Following our successful workshop in May, the
end of the academic year was upon us, some of the JISC OA pathfinders were
realigned, and many of us took a well-earned summer break.
Institutional Baselining: Collaborative
Assessment of Open Access (CIAO)
It's been a busy year for CIAO having been used
in at least 50 HEIs in the UK. Research
Consulting conducted a series of regional workshops to review the key
challenges that faced HEIs in implementing the REF OA policy. CIAO was used to
aid identify and categorise the challenges. See http://scholarlycommunications.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2015/06/02/implementation-of-the-hefce-open-access-policy-for-the-post-2014-ref-a-progress-report-to-jisc/
Over the summer months, many of the Pathfinders
were on tour, meeting at various locations around the UK. In July a
presentation was given at the Arma Good Practice workshop in York, followed by
a presentation at the Loch workshop in Edinburgh in August, Attending thesepresentations has been a great way of finding
out what is going on around the UK and
how we are tackling OA issues. Coming from a modern university with a growing
research profile, it feels like we are just finding our way through a thicket
and have the most empathy with similar universities such as Nottingham Trent,
Portsmouth and Coventry.
With the Hefce amendments, then maybe now is a
good time to re-examine your current procedures, using CIAO as a means of
assessing them.
Lessons Learnt
One of the key things that
has been learnt over the past year is nothing stands still, it seems that we
are in continuous state of flux and people and systems need to be flexible in order to adjust to changes.
Last autumn here at Oxford Brookes, our Pro Vice- Chancellor research, Alistair
Fitt offered to run 15 post REF roadshows which included coverage of the new
Hefce OA requirements. The most powerful
part of the presentation was when he logged on to the CRIS and uploaded the postprint version of one of
his papers just to show how easy it was
and also to say that no matter who you are, it was the academics responsibility
to add their research at the point of acceptance. Each academic that attended
received a bookmark with some simple instructions. A good number of academics
have since uploaded their publications, but it is now nearly a year ago since
the roadshow and more advocacy needs to be done. That's where My Individual
Assessment of Open Access (MIAO) – a tool for individuals to assess their
readiness for open access could prove useful as an icebreaker at departmental
meetings. Having produced a pilot version in March, a fully editable one has now been created which means that it can be
adjusted to suit local needs. So that's the next job is to edit MIAO and add
information that is Oxford Brookes specific. Here is the link to the editable
versions of MIAO and CIAO. Any feedback would be helpful and any examples of MIAO's
offspring.
Interviews, getting your timing right and researchers
behaving badly
At the workshop in May, Nottingham
Trent University reported on the results of the interviews that they conducted
in December/January 2014/15 and work has been done over the summer to further
analyse these. Meanwhile Portsmouth have also been conducting some interviews.
At Oxford Brookes, it was decided to concentrate on the ethnographical
interviews where researchers are interviewed about how they disseminate their
research, how do they decide where to publish. Do they consider OA? It was
decided to invite researchers who were in receipt of RCUK funding for
interviews. email invitations went out at the end of May but the timing was
wrong. It was the end of semester, exams needed to be marked and then
researchers wanted to get on with their research. Not one positive reply was
received. A case of researchers behaving badly! So invitations followed up with
a phone call will be sent out again this month. Let's hope there’s a
better response.
