University of Sussex
This is one of four case studies prepared following in-depth discussions with
stakeholders working within four universities.
The aim is to give interested parties a glimpse, from several different perspectives,
of how the systems, structures, cultures and environment of a university and all its
constituent departments might support or inhibit the progress of open access for
books. To assist readability and comparison between the case studies, we have
organised each one under four main themes:
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Policy. What is the university’s policy on open access, and on open access for
monographs? What are its policies on other issues affecting researchers such
as recruitment and publication? What is its policy on research in general?
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Researchers. How does the university support researchers? What does it
expect from them? How do researchers interact with the various systems and
services offered by the university for their benefit?
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Administration and technology. What systems is the university using to
manage its research, library, repository etc., and how do these interact?
What are the challenges when working with third party systems?
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Library. How does the library manage its book collection? What are the key
drivers for decisions about books? What is the balance between students and
researchers in library services? What is the balance between print and
electronic? Is the library ready to engage with open access books?
We begin with some key lessons from Sussex’s experience, and then consider each
of these areas in more detail.
Key lessons
Understand what makes the institution tick
The University of Sussex has a medium-sized research portfolio which covers a
comprehensive range of subjects. As an institution, it’s very much research-led and
makes supporting its research community a priority. Consequently, research
management functions have evolved to nurture research projects – and researchers
– from cradle to grave, helping researchers from the start of each project through to
commercialisation of the outputs and throughout their career at the institution.
This focus on research is a key way that the university is building and maintaining its
own reputation, and it has a direct bearing on the approach it is adopting towards
open access, both for journals and for books. If change is afoot Sussex is determined
to be in the vanguard so that it can attract the best talent, but it would prefer not to
lead the charge where this would expose the institution to undue risk. It needs to be
sure that implementing an OA policy won’t then restrict researchers from publishing
in the best place for their career development. More than one interviewee was
concerned that, unless institutions take a co-ordinated approach to this issue, the
richest few universities might cream off the best talent because they are better able
to afford to fund gold OA publication.
Enthusiasm among a few ‘early adopters’ can start the ball rolling
Several senior managers and support staff have taken a keen interest in OA, and
direct experience of what’s happening overseas has offered some fresh perspectives.
There’s a strong sense that whatever Sussex decides to do has to make sense in a
global context, not just in Britain.
With this in mind, and a strong feeling that academics haven’t yet fully engaged with
the issues, research managers and senior library staff developed an OA policy several
years ago, to enable work to start and the issues to be explored. They have taken a
pragmatic approach since, tweaking policy and systems as issues arise, and they’ve
found that this becomes easier as policy becomes more firmly bedded into the
culture, both within the institution and nationally.
External influences can drive the open access agenda, but institutional culture
shapes how it’s implemented
Sussex’s policy on publications is to respect researchers’ knowledge about the best
place to publish their work, and to make sure they’re able to publish wherever they
think most appropriate. In terms of open access, there is considerable support for
green OA as well as gold. As one interviewee put it, ‘We have to have the principles
we can afford’. More than one person stressed that equity is a guiding principle for
the institution and it would simply be too costly for it to commit to paying gold
publishing costs out of its own funds for every research outcome that is not wholly
(or even partly) covered by the RCUK funding allocation. There’s no central
institutional fund for open access (beyond the money received from RCUK), but a
researcher or school is completely at liberty to fund gold open access for any or all of
their outputs from their own budgets, if they decide that they want to.
While support is offered even-handedly to researchers, their individual needs are
paramount
There’s clear recognition that OA has to work for individual researchers and that one
size won’t fit all. Strikingly different approaches to research exist across the subjects
and even within different departments, and this is challenging for those charged
with managing support for them. In many disciplines, including social sciences, arts
and humanities, they often have to turn bids around very rapidly, which causes
logistical headaches for themselves and for research managers: anything that adds
further complications to the process could have far-reaching implications. And when
it comes to how researchers think about open access, there are huge differences in
approach - from how comfortable they are to put their work ‘out there’ in a less than
finished form (which is how some interviewees felt researchers in certain disciplines
perceive the green route to open access), to how well they understand their options
and obligations in an open access environment. These issues are complex and well
understood by some, but not the majority, at Sussex – advocacy is on-going, and
there’s a strong commitment to being flexible in order to accommodate the interests
of the individual.
Streamlining systems and creating new workflows can bring rapid benefits
Interviewees at Sussex weren’t universally complimentary about the various systems
that are in use at the university, and they are still working on developing systems
that work together seamlessly. Part of the issue is that various people have very big
ambitions for the ways in which this could be done. Already, work has started on
creating more joined-up systems and adapting workflows to support compliance
monitoring and reporting ready for a time when publishing in open access is
mandated by funders. It’s a work in progress but the university anticipates that it will
bring significant benefits. As one interviewee told us, work to link the repository with
other internal systems will help to identify which researcher has generated which
income, and also what their outputs have been. That’s just one example but it’s an
important one: in an open access culture, it will be imperative to demonstrate
clearly how each funder’s money has been spent and where and how outputs have
been shared.
It’s important to re-examine the skillsets available within the institution before
committing to radical change
Changing working practices and workflows will mean existing staff have to adapt to
new realities. In the library, for example, the policy to reduce the size of the print
collection and encourage uptake of e-versions has already started to change roles as
staff spend more time offering technical support and helping readers to discover and
evaluate online content. Library interviewees are comfortable with that and
anticipate that open access would accelerate, but not radically alter, the process that
has already started. But as the pace of change picks up, it’s important to keep an eye
on what skillsets exist before being encouraged into taking large steps. Now, when
academics are tempted by uncertainty to consider setting up presses within their
own institution, it’s important to look before they leap – do they have access
internally to the skillsets needed to manage an institutional press? Do they realise
what’s involved? There’s doubt about that in some quarters.
Policy
Interviewees at Sussex described a scenario in which the research base is small
compared to some other institutions, especially in some subject areas and this was
identified as a concern when the university has to compete for research funding.
‘You have to have critical mass’ was a comment that summed up anxieties on this
issue. At the same time Sussex characterises itself as research-intensive and
researcher-led and is determined to discharge what it sees as a core responsibility
thoroughly, offering extensive support to researchers. They are nurtured, supported
and given a high level of autonomy to make decisions on how they work and what,
where and when they publish. There’s a similar approach to students, both
undergraduate and postgraduate, and interviewees were clear that the needs of
students and researchers need to be carefully balanced in all policy decisions.
There was a clear sense that there is a lot of horizon-scanning going on across the
institution and that managers like to have their position clearly thought through.
They want to be forward-thinking and in the advance party when important change
is afoot and this is certainly true of how Sussex approaches open access, but
interviewees perceive a clear risk in being the first to jump, and they are determined
not to expose the institution to that risk.
Open Access
Members of the senior management and library teams have had a long-standing
interest in open access and made the decision to develop an institutional policy for it
before funders could decide to mandate open access. As one senior manager put it,
‘I think I felt the writing was on the wall’, and this proactive approach meant that
they were able to set their own agenda and timescales, rather than having to run to
catch up. The outline policy was devised in the face of what seemed like a lack of
engagement from academics, and went through senate pretty much unopposed. It’s
not at all clear to those who devised the policy if that means it was non-controversial
and widely supported, or if no-one was really engaged enough with the issue to look
at it critically. However, interviewees told us that the amount of feedback and
debate has been relatively low, both before and after the policy was adopted.
Research management and the library have maintained their united front on open
access and announcements relating to the policy are jointly issued to underline this
solidarity: one interviewee stressed that expertise from academics, research
managers, library and IT staff (among others) was needed in order to develop a
functional open access policy.
Once policy decisions are reached, the research management teams work to get
issues discussed at school research committee level. The aim is not to impose
solutions from above, but simply to get issues onto the radar and encourage
discussion. It’s central to Sussex’s culture that it strives not to hand down rules and
regulations from on high, and although the institution has identified itself as being in
favour of open access, it does not mandate publication in open access for its
academics. Again, this reflects the university’s view that researchers know the best
possible places for their work to be published, and the institution shouldn’t interfere
with the decisions that they make. It has taken a pragmatic approach to the issue of
affordability and come out firmly in favour of a green open access policy, in which
bibliographic information is deposited in the institutional repository in every case,
and full content wherever that is possible. Publishing in gold is an option where the
research funder will pay the costs, or where the money can be found by the
researcher’s own school, using their share of the central RCUK allocation or other
funds. The RCUK fund was initially allocated among the schools in line with the RCUK
model, but is now managed as a single pot as some of the allocations were very
small. The decision to go for green is based largely on a recognition that publishing
everything on gold would be prohibitively expensive if Sussex were to be expected to
pick up the tab. As one interviewee told us, even if they had lots of money, they’d
prefer to use it to pay more academics and to produce new work.
Now that there is a policy in place, Sussex is taking a ‘suck it and see’ approach to
see how it works and where tweaks will need to be made. In the main, it’s expected
that any such changes will be made to accommodate researchers’ own individual
preferences and requirements – that’s certainly been the case with reference to
theses, which Sussex requires PhD students to make available online. That has been
the stated policy since 2009 though there is wiggle room (for example, if the
researcher fears that it might hamper their efforts to publish a book later). Several
years down the line it’s more obvious where exceptions need to be made and also
easier to make them, because they’ve been able to streamline the process as it has
become embedded in the culture.
Senior management interviewees were certain that the principle of open access has
the potential to bring clear benefits for researchers and their institutions. However,
they want serious discussions with government, funders, other institutions and
researchers about what the priorities really are, and about who is willing to pay to
bring change about. One interviewee commented that researchers seem to be less
interested in being read than they are in securing the money to do more research,
and it’s certainly the case that the main focus on dissemination and impact comes
from funding bodies. And with this in mind one senior interviewee was adamant
that, if funders want outputs published in open access, they should pay for it rather
than expecting the institution to subsidise it: ‘In full. Not 80%. I think it is not an
overhead, it is a cost on the contract… otherwise the institution is forever subsiding
research, and that is coming out of the £9,000 the students pay to come here… I
don’t feel the students should be flipping burgers to pay for gold publications, and
you can quote me on that one. It’s just not fair.’
The overall sense from a number of interviewees was that they are waiting to see
how funders continue to develop their requirements, and what the timescales are
likely to be, before taking any major steps of their own. This is partly because they
want to share information with other institutions and partly because they think
they’ve got their hands full already.
And while Sussex has come out decisively in favour of a green model for open
access, they were aware that this brings its own very real set of challenges. Key
among these is engagement with researchers to discourage the notion that gold is
‘the gold standard’ and that work published in green is somehow of lesser value, ‘we
must avoid the gold and green perhaps being seen as gold and bronze….as an
institution we should certainly count both as being the same’.
Though Sussex’s open access policy is well-defined, it relates specifically to journal
articles. Our interviewees had spent relatively little time thinking about how their
operations might be affected if funders mandate open access publishing of
monographs in future, although at least one interviewee was well-informed as to the
likely size of publication charges. They hadn’t thought about it much because they
hadn’t yet needed to, and as one put it, ‘we’ve got enough of a headache with
journals and making that work’.
There was a feeling that there would be widespread concern over the imposition of
any such policy and that there would need to be a lengthy programme of
engagement with researchers to assuage their fears and answer questions.
Specifically, interviewees said they hoped that policy would be worked out in detail
by funders, especially with regard to researchers in HSS subjects. As one
commented, ‘they [researchers] are primed to ask lots of questions and it’s hard for
us to go to them with new pronouncements unless they are properly thought
through….if you can send a clear… message, then it makes it sit easier, even if you
don’t like it, it still makes it an easier pill to swallow’.
There was universal agreement that the university would not be in a position to fund
publishing fees of £8,000 or more to support monograph publication in gold open
access. As one interviewee from finance said: ‘ there’s only one well…. and one
bucket’. And, to avoid a scenario in which the richest few universities cream off all
the best talent because they can afford to fund a gold publication model, there’s a
need to take account of what’s happening on the world stage, and for ‘everyone to
jump at once’.
So Sussex, as yet, has no definite policy on open access for monographs, but it’s
taking a pragmatic approach based on its experience with journal articles and theses.
Any rules that it imposes will be primarily concerned with supporting Sussex
academics, and would need to allow for decisions to be taken in their best interests:
‘if a student wants to get a book with a publisher, a monograph, say, I would tend to
be student centric, so therefore let’s not put some silly rules that say you’ve got to
have it in the library in six months. If it’s going to take eighteen months to two years
to get a book published, let’s be realistic… the line I have been taking is that it’s case
by case’.
That will make managing an already highly complex issue even more difficult, but
there’s a view that the game will be worth the candle. One interviewee summed up
his take on open access: ‘I think it is an important issue, we would like to make it
work… but it is a very complex equation. There are lots of parameters… which need
to be calibrated and, you know, if you change one thing it changes lots of other
things.’
Repository
The Sussex repository is intended as a key system for researchers. It has been
operational since 2007 although until 2012 its use was very much optional. Sussex’s
decision to use the repository as a single record of its research outputs has driven a
change in perceptions of it, although not necessarily in a positive way: required to
deposit at least metadata records in the repository to support the REF, some
researchers associate the repository with time consuming, frustrating administrative
tasks, especially as the process is not always glitch-free.
The repository contains around 25,000 records of which probably only 2,000 are full
text open access items (though others may contain links to an OA version of the item
held elsewhere). As the importance of the repository climbs the institutional agenda
life sciences and medicine are now routinely making deposits, but the humanities
are proving more resistant. This may be because their researchers are less techsavvy or, as was suggested by one interviewee, because it’s a task carried out by
administrative staff and humanities researchers have limited admin support. In fact,
from talking to other interviewees it seems that the task of making the deposit is
handled sometimes by researchers and sometimes by support staff (though not by
the library): defining it as an administrative task might help to streamline the process
and make it more efficient.
Once it’s done, the repository staff check the records and then makes them live, but
even just checking bibliographical data for compliance and legal propriety takes
time. The idea of having to check full text articles was felt to be fraught with
difficulty, ‘that’s a bit of a can of worms and it needs almost a committee to make
each decision because each one has its own issues’. As the repository interviewee
went on to say, embargoes create more problems because there’s often opposing
views about what to do, and when, and using pre-publication versions causes
difficulties because repository staff have to add page and issue numbers before the
content is in any way acceptable to researchers in HSS subjects. So there are real
issues with the process, and the principle is also far from clear-cut. As one person
put it, some people think ‘it’d be better just to promote things that are fully
published…..Conversely, there are people who would like it that academics were
adding a record the moment they had an idea for an article and then updating the
record every few months as it progressed’. This idea of a publications database
could well have value, but having both could complicate matters even further unless
they can be made to work seamlessly together.
Anecdotal evidence that some researchers, though not all, are using the repository is
being put to the test with usage data being gathered and analysed. This work is
producing some interesting results and is informing how the repository develops in
the future. In a far-sighted move, future plans include linking records in lots of
different ways so that researchers can come to them via the groups they naturally
affiliate themselves with: it’s a recognition that the repository can best serve
researchers by aligning itself in ways that are relevant to them rather than in ways
that the institution itself holds dear. And indeed, in a green open access model it’s
vital that content is discoverable in the many different places that an academic
might look for it.
Researchers
As we’ve seen, managers at the university have some anxieties over their research
base and its ability to attract key funding – with relatively few researchers working in
some subject areas it’s felt that this works against the institution. Research project
turnover is around £27m p.a., and at any one time there are between 600 and 700
live research projects.
Support for researchers is extensive, right across the disciplines and irrespective of
career stage. More than one interviewee highlighted the fact that, quite unusually,
this support extends to post-doctoral researchers and research students, who are
treated as part of the workforce. Research and enterprise is a centralised division
geared to provide ‘cradle to grave’ support, which is seen as an important point of
difference for the university and ‘very Sussex’.
The Research and Enterprise team is headed by an individual with a strongly
integrationist approach – and he’s made sure that the Research Excellence
Framework (REF) submission is handled by this department. Previously it sat with the
planning team, as it does in several other institutions, but the view here is that, ‘you
can’t do one bit without doing the other bits too’. For the same reason, the same
team also takes a keen interest in publications as evidence of outputs and of
beneficial effects for society resulting from research funding that’s been awarded to
Sussex’s researchers.
There’s a clear interest in open access at management levels within the research and
enterprise division and this has been bolstered by ongoing advocacy work carried
out jointly with the library team among both operational members of the support
team and among researchers themselves. There are some doubts, however, as to
how far this interest had permeated until recently, when RCUK pronouncements had
the effect of focusing more minds on the issue (at least among research
management staff, as it now clearly has a direct bearing on their methods of
working). It’s interesting to note that very extensive efforts by visionary staff
members to influence thinking and behaviours may have had relatively little impact
until external policy pronouncements forced a change.
It has been vital to keep operational staff up to date with developments such as
these, because the Research and Enterprise function includes specialist teams that
variously provide direct support to researchers with their funding applications,
contracts, post-award management of funds, intellectual property and
commercialisation of outputs. One senior manager told us, ‘…my job…is being a
facilitator. Allowing people to work in the best possible way they can, trying not to
put hindrance in front of them, making sure they have got a very certain amount of
rules, but making sure as long as they bash between the buffers, they don’t realise
they’re there’.
But ultimately, that desire for researchers to have autonomy could prove
detrimental to all parties. As one example, if the institution can’t commit to funding
every request for APCs in the future, one obvious way to ease the situation is to
make sure that the cost of publishing in gold open access is routinely included in
funding bids. But if research development officers don’t have the opportunity to
explain the open access options and encourage researchers to put costs into the bid,
where this is permitted by the funder, it may well not get done.
And in fact, the wider issue of how best to support researchers with their publishing
decisions is a thorny one. Most interviewees stressed that it is not their job to get
involved in advising researchers on where and how to publish and, asked whether
this might change if open access publishing of monographs is mandated in future, an
interviewee from research management thought not. Her view was that academics
are the best people to make these judgements. An interviewee from senior
university management agreed, saying that since publication is so intrinsically linked
to a researcher’s career progression their employer should not limit their publication
options – showing again the Sussex concern for researchers as autonomous
individuals as well as employees of an organisation with its own interests.
However, another interviewee thought that this approach meant that researchers –
and especially, less experienced ones – were often left working in the dark. He said
he found the lack of support and mentoring available from more established
academics for their younger peers was ‘quite shocking, actually’. Operating in a
vacuum, researchers frequently opt for a tried and tested route to publication rather
than reaching for something more ambitious. Another interviewee felt that open
access might drive a change in publication behaviours without any intervention from
the institution: in an environment where publishing costs, academics might think
more carefully about the number of papers they publish. The interviewee felt that
this might not be a bad thing.
Nonetheless, managers remain cautious about how much, and when, they should
intervene. They’re also aware that sometimes they can’t do so, for sound business
reasons – the contracts team is unable for legal and practical reasons to advise
researchers individually on contracts between them and their publisher which do not
involve the university in any way, and the senior manager of that contracts team is
pragmatic enough to recognise that there would be no benefit to the institution in
changing that reality.
The ‘typically Sussex’ hands-off approach to researchers may have to be rethought,
particularly if open access is mandated, and if that policy extends to monographs.
With no central pot to pay open access publishing charges the university has
sometimes encouraged researchers to attempt to go back to funders for more
money later, and while this has sometimes been allowed, it’s unlikely to be viewed
favourably for books when the additional, late cost will be so much larger. In that
scenario, one interviewee stressed that researchers would have to be much more
clued up at an early stage about whether they were planning to produce a book or
not, and another raised the possibility that the institution might even try to influence
researchers to produce fewer books. Not surprisingly, then, there was wide
agreement that any move towards mandating open access for monographs would
have to be preceded by a lengthy and detailed consultation with academics, and a
programme of education, encouragement and support to persuade them to adopt
the necessary new behaviours and processes willingly. No-one was under the illusion
that imposing change from on high would be effective.
Indeed, several interviewees mentioned the relatively unimportant role that an
employing institution might play in the lives of researchers. Individuals working in
management functions recognise that researchers might identify more strongly with
a school or research group than the university as a whole, and sometimes resent
what they see as interference from central decision-makers. Another senior manager
stressed that academics are, by their very nature, inquisitive and inclined to push the
boundaries, and that managers have to take this into account when formulating
polices. An interviewee from the repository stressed the importance of disciplinary
cultures, and the fact that these might govern how and where researchers choose to
deposit their work.
This recognition that researchers have an identity beyond the institution seems to
have shaped the services and policies that Sussex offers. Interviewees recognised
that most researchers would have a career before and after Sussex, and were keen
to understand disciplinary norms – for example, the importance of books in HSS –
that would influence their long-term progression. They also acknowledged –
frequently - that the administrative tasks that are so important to the central
function of the university (research support, the repository and so on) are of
marginal interest to most academics, and that they need to be as light-touch as
possible to encourage involvement. Support should always be offered, even when
policies haven’t been followed to the letter.
Admin and technology
Sussex uses a number of different systems to support its research activity, and these
are continuously being evaluated and developed. In 2012 the finance system was
replaced with the intention of integrating the new one with a central research
management system, but that initial idea was shelved temporarily, though it is still
under consideration. Certainly at senior levels there are ambitions to integrate all
the university’s various systems smoothly but there’s recognition that this will
probably require a collection of systems bringing together finance, HR, student and
other data, which is going to be difficult to achieve in the short term. Currently, then,
there is no comprehensive research management system and the various processes
are managed instead via a home-grown system combining IT tools, Excel
spreadsheets and printed forms.
In common with many UK institutions, Sussex uses the pFACT tool to support
research budgeting, and there is a system of declaration forms that circulates to a
pre-defined list of contacts within the institution’s central management function and
relevant schools for confirmation that policies relating to insurance, governance and
ethics have been complied with before a funding bid is submitted to funding bodies.
It’s a system designed to protect the university itself, but it also benefits researchers
as it means they know the university will sign the contracts if a grant is awarded.
Once a funding bid is successful the university has an award acceptance form that is
signed by the lead researcher, head of school and director of research and
knowledge exchange, highlighting the main obligations enshrined within the
contract. The aim is to make sure researchers have read at least the most important
parts of their contract and understand how they are required to comply. Our
research development interviewee suggested that open access obligations could be
made explicit within this document and that, apart from this, there were few
changes to key processes and systems anticipated by that team if open access was
mandated. Workflow is monitored in an Excel spreadsheet that logs all bids that
come in, after which the research finance team takes charge and from this point on
there is no joined up system that makes sure the contractual obligations highlighted
to researchers are, in fact, carried out. If the procedure recently started by the
Wellcome Trust becomes more widely adopted, and previous compliance history is
examined when considering new funding applications, this issue will need to be
addressed.
At Sussex the question of how to address this problem is still being worked through.
There’s some difference of opinion as to where key responsibility currently sits. One
member of the research development team told us that responsibility sits with
research finance but the interviewee from that team said its responsibility extends
only to financial compliance, for which it is audited by funders. And it seems that
they could not take on a more extensive compliance role as things currently stand,
because they aren’t routinely told about outputs. His suggestion was that this is a
role for academics to take on, but it’s by no means certain that they’d agree.
Instead, research finance is focusing effort on creating new workflows and clear
protocols, in partnership with the library, in readiness for a time when open access
publishing of journal articles is mandated. It’s a process that involves working on a
one-to-one basis with very many people across the schools, the library and the
research management teams and it calls for still more advocacy work and really clear
processes. Though this has added to the workload in the short term, it is not seen as
a major issue into the future.
Their involvement in open access funding is relatively recent, following RCUK’s
decision to allocate central funding for open access publishing, and they have
identified significant issues that they are making plans for now. As our interviewee
from the department told us, the humanities generate much lower levels of income
for the university than other subjects but managing open access issues for these will
be among the most complex, partly because there’s higher levels of wariness about
open access among researchers in these fields and partly because their funding
comes from a variety of sources (such as charities) that are not fully engaged with
the open access debate.
Several interviewees stressed that Sussex likes to scan the horizon and plan carefully
and thoroughly well in advance of future policy or technological changes. To get
ready for the REF several new centralised systems were introduced, including – five
or six years ago - Southampton University’s E-Prints interface, which has been
valuable in pulling publication information together into a single central location.
Cognos is used for reporting publication and associated research information, and
this works satisfactorily, at least as far as the REF submission is concerned.
So far, the need to manage open access publishing for journal articles has meant
very little change for the main systems. In the repository the team has added some
new data fields within the metadata system to support detailed reporting, and in
finance the main changes have been conceptual rather than technical. The RCUK
allocation was initially identified as a single project with 12 sub-projects – one for
each school – and the money was shared out across them all. This is essentially the
model adopted by RCUK and Sussex mirrored it in a bid to head off argument and
implement a reasonable system within a manageable timeframe. After trying the
system out, it became clear that funds would be better managed as a single pot, so
that’s what they are now doing. The finance system has had a few minor
adjustments to allow for that and it is being used simply to facilitate a simple
purchase order and invoice system, but the institution has been taking advice from
external experts on ways to make the process much simpler for the finance
department, the library and academics to manage. Typically, they want a solution
that keeps individuals at the heart of the process and enables them to make their
own decisions - the use of corporate credit cards is one possible option that is being
discussed.
More than one interviewee expressed the view that Sussex offers researchers much
more support than they habitually take up, which means that both researcher and
institution probably miss out because opportunities remain unexplored and optimal
solutions aren’t always identified. Interestingly, it was acknowledged that personal
relationships can be at least as important as administrative systems in determining
where researchers turn when they need help. Frequently, researchers’ naturally turn
to colleagues within their own school for help when they want to develop bids, but
that may well not always be the best option. It’s a frustration that the detailed
expertise available within the research and enterprise function is not made better
use of – for example, researchers are frequently hazy about licensing issues and
misunderstanding is common. The advent of open access has increased the
confusion and fuelled suspicion so that, as one interviewee from research
management said: ‘There’s a misunderstanding on the licence terms’. He also said:
‘This is the irony of open access……..you still own copyright, which you’ve previously
been allowing publishers to take from you, so what’s wrong about it, in that
respect?’ While it’s unlikely that most fellow researchers will have detailed and
accurate knowledge on the subject, our interviewee acknowledged that research
management may also not yet be fully up to speed.
Those who deposit their research in the repository do so using the E-Prints interface,
but it has been modified to match the needs of Sussex’s academics more closely. As
a result, they have more control over what does – and what doesn‘t – appear in their
individual web profiles. The repository doesn’t use feeds from other repositories
such as subject-specific ones, although it was acknowledged that this might be a
valuable avenue to explore in the future. An important pre-condition would be that
the process is easy, automated and doesn’t add to existing workloads. It would also
have to be capable of being tailored to suit existing systems – the option already
exists with the repository’s PubMed ID, but it is being resisted because of the danger
of losing local particularities and details that are considered useful. That’s something
that is unlikely to be true only of Sussex, and it is something that third party
suppliers of content may need to explore in more detail.
Though the repository is being held aloof from third party systems, it interacts
smoothly with many other systems at Sussex, to facilitate a raft of different
reporting requirements that have previously been quite difficult. Now, however, we
were told that, ‘a head of school could say, “for each of my staff, show me the
research income this year and their research outputs this year” and you can do that’.
Library
Sussex’s library has a wide-ranging and large monograph collection, reflecting both
the determined acquisition trail the university went on following its inauguration in
the 1960s and the importance that it attaches to the monograph, which our library
interviewee says is more valued and more widely used in teaching at Sussex than
text books. The humanities and social sciences are particularly well represented in
the collection and that seems likely to continue. The library is full and, amid
pressures to find extra space for students to come in and browse the research and
teaching collections (recently combined to encourage wider use), the emphasis has
shifted from acquisition to removal of books from the collection. And while science
researchers and academics seem to accept both this and a move towards ebooks
quite readily, in the humanities and social sciences it is proving highly unpopular. In
HSS subjects, people still like to browse the shelves, and they still usually want to
read printed books.
Collections
The monograph collection inevitably remains very print-heavy for now, but the
library is moving as fast as it can towards a model in which ebooks are the preferred
choice, and not only for reasons of space. Another driver is the fact that the library
does not have subject librarians, instead there is a team each for research and for
teaching/learning so the library staff feel they are not best qualified to select new
titles to add to the collection. That’s seen as a decision best left to book users
themselves, so the library has been experimenting with patron-driven acquisition
(PDA), which is much easier to implement in an ebook environment, and it has been
developing fast.
At Sussex, where a number of the schools have significant numbers of both students
and researchers working off-campus either in the UK or overseas, PDA and ebooks
offer a much more practical way to support library users, though a library
interviewee said that the continuing lack of availability of text books in eformats is a
constant frustration. They have put a lot of effort into developing their PDA model
and have sought to gauge its success by analysing usage data, which has brought up
a few surprises. The books bought as part of the PDA programme are being well used
by both students and researchers, suggesting that there isn’t too much difference in
the way that the two find and use books after all.
Set against this backdrop, the library is working with a number of publishers to
support its desire to move more towards ebooks citing, among others, the Elsevier
Legacy Collection. However, concern was also expressed about whether publishers
really understand what institutions can afford, what they need, and what drives
institutional decisions about what to spend their budgets on.
There’s also concern about just how far it will be possible to go in moving towards an
ebook model. There’s still a huge emotional attachment to printed books in some
subjects, which library staff understand and wish to support. Furthermore, they
perceive that print and electronic versions of books are used very differently and
that both therefore have a valid role in supporting research, ‘ideally, people want to
have access to the electronic, so they can just check something or look quickly, but if
they want to read a whole book there’s still emphasis on the print.’ For this reason,
while library policy is to opt for e- versions wherever possible, they buy print
versions too as often as they possibly can, when asked to do so.
To support the PDA book-buying model, Sussex’s library took out a plan with EBook
Library (EBL), including MARC records for EBL’s 50,000 or so titles in its own library
management system Talis Alto, but this effectively removed control of the library
budget from the library’s hands so under the new model, the library is charged a
loan fee per book request up to four requests, at which time it purchases the book
and puts a permanent record into its catalogue. The book remains on the publisher’s
own platform.
The library’s permanent catalogue contains data on books that it has bought outright
and so open access books are not visible within it unless links are proactively added
into the system, which has not happened to date. However plans to implement the
Primo discovery tool could change that. Because Primo indexes both OAPEN and
DOAB it will expose OA versions of books alongside paid-for ones. There is work to
be done before that can happen, however, and the library is working with the
repository to make sure that the EBL profile can fit with its systems and, importantly,
that access to catalogue records can be switched off, as well as on, to minimise use
of content that will cost the library money it does not have. That’s important
because there’s a need to keep a tight rein on the budget and, while this is still new,
it isn’t entirely clear where all the challenges to budget management might come
from. Good and efficient workflows are still in development.
Open access
Open access for books – ‘seems like the right thing to do’ according to all the people
we asked at Sussex. A library interviewee’s initial reaction to being asked how an
open access policy for monographs might affect their book collection was unsure –
while it’s a possibility that they’re aware of, the subject hadn’t been given detailed
thought because it hadn’t been a priority. Managing the issues surrounding open
access journals is still proving a challenge, as we heard, ‘at the moment our focus is
completely on…. the work flow for APCs and how we’re going to manage that, so it’s
really a big headache for us’. With that headache still raging, it’s small wonder that
they’d prefer not to have to get to grips with an open access policy for books just
yet, though they expressed confidence that they’d rise to the challenge if the need
arose.
One way or another, open access for books can’t fail to have a significant impact on
the way that the library manages its systems and workflows, but the detail’s still
much less certain, not least for library staff themselves. Pressed to consider how
things might alter, one interviewee responded that open access would mean the
library would no longer be buying books which, while it’s a reasonable first response,
reveals that there’s work to be done detailing the various publishing models now
being tried - many of which do rely on a certain volume of sales of alternative,
added-value versions. Publishers, however, might find Sussex’s library ‘fairly
resistant’ to buying an alternative version if there was a free no-frills version
available but here, their desire to support researchers and academics might provide
an answer, ‘...if there was, you know a reason somebody needed the print, we’d
probably go for it’.
The main shift for library staff might lie in redefining their skills. A library interviewee
saw their likely role as very much central if open access is mandated for
monographs. She felt they’d be setting up new workflows, helping to get content
into the repository, aiding discovery of content and advising researchers on how to
get their work published, ’just as we have with open access journals’. This is to
continue a line of travel that has already started with the adoption of ebooks as
traditional management of print collections has taken a back seat. Asked how
publishers could help with the issue of discovery a library interviewee was very clear
that they must ensure their content is visible within the large discovery systems like
Primo, and provide a reliable, easy to use platform.
There was quite a wide difference of opinion evident across the university when it
came to considering whether a valid response to the open access debate would be
to set up a University of Sussex press. There’s been some pressure from researchers
to consider it and all the interviewees were willing to explore it, probably in a
consortium approach. But there were tensions between the opportunities it might
bring for academics to take greater control of publication of their work, and the
undue pressure that academics might feel to publish here rather than with the
publisher that they would usually prefer. The library added another note of caution –
there’s a serious question over whether the library has the skillsets required to set
up a press. Similarly, they felt that there’s a naivety about how much work is
involved in running a press, driven by academics who question what publishers do
for their money. That frustration that academics feel about publishers who they
suspect may be lining their pockets is complicated by the fact that, as one
interviewee said, academics do much to bolster the current publishing model, by
buying into the prestige conferred by publishing in particular journals or with
favoured publishers.