to meet our Japanese guests in Hannover and to discuss the promotion of open access and research data management and TIB’s services with them.