Information about Institutional Integration

Open access repositories offer a range of benefits to researchers, institutions and the global research community. To ensure the use and population of the repository it is vital that the repository is fully integrated with existing systems, workflows and the research culture of the institution. This will involve advocacy strategies to reach all the appropriate stakeholders. Where self archiving is to be promoted, training of authors must be provided to assist them in the deposit process.

Institutional policies

An increasing number of research institutions are releasing policies which require their staff to make their research results available through Open Access.

Some concerns have been expressed about the debate that such policies may open on the relationship of the institution to academic researchers. While it is undoubtedly true that such policies are beneficial for OA adoption and use by academics, some institutions are reluctant to put forward policies that may seem to impose restrictions or actions on their staff. Different countries and research cultures can see this issue in different ways.

Institutional policies are materially different to those produced by research bodies. In awarding a grant, a research funder can feel free to require the researcher to follow many different procedures and activities. A researcher normally sees such conditions as part of the bargain that is agreed in return for funding. An institution is often outside this discussion and plays little or no part in the award of funding. Institutional policies can therefore be seen by some as an intrusion into research practice and so should be created and proposed with some care. As an alternative some institutions use the Patchwork Mandate approach. By encouraging individual departments to introduce departmental mandates a patchwork of mandates can be created across the institution.

The University of Southampton maintains ROARMAP as a list of institutional policies in this area. Many funding agencies now have policies recommending or requiring as a condition of funding that authors archive any publications resulting from the funding. The JULIET service lists and analyses the policies of research funders that are active in this area.

Self Archiving

Self archiving means that the author deposits their work in to the repository by themselves. Repository systems are normally designed to allow academics to archive their own work. It is generally a simple process and should not take more than 10 minutes.

Mediated Deposit

An increasingly popular approach to population of repositories is the concept of mediated deposit. In this model authors supply the original articles in their native format. The repository administrator then converts these into an appropriate submission format, append the correct metadata and complete the deposit. For the academic staff the advantage of this route is that it is far less time demanding for them. For the repository it ensures that internal standards can be maintained more readily although it does increase the staffing requirements of the repository.

Advocacy Strategies

A clear plan for advocacy within the institution is important. Stakeholder groups within the institution should be identified and advocacy materials appropriate to their needs should be developed for use in events, workshops and training sessions as well as materials for use online.

Faculty/Departmental Campaigns

Presentations promoting the repository are also useful at departmental meetings. Securing an invitation to a departmental research committee is a very good opportunity to advocate the benefits of Open Access and self-archiving. Presentations may be more effective if they are delivered separately for academics, library staff and senior management. However, institutional staff such as managers, librarians and repository administrators should be aware of concerns often voiced by academics regarding the deposit of their work. Examples of such concerns include the disruption of the traditional publishing model, the actual quality of work found in repositories, the fact that it could be time consuming and issues of work preservation. Therefore institutional staff need to be prepared for such queries and concerns from stakeholders.

e-theses and dissertations

An important type of research output for any repository is e-theses and dissertations. If archiving is not mandatory, institutional integration is achieved by ensuring that young researchers are aware of the OA movement and subscribe to its benefits and therefore welcome the idea of archiving their work in the institutions repository, once all the necessary checks with regard t institutional policies and copyright have been made. For this, it is important to have good relations with the Graduate Office and secure invitations to departmental talks for postgraduate students in order to promote the repository and ensure awareness.

 

Last updated: 04-Feb-2010