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Andrew Simpson - Making sense for researchers: finding a practical approach at Portsmouth
The University of Portsmouth took a practical approach to implementing open access policies. They established a research outputs manager position split between the library and research office. Interviews with researchers found common misunderstandings about open access that informed training sessions. A research portal was created for submissions. Expanding support staff and developing reporting tools helped manage the growing open access requirements.
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Andrew Simpson - Making sense for researchers: finding a practical approach at Portsmouth
- 1. Making sense ofopen access Finding a practical approach at Portsmouth
- 2. An OA journey •Starting points • A new world • … and training and promotion • and systems and staffing • … of admin
- 3. • Historically teachingand undergraduate focused • 23,000 students; 2,500 staff • Some areas of high research activity top rated in REF – Allied Health and Physics • 298 researchers submitted to REF 2014 • Estimate 450 staff who are research active • Growing research focus University of Portsmouth
- 4. • Repository alreadyin place run by library • Maintained by Metadata (cataloguing) staff • Faculty Librarians provide support to researchers if asked, but focus is UGs and teaching support • Research office have chosen and are implementing CRIS (Pure) • Also start working with them on an OA policy and creation of an OA post The Portsmouth position in 2013
- 5. Research Outputs Manager •Open Access Working Group established to work on policy and creation of post • New funds obtained to create Research Outputs Manager post, starts in Sep 2013 • Co-location of post: full time library employee, spending two days a week based in research office • Able to work closely with the right people on policy, processes, systems …
- 6. Open access mandates HEFCE’sREF eligibility policy “This requirement will apply to journal articles and conference proceedings accepted for publication after 1 April 2016” RCUK’s OA policy “The policy applies to peer‐reviewed research articles (including review articles not commissioned by publishers), which acknowledge Research Council funding, that are submitted for publication from 1st April 2013, and which are published in journals or conference proceedings.” University of Portsmouth policy “Journal articles and conference proceedings accepted for publication after 1st January 2014.”
- 7. APC dilemmas • Greenroute preferred in university policy – no alternative? • RCUK block grant + small fund from University for gold payments • Application and approval process needed • Need to manage expectations of academic staff • Many understand gold = open access
- 8. Managing APC funds •Limited APC money for unfunded research • Established careful process to approve how it’s spent • More RCUK funds than we can spend (initially at least) • University policy to preference green What messages should we give to academic staff?
- 9. Unknowns • How wereother Universities handling this? • What did researchers think and know? • How could we make it as easy as possible? • Being involved in Jisc Pathfinder from 2014 helped with this… openaccess.jiscinvolve.org/wp/
- 10. Jisc Pathfinder: MakingSense Oxford Brookes, Nottingham Trent, Portsmouth: sensemakingopenaccess.blogspot.co.uk
- 11. Interviews • Semi-structured, informalconversations • Research leads – 11 across all faculties interviewed by our Research Outputs Manager • Extended to some academics interviewed by their subject librarians • Though sample was small, we learned a great deal through having the opportunity for open conversations
- 12. Findings • Broadly awareof OA and accepted its importance for the REF, RCUK etc. but not aware of the details and their implications • Common misunderstandings - – Didn’t consider OA in publication strategy before submitting – Difference between OA and hybrid journals – Difference between the ‘3 month rule’ and embargoes – Assumed you can always take the green route to comply – Not aware of the high cost of APCs – Don’t know what REF panel they will be submitting to • Just want to know what they have to do to comply
- 13. Actions • Some commonissues were quickly apparent and actions were taken to address these • The interviews also helped inform our ongoing activities with awareness raising • It was clear no single approach to awareness was going to work, so we developed a plan with a variety of methods
- 14. Training: OA sessions Peoplewere happy to attend university wide presentations if at a time they could do • OA sessions increased to every 6 weeks at various times • Smaller groups • Part of general Researcher Development Programme
- 16. Questionnaires • Pre andpost questionnaires used to improve the sessions • Helped highlight common misunderstandings • Half of attendees in 2015/16 had no experience of OA beforehand
- 17.
- 18. … and simplifiedfurther
- 19. Research Newsletter • Regularlibrary section
- 20. Tailoring the message •We analysed samples (approximately 50) of our Business School and Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation journals. • Results demonstrated most but not all journals comply with HEFCE or RCUK via the green route, so there is a need to check before submitting. • This helped reinforce the message that they do need to consider where to publish at an early stage, whilst keeping the limitations in perspective
- 21. We were ableto identify staff who already added items to ArXiv and set-up an import to Pure
- 22. System• Current mix ofsystems confusing • Reinforced our move to a single portal
- 23. Research Portal • Betterengagement with researchers • Sits alongside other profiles • Backed up by PVC(R) • Repository withdrawal
- 24. We were ableto set up reports and dashboards in Pure for research leads
- 25.
- 26. Individual help • Thevast majority of people do want to be able to contact someone for advice • We have promoted email help • We do not validate recent articles without a post-print and so deal with queries at published stage • Now starting to get more questions at an earlier stage asking about which journals comply • All takes time though!
- 27. Expanding the team •Growing workload needed a dedicated team • Research Outputs Officer and Assistant posts created from within library budget • Moved validation work from Metadata • Data post next?
- 28. Library staff • Questionnairesused with subject librarians • Good general awareness but from a publisher point of view • Wanted more specific back-up information
- 29. Off-setting deals • Recentoff-setting deals mean more options • Try to publicise what is available to make the most of them • Complicates the message further!
- 30. Data • Project Boardset up to looks at issues • Information Services and PVC(R) involved • Able to make use of CRIS for metadata • Storage space created whilst encouraging use of national services • Very little engagement yet • Still some issues of support • Data post next?
- 31. Findings and ourongoing approach • Practical and focused on the researcher • We have to do stuff for them if we want it to be done • Don’t need buy in just need cooperation • They are happy to take instruction if what they need to do is made as straightforward as possible
- 32. Andrew Simpson [email protected] www.port.ac.uk/library/help/research/open/ Making Sense: sensemakingopenaccess.blogspot.co.uk JiscPathfinders: openaccess.jiscinvolve.org/wp/pathfinder-projects/
Editor's Notes
- #4 298 researchers submitted to REF
- #7 UoP OA policy: http://www.port.ac.uk/accesstoinformation/policies/ HEFCE’s OA policy: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/rsrch/oa/ RCUK’s OA policy: http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/openaccess/
- #8 Small APC funds, but some APC funds, so need to be organised enough to deal with them, can’t ignore them
- #12 A feature of all of the Making Sense partners
- #13 The ‘what academics wanted’ is covered under the ‘actions’ section.
- #15 ie. pathfinder interviews found that people were happy to sign up to university-wide open access events. But smaller groups events are better. So we’ve arranged these to run about every 6 weeks throughout 2015-2016. We are also running department / research group specific sessions for those who want it.
- #16 Fits into wider researcher training Research office do promotion and bookings
- #17 Need to explain some of the counter-intuitive aspects – eg as we prefer the green route we’re actually asking people to avoid OA
- #21 Pathfinder interviews highlighted that academics did not always understand the importance of checking where they are going to publish before submitting their articles. Analyzing journals - ICG journals: I took the top 6 they published in most often last year based on the RCUK compliance report. A lot of their research is RCUK funded, and they don't seem to publish in a wide range of journals anyway, so this is a reasonable sample. PBS journals - I analysed a sample of journals on the ABS list. The ABS list is published each year and it's considered to be the 'definitive' list of business journals. I analysed three subjects; Accounting, Marketing, and Business and Economic History (54 journals). But showing academics a sample of journals they publish in, made it clear why this was important. However, it also showed that while it is important to check (ie. to avoid any problematic journals if possible), the situation is not that bad and it’s important to keep things in perspective. Presented results to both these research groups, and as example for the wider university. It seemed to be quite a good way of both making people realise they should thing of OA before submitting work (ie. not to get caught out), but also showing them that it's not as a massive issue as they may have thought.
- #22 Also, the pathfinder interviews highlighted that the openaccess needs to be made as easy as possible for academics, so set up the Arxiv importer to tackle the issue of ICG researchers (who have 100s names on each article) having to type in names again.
- #23 Pathfinder interviews found that academics were confused with the current system of uploading to Pure, and then content being transferred to Parade (eprints), and then onto their staff profile pages. There were also concerned their profile pages became out of date quickly. They wanted an overall simpler system, plus to have more control over updating their profiles. The Portsmouth Research Portal brings everything onto one system. It allows academics to update their profiles, organise their own pages and highlight publications they consider to be important, makes it clear who to contact for help, etc.
- #24 Mention PVC email – over 100 deposits over the weekend
- #25 This was requested from people in the pathfinder interviews. Allows research leads to monitor and manage what researchers in their area are doing. And, chase them if they’ve not uploaded articles to Pure. e.g. use information in Pure to do reviews etc. Could mention the response to Pal’s meetings with Readers and Profs (ie. academics uploaded 500 articles over one weekend in response to an email from Pal telling them he was reviewing their work based on what’s in Pure.)
- #26 It takes about 1 person 2 days to check through every three months. To give you an idea of the scale, we've published about 1600 journal and articles since 2014, so this would take longer for a bigger uni. For the 73 academics who attended the workshops, it was found that 80% (ie. 56 out of their 196) of their articles listed in Scopus were also in Pure. This is above the average for the University of Portsmouth; in June 2016 67% of publications listed in Scopus are also in Pure.
- #27 Pathfinder interviews: the vast majority of people wanted to be able to contact someone in the library for advice. single email address - [email protected] - which was on flowchart that was sent out (ie. as a result of the interviews), which seem to have prompted quite a lot of questions. e.g. an academic deciding on where to submit his paper, first emailed the [email protected] address with the list of 5 potential journals and asked which one would let him comply with HEFCE via the green route. This is what we want academics to do, however, it is time consuming answering their questions.
- #30 Off setting deals can be a mixed blessing – not much benefit for us?
- #31 Working on ORCID too
- #32 In Ithaka survey 74% at Portsmouth strongly support OA But is this enough going forward?