As ever with the ending of the summer period, September leads to a fair amount of head-scratching and wondering where the time went to do all the things you wanted to do in the past few months. Thankfully, the land has not been fallow in regard of open access developments within the HHuLOA project and the three partner institutions.
Project update
It is a year since we started collecting baseline information on open access planning within institutions. We now have 13 institutions contributing to this, and hope to have more this autumn. The partner institutions will be updating their own entries and all institutions willing to share their own information through are very welcome. The advantages of sharing this information have been flagged up as:
- Identifying service gaps and evidence to help build a local business case
- Informing local service development through sharing of good practice
- Bringing together sector wide activity to help inform above campus service development
A separate blog post is being published on an initial analysis of the data collected to highlight trends that have emerged.
The focus of attention with regard to navigation of funder policies has been on identifying use cases for the information as it is broken down. Ongoing analysis is under way, in particular looking at the comparison of the work with that of PASTEUR4OA and Sherpa JULIET. Additional funders are also being included.
The open access life cycle was published shortly after the last update, and has proved to be a valuable tool in prompting and informing open access discussions. A US version was also produced, and it is planned to develop stakeholder views of the life cycle during the autumn.
The project held a successful event at the National Railway Museum on 25th June. This focused on dissemination of the work described above, and then looked at the links between open access and research development. The findings are being described in a separate blog post, and are informing a forthcoming survey on this topic in October.
Dissemination also took place at the recent Northern Collaboration Conference at Leeds Beckett University, which also promoted the Pathfinder projects overall and encouraged take-up of their outputs.
Local developments
The technical work that is required at each site to ensure we can capture the correct metadata is ongoing, with each site at different stages. We hope to generate use cases from our experiences in the next few months to help guide others.
Systems aside, the work has also helped us better understand the RIOXX metadata profile that will help us capture the information we need for compliance and local open access management. A set of guidelines on using the profile has been produced, and this will be extended to cover REF-specific metadata in due course.
From each site:
The University of Huddersfield upgraded to EPrints 3.3 over the summer and we have spent a lot of time testing the new system before and after the migration. Although the upgrade went well, with virtually no downtime, we have suffered platform instability since. This has meant that we have only just had the RIOXX plug-in installed and this is the next job for us. We plan to use the HHuLOA RIOXX guidelines to help us get the plug-in working successfully in the coming weeks. Next will be the ORCiD plug in, which we are looking forward to getting to grips with. Huddersfield became an ORCiD Consortium Member through Jisc Collections and this will soon become the single point of truth. Huddersfield is currently out to tender for a CRIS, so we will be going quiet on that front for a while. Other activities over the summer were to use the Jisc APC template to report on APC payment, the next step will be to use this for RCUK reporting in the coming weeks. Finally we hope to give the Repository a new coat of paint in the coming months with a refresh of the look and feel of the platform.
The Repository team at Lincoln have been working on the prototype “Research Bridge”, a web-based system for aggregating information from disparate institutional systems (including the Lincoln Repository, staff data, research project/finance data and metrics/usage data systems), and for making this information available through dashboards and reports. This same system is being used to generate HEFCE policy compliance reports. Lincoln has become an ORCID Consortium Member through Jisc Collections, and the Repository team are working with Lincoln’s Human Resources department on processes for generating and storing ORCIDs in the University’s “MyView” staff data system, and on making them available through Microsoft Active Directory for use in other applications including the Lincoln Repository (EPrints).
The University of Hull saw the creation of the new Research Services Team in July, with 3.5 dedicated staff resource (albeit also covering library cataloguing) able to provide more focus on research support, including open access. This has boosted our ability to respond to REF policy submissions in preparation for next April. A communications plan is also coming into play this month to increase awareness, using a structured email campaign and postcards amongst its tools. We have completed the specification for Hydra development to accommodate RIOXX and REF metadata, and will be implementing this in the run-up to Christmas, by which time we shall also be Jisc ORCiD Consortium members. Our Open Access Working Group has provided useful input to our planning, and valuable institutional context for the services we need to provide.
Looking ahead
In addition to continuing the development of the baseline template, funder policy navigation and open access life cycle as described above, HHuLOA will be focusing more on its original elevator pitch in the coming months:
“HHuLOA will focus on good practice to identify and implement a range of OA initiatives across three non-RLUK research intensive partners.”
In doing so, we want to extend the discussions we started at our project event on how open access can contribute to research development and strategy in the context of a small but growing research base. We plan to explore the link between libraries and research offices (and other stakeholders) in managing OA workflows, develop good practice tips for a range of research facets (e.g., finance, legal, community, staffing, dissemination, and technical), and develop a draft MoU to facilitate connections between institutional stakeholders.
We are also keen to understand better how we embed open access in library supply chain workflows, and will be exploring this across the three partners in the New Year. Input on both these areas is very welcome.
Chris