The O2OA team recently met to review the first phase of the project and move further ahead with the next. At a meeting hosted (and catered!) wonderfully by Northampton, the team discussed the findings of the needs assessment and the learning amassed so far. Points included:
- The needs assessment highlighted a range of barriers and facilitators to OA. It is essential that we address these if we are to successfully implement OA institutionally
- There are wide variations (within the academic and research support communities) in knowledge about Gold vs. Green and what ‘compliance’ means. Resulting misunderstandings and misconceptions about OA lead unintentional non-compliance
- REF and funding requirements are the biggest drivers for OA publications and data, with the impact agenda also motivating OA approaches.
- Barriers and facilitators exist at the individual, institutional and external (eg. publisher) levels. Strategies to enhance OA activity must take account of these tiers and seek to overcome difficulties. Where barriers are attitudinal, training and clear institutional messages can help redress these. Where barriers are more practical, institutions can work on smarter and more transparent workflows to support activity
Overall there was some level of inertia to engage academics in this dialogue, making data collection more difficult than expected and indicating the future effort required to move people to action(!). Moving forward to the next work package – workflow development – we will be combining processes (technical, systems based) with behavioural factors to best support OA institutionally.
The baton is now passed to our lovely OA partners at Northampton – Let Workflows Commence!!
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