Open Access and National Adoption
Scholarly Outputs in Public Health
NECOBELAC in association with Irish Institute of Public Health
Dublin, 9th May 2012
Bill Hubbard
Centre for Research Communications
University of Nottingham
National adoption
• Models from elsewhere
• Netherlands
– Cream of Science
– National coverage
• USA
– independent
• UK
– relatively successful
UK examples
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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