Using semi-structured interviews to gain a better understanding of researchers' approach to Open Access (OA)

Ruth Stubbings from Nottingham Trent University (NTU) writes about their use of interviews to gain a better understanding of researcher attitudes and behaviours around Open Access (OA).

The project group at NTU was keen to explore researcher understanding of open access (OA), plus their attitudes and behaviours in relation to OA publishing, in order to provide more targeted and appropriate support.

We chose to investigate researcher attitudes and experiences of open access publishing through semi-structured interviews in the expectation that this would encourage a two way conversation where respondents felt able to express their views in their own words. It also provided a basic framework for the dialogue, allowing us to deviate and probe into different aspects more deeply if when required.

The main topic areas covered by the semi-structured interviews were: how the interviewee decides to disseminate their research results; their preferred methods of publication format, and how they choose where to publish; their understanding of OA; whether they publish their results through OA; and finally how the university could help the interviewee publish their research outputs more regularly via OA.

The interviews lasted between 30 to 60 minutes. Notes were taken during the interviews, and they were also recorded so that we could transcribe the main themes later. The information obtained during the interviews was then categorised and collated in Google forms.

50 research staff were interviewed across all Schools within the University, 23 of which were female and 27 male. 13% of respondents classified themselves as early career researchers, 35% mid-career researchers and 52% as established researchers - we targeted researchers that had submitted to the last REF and so the relatively high number of mid and established researchers was to be expected.

Deciding where to publish: All of the researchers interviewed follow the standard dissemination and publishing practices within their disciplines, with a high proportion highlighting that they have accepted invitations to publish in particular journals or monographs and that they respond to calls for papers. Encouragingly 48% of the interviewees have a strategic approach to the dissemination of their research, although not all of them have formally written it down. Unexpectedly, the impact factor of a journal, reputation and the audience is highly influential when choosing where to publish.

Understanding of OA: All respondents understood that OA allows free access to the reader to material published through this route.  The majority were supportive of OA and saw the main benefit being the ability to reach a wider audience; few interviewees, however, mentioned the potential of OA to increase an author’s citation rates. Just over quarter (28%) of the respondents linked OA with the need for the author to pay for their research findings to be published and the majority did not automatically associate IRep, our institutional repository, with OA publishing. Only a small percentage (mainly established career researchers) could easily articulate the difference between gold and green OA, plus the University and/or the RCUK policy on OA.

Publishing through OA: At the time of the study 64% of interviewees made their research publications available in full text through the institutional repository, IRep. 4.7% had also paid a publisher to make their work available through gold OA.  28% of the respondents had not made their research available through OA.





Four main barriers to publishing through OA were identified:
- Lack of funding  70.4%
- Lack of time 14.8% (research in general as well as publishing)
- Perceived lack of understanding of copyright and what they were legally allowed to do by
  publishers 14.8%
- The system (IRep) was too difficult to use 11%

How the university can help: The respondents felt the university could encourage authors to publish via OA by:
- Regularly reminding research staff of good practice
- Providing additional funding for publication through Gold OA
- Providing clearer guidance on copyright
- Making the IT infrastructure / systems easier to use
- Producing case studies showing link between OA and improved citations, readership, and to dispel     myth of ‘dodgy’ publishing.

So how has the findings influenced our work and the support we offer?  We’ve formulated a more formal dissemination and researcher engagement plan that has been agreed with the PVC for Research, which has placed a greater emphasis on a multi-pronged approach to communication and advocacy. This in turn has led to the introduction of OA drop-in sessions to supplement the more formal RDF events, and the development of new OA support materials, such as postcards and flyers,and the creation of a short case study video in conjunction with our marketing team. To try to alleviate researcher concerns around copyright and misunderstandings about the need to pay for OA, we have increased the amount of information provided on tools such as Sherpa Romeo and on the differences between green and gold OA. In response to the request to make our systems easier to use, further improvements to our institutional repository submission process will be introduced in the first quarter of 2016.

Links to resources that you may find useful:

NTU Interview Questions

NTU Interview Analysis Form

Uncovering researcher behaviours and engagement with Open Access, 20 May, Oxford Brookes University: presentations

Tools and techniques for effective understanding and communication: resources from Uncovering researcher behaviours and engagement with Open Access

Portsmouth University does it differently

Thanks to Emily Bennett  for the following blog about how the University of Portsmouth manage their research outputs .

We’ve been busy at Portsmouth this term with all things open access related.  I expect we have much in common with other universities; for example, we’ve got a web page about open access, an open access policy, a team in the Library who manage the validation of publications, a CRIS (Pure), website showing content from Pure - Portsmouth Research Portal, all-staff emails sent from our Pro Vice Chancellor for Research, and so on.  Also, similar to other universities we have a cross-department OA Working Group which includes the Library, Research and Innovation Services, and our OA champion and academic representative, and which drives the direction of open access within the University.

But there are few things we’re doing that I think may be less common in other universities.  So I thought I’d share a few things we’re trying -

●     Research Outputs Manager (ie. me!) has a dual role between the Library and the Research and Innovation Services (RIS) department. I work 2 days in our RIS department and the rest of the time in the Library. This arrangement has been really helpful in facilitating collaboration, which was crucial when setting up Pure.

●     As the Research Outputs team in the Library is small, we tend not to offer one-to-one sessions with academics - initially at least.  Instead, academics are first encouraged to come along to a workshop, which I run each month on our Researcher Development programme, managed by our RIS department.  To guide the design of these workshops, academics are asked to fill in a short pre-workshop questionnaire which looks at what they know about already, and then a post-workshop questionnaire which explores what they will do differently as a result of the workshop.  If after coming along to a workshop, they would like a one-to-one, then we’re more than happy to meet up with them.  But I tend to find that most people are happy that the workshop gave them an overview, and they just want to ask short, specific questions afterwards.  This approach makes delivering training more manageable than trying to offer lots of one-to-one sessions.

●     We chase academics for full-text versions if they upload the details to Pure without a copy of the article itself. Although sometimes the academic doesn’t have a copy, it gives us the chance to engage in a conversation with the academic and explain to them why they need it for future articles.  Of the 2014-2015 journal and conference articles on Pure, approximately 90% of them have the full-text attached.

●     Snapshot comparison between Scopus and Pure to get an estimate of the percentage of Portsmouth articles are missing from Pure. For example, if this comparison were to indicate that around 50% of our research articles may not be REF-eligible as they are missing from Pure, this would be difficult for the faculties to ignore.  We will complete this comparison each 3 months, and (hopefully!) see the percentage of articles in Pure rise.  The 3 monthly report, which is on an article level, is sent to research leads in faculties to help them chase their academics. I know there are limitations in this approach, not least Scopus’s patchy coverage of a few subject areas, but I feel that we need to start somewhere. The aim is not to get an incredibly accurate breakdown; instead, it’s to gauge or estimate our overall open access ‘performance’.

●     Like most universities we have an openaccess generic email address. I’m starting to analyse the kind of questions we’re being asked. This is at an early stage, and it’s nothing more fancy than using the labels in gmail (our email system) to divide the emails into categories.  This is very quick to do, and should help us identify key themes in the issues academics are having, which inform the design of our website, training etc.

These are a few things we’re working on at Portsmouth. Some of them are very much a ‘work in progress’, and I’ve included them here to hopefully give people ideas.  

Taking advantage of open access week to increase engagement at Nottingham Trent University (NTU)

Here Sharon Potter, one of the Research Support Librarians at NTU writes about what they did in OA week.

NTU OA Poster

As anyone working in a UK university knows, open access week falls at an incredibly busy time in the academic cycle. Nevertheless, we wanted to take advantage of OA week as our open access advocacy plan stresses the need for a multi-pronged communication strategy. Within open access week we wanted to explore how well drop-in sessions could act as a supplement to the more formal sign-up sessions we provide as part of the wider Researcher Development Programme at NTU, so decided to run our standard one-hour session on open access and IRep (NTU’s institutional repository) followed by a two-hour drop-in slot providing researchers with the opportunity to ask questions around open access and upload their  documents into the repository.  With the offer of coffee, Kit-
Kats, and help from their friendly Research Support Librarians, we had good attendance
at our two largest sites.  The drop-in sessions were facilitated by three Research Support
Librarians who were kept busy from start to finish.  The range of help varied from a few
researchers asking general questions around copyright issues, to requesting help in
registering to use our online submission form and uploading documents. There was a
definite increase in IRep engagement after open access week, and one of my colleagues
was embedded into the research seminar slots for one of the Schools she supports as a
direct result of the OA week activities. Was it a success?  We think so!
Find out more about OA at NTU

Here at Oxford Brookes, OA content was promoted  on our institutional repository RADAR via OA teapot cat and a new twitter account was created specifically for open access @BrookesOA .

Our monthly biscuit bar for Learning Resources staff was hosted by the Scholarly Communications team during OA week providing an opportunity to update staff  on latest developments.
Find out more about OA at Oxfored Brookes

Project Update September 2015

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.

Our next project meeting is on 22 September so more specific information should be available after this date

Research Support at Nottingham Trent

Here's a guest blog one of our associates, Ruth Stubbings who writes about how the Nottingham Trent University Library supports researchers and the reasons for getting involved with the 'Making Sense OA pathfinder project'.
Stop Press - the team is growing  - Research Data Manager wanted, closing date 23 August. more details

As in other Alliance Universities, the research agenda has continued to grow in prominence at NTU.  Support for research staff is offered through a range of teams and roles – the Pro Vice Chancellor for Research, the Associate Deans for Research, Head of the Graduate School, School Research Coordinators, the College Research Support Teams, the Grant capture Team, the Graduate School, the Centre for Professional Learning and Development (CPLD), and Library & Learning Resources.

Within the library there has been a growing recognition that the research agenda at NTU was going to continue to develop, so in July 2014 a Library Research Team was created to provide dedicated support to research active staff.  Members of the Library Research Team were drawn from what was originally the Academic Liaison Team who had been responsible for supporting learning, teaching and research.

The Library Research Team consists of four members of staff who provide specialist support and advice to researchers in the following areas:

•  How to find and trace subject specific information;
• Managing research information, including the management of bibliographic references; standards for citing references and ethical use of information;
• Managing their online identity:
• Finding other research groups to collaborate with;
• Advice on maximising and measuring the intellectual, scientific, economic, social and cultural impact of their research outputs

The Library Research Team work closely with:

• Senior members of the university to develop new policies and procedures, especially in relation to open access publishing, measuring impact and research data management;
• Other research support teams to provide support and guidance to research staff;
• Researchers, both on a one-to-one, but also through research committees

Support is provided through:

• Training sessions and workshops offered through the Research Continuing Professional Development Framework (NTU version of the RDF) and the Professional Research Practice Course for PGR students. Bespoke workshops and training sessions developed for Schools, Divisions and Research Groups, or cohorts of PGR students
• One-to-one guidance
• Library web pages aimed at Researchers: http://ntu.ac.uk/library/staff_researchers/research/index.html

The specialist support offered by the Library Research Team is held in high regard,
illustrated by a comment from Steph Walker, an Associate Dean for Research in November 2014 -

 “It is about relationship/partnership-building – I can see that my academic colleagues are beginning to see their Research Support Librarian as being an integrated part of their (research-oriented) team – and this can only be a very positive step as we move towards increasing our research-related activities”

 We wanted to be part of the Jisc Making sense project, because although we have a strong collaborative working relationship with research staff, we wished to develop a more in-depth understanding of how NTU researchers select where to publish, their views on Open Access (OA) and their publishing practices in relation to OA.  We believe the outcomes of the project will influence the development of tools and work flows to assist our researchers make their research outputs more readily available through OA publishing.

CIAO and MIAO - fully editable versions are now available

CIAO and MIAO are at the Fringe 2015

Just had a stimulating couple of days at Repository Fringe here in Edinburgh where there was much talk about the role of repositories/ the CRIS, open access and research data management. Now going to the LOCH - Open Access for the REF Planning workshop and what better place to launch the fully editable versions of CIAO  - http://bit.ly/1N9dkcd  and MIAO - http://bit.ly/1DsXnOa . Both are now available as word documents which means that you can customise them to meet our own institutional needs. Adjustments to the Hefce policy means that we need to possibly tweak our message to academics slightly. Now you can edit MIAO  and tailor for your own institutional needs so that's what I will be doing on my return to Oxford Brookes. 

The change in the Hefce policy does gives us some time to ensure that all our resources and systems are in place so it may be time to review progress so far using the CIAO framework.

Good to see that there is a cat presence  at the Edinburgh Fringe 2015!

Researcher behaviours revealed and their engagement with Open Access. What happened at the Open Access workshop on 20 May 2015, Oxford Brookes University

Around 50 delegates from UK universities attended the 'Uncovering researcher behaviours and engagement with Open Access' a Joint Jisc OA Good Practice Pathfinder Workshop for the Making Sense Project and the O2OA Project

The workshop was run with our project partners, Nottingham Trent University and the University of Portsmouth, and in co-operation with the O2OA project led by Coventry University.The event opened with a welcome and three provocations from our Vice-Chancellor, Professor Alistair  Fitt. Attendees were then introduced to the outputs so far from each of the projects before moving on to identifying and analysing the barriers to OA compliance for researchers and formulating solutions.

Working with the O2OA Project we were able to take advantage of areas of mutual interest, particularly around the issue of behavioural change and how we can support our researchers.

Here's a link to a writeup of the day from one of the delegates, thanks to Jennifer Gallagher from Oxford University

and see how the day developed via tweets and images thanks to Alison McNab's storify.

The following presentations are now available from RADAR.
Morning Sessions
Jisc OA Good Practice - Sarah Fahmy
Researcher Behaviours and Attitudes – evidence so far. 

• Making sense: a researcher centred approach to funder mandates
• Project aims - perspectives and methodologies - Stuart Hunt, Oxford Brookes University
• Open Access interviews - the practicalities, findings and conclusions Sharon Potter Nottingham Trent University
• Making sense at Portsmouth - Andrew Simpson,University of Portsmouth
• What next? - ethnographical interviews and cultural probes - Rowena Rouse, Oxford Brookes University

Groupwork - OA – Understanding what needs to change and how

•  Individual brainstorm: write down on post-it notes all the problems with OA that they are currently experiencing.
• Group reviews all problems and group them as:

1. Problem from university perspective (e.g. ‘academics don’t deposit)
2. Problem from researcher perspective (e.g. academics unclear on Green vs Gold)
3. If both, break it down into what the problem is for each group

• Group identifies top 3 university problems and top 3 researcher problems: discussion - are they the same problems? Are there additional problems? 
• Group selects top 3 researcher problems to take forward to the afternoon session 

Afternoon
Open to Open Access (O2OA) - Julie Bayley, Coventry University
Using intervention development approaches: intervention mapping - Julie Bayley, Coventry University

Groupwork : Practical Intervention Mapping

The resources that delegates were supplied with are now available from RADAR and include the following:

Tools and techniques for effective understanding and communication

• CIAO
• MIAO
• Interview Questions from NTU
• Coding from NTU
• Hefce poster – Portsmouth
• Researcher Lifecycle – Northampton
• Open Access and your published paper – Northampton
• Intervention Mapping – worksheet and grid