JISC

Key Perspectives, June 2007

Report summary

An investigation into what libraries are doing to promote Open Access (OA) and how effective their attempts are, based on questionnaires and focus group sessions, alongside detailed examinations of library websites.

The premise is that libraries are in a strong position to influence the low general knowledge about Open Access among staff in UK universities and it should be useful to find out what they are doing to that end.

The survey results first confirmed that understanding of Open Access is low and then revealed that most of those who are more familiar with Open Access didn’t even learn about it in their institution’s library.

In spite of a number of initiatives tried by libraries to foster interest in and understanding of Open Access, statements from researchers show that library education on the subject is “at best patchy”.

Researchers remain unclear about how to deposit Open Access content and how to find it. They are also unclear about their copyright situation.

From the website survey the authors discovered that only one department in the sample had a repository presence on its homepage – and that was the University of Southampton. Few advertise their Open Access functionality well – but the actual Open Access areas of institutional websites tend to be user friendly and full of useful information.

The overall discovery is that communications channels are not particularly effective. And even though researchers do see libraries as the place they would go for help with creating Open Access material, they don’t seem to be listening to the messages libraries send out to try to help them.

A number of recommendations follow about getting JISC to influence other bodies to help library websites improve and to reinforce the message that “mandatory policy is the only one that works.”

Ground level recommendations include encouraging senior staff to pass on the message about Open Access and perhaps mailing researchers directly and inviting them to Open Access events.

Key points

Institutions

“Communication channels between the library and researchers are not especially effective in informing about Open Access and researchers are in the main still poorly-informed about it. Those that have a reasonable level of awareness have generally not learned about Open Access from libraries.”

“Only a quarter of library websites have a clear, simple link to the institutional repository.”

“Librarians report a ‘policy vacuum’ in their institutions on Open Access and feel that they cannot champion Open Access and inform effectively on it alone. Although over half say their institution ‘encourages’ researchers to provide Open Access to their work, and a further 19% say their institution has a set of guidelines on this, most repositories remain almost empty of postprint content. Librarians state that they require leadership from senior management, and proper institutional mandatory policies, to effect change.”

“The current level of deposition of research outputs into institutional repositories around the world is very low.  Of the librarians surveyed here whose institution has an Open Access repository, 44% think that less than 10% of the annual peer-reviewed research output of their institution is deposited in their repository and 10% think that the tally is between 11% and 30%.  Many (38%) simply don’t know what the figure is.”

“16 of 52 library websites do not have a clear, simple link to the institutional repository”

“… most of the repositories in UK universities are near-empty. Even those that have a large number of items do not have many research papers (their content may be theses, images, working papers, reports and teaching materials.”

Researchers

“Of those researchers who are informed on Open Access, many are not clear about how to provide it. There is a knowledge gap between knowing about and knowing how.”

“Libraries are undertaking various activities to inform researchers on [how to create and find OA material[, including running seminars and training, producing publicity and advocacy materials and using the library website to create an Open Access resource. By no means all libraries use all these methods, and where they do their effectiveness is limited. Researchers are not listening to the messages.”

“Researchers are poorly-informed on institutional repositories. Almost three-quarters do not know if their institution has one and where there is a repository 60% of researchers have not deposited anything in it. Of those that do deposit, the proportion depositing only their best articles is very small (5% of depositors). Most (53%) deposit most of their articles and 42% deposit all of them.”

[Of respondents: ] “Overall, 19% say they are “very familiar” with Open Access, while a further 33% are “familiar” with the concept – slightly over half in total.  On the other hand, 29% of researchers are “not very familiar” with the concept of Open Access and 17% are “not at all familiar” with it.”

“… they were asked to indicate the extent to which they are familiar with options for making their own research output Open Access.  Overall, 8% of researchers say they are “very familiar” with the options available to them, and 15% say they are “familiar” with such options.  Therefore, the proportion of researchers who are to some extent familiar with they ways in which they can make their own research available on an Open Access basis is approximately half of those who are familiar with the concept itself.”

“Overall relatively few researchers appear to be confident that they know how to find content that is available on an Open Access basis.  Only 9% say they are “very familiar” and 19% report being “familiar” with methods for finding Open Access content.  Nearly 37% are “not very familiar” and 29% are “not at all familiar” with such methods.”

Examples of events and methods that have been tried to improve knowledge of Open Access include:

• An open day about Open Access, with addresses about OA topics including copyright, followed up by a message from the vice chancellor to all researchers urging them to deposit their work in the repository
• Working with heads of departments/schools/faculties
• Working with research groups
• Using the university newsletter (in one case a whole supplement was devoted to Open Access when the repository reached its 1000th item)
• Teaching/training on resource discovery for OA content (e.g. about the Directory of Open Access Journals, OAIster, etc)
• Adding information and links about OA to the library website
• Presentations or seminars about Open Access

This latter was often pleaded for by researcher, who often thought the Research Office should be involved in organising advocacy sessions and seminars about OA.

Overall, 64% of researchers would like their library to provide clearer pointers to existing Open Access content. 43% would like it to facilitate making their own work Open Access.

“Researchers said they would like the library to offer more pointers to OA content: in fact, libraries are providing the pointers, but the problem appears to be that they are not making it explicit enough when the target is Open Access content. Better OA marketing skills may be called for.”

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