Transcript This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. Advocacy and policy issues : advanced session Open Scholarship 2006 The University of.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
Advocacy and policy issues
: advanced session
Open Scholarship 2006
The University of Glasgow
18-20 October
Joanne Yeomans
CERN Scientific Information Service
Tutorial outline
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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?
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
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
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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:
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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
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What are the distinct themes or areas you need to work on to develop
your repository?
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What basic advocacy activities need repeating and/or building upon and
how?
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What is success and how can you measure it?
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How can you improve your relationship with publishers and how can you
use ‘repository power’ to influence them?
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Whose responsibility is it to populate the repository and what can you do
to help them in their role?
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How can you identify what’s missing from the repository?
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What items are more important to have in the repository than others?
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Who are the different stakeholders with an interest in the repository and
how much do you know about them?