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We are excited to introduce Mike Byer, our new Institutional Partnerships Lead dedicated to supporting university librarians. To help you get to know them better, we've prepared a Q&A session covering their background, goals, and how they plan to collaborate with the community.
I live in Vancouver, Canada with my wife and our senior greyhound, Biz. My mother worked in a public library and my house was full of books, so publishing was one of my more likely career paths. Before joining JMIR, I spent over a decade working for a university press in higher education textbook sales. During that time I travelled to campuses all over North America to meet with instructors, booksellers, and librarians. From that experience, I gained an understanding of the many challenges facing colleges and universities to meet all the needs of their stakeholders.
What motivated you to join an open access health publisher, and what aspects of this field are you most excited about?
As the son of a librarian, I understood from an early age that books and information were a community resource, meant to be shared widely. In a field such as health research, this is even more true because lives and well-being are at stake. As a born open publisher JMIR Publications has already completed the first step of removing the barrier to reading new research. I’m excited that I’m getting to work on extending accessibility by creating partnerships that will remove the financial barrier to publishing for the researcher.
What are your initial impressions of the open access landscape within university libraries?
Most of the librarians that I’ve been working with since joining JMIR have substantial knowledge of open access and view it favourably. They are speaking to me because they want to expand OA publishing opportunities for their researchers, faculty, and students. The challenge they all have is finding the funding, but I also sense that this is improving as well.
Goals and Priorities
What are your primary goals for the next six months in this role?
By the end of my first year I hope that I’ve developed strong working relationships with all of our long-term partners and that I’ve been able to cultivate some new partnerships that are proving fruitful. My upcoming trip to the Charleston Conference in November is going to be important for that relationship building. I’d like to begin to establish myself as a valuable contact for librarians, even when there’s no formal agreements in place.
How do you envision collaborating with university librarians to meet their evolving needs?
I didn’t come into this role with a lot of experience working with librarians, so I’ve been taking every opportunity to learn from our library partners. What I’ve learned is that no two situations are alike, so I need to remain flexible and open-minded about the best solution for each institution.
Are there any specific initiatives or services you are eager to discuss or implement with our library partners?
I think that we’re at an interesting moment where more research funders are mandating open access publishing. JMIR’s institutional partnerships are a great option for libraries that want to support their faculty and students through this transition to full open access while managing the growth of publishing costs.
Looking Ahead
What do you see as the biggest opportunities for open access publishers and university libraries to collaborate in the coming years?
With more research funders mandating that results be published OA, I think that librarians are going to be receiving additional institutional support to pursue publishing agreements with fully OA publishers, like JMIR. I think our institutional partnerships are effective models for expanding opportunity and choice for researchers while managing costs for institutions and funders.
What message would you like to share with the university librarians who will be working with you?
We all share the same objective: to increase opportunities for sharing research and reduce barriers to learning about it. JMIR has already addressed the latter goal. By collaborating on the former, we can achieve it more quickly.
What are you most looking forward to in your new role?
As a growing, independent publisher, JMIR is in a unique position to forge new relationships. I’m eager to build on the trail-blazing spirit I've always had, and I see a similar opportunity here at JMIR. I'd love to meet with librarians at the Charleston Conference in November to discuss how we can partner. Please feel free to make an appointment with me to connect.
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