Back at the cottage I'm staying in until Friday after a fab #UKSG2025 @uksg.bsky.social. Enjoyed talking with @msiowaintheuk.bsky.social and dancing night away with @oipassoc.bsky.social colleagues and others. Tired now and my knees hurt 😂

Really good point from @emmayhnell.bsky.social about better training needed for academics to communicate their research well - and more motivation / reward needed for reaching broader audiences #uksg2025

@emmayhnell.bsky.social talking about her research in Huntington’s disease and patients not able to understand the literature on their condition - science needs to be more understandable (this is why we founded @growkudos.bsky.social - science needs stories!) #uksg2025

Andrew Barker compares open access to Harold Wilson - “a moral crusade or nothing”. But we’ve got bogged down in complex definitions and compliance. We need to get back to the original goals of connecting the public with research. #uksg2025

Philippa - providing support and a collective voice for members including training, webinars and knowledge sharing #UKSG2025

Philippa - launched in 2023 includes new university presses, library publishers, open journal services etc - also have a diversity of models but we have shared principles #UKSG2025

Philippa Grand talking about OIPA oipauk.org #UKSG2025

Paula - takeaways - find ways to support these collective funding models, considered assessment criteria, if you cant support financially can you help to promote this, showcase achievements from these models, build collaboration with nonprofit publishers and researchers #UKSG2025

Paula - benefits for publishers include diversity of income streams - attracting external funding helps to show viability of the Presses to their host institutions #UKSG2025

Paula - Open Book Collective - Uni of London joined in 2024 - funding is flexible - commissioned new books, hire a fixed-term editorial assistant, partnership with Thoth #UKSG2025

Paula - Uni of London have been able to publish a number of books and also used funding to support ECRs and for promotion #UKSG2025

Paula - Jisc open access community framework - enabled publication of 36 new books, supported several diamond journals. Uni of London Press where part of this scheme #UKSG2025

Paula - libraries and publishers are already working together in new ways through various initiatives #UKSG2025

Paula Kennedy from University of London Press talking about the publisher role in open access publishing #UKSG2025

Rosie - takeaways - rebalancing time spent on starting new initiatives vs joining and sustaining, embrace the messiness of culture, consistency across spending, policy, training and services #UKSG2025

Rosie - moving away from messages of compliance, which can obscure the complexities of the decisions researchers are making #UKSG2025

Rosie - benefits to working with other teams to get those messages across as part of what other teams are doing - can then reach people who maybe wouldn't come to a "libray" session #UKSG2025

Rosie Higham - talking about research culture. Embedding open - we need to be part of the wider research culture, look at what others are doing and see how we can embed open research within that #UKSG2025

Sarah - how to do this - bring together the decision making around open content and pay walled content, improve knowledge of open access in other library teams (like liaison team), talk openly about choices, issues and complexities with academic communities #UKSG2025

Sarah - not an easy decision and was difficult conversation with academic community but having developed the principles has helped. #UKSG2025

Sarah - big budget reduction made it difficult to embody the principles - so haven't been able to grow the investment in open options but have been able to maintain what they were already supporting. But have cut other things - have come out of a number of TAs (big spend area) #UKSG2025

Sarah - developed a checklist for deciding how to decide what to support - then wondered if they were doing this more with this type of scheme rather than the more traditional service - so drew up a set of principles that apply to all things they are considering purchasing #UKSG2025

Sarah - been making deliberate choices to support open access infrastructure, OA books as well as journals. Making an effort continue to suppport these service in a time of budget cuts #UKSG2025

Sarah - incentivise open research in an attempt to create a community of practice #UKSG2025

Sarah - engaging with open research as a library has enabled us to have more interesting conversations across the university - opportunities to talk to senior leaders and researchers #UKSG2025

Sarah - library re-affirmed their commitment to open, open research and open access publishing #UKSG2025

Sarah - research intensive but also heavy focus on teaching so there are lots of pulls on finances in terms of purchasing #UKSG2025

Sarah Thompson from York Uni talking about the purchasing strategies and open research #UKSG2025

Scottish University Press - have expanded the offer to all universities in the UK and finalising a textbook publishing plan #UKSG2025

Final breakout with my OIPA colleagues - Phillipa covering for Gillian for the first speaker. Call for action - be a bit noisier about all the work we are doing #UKSGG2025

Varina - used reporting from the CRIS - cleaner data as staff update metadata and its unique to the institution - reporting can be challenging but they provide support (Pure) #UKSG2025

Varina - statement is recommended rather than required so inclusion of this is quite low. Only had 3 opts out requests #UKSG2025

Varina - couldn't ask researches directly as the institution has a policy to only send all staff surveys once per year and its tricky to get questions into that survey #UKSG2025

Varina - use Google analytics to track Web traffic - can only export a small slice of the data. Their in dashboard visualisations aren't easy to use #UKSG2025

Varina - tried to track rights retention queries through their query service, fresh service - but only picks them up if they mention rights retention despite the fact that this is sometimes the answer to the question around OA publishing - unless you tags #UKSG2025

Varina - have info on the open research webpage, do sessions, presented at dept aways days and similar events, social media campaigns and marketing comms #UKSG2025

Varina - Add the AAM under embargo with a note to make open on publication - then periodically check for papers to see when published #UKSG2025

Varina - make all AAMs available with the CCBY licence once all the publishers had been contacted, regardless of whether they had included the statement on the AAM #UKSG2025

Varina - policy went into affect in May 2023 - and started contacting publishers #UKSG2025

Varina - launched the policy 2 years ago - looking to evaluate it #UKSG2025

Next up is Evaluating rights retention at the Uni of Aberdeen #UKSG2025

Francesca - used Open Alex so excluded staff without an ID and papers without a DOI #UKSG2025

Francesca - used an alternative approach which was a more manual approach and could only look at gender #UKSG2025

Francesca - wanted to explore metrics using the COKI observatory and wanted to use the athena Swan data but weren't allowed to access this data #UKSG2025

Francesca - are research metrics part of the issue in relation to promotion #UKSG2025

Next up is Francesca Soldati talking about metrics that matter - scalable metrics for a gender equitable research culture #UKSG2025

Emily - women are more likely to have a support network #UKSG2025

Emily - applicants mostly wanted resource - so either buy out or additional staffing #UKSG2025

Emily - have a research EDI fund - also offered support for applicants, tried to remove bias within the application process #UKSG2025

Emily - research doesnt happen without professional services and technicians - work with researchers at every point of the research life cycle #UKSG2025