It’s not easy being green: supporting implementation of an open access to publications policy at University College Cork

摘要

In an effort to increase deposits of publications to the UCC institutional repository, CORA, UCC approved a green Open Access to Publications policy in late 2016. A survey of UCC researchers the previous year found that there was overwhelming support for the principles of open access. However, this hadn’t translated into wholesale engagement with open access archiving. The survey also found that the main reasons for poor engagement were lack of time and confusion over copyright. This presentation will describe the efforts undertaken by the recently formed Research and Digital Services team at UCC to assist researchers with open access archiving, and to manage the process of implementing the Open Access to Publications policy. Supporting researchers required a change of approach in how publications were collected for the repository. Instead of waiting for authors to submit to the repository, the team began an ‘early intervention’ method by tracking newly published materials via pro-active monitoring of Google Scholar and Scopus alerts for UCC affiliated publications. Following identification and profiling of copyright status, we requested submissions from authors and offered mediated deposit. This method makes it as easy as possible for authors to comply with UCC’s Open Access to Publications policy and provides reassurance around copyright issues. It also supports researcher compliance with funder Open Access mandates, for example, open access to scientific peer reviewed publications has been anchored as an underlying principle in the Horizon 2020. Ultimately we hope that archiving in the repository will become embedded in researchers’ minds as an automatic part of the publication lifecycle. During the presentation, we will also elaborate on how the method has evolved over time as we seek to streamline our process and how the process itself has had the effect of promoting awareness around open access.