Through both the project and our daily work with research active staff we are aware that they like to be reminded about the benefits of OA publishing and the practicalities through a range of different routes. We were therefore very conscious of the need for a multi-pronged communication strategy within our open access advocacy plan, highlighting open access publishing through a variety of channels, including:
- Face-to-face interactions, whether that is formal meetings, informal conversations, timetabled RDF workshops or drop-in sessions
- Flyers
- Postcards
- Guides on NTU’s publication strategy, open access publishing, SherpaRomeo, how to submit items to the Institutional Repository and Copyright
- And a short advocacy video by the Dean of the School of Animal, Rural and Environmental Sciences, Professor Robert Mortimer.
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| Watch the Open Access video - every university should have one |
Professor Mortimer is a strong advocate of open access publishing and needed no persuasion to talk to us on camera about the benefits of OA and how easy it is to deposit research outputs into our institutional repository, IRep.
It was the first time we had produced a video aimed at research staff, so we worked with the University Marketing department to develop a brief - for both our benefit and that of the film company. We provided them with background information on the topic and the questions we wanted to ask Robert. On the day the film crew put him at his ease by asking some neutral scene setting questions and then seamlessly moved into the subject questions. Robert was a natural and clearly articulated why he believes OA is helpful to individual researchers, groups and the University as a whole.
In case you would like to produce a talking head yourself, here are our top tips and the questions we asked.
