UKCORR were very fortunate that the British Library very generously agreed to host and provide lunch for members’ day again this year. This year we managed to book the whole of the Knowledge Centre for the day which enabled us to increase the number of places to 110.
The day kicked off with a couple of keynote presentation from Rachel Bruce, Head of Open Research, UK Research and Innovation and Chris Banks, Assistant Provost (Space) and Director of Library Services at Imperial College, London.
Rachel gave an update on Plan S and an overview of changes to the implementation guidelines. She also talked about the work cOAlition S are doing with key stakeholders – researchers, publishers and learned societies. She also outlined the priority actions for COAlition S and that they will be setting up an office that should be up and running next year.
Chris Banks presentation was on ‘Retaining academic choice and restraining institutional costs in a Plan S world: the role of the UKSCL model institutional open access policy’. Chris kicked off her presentation talking about the policy stack change and commented that publisher policies are not always in line. She highlighted the growth in publication charges and the increased complexity and accountability that institutions are facing. Chris finished by giving an update on UKSCL, which initially planned to apply a decaying license but this was too complex and so have moved to a model institutional open access policy that supports academics with copyright and rights retention. UKSCL will continue to act on acceptance and the policy will be revised on light of Plan S.
After the break Sara Gould and Jenny Basford of the British Library gave an update ‘Repository Services at the British Library’. They talked about the selection of the repository software and how they have been working with museums and galleries to make their content available. A pilot of the repository should be launched during Open Access week.
This was then followed by hour long breakout sessions:
- UKRI Open Access Policy led by Dr Paul Richards, Senior Policy Advisor, UKRI.
- Theses and dissertations led by the British Library
- Our skills gap: meeting the challenge led by The Scholarly Communications Competencies Coalition (SC3) and UKCORR: Alison Sutton and Dimity Flanagan
- Data Verification and Audit in REF 2021 session led by Andy Hepburn, Head of REF Data Verification and Information Management, REF2021
We ended that day with a number of lightning talks:
- ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it: Repository improvements to increase discoverability, visibility and usability’ Leigh Stork, Open Access & Research Repository Specialist, Aston University
- ‘Seed to Harvest: Repository perspective from a small research-only institution’ Chris Whitfield, Library and Information Officer, Rothamsted Research
- ‘Piloting a REF compliance service for Arts & Humanities’ Matthew Herring, Research Data and Outputs Specialist and Thom Blake, Research Support Librarian, University of York
- ‘Automating repository workflows with Orpheus’ Arthur Smith, Deputy Manager of Scholarly Communication (Open Access), University of Cambridge
- ‘CORE Discovery’ Matteo Cancellieri, CORE Big Scientific Data and Text Analytics Group, The Open University
- ‘RIOXX and UKCORR’ Paul Walk, Founder and Director Company: Antleaf Ltd.
- ‘Key updates from JISC’ Helen Clare, Scholarly communications subject specialist JISC
I am always impressed by the range of lightning talks that we have at the members’ day and these showcase the work that our members’ do to engage and support their academics.
Thanks to those of you who put comments on the feedback padlets, we will use this in the planning of next members’ day. Just to give an overview of some of the comments – people liked the range of speakers, updates and opportunities for discussion. The REF and theses breakout were commented on as being useful. Things that we could improve – start time being later to allow for travel, rooms for the UKRI and REF breakout session, having speakers from less funded institutions, lightning talks being earlier in the day and being listed on the programme.
Finally, I wanted to thank everyone who contributed to and took part in members’ day. It was lovely to see so many of you there. UKCORR is a very special community and it is a real privilege to be part of it.