Author: cawre

And so, into the final few months of the HHuLOA project. The project has been a curious mixture to date of institutional developments informing and being informed by the specific project activities that the three partner institutions would have been unlikely to take forward without the project. This update mirrors this, and highlights that Open Access developments within our institutions go beyond what HHuLOA is covering, but also the value of the project activities.

System/metadata developments

The project has had a particular interest in how our systems can manage the metadata they need to. Within the project this has been taken forward through the analysis of RIOXX. An analysis of REF metadata (RIOXX+, so to speak) is forthcoming, and is being guided by our mutual understanding of how this can be implemented and presented through our repository systems (Hydra at Hull, hosted EPrints at Huddersfield, and local EPrints at Lincoln). Working towards a recognised metadata standard for display is also being explored at Huddersfield, focusing on APA 6^th. Lincoln is focusing on the ongoing development of Repository Bridge, a system that can be used to more effectively flag the Open Access status of outputs in the repository.

Aside of repository concerns, both Hull and Huddersfield are in the process of selecting and implementing a new Research Information System. The work to understand the metadata required for our repositories will play into the RIS set-up, as it is likely that the RIS will be used to collect the metadata required in the first instance.

Another area that all three partners are looking at in more detail is ORCiD. Lincoln has a first iteration of a university-wide system for authenticating and handling ORCiD identifiers, whilst Huddersfield has implemented the EPrints plugin for testing. Hull will be rolling out ORCiD as part of the RIS implementation, and then capturing the identifier in the repository.

Advocacy/training developments

As the HEFCE policy deadline approaches, all sites have been looking at ways of spreading awareness of what academics and support service colleagues need to do, and why. Lincoln has been liaising with the local REF Office and Planning & Business Intelligence on reporting on citations and usage of OA outputs. Huddersfield is looking at making use of the CIAO and MIAO tools in training sessions (focusing on MIAO for researchers). Hull has been disseminating a postcard with instructions and attending as many staff meetings as possible to raise awareness prior to a series of open meetings and panels of academics telling their Open Access stories in Feb-Apr.

Linked to this has been the work of HHuLOA. Huddersfield has been making use of the Open Access life cycles (of which there are now four from different perspectives) and tube map in internal training sessions, whilst Hull has just concluded a national survey for the project on the links between Open Access and research workflows to better understand how Open Access can be embedded; a blog post on this will follow in February. We are also turning the work on navigating Open Access policies into a journal article to prompt ongoing discussion.

Other project activities?

Aside of the work described above, what else has the project been doing?

• Updates were made to the baseline spreadsheet of Open Access activity – further updates are encouraged and are being chased up from those who have contributed so far – and an analysis of the information within this carried out.
• Dissemination took place at the Northern Collaboration conference in September 2015, and at the Charleston Conference in the US in November. Presentations to come are at the Research2Reader (R2R) conference in February (on the Open Access life cycles) and at RLUK (on the links between Open Access and research workflows). A final project event, scoped as a Northern Collaboration Learning Exchange, is being developed for May.  We also wrote up our project event from June and drew out key themes from this.
• We are working with Jisc Monitor to advise on workflows and the design of the service, whilst also taking part in the pilot as Tier 3 institutions.
• We will be looking at links between Open Access workflows and e-resource management workflows (using the TERMS structure) to identify potential links, again looking at how to better embed Open Access.

Research Data Management

So, RDM may not be a primary activity for HHuLOA, but a key area of development at each partner. Huddersfield has received its first data from a humanities research project and is refining guidelines with the Research Office. Lincoln continues to develop a business case for a data registry and repository (having tested CKAN in the past), whilst Hull is working with the UK Research Data Discovery Service to enable harvesting of data records from Hydra. A growth area…

HHuLOA has launched a survey to investigate the links between Open Access and research support processes and strategy within institutions.  We hope to provide guidance on how Open Access can be better embedded within research support in institutions, both to support the need for HEFCE policy compliance and see the benefit of Open Access for research dissemination.

To complete the survey, please visit https://hull.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/open-access-and-research-support.  The survey should take no more than 15 minutes.

The survey is informed by a project event HHuLOA ran in June 2015 that attracted staff from a range of organisational units within universities.  The outcome of this day has been written up in other blog posts (see links below), and this survey seeks to build on the discussions on that day.

https://library.hud.ac.uk/archive/projects/hhuloa/2015/11/12/hhuloa-project-event-blog-piece-part-1/

https://library.hud.ac.uk/archive/projects/hhuloa/2015/11/12/hhuloa-project-event-blog-piece-part-2/

The day highlighted the important role being filled by different staff within Open Access workflows, depending on how research support is structured, including Library, IT, Finance, Marketing, HR, and research support offices.  The survey explores this stakeholder involvement further.  As such, responses from across different organisational units within institutions are welcome to ascertain the picture from different perspectives.  Please pass the survey link onto any colleagues also working with Open Access who can feed in their view.  Looking beyond day-to-day Open Access practice, the survey also then considers the place of Open Access within institutional strategy: how much is Open Access a strategic driver in itself as well as a means to an end?

Thank you in advance for taking part in the survey!

The institutions that have volunteered information for the baseline assessment spreadsheet (13 including the project partners) have, through their own openness, provided some useful insights to how and what open access developments are taking place. Based on information received up the end of the summer, a top 10 (although not necessarily in order) of themes and trends were identified for a presentation at the Northern Collaboration conference in September, and have been expanded for this blog post. A further analysis will take place after the latest information updates from the autumn have been added.

1. QA of research output records sits with the Library, irrespective of how deposit is carried out.

Quality Assurance seems to be a role that libraries are being recognised for as part of the open access process. This may be because no one else wants to do it, of course, but it does flag up that there is a very definite and important role that libraries are being called to undertake. This theme also highlights the role of libraries in research information system management, and it would be good to understand how this is panning out more broadly.

2. Text-mining is a largely unexplored area, with a major sticking point being the default use of PDF as the filetype being deposited.

Maybe not so surprisingly, text-mining hasn’t hit the radar yet, or at least not in the institutions providing data. There is interest, certainly, but possibly a lack of awareness of how to engage and support this in research outputs within repositories. It is recognised that the default use of PDF (or, at least, PDF image files if created this way) doesn’t necessarily help with this, and the main purpose of the repository being to facilitate easy access rather than machine processing. It would be good to hear of examples where repository contents have been used in text mining to understand how this can be best enabled.

3. The heaviest focus is on Green Open Access, with Gold Open Access as an add-on.

This is perhaps not surprising given the pronouncements from many institutions in this area. Pragmatism is winning out over policy preference (at least in RCUK’s case). It does raise the issue of how institutions might better support Gold Open Access (assuming costs can be managed).

4. Reporting is an underdeveloped area.

Whilst libraries have focused on getting content deposited, and some repository systems have good reporting tools, it seems that this has been put on the back burner in many cases, at least for now. Given the audit requirements for HEFCE and RCUK, this is an area that will require development, and internal reporting will also help raise the profile of what Open Access through the repository can enable.

5. Metadata entry does use automated tools (e.g., CrossRef if supplying a DOI), but much effort is still manual.

The inconsistency in information and policy from different publishers makes this manual effort almost inevitable. Nevertheless, if systems can be used to provide metadata, and maybe event the appropriate full-text, then they can be successfully exploited for this. This area of development in Jisc to help support HEFCE policy compliance is thus a key area to assist with ensuring repository records are managed in a timely fashion.

6. There is widespread availability of polices for Open Access, informed by an institutional body.

It was good to see that almost all those providing information have a local Open Access policy to inform their local practice. To some degree, then, institutions have accepted the need to highlight and communicate the benefits of Open Access and the need to act on this. It remains to be seen what type of teeth such bodies have when trying to enforce the policy.

7. Creative Commons licences are used widely, but only when required.

The power of the mandate seems to have had an impact here. Responses suggested that the RCUK and HEFCE policies are influencing use of CC licences. However, the responses also suggest that institutions are not promoting their own view of such licences, or looking to make use of them more generally. This feels short-sighted, as if such licences are going to be used, then it will be important for institutions to know and understand how the both make the most of them, and also defend them if they need to (if a licence is breached, for example).

8. Most sites responding now seem to have 1 or more FTE working on Open Access.

It is a while since UKCoRR did a survey of staffing for repositories and Open Access, so it was good to see this evidence. This is not to say the staffing resource is sufficient, particularly, but that there is some substance to how institutions are tackling Open Access that wasn’t present a few years ago.

9. A widespread mix of support services within universities are involved in Open Access.

This was another positive finding at the responding institutions. These connections will be tested further in an [upcoming survey] to unpick further how these relationships are working. It was less positive to note that direct academic involvement was not high, when they are primary stakeholders. Understanding how to involve academics more closely may be an ongoing challenge for all support services.

10. The main concerns noted were: resources, time – and the acceptance date!

No surprises here…

There is no doubt that many of these findings are not new, but it has been useful to have confirmation of them based on the data received. The more institutions provide this, the better the analysis can be, and hopefully lead to more refined investigation and analysis of Open Access trends.

The biannual update on progress with implementing Open Access, and specifically, implementing processes in readiness for the HEFCE REF Open Access policy, has now been added to the baseline spreadsheet to include the latest activity at the three partner sites – Hull, Huddersfield and Lincoln. All those who have added information earlier this year are invited to add their own updates for September 2015. Additionally, the spreadsheet is open to other institutions adding their own data, either from now or retrospectively, to add to the body of content that is amassing within the spreadsheet. Thirteen institutions have now added data, and it would be great to make it to 20 by the next update in March 2016.

Looking beyond this, the HHuLOA project completes at the end of May 2016. Noting the relaxation of the HEFCE policy for the first 12 months to focus on date of publication rather than date of acceptance, we’d like to keep the spreadsheet going so as to maintain a community awareness of progress going forward. Feedback on how we can make this as useful as possible is very welcome.

An assessment of the data gathered so far has been written up as a separate blog piece, focusing on trends and key similarities and differences. Validation of these findings from other institutions is welcome.

Following the morning review of HHuLOA project activity to date, the afternoon session was given over to looking at the link between Open Access and research development.  Open Access is a means by which research can be disseminated; to that end, where does the dissemination of research fit into institutional research practice and development in terms of achieving impact and meeting the University’s aims?  How can we embed Open Access within such institutional processes, thinking, and strategy to make it an established part of research practice and not an optional sideline?

To investigate this, the afternoon used two exercises to unpick ideas:

• Looking at key Open Access themes and how they might relate to research development
• Looking at institutional/research strategy and how Open Access might be embedded within this

This blog post summarises the discussions that took place, which were also noted from the day in the attached file.

HHuLOA project event 150625 notes

HHuLOA project event slides 150625

Open Access themes

The following themes were considered:

• Functional – How is research dissemination put into practice within an institution (other than individually)?
• Financial – How can we assess funding of Open Access as an investment?
• Legal – How can we use licensing to control/manage open dissemination (and avoid the challenge that Open Access gives our outputs away)?
• Technical – What is the repository’s role within the institution as a whole?
• Staffing – What staff resource is needed to make Open Access effective for the institutional investment in Open Access?
• Community – How does the institution wish to be seen in the HE community re: Open Access?

The subtext of each of these is, how do we get Open Access better embedded?  The notes from the session are available here.  It was clear that some were felt to be simpler to address than others, and it depended on the relative operational/strategic perspective you were able to take from your role.  In brief:

• Functional – Discussion focused around whether maintaining a list of proposed journals would help and identifying where to join conversations about dissemination plans. There are clear disciplinary differences as well that need specific attention.  Making use of social media to help promote Open Access wherever it does occur could also be a useful practical intervention.
• Financial – The need to highlight the financial outcomes from Open Access was flagged to raise awareness of the benefits: the collaborations established and economic gains/savings from these, as well as potential journal subscription savings (a long term goal!). Working towards a good REF environment score and building institutional reputation for Open Access as a way of attracting staff and investment were other areas considered.
• Legal – The need to either identify institutional licensing practice or prompt the establishment of such practice was highlighted as the main initial steps for this, so that application of open licences can take place in an acknowledged framework of practice.
• Technical – Given the mixed audience, it was interesting to note that most discussion here focused on the specific roles of the repository and a CRIS. Clarifying this and communicating it seem to be clear areas of ongoing need.
• Staffing – This discussion focused on who is involved, or needs to be involved, in Open Access to get it embedded. The need to reach across different parts of a University was highlighted, and this mirrors the development of different views of the Open Access life cycle to support this.
• Community – Attendees were unsure how their institutions wished to be viewed re: Open Access, but generated a useful list of reasons why institutions should consider positive endorsement of Open Access going forward, including knowledge transfer, value for money, public good, and, of course, research impact.

The outputs from this event were complemented by the findings at an earlier project stakeholder day in April, for which notes were also compiled.

HHuLOA stakeholder workshop 150427

Strategy and Open Access

The second part of the afternoon focused on strategy.  This poses an immediate challenge.  If Open Access is a means of research dissemination, does it merit strategic inclusion (which would more likely focus on dissemination more generally, not the means by which this is enabled)?  And yet, if we believe that Open Access is a substantial shift in research dissemination practice, is this not a strategic change in how we carry out this activity?  Discuss!

Discussion did indeed take place.  Initially, attendees considered potential approaches to having Open Access as part of institutional strategy, and where different institutions might position themselves:

Scenario 1

The University has decided that it would like to lead the world in the open dissemination of its research outputs, making use of a range of open access routes as appropriate to different output types.  Open access management will be embedded as a core part of institutional research support.

Scenario 2

The University recognises the value of open access, both as a means of supporting openness to research generally and as a means of raising the reputation of the institution through marketing of available outputs.  Appropriate support will be put in place to underpin this, acknowledging the compliance with external policies that will go hand in hand with this.

Scenario 3

The University notes the drivers and advocated value of open access, and will support compliance as required with external policies.  The focus of the University, though, is on maximising its research income, and dissemination options are left to individual and/or departmental decisions.

Most considered that they worked at an institution exhibiting Scenario 3.  Scenarios 1 and 2 were considered different levels of Open Access acceptance institutionally.  Moving from one to another was considered to need culture change, reconciliation with academic freedom, a greater focus on research outcomes, and ways of measuring performance against Open Access use to assess activity.  Many of the tools and steps needed were known and recognised, but they need to be drawn together to effect strategic change.

A sample, anonymous, institutional research strategy was also shared and attendees sent away with the challenge of identifying how Open Access might support the elements contained within this (and how this might be reflected in the strategy itself).  This file is shared for your own take on this…

Sample research strategy to assess Open Access connections

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 25^th 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.

HHuLOA project event 150625 notes

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

One of the HHuLOA project’s workpackages is to carry out technical work to ensure that the repositories at the partner institutions are fit for purpose in capturing the information we need to ensure compliance with the HEFCE REF Open Access Policy.  Paragraph 38 in the HEFCE Open Access FAQ states:

“The RIOXX profile is designed primarily to fulfil Research Councils UK’s requirements for metadata collection and reporting on open access. It is compatible with the information and audit requirements for the open-access policy in the next REF, which also overlap with RIOXX. The REF information requirements document shows all areas where overlaps exist between RIOXX and REF.”

The information requirements document outlines how the RIOXX profile can capture relevant information, acknowledging the additional information that will be required as well (mainly around the reporting of exceptions).  As it is anticipated that the detail of HEFCE’s requirements aside of RIOXX will be developed further, HHuLOA decided that we would start by examining the RIOXX profile and understanding how this would work in our repository systems.  The output from this is the attached analysis of the RIOXX elements, with proposed practice on applying these and capturing the information for them.  We can’t say that the guidance will necessarily apply across all repositories, but we hope that by sharing it we will help those working with RIOXX.  Feedback is very welcome.

HHuLOA RIOXX review

Most of the elements generated some queries, even if minor, and we are going away to understand better what the implications of these are.  Two of the mandatory elements, though, resulted in more discussion than others:

ali:licence_ref – this element is intended to hold information about licences under which the open access article is held, to make it clear under which permissions it can be used.  Where a Creative Commons or equivalent licence is being applied it is clear how this can be used.  However, it is less clear in the context of publisher licences, as the presentation of this information is not yet standardised or, in some cases, persistent.  The RIOXX standard provides a back-up approach by using URLs that refer to ‘all rights reserved’ statements generically, and we will most likely default to these until publisher information is more readily available.  This element is taken from NISO, and they do indicate they see this as being an ongoing development.  We would urge publishers to heed this call and make licence information available through persistent URLs akin to CC licence link availability.

rioxxterms:version – this element is intended to hold an entry from a fixed category list defining the version of the file available through the repository. Whilst having a fixed list clearly has value in helping to structure this information, it is very unclear what versions from publishers fall into which category: most institutions struggle with acquiring an AAM, never mind understanding which type of AAM it is.  It is not clear that the category list is understood or being used by publishers.  Hence, defaulting to NA for not applicable or unknown (or making a best guess) will be necessary, at least initially.  Further definition and common application of the category types is essential if this information is to be collected properly and be of value.

—————————-

As a project we will be taking forward our review of RIOXX into our system developments, following three distinct paths:

Hull – RIOXX will be implemented alongside other REF-related fields within our Hydra repository.  We will also be exploring how we can best share this work with other Hydra adopters in the UK.

Lincoln – RIOXX is being implemented within a locally-hosted version of EPrints, making changes in liaison with the EPrints team in Southampton.

Huddersfield – RIOXX is being implemented as part of a system upgrade to the EPrints-hosted repository, using the RIOXX plugin.

We will endeavour to report on our ongoing experiences in making use of RIOXX as we go along.

 

Back in March the University of Hull was visited by the OA Pathfinder team from Northumbria and Sunderland, who were on their travels interviewing a number of institutions on how they were dealing with open access.  The interview has now been written up as a case study.  This followed on from the successful workshop ran by Northumbria at the end of October 2014 that HHuLOA and the O2OA project based in Coventry had attended.

Being interviewed on our work with open access was a great way of reflecting on how we are doing and what work still needed to be done.  It was also a useful way to engage some internal stakeholders, with representatives from our Strategic Development Unit and an academic member of the School of Biological, Biomedical and Environmental Sciences also taking part alongside staff from the Library.  Our thanks go to David Young and Barry Hall for taking the time to visit and help us better understand how we are getting on.

A further case study is being prepared based on an interview with HHuLOA partner the University of Lincoln.

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…