Hey man, so we're finishing up Acts chapter one this evening, so we're going to finish up the last half of Acts, so last week we looked at the part where the apostles basically stood there and Jesus who had been with them for forty days was taken up into the clouds and he was taken off the earth, Jesus rose again from the dead of course, was with the apostles and had seen, you know they were seen, he was seen of them many different times and you know it's not completely recorded every single time that or all the time and the things that he said to them, but you know in the Gospels we see some of the appearances that Jesus made to the apostles and in Acts chapter one we're going to start in verse number twelve, so we're looking tonight at the first act that they did after Jesus was taken up and Jesus went into heaven, look at verse number twelve, the Bible says and they returned and then returned they, so the angels you know they say what are you doing standing here, you know now it's time to get the work, so the first thing that they do is in Acts chapter twelve they returned unto Jerusalem from the Mount called Olivet which is from Jerusalem a Sabbath day's journey and they would come in, they went into an upper room, they're abode both Peter and James and John, Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the Centipelopheus and Simon Zalotus and Judas the brother of James, this is a different Judas of course, but again I want you to point out here just very quickly in verse number thirteen notice the order, you know notice the order that the disciples are listed it kind of starts out you know with the leader Peter you know and then it goes into you know the ones that are closest to Jesus are listed first, Jesus is inner circle so to speak and then it just it lists in that order a few times in the Bible, look at verse number fourteen, the Bible says but of course to point out Peter is listed first, verse fourteen these all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication which with the women and marry the mother of Jesus and with his brethren in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples so it wasn't just the eleven disciples and said the number of the names together about 120 so the 120 disciples at this point and then Peter starts to kind of give an explanation of what has happened with Judas he says men and brethren this scripture must needs have been fulfilled which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before concerning Judas which was guide to them that took Jesus so here he's talking about turn to John chapter thirteen Peter here is saying he's saying that that David prophesied this, David called this out that this would happen that Judas would betray Jesus for he was numbered with us in verse seventeen of Acts one and obtained part of this ministry the Bible says in verse eighteen now this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity and falling headlong a burst of thunder in the midst and all his bowels gushed out so turn to John chapter thirteen and let's look at verse number eighteen John chapter thirteen and let's look at verse number eighteen so here he's talking about Judas of course we studied that in the last couple of weeks he's saying one of us betrayed Jesus he was a guide to the people that arrested Jesus of course we know the story Judas was paid the reward of iniquity it's called in verse number eighteen but look at verse eighteen of John thirteen Jesus spoke of this as well he says I speak not of you all I know whom I have chosen but that the scripture may be fulfilled so here we see this Jesus even references that there was a prophecy about Judas who is going to you know betray Jesus he says that the scripture may be fulfilled he that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me so both Peter says that David prophesied this and then Jesus himself in John thirteen said that this is a prophecy that needs to be fulfilled now turn to Psalm chapter forty one Psalm chapter forty one let's look at this look at Psalm chapter forty one look at Psalm chapter forty one and notice Jesus said that he that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me in Psalm chapter forty one look at verse number nine this is the prophecy that they are talking about right here David wrote this in Psalm chapter forty one look at verse number nine he says yay my known familiar friend in whom I trusted which did eat of my bread hath lifted up his heel against me now this is an interesting concept here in Psalm chapter forty one in verse number nine because David is there is that he's the author of course this is you know Holy Spirit inspired this is the word of God but David is the author this is what we would call a dual prophecy in the Old Testament because David David is talking here about you know one of the you know the prophecies that applies to David himself if you look at David just writing this from his own perspective is when a hithafel you know turned against him when his son Absalom came you know came to take over the kingdom or you know performed a coup against David you know a hithafel was this counselor this you know the Bible says in 2 Samuel it says that a hithafel's counsel was like the counsel of God it was so good okay so a hithafel was this super good counselor and he turned against David and that was just it shows you in Psalm chapter 41 verse number nine says you know my own familiar friend whom I trusted he's talking about this guy he's like you know and if you read the story in 2 Samuel 15 I believe it is about Absalom taking over David's just shocked that a hithafel went with Absalom he's just like whoa what's going on there but look at 2 Samuel chapter 17 in verse number 23 the all that to say this I'm just pointing out that this is a dual prophecy and you will find these all over the Bible these dual prophecies where you know there's a prophecy that applies to that time and then it also applies to either end times prophecy or like in this case it's a messianic prophecy about Judas betraying betraying Jesus Christ look at verse number 23 so what happens is a hithafel he goes with Absalom David you know that a hithafel's counsel would just be turned to foolishness because the Bible says that a hithafel like everybody listened to this guy so David's like hey just please God turn his David was afraid of the counsel of a hithafel with Absalom because look the guy was wise he was smart and a hithafel's counsel actually was the smarter counsel when it came to you know what Absalom wanted to do but then David sent in a counselor to kind of confound that and God worked that out to where David won the big battle but what happens to hithafel so hithafel's counsel was not taken and his pride was so wounded look at verse number 23 of 2 Samuel chapter 17 so Absalom decides I'm going with this other counselor who's a spy of David as God worked it out this way in a verse number 23 of 2 Samuel 17 and when a hithafel saw that his counsel was not followed he saddled his ass in a rose and got him home to his house to his city put his household in order and hanged himself does that sound familiar so here we see you know the true dual prophecy of a hithafel betraying David you know as a dual prophecy of you know Judas betraying Jesus and that is what Peter is talking about so Peter is just calling this out so Peter's standing up and he's saying look there's one that's not among us anymore he's like now we're 11 we're not 12 but he's saying this is but it had to happen he said it had to happen because this was fulfilling scripture he's you know Peter is giving you know he's giving an Old Testament sermon he's giving a lesson on what you know a messianic prophecy that happened with Jesus now isn't this a little different Peter by the way I mean to remember Peter who's just like completely confused and just like you know he betrayed Jesus three times with the night that he got arrested and then Peter was the one even after that several disciples saw Jesus including Peter by the way resurrected Peter's just like he doesn't know what to do he's just like I'm going fishing and he takes a bunch of disciples fishing with him now as soon as we get to acts I want you to you know because now this is the Peter that you're going to see from here on forward now that we're in acts Peter's got his head on straight Peter knows what's going on Peter's moving forward and he gets it he gets it I think this is my personal opinion this is my personal opinion it's not listed in the Bible but I think that Peter had some moments with Jesus kind of like Paul had moments with Jesus and I think Jesus probably got Peter ready for this type of you know mission that he's on because we see a definite different Peter here when you read the Bible in acts and then you read the Gospels Peter's on a mission now he gets it he understands the prophecies he understands everything you know before you listen to the disciples in the Gospels you're like how come they don't understand what Jesus is talking about like why aren't they getting this you know why aren't they understanding now Peter understands go back to Acts chapter one all that to say this Peter is on you know he's on track to lead now and he understands what's going on and he is leading this group of 120 disciples and he's saying look this was supposed to happen but the point he's getting at in Acts chapter one is we're down a man we're down a man look at Acts chapter one verse nineteen it was known unto all the dwellers at Jerusalem in so much that as the field is calling their proper tongue ok okadama that is to say the field of blood for it is written in the book of Psalms let his habitation be desolate let no man dwell there in and let his bishopric let another take he's talking about Psalm chapter 69 you go ahead and turn to Psalm 109 Psalm 69 25 says let their habitation be desolate and let none dwell in their tents and Psalm 109 verse number eight says let his days be few and let another take his office all these have you know dual prophecies to what David's going through at the time to what Jesus or what Peter is talking about concerning Judas and Jesus but look here's the thing when you read Psalm 41 9 and you say you know you read Psalm 41 9 and you pretend like you were in David's time and you say okay my own friend has betrayed me that ate bread with me just like he's talking about a hithafel and then the situation with Judas and Jesus happens and then we can get it all that to say that like a lot of these dual prophecies they won't be understood until they happen you know so a lot of prophecies you know will not be understood until they're they're fulfilled so we kind of have to remember that so remember that when we're talking about end times things we're trying to figure things out look there's a lot of things that we just may not know until they happen you know until they happen then we can live back and say oh yeah that's that's what Psalm 49 was talking about or that's what you know Revelation chapter 6 was talking about it happened so keep that in mind we don't have to figure out every single thing that we're looking through a glass darkly at you know we might not understand everything until it's fulfilled okay all all that to say that but what's the point you say what's the point of prophecy if you know we don't understand it until it's fulfilled well it shows the truth of the Word of God that's for sure and when we look at the Judas and Jesus situation and we look back at Psalm 41 9 we're like oh man you know it shows that Bible is the Word of God it shows that no man could have written this book because no man could control these outcomes it shows the truth of the Word of God and it shows that the plan is way above us both with end times and you know with God sending Jesus and how he redeemed the world go back to Acts chapter 1 go back to Acts chapter 1 so back to this he's talking about how we're down a man how Judas betrayed Jesus and look we look at verse number 21 he says wherefore of these men which have accompanied us at all the time that Lord Jesus went in and out among us beginning from the baptism of John he's like this guy was with us the whole time under that same day he was taken up from us must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection and they appointed to Joseph called Bar Sabbaths who is surname justice surname just means you know his nickname and Matthias and they prayed and said that Lord God which know us the hearts of all men show whether of these two thou has chosen they may take part of this ministry and apostleship so these men must have been with them and and along with them and witness these things as well that he may take part of this ministry and apostleship from which Judas by transgression fell that he might go to his own place and they gave forth their lots in the lot fell upon Matthias and he was numbered with the 11 apostles so now we're back to 12 so what about this casting lots this kind of something that that's come up and people asked about what about this casting lots so first of all casting lots we don't really know what it was you know something along the lines of you know whether they they rolled some rock or dice or something like that or they they drew straws you know they probably didn't play paper rock scissors because that's not totally random by the way there's that there's a skill to paper rock scissors and I'll talk to you about that after the sermon I actually got my first job by winning at paper rock scissors it was not luck there's skill to it I'll explain it you know later but anyway the point is casting lots was this random thing and it was something that was done all the time it was actually something that the Lord told them to do at times turned to Leviticus chapter 16 in the Old Testament there's nothing in the old in the New Testament that tells us that we should be casting lots okay and another thing is it wasn't gambling okay it wasn't gambling because they're not casting lots for you know money they're not doing this to to gamble or bet or anything that they're doing it to help make a decision on something that's what this is used for look at Leviticus chapter 16 and verse number 8 remember the two goats that we've talked about you know in the last couple of months and Aaron show what cast lots upon the two goats look this is this is talking about God telling him how to do this Aaron is supposed to cast lots upon the two goats one lot for the Lord and the other lot for the scapegoat look at Proverbs chapter 16 so it's a way to choose something it's a way to make a decision on something look at Proverbs 16 and verse 33 Proverbs 16 and verse 33 the Bible says the lot is cast into the lap but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord so I mean casting lots is mentioned dozens and dozens of times in the Old Testament look at Proverbs 18 Proverbs 18 just a couple pages over in your Bible the Bible says the lot cause it causes contentions to seize and part of between the mighty so this is really kind of the answer of what casting lots was used for right here casting lots was so if me and brother George you know need to make a decision on something and we want to let the Lord decide we will just cast lots that way it takes the decision out of his hands it takes the decision out of my hands and you know we it just the Lord decided you know it was nobody's single decision it takes that it takes the contentions out of the situation and it put it in the Lord's hand and you know even in Joshua they cast lots for the the different portions of land it was a very common thing in the Old Testament now there were not you know we're not called to do this we have the Word of God to help us make decisions today we have the whole Bible we're not going to be casting lots in this church but the point is is that it was it was commonly done the Lord commanded it at times in the Old Testament and it was not done in a way where people were gambling for money it was just to help make a decision you know people think like dice like oh they're playing dice no it's just it was to help make a decision and it was to leave that decision up to the Lord and that's what they did mentioning you know casting lots for these two men another thing I want to address before I get to the the main point of the sermon tonight is this idea of the 12th disciple a lot of people think and you know I've thought about it myself that that Paul was supposed to be the 12th disciple and that you know Peter shouldn't have done this Peter shouldn't have gone and chosen between justice and Matthias and cast lots and filled this vacancy and you know what's my opinion on that well I mean first of all the Bible just doesn't tell us the Bible doesn't tell us whether or not Peter should have done this or not the Bible tells us what Peter did you know we're just hearing a record of what happened here and he cast lots Matthias was chosen and here's the thing like if you think that Paul was supposed to be the 12th disciple I mean that's okay that's an opinion to have there's nothing wrong with that because it really doesn't matter I mean if God was like I want Paul to be the 12th disciple and Peter shouldn't have done that God obviously made Paul an apostle anyway so God you know God obviously created he met Paul on the road and he got Paul moving in the direction he wanted to regardless of what Peter did here but there's no indication to me that Peter did anything wrong he was just trying to you know follow the Bible fill the vacancy just as the Bible said should have been done so I don't believe that anything was done wrong there and casting lots was just something to use to help make that decision to help give that decision over to the Lord and that shows that Peter he didn't want to just be this guy making all these calls he wanted to just leave it up to the Lord to pick between these two men now so that's what they do they're getting ready they're getting ready they fill Judas's vacancy we see Peter has become the leader that he needs to be he's understanding the prophecies of Jesus he's looking he's looking forward and we're going to see as we go into Acts 2 and on you know just the man Peter has become and I believe that Jesus you know created Peter he well I mean not created but he he built Peter into that leader and that's you know that's encouragement for all of us it's encouragement for all of us when we look at you know some mistakes that Peter made in his life and just it maybe he spun his wheels a little bit took him a little while to get going but boy when he got going he got going and this is where we see it start in Acts chapter 1 turn back to verse 18 if you would turn back to verse number 18 acts chapter 1 verse number 18 Peter says something interesting in Acts chapter 1 and verse number 18 that I want to kind of focus on this evening so here we see the context Jesus has taken up the disciples are ready to go there's 120 of them we're about to get into you know a big event in acts chapter 2 but I want to point something out for the application this evening look at acts chapter 18 acts chapter 1 and verse number 18 let me get there myself acts chapter 1 and verse number 18 talking about Judas Judas committed a terrible sin we know he betrayed the Lord Jesus Christ look at number 18 it says now this man purchased the field with the reward of iniquity now of course you know we know that you know it wasn't really it was his money that you know purchased the field it wasn't Judas that purchased the field but the point is is that there's an interesting three words there it says the reward of iniquity now we talk a lot about iniquity in this church we talk a lot about sin we talk a lot about hey if you get into these types of sin here's what's going to happen to you here's the consequences God's going to punish you you're never going to get away with anything but it's interesting because Peter uses this word right here and he says that this field was purchased with the reward of iniquity what's what was that in this case it was those 30 pieces of silver Judas brought the money and he took it back to the Pharisees I want this but they just went they bought the field with it the point is Judas got money for what he did now it didn't work out for Judas he ended up killing himself but that's not the point but the point is turned to Luke chapter 15 Judas got paid Judas got paid we talk a lot about the punishment for sin because the Bible talks a lot about the punishment for sin in the box you know in in every part of the Bible but look at Luke chapter 15 but the Bible also says here in Acts chapter 1 of verse 18 that there's a reward for iniquity too look at Luke 15 let's look at a story in the Bible he said a certain man had two sons Acts chapter 15 verse number 11 a certain man had two sons and the younger of them said to his father give me this portion of goods that fall to me and he divided unto them his living and not many days after the young son gathered all together and took his journey into a far country and there he wasted his substance with riotous living so here we see a man that had two sons and this younger son comes up to his dad he says I want my inheritance now I don't know if he's 20 25 whatever age he is he's a young man he's like I want all the money now and his dad just gives them all the money and then he goes and he just lives this riotous lifestyle and at this end of verse 13 it says that he's living this riotous life I mean he's out there and he's look I'm sure that if you caught this kid at this time that it would be tough you know he would have been having a good time he'd been having a good time you know because he's in that he's in that stage where he's getting rewarded for iniquity you know he's he's engaging in pleasures whatever those pleasures were he's probably you know getting into alcohol and you know fornication I mean just these are just some things you know think about people that get into drugs and alcohol look they don't do it because they want punishment they do it because there is a reward there that they're after there's a reward look those things make you feel good for a short time that's the reward for iniquity this is why people do it but the thing is it's temporary it's short time look at verse you know the very next verse the guy is like living with the pigs you know so it was very short time but I bet if you would have went up to him in verse 13 and said hey man this isn't good you know you're gonna be punished for this this is gonna be bad he probably wouldn't listen to you at all because he was getting rewarded for his iniquity he was in that short temporary time so the point I'm trying to make and the point that Peter was making in verse 18 is that there's a reward to sin there's a reward to sin but most of the time it's temporary it's very short lived and here's another thing about the reward to sin most of the time it's only for you most of the time the reward for sin is only for you the people around you usually begin to suffer right away they don't get a reward when somebody is on drugs or they're on alcohol or whatever it may it may make them feel good right at that time but immediately their family their children begin to suffer immediately they don't get that that short high or that short whatever it is you know but people go out and they they do that and they they get they get drunk or they get high and they just feel super smart or whatever they feel super powerful I mean there was some guy walking down the street that woke us all up the other night and he was out there and he was just like punching air and like screaming as loud as he could like that guy thought he was really powerful I mean he must have thought he was like Superman or something how he was acting but to everybody else including the people I'm telling this story he just looked and sounded like an idiot like a fool but to him he was being rewarded for that iniquity at that moment at that time to everybody else you know whatever family he had you know maybe had a wife or kids or whatever in the past I mean it's just nothing but damage damage damage damage but he's been rewarded for iniquity he's been rewarded for that you know I mean you look at some of these people that get into this you know drunkenness and and drugs and you know I mean basically here's the thing folks like if you're a loser there's two paths for you you can like fix yourself and not be a loser anymore or you can go get drunk and get high and make yourself feel like you're not but you still are in its temporary but that's that's what they're chasing they're chasing the reward of iniquity that's why they do it what about us what about Christians you're like you know we don't struggle with these types of things hopefully no one here struggles with these types of things but what about us I mean it's the same thing with us it's the same thing with things in our lives the reason that we get into iniquity is because there's a reward there we're rewarded for it that's why people fall into it people don't just decide as a Christian like hey I'm gonna do this because I like to be beaten by God because I like punishment by God you know they get into it because they're rewarded for it they're after that reward how about this one how about this one how about complaining ever complained you know complaining does it makes you feel better rate right away when you complain about something or somebody it just at least temporarily it makes you feel better it makes you feel better but look here's the thing what's the long-term effects of that the long-term effects of becoming a complainer is that you know you become an unthankful person that's a terrible consequence but it makes you feel good right away you get rewarded right away you know even small things think about this think about soul winning we got soul winning and we go out and you knock a hundred you knock a hundred home map and nobody wants to talk to you and you know you could look you could look at that you'd be like man a hundred homes and zero salvation's what what you could be like that and you know it may make you feel better to sit there with your soul winning partner and just complain about it a little bit complain about how unreceptive people are or you know what but you know what you could get to be a negative person an unthankful person if you just continue that in your life and you continue trying to get that immediate reward for complaining or you could be this type of person you go out soul winning and you knock a hundred homes and you're like thank God I can walk thank God my legs work thank God I could go out soul winning today and thank God that you know I thank God that I have so many people around me that's what I thought about just last night no not to eat I took a trip with with Ashley to get the chairs and we went out to eat together and we were sitting there in this restaurant and we saw a lady come into the restaurant just sit all by herself as you came into this and I was thinking to myself who comes to a restaurant and goes and eats by herself well you know maybe she didn't have anybody to go eat with you know maybe she didn't have anybody to go out and eat with her you know what I just got to thinking like sometimes I think to myself because I'm just I'm constantly surrounded by people I mean there's people around me all the time you know what sometimes I get to the point where like man I wish I could just have 10 minutes by myself but maybe I should think you know what thank God for all these people that around me all the time thank God that I will never you know hopefully you know be by myself thank God that I'm surrounded by my wife and my family and my children and my church family you know thank God for this I mean look complaining is easy to do because it satisfies us we get a reward for it right away well it's something we should stay far away from turn to numbers chapter 11 complaining will seriously affect your children too if you complain a lot and your children here you complain it will negatively affect them just like just like the the drunk who's getting a who's getting a high right away immediately the family starts to suffer it's the same way with complaining you complain about things you complain about people and your kids will become negative complaining people that's a terrible thing to even think about I mean look at numbers chapter 11 this shows you right here just how complaining and people that complain how they affect people around them look at numbers chapter 11 and verse number 14 this is Moses and he's saying like the people are complaining that you know they either don't have food and then they have too much food and then they don't they want meat and then they're gonna have too much meat and he's just like every single thing these people are complaining about look at Moses what he says to God in verse 14 he says I'm not able to bear all these people alone because it is too heavy for me just because they're complaining here they're all they're doing is complaining they're not trying to attack him or kill him or anything it says if thou dealeth us with me look what he says to God he says kill me I pray the out of hand I have found favor in thy sight and let me not see my wretchedness he has people complaining all around him and he's like God just kill me that should show you right there like being around people that complain all the time it just like if you're not a complainer and you're trying to be a positive person it just like it just really affects you look at Moses right here he's like God just take me home because people all they do is complain so people around complainers suffer greatly it's just like the drug user he gets the high everybody else suffers and then look I mean you may get a high right away from complaining but you become an unthankful person that's a nightmare state to find yourself in to be somebody just isn't thankful for anything in your life look folks just keep this in your mind because this might be the one thing that is wrecking people in this country you deserve nothing you deserve nothing just remember that in your life and you know what it's pretty easy to be positive at that point when you realize that you walk through life maybe things that work don't go well maybe things you know aren't going well over here but it's like you know what I deserve nothing I deserve no material things I actually spiritually I deserve to go to hell spiritually I deserve to go to hell yet what okay I got this life maybe think they're going well maybe they're not but I'm going to heaven either way and I don't deserve it as people that think they deserve things that that's something is owed to them they become unthankful people and those are miserable people and you don't want to be that type of person here's another one turn to Proverbs chapter 19 I'll just go through a few I could go all day on this one but go to Proverbs chapter 19 here's another one that's it's it's it's iniquity that gives you a reward right away all iniquity will give you a reward right away but you know I'm you know we don't struggle with drugs and alcohol here but here's some things that like a lot of people struggle with here's what look at Proverbs 19 look at verse 15 Proverbs 19 and verse number 15 the Bible says this it says slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep and an idle soul shall suffer hunger you know what slothfulness will reward you right away slothfulness will give you an immediate reward you know why because it feels good to sleep it feels good to sleep I mean it feels good to just just like sleep in I can't remember what that's like but I'm sure it feels good you know it feels good to sleep but the problem is if you sleep all the time turn to Ecclesiastes chapter 10 if you sleep all the time trouble will follow that reward is there though that reward is there you know that reward is to let yourself slip a little bit at work you know just get a little bit lazier just get a little bit like hey everybody else is doing it look folks a lot of slothful people out there it'd be a really easy thing to follow look at Ecclesiastes chapter 10 of verse 18 so if you chase that reward if you chase that reward for slothfulness the Bible says by much slothfulness the building decayeth and through idleness of hands the house drop it through slothfulness is much more than first Timothy 5 8 slothfulness is much more than just providing for your family slothfulness in general whether you're married whether you're not look it will ruin you personally you can chase that reward and say you know what I just want a little bit more sleep I just don't like to to to work that hard but look you know men you need to be working men you need to be working look working is the opposite of slothfulness and working actually has the opposite of the reward of slothfulness because working working hard will hurt it first working hard is is completely opposite as getting rewarded with that sleep right away at slothfulness because working hard will you know what it may be downright unpleasant at first I mean but then but then as you push through that unpleasantry you know hard work is the opposite diligence is the opposite as your diligent as you work hard over time you will begin to like it that's what will happen so chasing that reward from slothfulness it will end look it will ruin a man it will ruin a man I've met many a ruined man because they're lazy and that one thing has ruined them and guess what those lazy people those slothful people you know what they become they become unthankful to you read Romans 1 unthankful we're talking about reprobates the wickedest people on the planet unthankful is one of the words used to describe those people I'm not saying lazy people are reprobates okay but what I'm saying is that being unthankful is a horrible horrible thing to fall into but guess what it's same thing with a lazy woman you look at Proverbs 31 you look at the Proverbs 31 woman that woman's working that woman's working hard she's strong look being a lazy woman will ruin a family being a lazy woman will ruin your children because you'll raise lazy uneducated children but it's chasing that reward it's chasing that reward of iniquity that drags us in turn to Proverbs chapter 20 how about this one Proverbs chapter 20 look at Proverbs chapter 20 Proverbs chapter 20 look at verse number 23 Proverbs chapter 20 in verse number 23 the Bible says diverse weights are an abomination under the Lord and a false balance is not good how about this one just unethical behavior how about this one just just being unethical maybe maybe you're at work this is so and you know what people do this all the time too maybe you're at work and you just take credit for some something that you didn't do something small maybe somebody gives you credit for something you didn't do and you just don't say anything you know what there'll be a reward for that if somebody comes up to you and says hey you know brother that was a great job you know you did on that project last week and you're like you didn't do it it was some other guy that you work with you're just like oh thank you you know what there's a reward for that because you will get the credit for that and maybe you don't even have to say anything but it's unethical but you're rewarded for it you know maybe maybe you don't defend somebody who's being trashed at work or being tracked in some social circle or whatever maybe you just don't defend them maybe it's something as simple as that and you just let somebody maybe you have a you know conflict with that person like you know what they're lower I'm better how about that there's a reward for that you know that you know people get themselves ahead this way you know people that are you know get super high up and in companies you know what they operate there there's a lot of people that are pretty good at unethical behavior you know what there's a reward for it there might be promotions for it there might be recognition for it there might be bonuses there might be money for it you know there's a reward there how about this how about just gossip just gossip you know there's a reward there maybe you're maybe you're whipping somebody down that you don't like you want below you but these things can have rewards for you personally in the short term but you know for the unsaved you will see people get ahead in life operating this way you will see people get ahead at their jobs get ahead in in circles this way it can actually lead to great wealth for the unsaved you know you think about it like just the elaborate financial schemes that you've heard over the last maybe decade or 15 years just people that just ripped people off or like millions hundreds of millions of dollars or whatever it was but they were just lying they were just stealing they were just they were just operating unethically they got rewarded for it they got hundreds of millions of dollars for it there was a reward to that iniquity it works you know if you're a thief you can go out and be a thief and you know if you don't get caught look you're gonna get caught but if you go out and you be a thief there's plenty of thieves that go out there and are pretty good at stealing and they don't get caught and they're rewarded especially in California when you know you're encouraged to steal things here but there's iniquity has rewards but here's the point here's the point folks there's a reward to it that's why people do it you sit here and you think of like you look at these people that you you've heard of maybe famous people or people you know and you're like why did they go into the alcohol why did they you know why was that why did they commit adultery why did they do these horrible things because they were chasing the reward of iniquity that's why and they weren't thinking about what was coming they were they were just chasing the reward and by the way it's much easier to so oh but it's it's temptation to this reward I you know this this I'm tempted to drink alcohol or I'm tempted to just be dishonest or I'm tempted to complain about things because I like that feeling guess what and especially for the kids in a Bible preaching church you know what if you never go down these roads you will never want that reward if you never go down the road of alcohol if you never go down the road of becoming a negative person in a complainer in a gossip you'll never want the rewards because you just you've never done it if if you if kids if you're raised and you just were raised to work hard you'll never be tempted to just sleep all the time because you'll be like you'll look at people to do that you just like I don't understand I don't get it but it's harder for people that have been down those roads because they they've gotten that reward and they desire it and they can desire it but if you'd never go down those roads this is why we preach so hard against sin in this church because we're not trying to beat up people that have sinned in the past we're trying to get people to not go down those roads in the first place so they don't even they don't even want the reward they don't desire the reward they don't even think about the reward they just know what's coming as punishment if they do those things they just know that the Bible is true because guess what what's coming is always worse the punishment for you from your heavenly father adopted sons and daughters is always worse and it could be it could be irreparable in your life on this earth so look I mean sin has two sides folks we talk about the consequences of sin all the time we talk about the consequences of sin all the time but the problem is turn to Proverbs 25 the problem is is that we are still lured in by this reward people are still lured in by this reward of iniquity it still gets Christians it still gets them this need and you know what it is it's it's this need it's this need for immediate gratification gratification it's this need for you know what I want that and I have to have it right now regardless of what the punishment is look at Proverbs 25 Proverbs 25 sin has two sides it's a it's a double-sided coin folks Proverbs 25 look at verse 28 the Bible says he that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls think about that for a second what this is saying is if you just have no rule over your own spirit meaning meaning you can't this is what this thing you can't control yourself this is somebody who just have control of themselves they just like they see something they want it and they're just like I have to have it maybe you shouldn't spoil your kids by the way because you know what that's what you're teaching them to do you're teaching your kids when you never say no to your kids and you just give your kids every single thing that they ever want sorry kids what you're teaching them is against Proverbs 25 28 you are teaching them that whatever they see and they want they get and that's a horrible thing because you know what you will raise a city with broken down walls and guess what what happens to a city with broken down walls well nothing unless some enemy comes along but guess what the devil's gonna send enemies your way you will have enemies passing by constantly you know what Satan for even you grown men and women in the room tonight Satan will send the enemies where he knows your wall is the weakest and he will send them by you are broken down walls turn to 1st Corinthians chapter 10 Satan will make sure as you're a city with no walls as you raise your kids with no walls because you've given them every single thing they've ever wanted he will make sure that he sends plenty of enemies by those piles of rubble he'll make sure something comes along and he'll make sure it's something that seems good to you he'll make sure that it's something where you're like you know what there's reward there there's reward there and if you're a city with broken down walls you're just like reward and you just go after it and you don't think about consequences you don't think about the people around you you just go after that reward but guess what first Corinthians chapter 10 it gives us the Bible gives us hope here if you are saved guess what if you're saved you will never get away with anything and punishment is always coming to you the reward of iniquity is so stupid for a saved person because the punishment is going to be so much worse and it's and it's a price that you would never want to pay if you knew it was coming right up front and you were focused on anything other than just the reward of iniquity for just yourself but guess what God gives us a promise yes he promises that he will chastise us that he will punish us and we will not get away with things but he also promises us this in first Corinthians chapter 10 look at verse 13 he says there is no temptation taken to you but such as common to man is like whatever you're going through right now other people have gone through it you're like big deal I'm still going through it he says but God is faithful that's the key right there what I'm saying here is true because God is faithful underline those words who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you're able it says here God says I promise I am faithful in what I'm about to say he says I you will not be tempted with anything that you can't handle you will not be but you're like but you know what I'm tempted and I fail all the time you know I'm tempted and I chase that reward of iniquity all the time you know what that's because you're weak that's because you're choosing to fail that's because your Proverbs 25 28 and you don't have rule of your own spirit but the Bible is saying that if you are saved that any temptation any reward of iniquity that is put in front of your face you will be able to withstand it God's telling you you can withstand it you know what it's possible so here's the thing that's why you know you need to be strong if you're a parent if you're an adult you want to be a you know you want to be a mature Christian but you need to be a strong person you need to be somebody that has rule over your spirit otherwise what chance I mean look this this ministry needs strong men and women that just don't go around chasing stupid rewards of iniquity and not thinking about consequences because look if you fail the Bible was saying here you chose to fail you chose to fail for that reward for that reward of iniquity and look you know in the Bible is telling you here that if you take that reward of iniquity in your life save believer it's a bad trade it's a bad trade for you personally and it's especially a bad trade for those people around you for your family and for your children so yeah there's a reward to iniquity there that you can look around you and you can see people living these lives around us you say you know these people that are living these lives that aren't separated like us seems like they're having a good time they're getting rewarded for that iniquity they're chasing the reward for iniquity number one it doesn't work the same for us the price will be paid for us on this earth and I wouldn't want to be an unsaved person just chasing rewards of iniquity in my life let's borrow heads and have a word


to one. Hi, hello everyone. Welcome to the Jenkins Infractructure Weekly team meeting. We are today the 2nd of August 2022. We are, for now, to attend this, Marc Waite and myself, Stefan Merle. For today, it's a very short, it should be a very short meeting as it's holidays here and most of the team is on holidays. For the announcement, we have today's weekly a 2.362, sorry, which have been released and the checklist have been completed. If I read correctly, what Marc just wrote down. Last week on the 27th of July, we had a security release that dealt with a few adversaries. You got the link in the shared notes. Let me put the link in the discussion Zoom link. Sorry. Can you copy and paste the link in the little box in the Zoom meeting? But we are the only two, so it's not really useful. We got a little discussion about the CAA enforcement for the certification that we will postpone for the discussion for next week. It's not a security issue, per se, more good to have. I think it's all we got here. For the announcement, as I told you, Damien is on holidays until Wednesday included, so until Thursday. Hervé is out until next Monday. I will be out for two weeks beginning next week, so the bandwidth is quite limited for the task that we got. I think the next LTS baseline was not secured last week. It's now selected, I think, so it would be 2.361. Of course, you got the link for all the discussion on the Google group for that. A coming calendar the next weekly, so it will be next week, and it should be the 2.363, and it will be the 9th of August. The next LTS, I don't really know if the date is correct. If it's correct, that will be on Wednesday. So that date definitely is correct. Next Wednesday will be an LTS, and the release candidate is available. It's a relatively small set of changes in it. So it's holidays for everyone. Okay, and that's all for the upcoming calendar. So it's kind of easy. For the work in progress, as usual, we will have a look at the milestone. The current milestone had nothing closed, so we did some work, but it's not within the milestone. For myself, I did work a little on the migration for updated Jenkins.io, mostly working on the Puppet stuff and IRC installation, but nothing too risky as I was alone. Alert fatigue, we had a lot of PagerDuty and Datadug alert for a weird time loading time. We did avoid that specific alert until the end of August. I also prepared a pull request to erase the PagerDuty from that monitoring. I'm not sure that it has been validated and merged, but it's ready to get merged. The Jenkins 261, it's an issue that you set up Mark. We discovered that the updates of the docker packaging was not pushed everywhere, so I did prepare an update manifest to take care of that. It's ready and working. We will just have to merge and validate the docker packaging upgrade by merging those peer. It's almost done. Sorry, we are here. For this issue, it's for you, Mark, the replacement of S390 Ubuntu. It's still on my list. I hope to get to it this week. If you're okay with that, when we're done checking all the issues, I will move them all to the next milestone. It's easier. Yes. Then, in follow-up, I mentioned it has expired in the Datadug API. I think Avid did some work on that. Yes, it's closed here and merged. I'm not quite sure if it's done. It seems like they still have a little work to do, so that will move to the next milestone. We have someone asking for permission. Yes, it's Joseph Peterson. He's a ... Oh, yes, that's from last time and that's still an ongoing thing. I know that Hervé talked with Tom about that. They're working on that and they try Tom's and they try to get back the NPM namespace. It's a work on progress too. This one, I don't know. Oh, yes, that's the all-in-one agent that we're all working on to be able to provide everything in one. Yes, so that's still a work on progress. So we did spoke about that. That will wait for everyone to be back and to think and to speak about that, just the CAA in the DNS. This is a brand new issue that I will be able to handle probably today. That's easy. So as for those that will all move to the next milestone, yeah, great. And then the working progress. So it's done and new and important. We got all that we had last week. So nothing new. I think we can just get over that. Quite easily. What do you think? Marc, you want to go in detail on each of them? No, I don't think so. I don't think we need to go in detail. So yes, I think that it's all in there. So if it's okay for you, I'm done. So that was really fast. I'm sorry. That's great. A brief meeting is a good thing. Thanks, Stefan. I'm not aware of any other topics we need to cover.


I'm really pleased today to be here with my colleagues from the COPIM project to talk about open access monographs, their infrastructures, their funding models and their developments. My name is Martin Paul Eve and I'm going to give you a brief introduction to the landscape as it stands and hopefully also some background that will inform our breakout groups and discussions in the workshops. By way of personal introduction I am Professor of Literature, Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck College at the University of London. I am the author of nine books, all of which are OA monographs, they're open access, and I've had long-standing interest in developing equitable funding structures in particular for open access in the humanities disciplines, where we often find it difficult to gather APC funding for journals or book processing charge funding in the book space. I guess it's worth just backing up a little bit for this framing session and just to ask why does open access matter, why does it matter for books and why does it matter at this point? It seems abundantly clear to me that COVID-19 was the sharp end expose of a crumbling research publication infrastructure in the humanities and social sciences. As anyone who knows my Twitter feed will know about me, I'm clinically extremely vulnerable and during the pandemic period when suddenly I was locked out of research libraries in lockdowns, it became virtually impossible to conduct my research work at home without access to those print infrastructures. It seemed to me that COVID-19 exposed the need for digital and uniformly open access to even long form writing in these spaces, but I also appreciate that the COVID-19 pandemic also gave us the sharp end of budgetary constraints and a tidal wave of anxiety about institutional finance followed that initial period of lockdowns. I think also though those who recognize the structure of the publishing industry are also aware that over the past few decades the profile of the monograph and its sales have changed quite radically. Press sustainability has been threatened by demand-driven acquisition in part which delivers only a fraction of the revenue required to produce a book every time it's accessed and the number of sales of titles that can be expected at presses has gone through the floor to put it politely. Open access then could offer us increased readership usage and citation of these volumes and we're also seeing a number of funder mandates coming through that are pushing for long form writing the research monograph to be made openly accessible. Indeed we know that we're in the middle of the moment of a changing policy landscape and that things are shifting quite rapidly so we had the recent UKRI review in the UK that has stated that from 2024 open access will be extended to monographs that are published under UKRI funded umbrellas. I suppose in the UK context we all know that UKRI project funding is only a sliver of the entire output in monographs or any other research space and really what we're waiting on at the moment is the REF review which will think about the conditions under which monographs can be submitted to the next REF here. The ministerial steer is that there should be a stronger push for open access. The policy won't steer is that ideally REF policy will be harmonized with UKRI statements and so if I were gazing into my crystal ball at this point I'd probably say well the REF policy will look a lot like the UKRI policy. What we're not clear on is how that will be funded and I suppose in this opening talk today I'm going to talk about the challenges of funding in particular and what we're doing to pilots and business models to transition existing university presses to models for open access books because the fundamental truth is however you look at this problem book processing charges do not scale well or fairly among libraries and the way you can think about this is if you had say a hundred people in a room and you needed a hundred pounds to run an event the two ways you could do that is you can ask everybody in the room to pay one pound and they can afford that and everybody pays their pound and the event can run because essentially you've got the money you need if you think about the analogy to a book processing charge it's equivalent to just going to the speaker and asking them upfront for a hundred pounds in order to speak and often the money is not there it's not with that speaker it's distributed among the many actors in the system and that's exactly what we have in the library funding landscape for books the sales system works relatively well at distributing costs between many different libraries the book processing charge model is incredibly problematic and starts to exclude people based on their inability to pay them I should say also though that the benefits of open access should not be thought of in financial savings terms but really in terms of the usage of these artifacts we often get hung up on the humanities being unwanted unloved the social sciences unread and so on but a good case study from one of the presses we're working with at the cu press was that during just march to june 2020 they made 279 titles openly accessible on project news these titles were downloaded 350 000 times over just those few months from 129 countries and seven of the top 10 downloads were from titles that were over 10 years old so the back list saw extensive usage and you know every time presses do this and make their books openly accessible we suddenly see explosive explosions in the usage levels of these titles which to me speaks to an unmet opportunity there is an audience for this work we're just not doing the best we can at the moment to get these works in front of the people who would like to read them and that's where open access for monographs could be of great use should also point out that we're dealing with quite a strange landscape here compared to the journal space lots of people have been familiar with the transition of journals to open access models and we can get a good profile of what that landscape looks like from the directory of open access journals but if you compare the directory of open access books to the directory of open access journals you quickly see that the open access books market has many smaller players with publications in multiple languages across a broad spectrum of subject areas and this is an infrastructure that is valued in different disciplinary contexts so there are a large number of small to medium-sized university presses for example who are intensely valued in particular subject areas you know they're not the mega presses of Cambridge Oxford MIT but nonetheless they will be the specialist press in a particular area they'll have commissioning expertise they will have a value among disciplinary practices and need support and I'm going to propose today that we need to think of supporting these types of mission-driven presses as though they were part of the research infrastructure for the humanities borrowing from the language that Charles Watkinson has been using in the US for a while and often people come back on that and say well why why do we need to support this in infrastructure why do we need to think about supporting presses holistically rather than just buying the books that we want once we know that they're successful and the basic answer is that if we could predict in advance and oppress which books are important which books are the ones that will go on to make a difference in the world then we'd have solved a massive problem in research which is simply that we can't do that we don't know ahead of time which bits of research are the things that will change the world that are the important ones that take off just by way of analogy to the fiction space Samuel Beckett Nobel Prize-winning novelist and and playwright had his first manuscript rejected 18 times by presses before it was picked up and we have the same in the research space you can't have the cream without the milk and presses need to publish a wide range of materials so that we can find out where the where that important research is and that's why I think we need to start thinking of this this thing that needs to be continuously supported rather than just buying the titles once we know that they're successful it's quite an exciting time though for open access monographs in the last year or so we've seen a number of experimental business models come forward piloting the way that we might produce away monographs without resorting to book processing charges and this is a little simplified but I'm going to talk about them as though they were part of three different strata so at the very top end of mega presses we have MIT presses direct to open scheme which came through which is a front list unlocking mechanism where libraries subscribe to the front list at the press and if they get enough subscribers the entire front list for that year can be made openly accessible at Cambridge University Press also launched its flip to open flip it open scheme which is a model where once a book has recovered its costs and gone beyond the certain threshold of sales they will make those books open access um that's great in many ways um but it does mean that only the books that were successful rather than research monographs are getting the benefits of open access now those presses have institutional subsidy supports they have often large grants to support this work that they're doing at the moment and I don't want to knock that you know it's good that they're doing this but there are also presses at the small to medium end here who are in a very different boat so I also want first to tip my hat to the scholar led born open access presses puncton books open book publishers mattering press uh who have instigated membership schemes to support their operations over the past few years so these are collective models where libraries contribute a membership fee to support those presses ongoing operations so that they don't have to charge book processing charges and that's great and by the way my experience of working with open book publishers and puncton books for two of my works was incredibly positive as good as any university press I've ever been with so just to put in a good word for them I'm going to talk for the rest of my sort of five five minutes now though about what we do with these small to medium sized university presses and what we're doing at the coping project to come up with a model that works for them these presses often receive some but not much subsidy from their host institutions um and they're really falling in that um gap between these two spaces of scholar led and large well funded academic presses traditionally they'd put their titles into knowledge unlatched and that would be the way they do it but we obviously know that knowledge unlatched is now owned by Wiley and so that may not be as value aligned as it was in the past with library goals we also know that these presses need models that don't put their entire operation at a jeopardy just to try something in the oa space and that's the model that we've come up with at coping for these presses which is called opening the future I'm going to talk to you for a few minutes about now so opening the future is a backlist subscription model for opening the front list at a press and the idea is that presses put together packages of their titles so the central european university press one of our partners has presses in history politics and slavic studies for example and there's 50 books in each package libraries can subscribe to those 50 books and that's just a subscription there's nothing open access about that it's 50 books for your local collection what's different about the model is that the publisher uses the revenue from that subscription to make the front list openly accessible one book at a time as they hit the revenue threshold for that book and in this way what we're trying to do is give libraries something that they can buy with their traditional acquisitions budget but that by stealth almost ends up funding open access and that's how we can start to see a transition from funding books for a local collection to funding the building of a global collection that everybody wants now i'm not naive enough to think that humanities and social sciences are well funded and that we can charge the earth for this so the smallest universities in this scheme are paying just 300 pounds for those books to subscribe to and the largest just a thousand so half a single apc to support a scheme like this and our target is to get to the point where these presses can produce their front lists their research monograph front lists entirely openly accessible so the collection grows by 25 titles every year we're working with project muse for metadata so this is high quality mark kbart with counter compliance statistics and we'll also talk to you later today a bit about our system totes at copin which is an open metadata dissemination system but i don't want to muddy the water at this point what's important is that with a collective model like this as more members join the cost goes down and if we can get to our target number of libraries we're looking at just 10 pounds per library per monograph and the front list of those monographs is all open access so really this is extremely cost effective way compared to a book processing charge of supporting these presses to convert their front list to open the accessible models so we're piloting this with Liverpool University Press and the Central European University Press so two presses that have extensive backlists and can support this type of system for up to 40 years actually with with their backlist the backlist is drm free it's massively concurrent access so you can do what you like with it we're not putting any lockdown restrictions on those titles and after three years it's perpetual access for libraries to the books they're subscribing to so there's no hidden locks on these books they're just available for researchers to download and use as they see fit and you get perpetual access at the end of that term but what i like about this model and this is what we built in in the design is that we're trying to work incrementally here lots of models have set their sights on all or nothing and said if we hit our library membership threshold we'll make our entire list open access and that's you know a laudable goal but what it often means is we don't hit the target and then we get nothing instead in opening the future we unlock one book at a time and it's simply the next book coming through production so there's none of this question about are they selecting the worst titles to make them open access and palming them off on libraries it's simply this book is about to go into production we haven't said whether it's open access or for sale yet and if we've got the revenue from 10 memberships to this system we'll make that next book open access and we're also signaling that clearly to libraries so there's no accidental double dipping where a library goes in and buys a title but it's already funded to be open access so clear metadata signaling in advance and a clear warning ahead of time for which titles are OA and which are for purchase what this model is not and what we're trying to get away from is a read and publish deal so we're very used to these now in the journal space seeing transformative agreements where it's for researchers at your institution to publish open access we're trying to change the way we think about this so that anybody who goes to the press can publish open access without a book processing charge by converting the entire front list of the press to open access we get around this problem of is this book from our researcher it's just that the entire press is working on an open access basis so that's my kind of introduction to the policy landscape and what we're doing business model wise try to convert open access existing university presses to OA models and my take home message for this audience today though is that we're going to be talking about a lot of pilots we're going to be talking about a lot of experiments and things we're doing at this time to try to change things and it's very tempting at this point I've especially given the pandemic budget constraints to sit back and think let's see what happens and the problem is that if we sit back and just see what happens rather than supporting these pilots it's going to be another decade before we just have another set of pilots and another set of pilots and the pilots will never become what we do as basic practice so I guess my plea is what can we do is a plea and a question what can we do to make this more than just a pilot phase and make it the beginning of a true transition to open access for monographs the beginning of a different way of doing things in these disciplines I'm going to now hand over to my colleague Joe Deville who's going to talk a bit more about the infrastructural side of what we're doing at Copham and the way that insects with scholar led yes didn't we say that we'd also just go around the room and just ask everyone just just one point from their breakout sessions I think that's right so yeah thanks very much Martin so yeah we'll begin with that I just think I mean we don't spend too long doing it because obviously time is of the essence and if your breakout was anything like mine you know we could have talked for at least another half an hour but anyway and perhaps I'll just begin with one thought one thing that came up in our discussions which was this kind of question of how libraries navigate the this changing landscape where they are being presented with more and more models for open access and where you know the ways that likely budgets are allocated might be changing in some cases and not in other cases and I think for me what was most kind of hopeful is hearing from some institutions where that sort of traditional separation between kind of contact acquisition and sporting open access is breaking down and you're actually having more and more conversations across silos and ultimately I'm thinking you know in the round about what do we want to support and and why without just having to sort of say oh we can only support open access from this defined open access pot we did it from one institution that has such a pot and you know and they're there which is fantastic but they're now increasingly struggling to fund because they're getting so many and asks for from that pot so I think that's a really crucial thing that needs to happen from our perspective in libraries is that those silos break down and it's good to hear that in some cases it's starting to happen so Martin perhaps over to you sorry everyone you can hear hear a little bit more from me we had a wide ranging discussion in our breakout room but I guess the the cool things that came through were it's helpful to start to normalize expenditure on OA monographs as expenditure on monographs and getting beyond this separation of scholarly communications from acquisitions budgets which seemed a really important and recurrent theme but also you know thinking about this in two ways I want to highlight that another conversation we have is about accessibility as an overlooked aspect of OA and ensuring that actually access for everyone is really part of what we're doing here and not just thinking about accessing monetary terms but also in terms of disability accessibility and so on thanks Martin and Lucy yeah so we touched on the topic of different pots of money as well and but a point that we were circling around quite a lot was this idea of tipping points and what is the the thing that will trigger the tipping point into OA for monographs so there was quite a lot of discussion about policy and a feeling that you know policy moves particularly the next ref are going to be important but there's also a certain amount of anxiety around that for less well-resourced universities and you know if the model is BPCs then how is that going to be funded and even if it's lots of small you know little pots of money that are required for schemes which charge less than a BPC still that's a financial commitment and how do you balance those different things especially if there's quite a lot of them so that was kind of what came out of our discussions thank you really interesting here thanks Lucy and Tom I won't go into too much detail because actually we talked about a lot of the things you all mentioned I'll just bring up one sentence that stuck in my head from a colleague at Leeds who said so much of what you can do is dictated by what your institution is doing and so even if you and your immediate colleagues know it's the right thing to do you may not actually be able to do it in terms of supporting OA. Yeah perfect thank you very much and welcome welcome to the felines in the room. This is this is Pod. Toby. I think all of or most of what has been covered in our recommendations has also been touched upon in what you've spoken about so maybe I'll just keep it short here and yeah. Yeah well it's good to hear that there are some resonances between the different rooms so that's that's good okay all right then so yeah now I'm going to move on to talk about some of the work that that I'm doing on the Coglin project Martin's already sort of trailed it in a way in talking about the the challenges that face and smaller to medium publishers and securing OA funding and I've been working with colleagues with I'll enjoy from Hudson Books and other colleagues Rupert Gatti from Open Book Publishers and others on developing some solutions or hopefully we hopefully solutions to some of these challenges so I'm just going to share my slides here we go let's have a look okay let's go that should work okay right and can you see that and someone told me can you confirm that that's you can see that okay yes okay thank you very much okay so what I'm going to be talking about today is a new organization that is in the process of being founded title called the Open Book Collective Martin's also going to be speaking later on in the presentation about a infrastructure development that's connected to the Open Book Collective which is another kind of output of the Coglin project which in a way stands on its own but also provides a really important function for the work of the Open Book Collective okay here's a very quick overview of what the Open Book Collective is and what it stands for so as it sort of says on the left there you know what the Open Book Collective tries to do is to bring together different entities in the open publishing landscape publishers publishing service providers and then also research institutions so like Martin was talking about you know another initiative that tries to bridge the work of research institutions and those that are developing content and what we want to do is is is harness I guess the power of collaboration across these different stakeholders to secure the future of of open access book length and long form scholarship on the right there are some of the values of this new organization so a care and curation of high quality academic books a commitment to biblio diversity and collaboration and resource sharing over competition networked community building over profit driven centralization horizontal working relationships over exclusive forms of hierarchization and growing and safeguarding open accessibility to and reuse of academic books for global readers without technical or economic barriers so you already get a sense from that about I guess what some of the values are that are informing the Open Book Collective and that is reflected in lots of different ways in in our governance structure and the kinds of initiatives that we want to support via via the collective but I'll come back to some of that what I'm going to do now is move on to thinking about practically what the Open Book Collective will do and the Open Book Collective to be clear is going to do different things but at the center of the Open Book Collective's work is a platform that tries to address some of the challenges of small to medium publishers and also service providers in securing funding for their work okay so the particular challenge that we kind of began with in the project is this you have as Martin already mentioned some small academic led presses that have existing library membership programs and they offer those library memberships programs in particular to libraries and universities and if they're lucky they get financial support in return and there are other initiatives that do something similar infrastructural initiatives so for example Director of Open Access Books has a library membership scheme and sometimes they're successful in in securing subscriptions for those schemes however there are a number of publishers in this kind of landscape and also infrastructure providers that don't have library membership schemes so matching press the press that I'm working with you know we're very very small published so we publish let's say an average of three to four books a year it actually varies a lot you know one year it's one year one book next year it's eight you know nine books we published in one year makes it hard for us to offer our own individual library membership scheme because we're small and our output is variable and so what what can we do for those these kind of publishers to help them secure their funding as well as making easy for those slightly larger publishers to reach out to universities as we've already heard about in the breakout rooms and when it comes to assessing the different initiatives that already exist out there there are some real no sorry when it comes to the open access initiatives themselves and doing their outreach work for those that do have programs they there are challenges so the outreach work is highly labor intensive the outreach tends to be geographically skewed so initiatives tend to focus on the you know the country that they're based in and where they have networks and so on the outreach rewards are uncertain and what that means is although library membership schemes can be a useful tool um it's nonetheless you still have bpc based publishing models at the heart of many open access publishers you know punkdom and and open book publishers still take fees they don't make it a mandatory requirement for publishing open access but a lot of their work is funded through fees that they ask authors to see if they can secure this places barriers to entry for for smaller initiatives and like matching like matching press and also for larger initiatives as i say these the rewards are uncertain the situation also generates and challenges for libraries and universities so there are inconsistencies in how initiatives present themselves as we've already heard about it's really labor intensive to assess the library to assess the increasing number of asks that they're getting from initiatives and obviously as we've also in my breakout session heard about you know libraries want evidence of how a different initiative might be relevant to them to their faculty to their students to their priorities and what we at the open book collective are trying to do is try to address some of these problems so we're starting with the same challenge to some extent you know we have on the one side we have publishers and with library membership programs on the other we have libraries and universities but what we're doing with the open book collective is setting up a financial intermediary so what we will do is we will advertise library membership programs on the platform for which we will then manage the subscriptions and direct payment to individual initiatives whether publishers or infrastructure providers well also do on the platform is allowed a formation of new collectives so for the presses like my own like matching press for mason press which is the other logo below it and as well as perhaps some other infrastructure infrastructure initiatives we will make it possible for the platform to offer collective packages and to receive revenue for those collective packages so allow these smaller initiatives to still potentially receive some revenue without being beholden and to providing you know a kind of very very regular form of output so that being part of a collective will at will allow individual output to vary but you'll still have and the kind of a consistency of output across a group and will also potentially host other types of presses on the platform martin talked about opening the future we hope and that we will when at the point of launch have some of the opening the future presses on the platform offering their library membership schemes and potentially other open access books and book initiatives we are actually in conversation with a number and it may well be that some of you here in the room might be the kind of initiative that could benefit from being part of the open book collective and if that is the case I'd really encourage you to get in touch with us and to have to start those conversations because yeah we're really keen to to build a a collective a group of publishers and infrastructure providers that have offerings on the platform worth saying as well that of course the platform will allow payments to pass via via third parties and consortium membership organizations for example so that's the kind of financial intermediation part of the platform but it does something else it also provides information initiatives groups of initiatives provide information to the platform and then that information is then passed to to libraries or to their to their representatives and I guess the the point here is that what we're trying to do is we're trying to make this information easier for libraries to deal with so to ensure that information is clear it's consistent there's clear information on the packages that are being offered clear information on the values of different initiatives how their structure and from the library's perspective that the metadata that these initiatives and when it comes to publishers and supply is consistent that there is an easy way of browsing the catalogues of different initiatives so we'll have a shared catalog based on the the tote back end that Martin's going to talk about in the second for those publishers that put them information in this catalog and crucially as well information on the local relevance of initiatives to institutions so that the institution can get a sense of how the the content for example of a publisher might relate to the priorities of their faculty of their staff so hopefully one thing it will do is make it easier for libraries to understand the relevance of particular institutions it also helped with invoicing contracting all these different ways that we can help make the process of supporting different initiatives less painful okay i'm just going to hand over to martin now i'm going to talk more about tote and the back end upon which open book collective depends to a significant degree thanks joe um there's a real problem with open access books that seems completely ironic which is that the metadata for them and their discoverability is often extremely poor and this is not usually actually the faults of presses who are providing often high quality metadata but it goes through several layers of aggregator who tend to strip it out by the time it gets to libraries a good example of this is simply the fact that we can't easily put a flag saying that a particular work is open access for instance and that then leads to situations where libraries end up accidentally purchasing more types that they've already funded to be open access so one of the things we've been working on at the coping project is an open metadata dissemination system for books that is built from the ground up to accommodate open access books their affordances and characteristics it's an open api and it's using open standards open metadata and open source code and this integrates either directly with library discoverability systems but we're also in conversations with the directory of open access books and our open to ensure that presses using this system can filter their data into those systems which are already integrated with library discoverability and cataloging systems this also plugs a huge infrastructure gap in the lots of presses end up using systems like books for onyx which are commercial solutions to give them metadata feeds that that are in the formats that libraries need we think we can do this much better if we if we work from scratch thinking about open access as the default and so that's where tote comes in and you can see more about that at tote.pub t-h-o-t-h.pub where you can explore some sample catalogs and and see the kind of records that we're now able to export and really this is going to be a huge boon for presses that can't afford those commercial solutions and also gives them the power to shape their own catalogs and ways that will filter through accurately to libraries okay joe how's that yeah excellent thanks very much and yeah just to note to say the matching press my press we've just input our data into tote and yeah it's you know it's really really incredibly invaluable for us to help you know us manage our metadata much more effectively than we were doing before it was a very in a very amateurish way I confess okay yeah just now moving on to think talking a little bit about the OBC business model and it's maybe relevant for some of you may not be relevant for some of you but hopefully it'll just give you a sense of how we're planning to fund our work okay so the way it works practically is that the publisher or service provider will offer their membership program via the open book collective and the library then potentially will support that individual initiative perhaps more than one initiative and then will so financially you know pay for that and support and the on top of that is then added the OBC processing fee which I'll talk about more in a second and then the OBC collects that membership program revenue with the processing fee and on top and then distributes it so the publishing or service provider will receive membership income from the OBC less than some fees and the library will then receive not then but you know over the course of their membership at different points the information that they need from the publisher whether that be metadata updates about their work new publications and so on as well as for example for the likes of an opening the future press and if they join the platform access to the relevant backlist the OBC then distributes the income it received into two funds then there is the OBC management fund is the fund that funds the the work of the open book collective so one of the things that the open book collective does is it conducts outreach on behalf of publishers and a lot of the funds that we will collect will go towards funding that outreach so we will do the work of going to library speaking to them about the different library membership program packages that we have on the platform seeing if they fit with institutional priorities seeing if it's something that and a library will be willing to and support and there's details there about how we then allocate money to that particular fund and and then a smaller portion of the money then goes to what we call the OBC development fund this is a separate fund that allows us to support new publishing initiative new infrastructure providers or to help existing providers improve their processes make their work more efficient and so this is in keeping with our remit as an organization not just to be a kind of financial intermediary and an information provider an actor within the landscape of open publishing that genuinely supports a range of different initiatives in a in a global context as I come on to say in a second we will be founded as a UK and charity so that's in keeping with our charitable remit here are some of the kind of numbers and so the the processing fee that I mentioned is five percent on top of the membership program so you know if there's a one thousand pound subscription the library will pay one thousand and fifty pounds and then from the publisher's perspective there are the standard fee is to retain five percent actually five percent from year two onwards and but twelve point five percent in the first year and the reason for that is because that reflects I guess the amount of effort that it takes to get a library to subscribe in the in the first year and after as they come to renew that effort decreases okay how much more time we've got four more minutes some quick words on what we think the value of this new initiative will be so for the scholarly community and our and open access in general you know this provides a sustainable gradual funding funding model similar to what Martin was talking about in the first session not not dependent on hitting fixed annual targets providing the new revenue source within the oa ecosystem that can grow over time it becomes easier to publish open access for publishers as a result helping them transition away from bpc based publishing models this is an openly accessible portal I should say I didn't really have time to talk about that before but of course you know anyone can browse this they can learn about different initiatives learn about their values learn about their priorities in one simple to use space as well as browse a shared catalog so of the initiatives that have their metadata in in tote allowing a greater diversity and open access you know in line with those values of biblio diversity that I talked about before meaning that both small and larger open access publishers can engage with libraries you know from matching presses will be completely transformative it's completely impossible for us at the moment to generate any funding from libraries but this provides a really potentially valuable new avenue more robust oa infrastructures we think it's really important to support not just publishers in the world of open access but infrastructures and yes as martin said we might want to think about publishers themselves as infrastructures but there are also these other infrastructural initiatives that are utterly crucial for the long-term sustainability of open access publishing the director of open access books tote for example perhaps even the open book collective in itself value for publishers and service providers I think I've talked about some extent already so I'll skip past that in the interest of time value for those who are supporting oa institutions so I think it become easier to demonstrate the local value of supporting open access and initiatives so by providing information on how individual initiatives might be relevant to your priorities it becomes hopefully easier for you know to to speak to colleagues about exactly breaking down those silos in budgets for example reduce administration making it easier to manage invoicing contracting and so on and so forth fitting making it easier to communicate how you're fitting with the institutional strategies supporting and diverse initiatives and also providing you know more open open titles very quick word on governance as I mentioned that OBC will shortly be registered as a charity in the UK I expect that to be completed in next few weeks there are then different boards involved in the management of the book collective probably won't go into all the details here but they're on the screen there the key principle is that this is a member led organization what we really want to avoid is the situation that's happened in the past with some initiatives where the library community gets excited about a new open access infrastructure and then that infrastructure then becomes commercial and loses some of the values that were so exciting in the first place but you want to make sure this is an organization controlled by members so that that can't happen here's a timeline beta by April launch early summer we will be communicating more about that in due course I just wanted in the final minute if I have time if the present if the organizers allow me just to give you a very quick sense of what this will look like so let's just quickly see if I can do that yeah here we go this is a not the live website but some designs have been created by our designer so this will kind of it will be what it'll look like and you'll go onto the site and then you can depending on who you are you can take different kinds of action as a library you can start to build a subscription package as a publisher you can find out how to to join and just skip through some of these slides and this is what a kind of building your quotation page you'll be able to support collectives composed of different initiatives you'll be able to support individual initiatives and that will then add to a kind of basket and just skip to the basket page there's a collective catalog individual book pages then here's the basket page sorry and so it'll go back there it'll provide you a total quotation for supporting different initiatives and if an initiative is already in a collective package it will then remove that from your quotation so you don't accidentally have a kind of double dipping scenario you'll add some details and then we will be in touch with you to discuss further and to deal with all the contracting stuff the system actually does also work out the contracting in the back end as well okay I think that's it for me really look forward to your thoughts your feedback on this proposition on anything that I've talked about thank you so we've just got now five minutes really to to wrap up this session and then give people a chance to stretch their legs and go elsewhere but thanks so much everyone in the breakout rooms for contributing and giving your feedback on this I think we're just going to do a quick summary go around the rooms to see if there are commonalities or shared points for my group really what came through quite strongly was that the OBC could be a really useful framework for comparing the offers that are here we need a combination though of thought we need to think about what metrics we're using and how sensible they are one of the comments stuck in my mind was we don't have sensible metrics for making these decisions yet and we need a balance between narrative and structured information that goes back to libraries on what they're supporting and what they've achieved as a result of that support because the academic voice is often missing from these discussions but should be more prominently featured if we want this to be carrying the hearts and minds of the communities we're trying to serve thank you so I'll pass over to Lucy thanks Martin so we covered quite a lot of different topics in our session but one of them that stuck out to me was that OBC's one of its strong sort of selling points or you know reasons to support it is that it can simplify things for libraries but that there are some questions about if there are initiatives on OBC which also have separate ways to get support from libraries how can that be made clear and will those institutions or initiatives or publishers communicate that back to libraries so that they can know that when they're assessing and making a decision and we also talked a bit towards the end about sort of different types of value proposition that OBC presents so both kind of a sort of ethical or equitable value or you know kind of scholarly value and also a kind of monetary value and how you kind of juggle those messages and the idea that you know really we kind of need to be presenting both because both issues are important to libraries in different ways and important to libraries and communicating upwards as well so they kind of came out of our discussions brilliant thank you Lucy did you get Toby oh yes sure I think our discussions have also been quite fruitful regarding the first hand thoughts on the OBC some of the participants felt that the presentation is or the the OBC as an overall offer is quite new to them so it's rather difficult to give like a direct reaction for them to see if they can support that or not but they definitely feel that it be good to support smaller initiatives and the proposed model seems to be an interesting way to learn more about. Also a very practical question that came up in relation to that is the OBC's relation to GISC so just the very practical question of how libraries can then route their subscriptions with the OBC and we explored what the OBC is looking at there so for example Graham who has been on my room mentioned that GISC has been involved from the start of course in coping overall and in the open book collective gathering of thoughts and the conceptual building the platform and we are in active discussions with the GISC licensing team to get the subscription manager lined up for that so I think the reaction from our participants has been quite positive on that aspect because it would of course help them to streamline the management of subscriptions through the OBC with the GISC subscription manager maybe also to point to another thought that came up in relation to TOAT and I think people in our group have been quite positive about the notion that the records we are producing with TOAT are CC0 and also and was noted that libraries for some of the libraries there is a big issue with the quality of existing records in four open monographs and so TOAT might be an interesting venture to follow up on in that respect to provide higher quality metadata that would help their systems as well. Thank you I'm going to go quickly to Tom and I think Joe's summarizing his in the chat because we want to give people a couple of minutes between sessions but Tom did you just want to close us out? Oh an honor thank you Martin so I'll keep mine very brief and say that we had a really wide-ranging discussion that touched on a lot of what you all said and one takeaway for me was the concept of where this where GISC begins and ends and someone said you know is essentially said is this like a fresh skin for the GISC licensing subscriptions manager which was a really interesting point that we perhaps need to get right in our comms. I'll leave it there. Brilliant. Perhaps I can just say as the final word I won't summarize my discussion but yeah just to say thank you so much everyone and you know I would really encourage any of you that want to stay in touch to yeah to sign up to our mailing list and if there anybody is in the room who is a publisher or represents a university press or works as a small publisher and you think that it might OBC might be relevant for you in terms of potentially for example having a package on the platform we did now or some future moment please do get in touch with me and we're already talking to some publishers around exactly that and yeah thanks so much for all your contributions has brought incredibly beneficial I think for me personally and I'm sure for all of us.