HHuLO Access

As ever, September has arrived and there is a feeling of wondering where the summer for all those jobs you need to get done has disappeared to.   There was a great deal of activity in getting HHuLOA and the PathFinder programme off the ground in June and July, but what else has happened since then?

As it turns out, quite a lot.  Open access is so core to activity within our institutions now that it is certainly far more than a project activity, as is being evidenced by the HHuLOA project.  And good progress has been made institutionally that will be reflected further through this blog in the coming weeks.  This post provides a summary of developments at three/four months in.  It also reflects the main area of project activity in this first stage of the project, which was to establish a baseline of activity within each institution.

Structures and policies

All three partner institutions are establishing open access and research data management on a firmer institutional footing.  Hull is transition from a RDM  Working Group to a more formal RDM Steering Group, whilst an Open Access Steering Group has been proposed as part of a new Open Access Policy that is being submitted to the University Research and Enterprise Committee shortly.  Interestingly, the cross-faculty representation on the RDM Working Group were not keen on expanding the remit to include open access but focus attention on the issues of RDM (for which a separate institutional policy is also in the process of being agreed).  By contrast, Lincoln has formed a single Research Information Services Group (RISG) to address RDM and research information, and this has recently had an institutional Open Access Policy approved that is taking open access as the norm, and non-open access as an exception. Cutting the cake slightly differently again, Huddersfield is developing a joint Open Access and Research Data Management Policy being developed at Huddersfield, and has been undertaking researcher advocacy sessions on this prior to approval.

Compliance and monitoring

Policy development seeks to mix the carrots of open access with the stick of compliance.  Much of the open access activity within our institutions at the moment is geared, or is gearing, to compliance.  The recent RCUK reporting exercise was a valuable way to get a status check on where each institution is at, and provide insights on what needs to be done for ongoing RCUK compliance whilst also making sure that HEFCE OA policy compliance is covered at the same time.  Key to making future progress is establishing better monitoring processes.  Huddersfield is viewing this as an essential part of growing the use of open access, for compliance and more generally, and is carrying out work to improve internal processes as well as playing an active role in the Jisc Monitor project.  Mirroring this, RISG at Lincoln has set out a number of tasks for systems development with this in mind, and Hull has been developing a set of process and system requirements to underpin its Open Access Policy.  Whilst much of this work is looking ahead, it is good to have identified the steps involved now.  HHuLOA will be looking to share these soon.

External activities

Open access cannot, of course, exist just within the institutions, and all three partners have been looking to broaden their involvement with other services.  Lincoln has been able to start submitting theses to BL EThOS service, whilst Hull has been able to start submitting statistics to the IRUS-UK service: Huddersfield has continued to develop the OAWAL blog with Portland State University to aid librarians in their management of open access workflows.  More on this can be read at:

Emery, Jill and Stone, Graham (2014) Introduction to OAWAL: Open Access workflows for Academic Librarians. Serials Review, 40 (2). pp. 83-8. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/20272/

Monographs and institutional publishing

Whilst much open access activity has been focused on journal articles (not least because of the compliance required) Huddersfield have continued to develop their interests in open access monographs.  They are currently working on the OAPEN-UK open access monographs project to co-write an author’s guide to publishing open access monographs, and have published five titles through the University of Huddersfield Press into the Directory of Open Access Books.

The Press is also a journal publisher, and hosts five titles with two more on the way.  It is recently been accepted into Sherpa RoMEO, and entries in the Directory of Open Access Journals and Library Publishing Coalition Directory are forthcoming.  This internal approach can provide a valuable outlet for research dissemination using open access routes.

Advocacy

Everything the partner institutions have done has an advocacy element to them.  Two further examples are picked out here for additional context:

Huddersfield recently presented a paper at the 2014 ALPSP conference on the potential impact of Open Access repositories and library scholarly publishing on ‘traditional’ publishing models (http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/21215/), laying out some of the thinking that informs the University Press.

Hull has had a new PVC Research and Enterprise start in September.  Getting senior management buy-in is essential to getting policy, structure and compliance matters addressed, and it was pleasing to get an invitation to a meeting to explain open access for the new arrival.  This invitation came at the initiative of the Vice Chancellor, and it was of note that open access had hit as an issue at this senior level to warrant the need to make it one of the first matters the new PVC needed to deal with.  A lot of this has been driven by the HEFCE open access policy, which has the potential to act as a huge open access lever more generally.  The new PVC is from industry and is learning a lot about Higher Education.  Uppermost was a key message, though: how can open access help to make the University more successful in its research.  It is precisely this question that HHuLOA will be seeking to answer.

Looking ahead

Over the next few weeks the project and the partner institutions will be focused on the following:

• Confirming our baseline for dissemination and to inform future planning
• Sharing this with the projects at Coventry and Northumbria on 27th October
• Engaging in Open Access Week events and carrying out local staff development sessions
• Creating a tool for navigating the policy landscape (noting new developments such as the Charity Open Access Fund)
• Bringing together our plans and ideas for open access services and what is needed for these

It promises to be a busy, but exciting, period for open access development.

The Jisc Open Access Good Practice Workshop that too place on 17th June, at which HHuLOA presented (see earlier post for a link to the slides) was also the first meeting of the Jisc Open Access Implementation Community.  The materials presented and generated at this workshop have now been shared via the OAIC blog.  The day was split into two halves: a series of presentations from the Pathfinder projects and Jisc on recent open access work and developments; and an exercise working together on identifying core open access challenges and what solutions could be identified for these.  It was a good introduction to both the Pathfinder programme and current Jisc planning in this field, and as such a valuable summary for those wishing to get up to speed.

Without repeating the content on the OAIC blog, my own takeaways from the day were as follows:

• The value and new ideas being brought to a couple of the projects by team members not previously involved in open access.  For example, the Coventry project (O2OA) is led by a Business Development Manager.  It will be good to get these different perspectives on board.
• The complementary role of the Jisc Monitor project that is kicking off in tandem with the Pathfinder projects and looking at how a managed service can support institutions in meeting the HEFCE OA policy.  It will be useful to contrast how services can be best provided at campus and above campus level, and where the dividing line most effectively sits.
• Neil Jacobs presented a slide that sought to encapsulate all current Jisc OA activity and the workflow between them.  This, not surprisingly perhaps given the breadth of activity, brought spaghetti to mind, but it was a very helpful snapshot of how the landscape is developing toward embedding and facilitating OA publishing as a routine activity.
• The realisation in the exercise section that we do know the problems, but need to approach these in different ways to arrive at solutions that work for all the parties concerned.  The need for clarity all round is key, so we know precisely which problem and facet of this we are dealing with.  Plenty for the Pathfinder projects to get their teeth into!

There will be other OAIC events as the Pathfinder progresses, aimed at both project members and anyone in the HE community involved in developing OA solutions.  Watch this space.

The HHuLOA project is a two year Jisc supported project from the Universities of Hull, Huddersfield and Lincoln that will examine the role of open access in furthering the development of research at the partner institutions. The project will focus on good practice in identifying and implementing a range of open access initiatives across the partners with the specific remit of furthering the research interests of the partner institutions, and will work with a number of external partners and projects including Jisc Monitor, IRUS-UK and the British Library in the areas of APC management, statistics and open access rights management.The use of in-house open access publication will also be explored. Work to enhance the established EPrints and Fedora repositories at the partner sites will be undertaken and fed back accordingly. All work will be undertaken within the context of an emerging and shifting open access policy context, which will be monitored to show the relationship with the good practice identified.

The Universities of Hull, Huddersfield and Lincoln have been active in supporting open access for many years, both internally and through a variety of external projects. Each has played an active role in the development of their local repository, looking to exploit technology to further institutional open access services. All are institutions seeking to develop their research capability and reputation. Open access has a key role to play in supporting this mutual strategic direction.

The aim of this good practice project is thus to identify how open access support mechanisms can be used to assist with this development of research, working towards a more effective and rewarding submission to the post-2014 REF. Working together, the three institutions will bring a wealth of experience and innovative thinking to capturing existing and novel good practice and sharing this, with the aim of supporting other institutions developing their research capacity and looking to understand how open access can be used as a means of supporting this.

In fulfilling these aims, the project will address the following areas:

• Compliance with funders’ and institutional mandates
• Monitoring and managing publication charges and licences
• Gathering information around block grant publication fund distribution
• Identifying, facilitating and managing interoperability across relevant IT services
• Improving awareness and clarity of research funders’ OA policy

We were pleased to present at the Jisc Open Access Good Practice Workshop in London today. You can see our slides here:

HHuLOA presentation 17th June 2014

Welcome to HHuLOA, a Jisc Pathfinder Project looking at OA best Practice.

The HHuLOA project is a partnership between the Universities of Hull, Huddersfield and Lincoln and will examine the role of open access in furthering the development of research at the partner institutions.  The project will focus on good practice in identifying and implementing a range of open access initiatives across the partners with the specific remit of furthering the research interests of the partner institutions, and will work with project and external partners such as Jisc Monitor, IRUS-UK and the British Library in the areas of APC management, statistics and open access rights management.

We’ll be posting regulay updates to this blog and with be using the Twitter hashtag #hhuloa