30 May 2025
TSharon Stevens, University of Worcester
The increasing developments in open access publishing are creating opportunities for librarians to support academics and researchers within a changing publishing landscape. For library staff working at smaller non-research-intensive institutions OA presents additional challenges as we often lack the infrastructure and scale to engage with emerging publishing models. In this editorial I reflect on my experiences during my first year as the Head of Open Scholarship and Content Management at the University of Worcester and consider the increasing skill list to support OA the impact and challenges that this creates and possible next steps.
The University of Worcester and my role
The University of Worcester is a small university with around 10000 students with a teaching and research portfolio of nine academic schools covering subjects including education, arts and humanities, business, science, nursing/allied health, sports science, psychology and a new medical school.
I joined the University as the Head of Open Scholarship and Content Management in October 2023. My role covers a broad portfolio with oversight of systems and discovery, content management (including acquisitions, resource lists, eresources and read and publish) and research support which includes the management of the repository and special collections. Small individual teams are led by team leaders including an Acquisitions Manager, EResources Manager and Research Librarian. Within the research support team there are two part-time members of staff, a repository administrator and research cataloguer.
My first year – supporting Open Access at the University
Prior to my arrival at Worcester the research support team had been carrying a vacancy in the support of the repository. The recruitment of a repository administrator (Katy Small) during my first few months has enabled me to work with the research librarian (Dr Theresa Oakley) to begin to review our ‘offer’ to researchers.
I have focused much of my time during my first year on stakeholder engagement and feedback from the research community. Attending relevant University committees has resulted in opportunities and library service attendance at newly created committees, including a REF strategy group and REF working group (though the meetings can feel like buses as they all seem to come at once!).
What is clear and I’m sure will be of no surprise to anyone working in this area, is that in common with smaller universities we do not have the infrastructure of scale of larger more research focused Universities. There is also a variable and often limited understanding of open access within the research community, (though my experience at other Universities suggests that OA understanding is inconsistent across researchers). Though all of this comes with challenges it has also enabled me and the research team to focus on promoting our specific knowledge and skills to support the University research agenda. Some examples of our approach have included:
- REF29 Open access consultation – I drafted the University response to the OA consultation in May 2024.
- Library Services Research Support Working group – the creation of a library services research support working group with representation from the research community (we have a doctoral student rep, two early career researchers and two experience researchers) to support the development of library services ‘offer’ to researchers. The aim of this group is to help us identify priorities and gather feedback and evidence of impact on the services and support we develop to support our researchers.
- Skills sessions delivered by the Research Librarian on both the doctoral school researcher developer programme and the equivalent staff researcher developer programme with sessions on open access, copyright, getting published, and submitting to the University repository.
- Open Access week – drop-in sessions, blog posts and the creation of a new video on the read and publish agreements available through library services.
- Bespoke sessions on topics such as the University Read and Publish Agreements and Open Access have been delivered to research networks and school research committees.
Diversity in Open Access Publishing – our increasing knowledge burden
Over the past year, keeping up to date with the diversity in open access publishing models is one of my biggest challenges (I’m sure I’m not alone). There is an increasing knowledge and skills list, some examples from the webinars and events I’ve attended include:
- Understanding different publishing models, their implications and potential opportunities for the University
- Changes in policy and keeping up to date with research in the OA field especially around financial and impact on publishing including equity concerns.
- Technical elements of the repository developments
- Copyright and rights retention issues
- Developments in AI
Challenges and impact
This increasing skill lists are increasingly complex. The broad content and open scholarship portfolio I have means it can be difficult to maintain an oversight of these developments, and though webinars and communities of practice are welcome, it can be difficult working in a smaller organisation to raise these issues within the University.
The budgetary constraints, which many of us are facing, is resulting in additional challenges in the promotion of OA and alternative publishing models.
Financial pressures create an increasing focus on income generation, which includes the REF. Though the REF is the key driver in OA, the decision not to include long-forms in the OA requirements for REF29, though welcome (I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to breathe a sigh of relief when this was announced), has also created a “well we don’t have to worry about publishing OA books”, from some researchers. The focus for our researchers, understandably is very much on meeting the current REF OA requirements. The challenge is that long-form OA is not going away, library services, our researchers, and institutions need to engage with OA publishing models, including diamond, now to be ready for any future REF changes.
The focus on student experience to help improve retention can be another challenge as it is difficult to raise a topic which is perceived as not being linked to student experience by senior members of the University. For many at the University, open access, relates to research and not teaching.
A way forward and support
The combination of financial restraints and focus on student experience does perhaps create the possibility of repositioning conversations around open access and publishing models. My content management role means I spend a considerable amount of my time working with my Acquisitions and EResources Managers. Providing access to e-text books is a financial challenge for many of us and there is a link between Diamond models for books/open educational resources and meeting our priorities for providing access to texts.
I am beginning to explore how to broaden the discussion around open access publishing models to draw attention to the benefits to teaching and learning, especially in terms of improving student experience and financial sustainability.
Some initial first steps planned is the creation of a University Open Scholarship working group led by library services to focus on promoting open access models more broadly and exploring approaches to raise awareness of open textbooks models and open educational resources to all teaching and research staff to support learning and teaching.
Though these ideas are very much at the early stage, there are opportunities, which as a sector we could consider to help support the promotion and development of open access models within teaching focused and smaller organisations, including:
- The development of tailored resources on OA publishing models concentrating on the benefits to teaching and learning in areas including financial sustainability and improved student engagement would be helpful.
- Mentoring/buddying or targeted smaller communities of practice could provide opportunities for those who are beginning to consider alternative publishing models such as diamond a space to buddy and learn from those are a little further ahead in this area. Such opportunities could be established for a specific timeframe to help lessen the time commitment for those involved.
Conclusion
Though I have a diverse portfolio the links between open access and content have enabled me to develop a clear oversight and synergy between the two areas. Repositioning the conversation around open access publishing models to include the benefits to both learning and teaching and research is one which I believe provides opportunities to raise the open access agenda in a meaningful way to help meet the needs of our organisation.