Changes to UK Institutional Repositories

Penny CS Andrews University of Sheffield

Gilles San Martin, Fotopedia (CC BY -SA)

Trevor Coultart, Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND)

INTRODUCTION  

•  What is Open Access (OA)?

•  What are the routes to OA?

•  What is an institutional repository?

•  How have funder policies changed recently?

•  How does this relate to my study?

BACKGROUND  

Ingolfson, Wikimedia Commons (PD)

•  Call for mandating deposit in institutional repositories

•  Low compliance with institutional policy across Europe (Liege an exception)

•  Rising compliance with funder policy – Wellcome increasing monitoring & sanctions for non-compliance

PublicDomainPictures, Pixabay (CC-0)

Literature Review  

•  Mandates can help to accelerate change in scholarly communications

•  There is a role for funders in bringing about change via policy

•  Mandates vs Academic Freedom – mandates & policies more successful if emphasise author rights over responsibilities

•  Need to state advantages and incentives for authors Clearly

Literature Review II  

•  Stronger mandates apparently attract more full text deposits

•  Low awareness of institutional policy relative to funder policy

•  Poor understanding of what is meant by Open Access and the various Creative Commons licences – guidance needed

•  Authors rights set in opposition to institutional & societal needs and desires

karlherl,, Pixabay (CC-0)

PublicDomainPictures, Pixabay (CC-0)

Research Questions  

1.  What are the main characteristics of Open Access policies in the UK?

2.  What are the similarities and differences between institutional Open Access policies and their supporting documentation in the UK?

3.  Are clear mechanisms for monitoring and

encouraging compliance identified by the policies and/or supporting documentation?

PublicDomainPictures, Pixabay (CC-0)

Methodology & Sampling  

•  Content analysis of policy documents and supporting information

•  Thematic coding

•  Comparing documents to Shieber & Suber (2013) guidance on best practice for university OA policies & Best practice model in Rentier (2013)/University of Liege

•  Sample = policies available in ROARMAP directory + representative examples (30 total)

Pete Jelliffe, Flickr (CC BY-ND)

Best Practice  

• Shieber & Suber (2013)

• Rentier (2013)

Findings  

Characteristics of policies: 1.  location of policy document on library

website 2.  Use of word “require” in reference to deposit 3.  Links to external funder requirements in

supporting documents 4.  Focus on incentives but not sanctions

Karl, Pixabay (CC-0)

Findings II  

•  Some state preference for green OA (9) and some for gold (3)

•  Communication of incentives for OA poor

•  Few sanctions

•  Little attention to monitoring compliance

•  Delay in update to policy – changes to guidance more common

cello5, Pixabay (CC-0)

Table 1: overview of Documents  

Table 2: Compliance with Shieber & Suber  

Table 3: Compliance with Rentier  

FUTURE WORK  

•  Interviews with Repository/Open Access staff – their perceptions of change to UK repositories following the policy changes

•  Theories used as lens through which to view data: Actor-network Theory (ANT), socio-technical interaction networks (STIN) and social exchange theory

•  Mary Anne Kennan’s (2011) models regarding actor-network theory and repository development will be applied to the data

Ed g2s, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA)

(For references, see the paper on the iFutures website)

Thanks!

Twitter: @pennyb

pcsandrews1@sheffield.ac.uk