Guest Post: Reflections on Open Access Week 2012 at the University of Oxford

During Open Access Week a series of guest blog posts were published on this blog in which three repository managers shared their findings of SEO analyses of their institutional repositories.

As a follow-up to those posts, which were motivated by a commitment to openness and sharing which is prevalent in the repository community, this post by Catherine Dockerty (Web and Data Services Manager, Radcliffe Science Library) and Juliet Ralph (Bodleian Libraries Life Sciences Librarian) provides a summary of the activities behind the Open Access Week event at the University of Oxford.

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Open Access Week at Oxford

Open Access Week 2012 saw a determined effort from the Bodleian Libraries of Oxford University to shine a light on developments in Open Access with a full week-long programme of events. This was prompted by the need to assess the state of play in Open Access (OA) which, for major research institutions such as Oxford, is particularly urgent in the wake of the publication of the Finch Report. It was the second year we have participated in Open Access Week – last year we held a single event and we wanted to do a lot more this time round.

What We Were Trying To Do

We had a number of specific things we wanted to achieve though our programme:

• Increasing the knowledge of library staff. All reader-facing staff will potentially deal with enquiries relating to Open Access.
• Assembling and showcasing the expertise of Bodleian Libraries staff in Open Access. Readers need to know what we can do for them.
• Raising awareness of publishing options to academic researchers.
• Promoting submission to Oxford’s institutional repository ORA (Oxford Research Archive). Oxford currently has mandatory deposit for doctoral theses, but not for research papers.
• Highlighting Oxford’s progress in the field of Open Data.

What We Did

We put together a programme of talks and other activities, most of which were lunchtime sessions and took place at the Radcliffe Science Library, one of the Bodleian Libraries and Oxford University’s main library for the sciences and engineering. The majority of speakers were library staff. The focus was on science, but events covering law and medicine were included and there were attendees from the humanities and social sciences.

An evening session, “Bodley’s ‘Republic of [Open] Letters” was hosted by the Oxford Open Science Group and highlighted the DaMaRO Project, which is developing a research data management policy and data archiving infrastructure for Oxford

The presentations are available online.

Wikipedia Editathon

Ada Lovelace by Margaret Carpenter, 1836

The final event of the Open Access Week programme was a Wikipedia “Editathon” on the theme Women in Science. The event was organised as a collaboration between the Bodleian Libraries and Oxford University’s IT Services, and was a follow-up to the Ada Lovelace Day event at the Royal Society the week earlier. This tied in neatly with Open Access Week as we were able to highlight open access sources for use in updating articles. Our event was publicised at the Royal Society one and on Ada Lovelace Day Wikipedia page.

Having an Oxford-based Wikipedia event was also an opportunity to encourage academics and students to get involved in editing Wikipedia, which is reliant on expert contributors to add high quality articles and improve existing ones. Wikipedia has a readership vastly exceeding that of any academic journal, and presents an opportunity for academics to have an impact on a wider audience.

Juliet Ralph (Bodleian Libraries Life Sciences Librarian) kicked off the proceedings with an introductory talk to introduce Wikipedia and outline the format of the session. Online resources for editing articles were suggested, focusing on open access. The fact that the Royal Society was providing free access to all its publications until 29^th November 2012 was highlighted. A collection of printed reference materials from the RSL’s collection was also provided.

A list of articles for adding/updating was provided as guidance to participants, but this was not intended to be prescriptive. The list was the same one as used at the Royal Society event, updated to reflect all the work done that day.

We were very pleased that Oxford-based Wikipedians James and Harry Burt were able to attend and assist the assembled editors. They also treated us to an impromptu presentation on their work as long-time Wikipedia editors.

Online participation via Twitter was encouraged using the hashtag #WomenSciWP (the same as for the Royal Society event). Note that a Twubs archive of the tweets is available. The event was also live-tweeted from the RSL’s Twitter feed (@radcliffescilib).

By the end of the session two new articles were created and 12 updated. Attendees were mainly research staff and postgraduate students from the fields of science and medicine. Also present were two archivists from the Saving Oxford Medicine project who posted a blog post about the work.

Special thanks to:

• James and Harry Burt for presenting and for help they gave to other participants.
• Izzie McMann and Karen Langdon (Radcliffe Science Library staff) for assisting participants on the day.
• Janet McKnight (IT Services) and Alison Prince (Bodleian Libraries Web Manager) for help in organising and publicising the event.
• Andrew Gray (British Library Wikipedian in Residence) and Daria Cybulska (Wikimedia UK) for publicising the Editathon and supplying learning materials for the session.

Reflections

We certainly achieved the aim of increasing the knowledge of OA issues in Library staff within the sciences, several of whom attended more than one event. In future we will aim to actively promote the staff development benefits from participating to all Bodleian Libraries staff, not just those in the sciences. Our collaborations with the Open Science Group and IT Services were successful, and we hope to work together with them on future events.

We fulfilled all our original intentions to some extent, but some events were not well attended in spite of being publicised widely although were positively received by those who did.

The timing of Open Access Week is a problem for Oxford as the start of the academic year is later than for most UK universities, which means the new term is just getting underway in earnest and there are many other events to compete with. Staff time in planning events is also in short supply as reader-facing staff will have been prioritising inductions for new students over the previous weeks.

The Wikipedia event was a success (well attended with positive feedback) and we would certainly hold a similar event in the future, although not necessarily as part of Open Access Week. The fact that it was a hands-on session went down well, and the Women in Science theme attracted interest.

Next Time

Holding events at lunchtime was evidently not popular and we may decide to move them to an afternoon slot (colleagues who run user education programmes had a higher take-up when they did this). We may also move the sessions out of the library into academic departments or colleges, and hold events at other times of year.

We will be making a concerted effort to involve well-known speakers, rather than relying heavily on library staff.

We will be looking to encourage other OA events in Oxford and elsewhere, and we will also think about using online chat as well as Twitter for online participation. The planning starts now!

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View Twitter conversation from: [Topsy]

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Catherine Dockerty is the Web and Data Services Manager at the Radcliffe Science Library at Oxford University where her role is managing online content, social media and communications, and to support colleagues in serving the University’s teaching and research in the sciences. She has spent 13 years working in various reader services roles at Oxford University, and has also worked in the civil engineering industry and the book trade.

Juliet Ralph is the Subject Librarian for Life Sciences and Medicine in the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford, where she has worked for over 15 years. She is one of many librarians involved in providing support for research at Oxford, including Open Access.