Advocacy and policy issues: advanced session

Open Scholarship 2006The University of Glasgow

18-20 October

Joanne YeomansCERN Scientific Information Service

             

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Tutorial outline

• Introduction• Presentation on CERN’s experience• Breakout to groups• Brainstorm thoughts/ideas• Coffee• Finalise discussion (5-10 minutes)• Present results of discussion (5 minutes each

group)• General discussion

Advocacy definition

• active support of an idea or cause etc.; especially the act of pleading or arguing for something (Princeton WordNet)

• Advocacy starts with arguing for the benefits of having and using a repository,

• but what happens when everyone has heard the message?

• Repeat the message• Change the message• Add to the message – use new

arguments• Find a new audience • Act yourself

• Many of you already know the main advocacy arguments so let’s also focus on the action you can take

REPOSI

TORY

When everyone has heard the message

CERN Background

• Mandate for approximately 50 years, electronic web repository since 1993

• Electronic repository was started around the time of arXiv (general physics repository)

• Theorists communicate via arXiv and prefer to deposit there

• Experimentalists generally publish via departmental committee and must submit to CDS to get a CERN publication number

• Estimate around 40% author submission (to CDS)• Overall collect around 70% of papers• Many others (especially conference papers and

computing authors) are ‘lost’ at the moment

Identify the problem

• Find what is missing (problem 1)

• Many authors prefer to use arXiv• Some groups prefer to use their own system to

display bibliographies on the web• Many conference papers are missing - Some

authors submit very similar papers to different conferences, is this a big problem?

• Some (usually new) authors just don’t know what they’re supposed to do

Tackle the problems 1

• How to find what is missing?

• Solutions:– Use databases to search by affiliation and compare to

holdings– Check if departments keep their own record of

publications (then set up an automatic harvest/download)

– Analyse the holdings to try to identify patterns• Particular authors or related authors, eg in the same group• Types of document• Time periods• Particular journals or publishers

Tackle the problems 2

• Many authors prefer to use arXiv• Some groups prefer to use their own

system to display on the web

• Solutions:– Harvest from arXiv– Harvest from web pages– Talk to the researchers about why they prefer

to do it like that

Tackle the problems 3

• Some groups prefer to use their own system to display on the web

• Solutions:– Offer to get web pages in the style they want

produced automatically from the repository and show them how simple it becomes then to update the list

– Offer to do this for individuals– Ask them to talk to their colleagues and ask if anyone

else is interested in this service

Tackle the problems 4

• Many conference papers are missing - Some authors submit very similar papers to different conferences

• Solutions:– If they really don’t want to make them public, mark the

records so it is possible to discount them if necessary when producing statistics!

– Mail authors on return from conferences to ask for paper (this works at CERN because we have a central travel request database)

– Offer to suppress the full-text file totally or for viewing only on-site

Tackle the problems 5

• Some (usually new) authors just don’t know what they’re supposed to do

• Solutions:– Speak at staff induction session– Write periodic reminders in the staff bulletin– Ask to speak at group meetings– Use personal contacts to offer to demonstrate the

system– Make general publicity for OA and the repository

Other things we do

• Write to publishers to ask for permission to download published versions– Worked for APS, AIP

• Search Google Scholar for free versions of papers published in commonly missed journals– Worked well for IEEE

Other things we do

• Consider cancellations of journals from publishers with not so good attitudes to OA or repositories– write to them or invite them to discuss this with you

and explain your reasons and what you would like them to do

• Apply for research grants, or ‘free’ students to work on identified projects– We keep a list of different jobs that need doing at

different levels and have all sorts of people:• children of staff come for 1 week work experience, • PhD students for three years, • Library Masters students working on projects

Why are you doing this?

• No-one has the answers yet

• Involve the authors as much as possible in as many activities as possible

• Try to find people who will advocate on your behalf – they are your friends!

• It’s an exciting area to work on • Not many librarians have the chance to work at

the cutting edge• YOU can make a mark!

Brainstorm

• All ideas have equal merit• Start with quantity and then refine the quality• Does anyone have experience to share?

• But please don’t just use the most experienced person in your group to answer all your questions – they are also here to learn

• To get fresh ideas, reframe the problem:– Consider it from a different perspective (director,

department head, researcher, etc)– Consider the opposite of what you want to achieve –

this can help to focus on why you want to do the thing• (eg if you want to look at why a mandate is necessary, ask

what happens if there is no mandate)

Brainstorm practicalities

• Two questions to consider• If someone in the group has a particular problem

they’d like to discuss, use 10 minutes to focus on this

• Use the flip-chart sheets to make notes• 5 mins each presentation after coffee• We’ll stick the sheets onto the wall for everyone

to look at after the session• We’ll write an overview of these discussions to

put on the conference website later

Feedback

Notes taken and written up by

Susanna Mornati

CILEA, Project Leader AEPIC

Questions B1

A repository manager or advocate needs a variety of skills and know-how. Where could you find people with

the skills or knowledge that you are lacking and how can you get them to become alliance partners?

• Survey of skills available within the same institution, e.g. computing, marketing (there is no unique profile)

• Students can help with data entry, small projects for cash

• Consortium approach (more libraries / institutions / researchers together, at the regional or national level, through networks)

• Repository software user groups (expertise available) • Targeting key academics - champions within and outside

the institution

Questions B2

What incentives can you offer to people that will help increase content?

• Focus on add-on services not the filling of the repository

• Sell services to individuals and to the community• Targeted marketing (individuals and wider

audience)• Promoting the increase of access• Long-term preservation issue (raising priority)• Buy them a drink

Questions C1

How could you get people to use the repository as part of their workflow process rather than as a

store for documents?

• Derivative uses: CV production and list of publications, use of content for learning materials, Current research register, publicity

• Feedback to administration: budget allocation, research evaluation

• Unique point of submission: build subject repositories by harvesting from IRs

Questions D1

How can you help authors to understand the complexities of funder mandates, how can you use them to your

advantage, and what can you do for those funders who don’t have a mandate?

• Publicize Juliet database (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/juliet) on funders’ policies

• Many countries don’t have funder mandates• Alert other funders to existing mandates• Alert authors to implications of mandates – in particular,

tie in with copyright management and retention• Advocate IRs and OA in general (raise awareness

before mandating)• Use the Research Support Unit

Questions D2

What are the implications as OA (and hybrid) journals become more popular?

• Existing confusion: either distance the two issues or discuss them together but make clear the distinction between OA journals and repositories

• Who pays for OA publishing? Will they come out of the money for repository funding

• Consider the repository as a bibliography tool and use harvesting and linking to OA journal articles

Questions E1

Can you identify potential ‘easy’ sources of content and how could you go about getting that content?

• There are different levels of ‘ease’• Easy content: full-text versus metadata • Is harvesting easy? Why are none of use doing it? Need

to address technical issues, resource/staff issues and legal questions

• E-theses have few legal problems but you might not necessarily want this content

• target disciplines according to their differences, eg economics and computing produce working papers and reports which might be easier

Questions E2

How can you use existing content to attract more content direct from the authors?

• Use content for demonstrators• Build services on contents for researchers’

information eg CVs and bibliographies• Use rankings to raise competition• Link in to citations, funder mandates,

policies

Questions F1

How does an institutional-level mandate make a difference?

• Becomes a “must” not a “should”• Change researchers’ behaviour (make it a

natural part of the publishing process to increase the speed of dissemination)

• Link to incentives eg financial (reward articles deposited)

• Mandate plus extra motivation: added value, incentives – reuse data for annual report, personal websites /

bibliographies

Questions F2

Do you need a different policy for each research subject and are there different ways in which you can work with

different departments?

• Share policies, customize workflows – policies can be the same, but practical workflow will vary by subject

• Differences in disciplines and material types: articles, books, working papers – royalties, copyright

• In the social sciences and humanities small publishers are often negative about Open Access

• Humanities authors might be won over by emphasizing the availability of their work to readers if it’s digitized

Discussion

Also suggested during final discussion:

• Cross-institutional services:– Citations, available tools to build new

knowledge

Other questions to think about

• What are the distinct themes or areas you need to work on to develop your repository?

• What basic advocacy activities need repeating and/or building upon and how?

• What is success and how can you measure it?

• How can you improve your relationship with publishers and how can you use ‘repository power’ to influence them?

• Whose responsibility is it to populate the repository and what can you do to help them in their role?

• How can you identify what’s missing from the repository?

• What items are more important to have in the repository than others?

• Who are the different stakeholders with an interest in the repository and how much do you know about them?