Open Access and National Adoption Scholarly Outputs in Public Health

NECOBELAC in association with Irish Institute of Public Health

Dublin, 9th May 2012

Bill HubbardCentre for Research CommunicationsUniversity of Nottingham

National adoption

• Models from elsewhere• Netherlands

– Cream of Science– National coverage

• USA– independent

• UK– relatively successful

UK examples

• SHERPA - self-help group• SHERPA Plus - self-help and workshop support• RSP - centralised support, workshops,

consultancy• DRIVER - advocacy for IRs, European

standards, political confederation• UKCoRR - repository manager peer group and

professional body• Now virtual coverage of the UK research base

Lessons learnt overview

For Open Access to work, need

• Permissive legal situation• Technical capabilities & systems• Functioning national network of

repositories• National network of OA activists• Buy-in from stakeholders on OA

Legal Environment

• Permission to archive– work with publishers and advisory services

• Direction to archive– work with funders, institutions and

governments

• Stakeholders - particularly authors - need clarity, reassurance and service-level assistance

Technical capabilities

• Not a technical problem - within current capabilities

• To put together a repository, need a techie with web service and LAMP stack skills - or buy it in!

Functioning network of repositories

National network of OA activists

• Identify agents of change• Identify early adopters, local champions

– critically analyse any record of success

• Support them with information and links• Help them identify local quick wins and

political targets• Give them advice and information about

benefits and cost/benefit cases

Provide training and support

• Materials are available– See NECOBELAC, SHERPA, RSP websites

• Services are available– See RoMEO, JULIET, DRIVER

• Recognise that peer-to-peer support has value: OA is an intensively collaborative exercise

Create peer-to-peer and self-help groups

• Example of SHERPA• Example of UKCoRR• Example of DRIVER• What examples exist within Irish

healthcare for other change initiatives?

Top-down support - Funding Bodies

• Recognition of value of OA to mission of funders

• Policies/ mandates to ensure OA and/or deposition

• Recognition/reward of compliance from authors– and sanctions for non-compliance from authors– work with repository managers

• Promotion of OA work to their stakeholders (government, general public, researchers, institutions, learned societies)

Side-to-side support

• Networking amongst peers– email, events, wikis, blogs

• Professional training– advocacy, technical issues, legal issues

• Share best practice, standards• Self-help - create:

– mentoring arrangements– peer-networks– professional support groups - eg, UKCoRR

Bottom-up support - local activists

• Support repositories• Create effective policies for/about

repository use• Advocacy to researchers, authors and

library staff• Tackle practical problems• Identifying work-flows and structures within

institutions to support OA deposit• Act as institutional focus to drive repository

agenda

Buy-in from stakeholders on OA

Who are the stakeholders?

• Academic authors• Academic researchers• Medical practitioners, patients, learned

societies, general public• Librarians and information professionals• Senior institutional administrators• Funding agencies• Publishers

First - general stakeholder awareness

• Available materials for all stakeholders showing:

• Idea and advantages of Open Access to research

• Different forms of Open Access– repositories, publishing

• Different uses of Open Access repositories and publishing systems

• Support material for FAQs and initial concerns and initial enthusiasms

Achieve buy in from stakeholders

• Demonstrate benefits• Integrate with existing workflows• Integrate with existing structures• Analyse incentives for each stakeholder

group and answer• Identify structural blocks to OA adoption• Recognise vested interests and respond

Questions?

• Bill Hubbard• Head of Centre for Research

Communications

• bill.hubbard@nottingham.ac.uk