It has been too long since our HHuLOA project event at the end of June, but a useful time to reflect back on what was covered at this and how it is informing the ongoing work of the project.
Twenty-two attendees from across the country wended their way to the excellent facilities at the National Railway Museum on Thursday 25th June to the event, which was entitled ‘How can Open Access support research development?’ Those making the trip came from varied backgrounds, covering both library and research office, and this facilitated a useful exchange of views and ideas from different perspectives.
The morning of the event was given over to presentations of the main outputs from the project to date, which are available through the blog and have been discussed in greater detail elsewhere (See WP1, WP2, WP3). Feedback was especially invited on the Open Access life cycle, and this has been fed back into the subsequent development of a next version, plus the development of alternative versions from different viewpoints: the existing version is library-focused, but new versions are being developed for publishers, researchers and research offices, noting their essential part in the Open Access process. A version for IT staff is also being considered.
There was also much interest in the work on navigating funder open access policies. This is an area where the project has since reached a practical limit in how far it can take the work, and will be presenting a proposed direction of travel for the community to pick up as appropriate; this will also be discussed with Jisc in the light of the clear interest in having a navigation tool to ease compliance across funders.
The baseline spreadsheet capturing information on institutional open access developments was reviewed, and has since been updated by the project partners for September 2015. Additional entries are still invited, and we are looking at maintaining the record beyond the life of the project to help assess progress across the community. A separate blog piece will be published analysing the findings so far.
Part 2 of this blog will look specifically at the detail of the afternoon session, which focused more closely on the link between Open Access and research development within institutions. The slides used on the day are also available – HHuLOA project event slides 150625.