Written by
Brandon Johnson, Communications Strategist
Oct. 2, 2024
Matthew Kopel smiling with arms folded

Photo credit: Brandon Johnson

In June 2024, Matthew Kopel joined Princeton University Library (PUL) as its Open Access and Intellectual Property Librarian. Kopel is part of the Research Data and Open Scholarship office and his work is focused on broadening our support of Open Access and copyright as it pertains to all forms of scholarship.

Previously a copyright specialist at Cornell University Library, Kopel’s background in scholarly communications began in his first career in editorial roles at Routledge, Palgrave, and Bloomsbury. He earned his Master of Science in Library & Information Science (MSLIS) from Drexel University and is currently Treasurer for the University Information Policy Officers.

What role do you play as Open Access and Intellectual Property Librarian? 

I wear a few hats that all fall generally under the heading of scholarly communications. Scholarly communications is one of those terms that encompasses a lot: The creation, publication, and dissemination of research output. In addition to being a point of expertise and support around copyright and publishing for PUL and the campus community, there is an explicit call in my position to develop and champion a sustainable open access roadmap for Princeton University Library. There are a lot of definitions of Open Access as well. One of the first came from the Budapest Open Access Declaration

“By “open access”…we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.”

I want to make sure that as library staff we’re acting as good stewards of both the research output of our users and the very substantial financial resources that go into both publishing and access.

Can you tell us a bit about your background and what led you to this role? 

I had a first career in academic publishing in a variety of roles, primarily doing acquisitions. I realized that the parts of it I cared about the most — enabling scholars to do their work, clearing the path for them to succeed, to disseminate their work to the widest possible audience, and making sure that all happened under an umbrella of equity — were not really compatible with the idea of ever-increasing profitability. I got my library degree and worked in a few different spaces before really diving into the world of copyright. This position neatly ties together my professional experience and ideological standing.

What is your favorite aspect of your work? 

Often for better (sometimes for worse) I love problem solving. Copyright work is often about untangling rights, or being aware of the differences between “can” and “should” in an increasingly litigious information ecosystem. Empowering peers and users to untangle those same knots, to understand and navigate risk, and to plan ahead so they don’t need to scramble at the last minute is incredibly satisfying when it all works out. Sometimes it ends up being triage and reassurance at that same last minute, and helping out as I’m able is great. I am a librarian and not a lawyer. I provide information, not legal advice. Hopefully that information will lead to best practices, will reduce risk around a project, and will lead to better access.

The Open Access side of my job is thrilling as well, but differently so, because it is less abstract, and there’s more immediately at stake. It is a much, much harder system of problems to solve because of the embedded commercial stakeholders in the research lifecycle (publishers). It can really be daunting to think about how far scholarly communications has come in the last 25 years, and how far and fast the goalposts of sustainability move with each article and book published inside of the model that extracts financial, intellectual, and human capital, while providing a questionable return on that investment back to us, along with healthy dividends for shareholders. Trying to figure out what scholarly information sharing can and should be, how it necessarily must change with technological developments, and the friction that commercial markets add to or subtract from that evolution…it is a lot. But I really can’t imagine doing anything else, because I really believe that we’re at the cusp of significant change in how we, as a global society, consider the value of research across the arts and sciences, really the academy as a whole. Maybe I’m just a big nerd, but you can’t tell me that the potential for change at this scale, a paradigm change in how knowledge is made available to our world, is not incredibly exciting.

How can members of the university take advantage of the services offered by you and your office?

I’m really amped to engage with everyone at Princeton. I look forward to providing workshops and fostering discussions for faculty, researchers, students, and anyone else who has any questions. I want to make sure folks have the tools they need to navigate copyright issues, and that they understand the big picture of open access, and the impact it has on their work. 

What are some goals for the Research and Open Scholarship team for the coming academic year?

A major priority for the coming year will be making sure that everyone participating in federally funded research understands the requirements that are coming down the pike as a result of the “Nelson Memo” from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. This policy requires recipients of federal funding to make their research available to the public, which will often be at odds with the standard terms of journal publishers (unless a substantial fee is paid…). “Public Access,” as required by the memo, is not the same thing as “Open Access,” but there are similar implications, requirements, and potentially costs to that need to be included in budgets. I and other colleagues are paying careful attention to the policies as they are finalized, and will be here to help guide folks through the changes as the requirements go into place.  

I’m also doing some big picture analyses of the costs of open access at Princeton in general. We need to be able to talk about these issues in terms of equity and ethics, as well as dollars and cents. This means understanding what value created by the time, talent, and treasure Princeton is providing to the publishers through research output, Article and Book Processing charges, editorial participation and more. We likewise need to assess the value returned to us through quality of research, and utility of the resources and infrastructure they present to us in return. It is easy to approach these issues with inherent bias of one kind or another. My goal is to be able to show data so that the conversations we have across Princeton and beyond about what sustainability could look like start with facts. 

Related events: Kopel will be leading events on Open Access at Princeton, Open Access funding, and understanding Creative Commons as part of Open Access Week in October 2024.

Media Contact: Stephanie Oster, Library Publicity Manager