Exploring career paths and roles of the open access professionals

Context/justification: Understanding the role of open access (OA) professionals, defined as individuals involved in advancing open access in research institutions, and their career trajectories is essential to ensure high-quality assistance in implementing the concept of open science in academia.

Goals and Methods: This paper aims to reconstruct OA professionals’ career journeys and explore their roles in implementing the OA agenda within research institutions.The study is guided by an interpretive framework, seeking to comprehend the experiences of OA professionals from their perspectives. We employed an explanative study approach consisting of two phases in 2023. Firstly, using a survey sent to all scientific institutions in Poland, the employment structure of OA professionals and their roles were estimated. In the second step, online in-depth interviews were conducted with OA professionals. Data were analysed in Atlas.ti using a concept-driven and data-driven thematic analysis.

Results: Participants share similar backgrounds, coming mainly from librarianship, scientific publishing houses, IT departments and academic domains. The reason behind professional engagement in OA is usually the ‘climate’ of stronger incorporation of open science in the research processes. Professionals‘ roles are nonuniform and depend on a research institution's socio-technological context. The OA cadre works on diverse domains, encompassing the production and interpretation of OA procedures and the discernment of researchers’ needs vis-a-vis open access and infrastructure services. Apart from OA activities, professionals hold other responsibilities, e.g. leading academic publishing houses, scientific work, or other librarians' duties. An essential role in the development of OA professionals is assumed by both formal and informal networks, providing mutual support and knowledge transfer.

Conclusion: By focusing on the career journeys we were able to discover diversity of challenges faced by representatives of profession that is still being constructed, as well as their agency in creating OA solutions in the institutions.