Harvard Library is pleased to announce Yuan Li’s appointment as University Scholarly Communication Officer and Director of Open Scholarship and Research Data Services in Harvard Library. Yuan brings to this position a unique combination of experience in both scholarly communication and research data services, as well as a passion for advancing open data, open access, and open education. She began her role on September 11, 2023.
Harvard is an established leader in open access. The department of Open Scholarship and Research Data Services supports Harvard Library’s aspirations, on behalf of researchers, to be global leaders in expanding world knowledge and intellectual exploration through the creation, promotion, and support of new and existing models of sharing research outputs. Its focus is on shifting the information landscape towards a more equitable, diverse ecosystem of trustworthy resources, where impactful research is freely available to all who need it.
With Yuan at its head, Open Scholarship and Research Data Services offers, and aids other units in providing, custom support to researchers across the lifecycle of their research outputs. They support the open-access policies adopted by faculty at every Harvard school, advise on the orderly deposit and archiving of research outputs in the most appropriate repository or repositories, and promote standards in metadata schema and description practices to enhance discovery. Additionally, they investigate and implement new models for scholarly publishing, including services and infrastructure that leverage current repository work. They collaborate with peers to design forward-looking repository models to provide open access to scholarship.
Yuan comes to Harvard from Princeton, where she served as the Scholarly Communications Librarian, leading and managing Princeton University Library’s efforts in scholarly communication innovations and reforms. During her tenure she established the Scholarly Communications Office and launched several open-access programs and services, including the Princeton Open Access Repository, Princeton Open Access Publication Fund Program, Princeton Open Access Publishing Program, and PUL Copyright Services. She also helped establish the groundwork for Princeton Research Data Services, which evolved into a robust program that provides data curation, data education, and open data services.
Yuan currently serves on the SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) Steering Committee, sharing the organization’s belief that knowledge and education should be open by default and equitable by design. She holds a master’s degree in library science and information studies from the University of Rhode Island, a master’s degree in computer science from the National Computer System Engineering Research Institute of China, and a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Yanshan University in Qinhuangdao, China. Additionally, she is currently pursuing a PhD in organizational leadership from Liberty University.