Abstract

A succession strategy is pointless unless a project has attained three critical prerequisites: success, stability, and sustainability. For the Public Knowledge Project the components that collectively addressed these prerequisites can be categorized as follows:

· The Right Place: a supportive environment composed of academic institutions, especially libraries, research funding agencies, plus research and community networks.

· The Right Time: the appearance and widespread adoption of transformational technological development models (open source) and information/knowledge accessibility initiatives (open access), with the concurrent appearance of national and international policy initiatives adopting and promoting OS and OA.

· The Right People: a hybrid project group consisting of researchers, librarians, software developers, and community participants.

It is also important to recognize that succession may not just apply to people and the key positions they occupy, but also to the organizational frameworks that must evolve to remain viable. Projects are generally considered to be temporary endeavours with a beginning and an end. Planning and implementing the transition of a project to a more enduring and stable organizational model is critical.

This was especially the case for PKP. What started primarily as a research project by John Willlinsky in the lmid 1990s quickly evolved into an applied research initiative to develop an online scholarly publishing system that would be readily available to any academic journal. When the user community started to grow rapidly, PKP also had to contend with the many demands of supporting a suite of online software. Succession and transition planning became a more complex and challenging undertaking.

The phrase "the right place at the right time" is often construed as serendipitous, fortuitous, or opportune. True, but only to a certain extent. For PKP this was the opportunity to recognize the situational dynamics that were coalescing and to pursue them to achieve success, stability, and sustainabilty for the long term.

Brief Bio

Brian Owen was the Associate Dean of Libraries for Library Technology Services and Special Collections at SFU Library; & Managing Director for the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) from 2004 - 2018. As PKP's Managing Director, Brian was responsible for coordinating all planning, governance and administrative activities. He directed the development and implementation of PKP's sustainability strategy and its business plan in 2011 with the objective of making PKP a self-supporting entity with financial revenue from multiple sources. He was also responsible for the hiring and management of the core PKP team. Since retiring in 2018, Brian has continued community involvement in a different context as a Captain in the Britannia Beach Volunteer Fire Dept.

Please see 'Notes' below for any suggested/official citation information added by the author(s) of this work. Otherwise, you can cite the HSS Commons instance of this publication as follows:

• Owen, B., (2026), "The Right Place at the Right Time..Plus the Right People", HSSCommons: (DOI: 10.25547/5C1H-GF93)

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1. pkp
2. project management
3. project transition
4. public knowledge project
5. succession
6. transitions and succession