The time since the last overview of the HHuLOA project seems to have been a very long time ago. In which much must have happened. Whilst that is not exclusive to the HHuLOA project on its own, it does feel like some good progress has been made in the past six months.
Project workpackages
Baseline template – In creating our own baseline we wanted to capture information on all aspects of open access activity that may be taking place, or required, within our institutions. The project partners developed this through the autumn, with helpful insight from Northumbria and others, and the final template was released in February for general use. The template was the topic of a separate blog post, which also provides the link to this openly available Google spreadsheet. The partner institutions have been busy adding the second round of data for March 2015 recently. This has highlighted that in many areas there is little or no change since September, albeit that this can be good (indicating stability of service provision) and bad (lack of momentum in areas that need change). In other areas there has been very positive developments, some of which are highlighted later in this blog post. Further analysis will be carried out in due course to assess overall progress and priorities for ongoing effort.
Dissemination of the baseline spreadsheet has been widespread and other institutions invited to contribute their own data, both as a tool for their own benefit and as a way of identifying any broad trends and/or issues that may be arising. So far, seven institutions (both large and small) have added data. In building up a picture of open access development, and being open about open access, others will be encouraged to also add their data in the coming months.
Policy landscape tool – Our intention in creating a policy tool was to provide a means by which academics could easily understand what each funder required of them, and what open access those funders were prepared to support. An initial call for input from the OA Pathfinder projects provided a great response (thanks to all!), and a very long list of funders. The work was at risk of becoming unwieldy, or at last much bigger than anticipated. We have, thus, stripped it down initially to key funders, and generated a spreadsheet that captures the valid information. This will be shared more widely imminently – watch out for the blog post and link from OAWAL – and comment is very welcome. Using Google spreadsheets again, we will be exploiting the ability to provide different views onto the data for navigation as a next step.
Open access service review – This work set out as an exploration of where services sit within the open access lifecycle, and what gaps there may be. Interestingly, there did not appear to be many gaps: many others have thought this through and there are initiatives across the board. The work did, though, highlight that placing these services in the context of a lifecycle was itself helpful. The final touches are being put to this and it will be disseminated shortly – look out for the blog post on that as well!
A specific area of investigation in this area was how we capture rights information in open access materials, as this is essential in clarifying their re-use by others. Work is being undertaken with the British Library on this, who are proposing how it might be managed for e-theses. A blog post outlining their thinking has been disseminated and feedback is welcome.
Programme activity
At the first Pathfinder programme meeting last June, the potential synergy between HHuLOA and the projects from Northumbria and Oxford Brookes was highlighted. This led to a successful workshop in October that highlighted some valuable ways forward and areas that needed attention.
At Hull, we followed up this contact with Northumbria recently by acting as one of the institutional case studies they are pulling together: Lincoln will also be the subject of a case study within this series. This involved David Young from Northumbria and Barry Hall from Sunderland visiting and running a workshop for us from which they gathered the relevant information they needed. Invited to gather a range of staff to contribute, this was a great opportunity to bring together different stakeholders (we included librarians, an academic and a policy maker), and a chance to take time out to simply talk through the issues of open access and how institutions respond to them.
HHuLOA was one of the projects asked to present at the RLUK conference in November.
We attended the second programme meeting in Edinburgh in December, which was a useful catch-up with the other projects, and a useful chance to reflect on the various issues we are tackling.
We also attended the Jisc Monitor workshop in January looking at the data model that any related service would need to operate using, and have been in contact with Jisc Monitor staff to feed in our thoughts about technical needs and developments.
Institutional activity
Hull – Recent months have seen a flurry of local activity in getting the open access message out, largely driven by the HEFCE REF OA policy deadline. Hull’s institutional Open Access Policy was approved in October and is in the process of being rolled out in time for a start date on 1st April 2015, to be overseen by a cross-Faculty Open Access Working Group. This date is deliberate, in being one year prior to the HEFCE policy start date, so that we can take a full year to put HEFCE’s requirements into practice in partnership with the academic community. Open meetings are taking place with academic staff to make them aware of the HEFCE and University policies, to engage their participation, and to describe what they need to do. To assist with this, an open access libguide has been launched to provide guidance.
Lincoln – Following on from the launch of their open access policy, Lincoln is now re-animating their RDM policy to sit alongside this. Encouragingly, a review of the policy, which was originally put together in 2012, highlighted that very little needed updating as the work carried out then had put in place a policy that has stood the test of time. In looking to make sure that the locally-hosted EPrints repository can hold the necessary information for HEFCE compliance an audit is being carried out, with a view to identifying the best way forward.
Huddersfield – Huddersfield’s Open Access Policy has also now been agreed, and will be launched shortly. An RDM policy will follow, again as a companion document. To improve the user experience of their EPrints-hosted repository as we move toward HEFCE compliance, the system will be re-skinned in the summer, and the results display adapted to use an APA citation style that is consistent with other library systems. The EPrints RIOXX plugin will also be added via system update in the next couple of months.
What next?
Completing the outstanding parts of the workpackages described above will be a short-term priority, but what comes after this?
- Technical enhancement – Described in part above under institutional activity, there are moves afoot to make local repositories RIOXX-compliant. This will be core to making the systems fit for purpose. HHuLOA will be holding an internal half-day workshop on April to look at the schema in detail, and understand better how it should be implemented.
- The impact of Open Access on research development – Building on internal discussions, the next major area of work will be to identify how open access can benefit research development, and consolidate its position in institutional processes around research dissemination. A half-day workshop is being organised (again in April) with institutional stakeholders across the partner institutions to get different viewpoints, and these will be brought together for wider dissemination in June.
Oh, and ongoing advocacy, advocacy, advocacy…