Open access management tools

Academic libraries play a central role in supporting and managing their institution’s research outputs. As well as curating research outputs via Institutional Repositories, libraries increasingly play a critical role in managing institution’s Open Access (OA).

The role of libraries in supporting Open Access has grown considerably over the past 5 years in light of the Open Access obligations of the Research Excellence Framework and major research funders such as UKRI, The Wellcome Trust and Horizon Europe.

Libraries are therefore often responsible for the following:

• Hosting OA outputs via institutional repositories (IRs)
• Ensuring compliance with funders OA mandates
• Ensuring compliance with publishers’ OA policies
• Administering OA funds -institutional budgets to cover article processing charges (OA)
• Administering institutional publisher transitional agreements (TAs) which include the ability to publish OA in “hybrid” journals*
• Reporting on OA compliance for the Research Excellence Framework

Libraries will use a variety of tools to manage the OA workflow, OA policies and OA monitoring / reporting.

Below you will find details of some of the main tools currently used.

*Hybrid journals are priced publisher journals that allow a proportion of articles to be made available Open Access

Institutional Repositories (IRs)

Used to store and provide Open Access to scholarly outputs. The IR workflow will typically include elements of OA administration for research outputs such as setting of publisher embargos (for Green Open Access) and ensuring metadata meets publisher requirements (e.g. by the use of set publisher attribution statements).

APC Management and Open Access Funds

Libraries often manage Article Processing Charge (APC) funds and agreements.

• ChronosHub – Supports APC workflows, funding compliance, and publisher agreements.
• RightsLink for Scientific Communications – this service from the Copyright Clearance Center provides workflows for APC administration and management.

In addition, individual publishers will use dashboards for managing transitional agreements which are often administered by libraries e.g. the Wiley Open Access Dashboard (WOAD) and the Taylor & Francis Research Dashboard

Where to Publish

Libraries will frequently provide advice and guidance to researchers on best practice for making their work available Open Access and will use tools such as:

• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a unique and extensive index of diverse open access journals from around the world.
•  Think, Check, Submit can help researchers identify trusted journals for their research.

Metadata, Discoverability, and Compliance Tools

There are a range of tools that help ensure Open Access outputs are discoverable and compliant with publisher mandates:

• OA Switchboard allows the sharing of information between publishers, institutions and funders. This includes publication metadata and alerts to OA articles published by institutions’ authors.
• Open Policy Finder (formerly Sherpa-Romeo) - an online resource that aggregates and analyses publisher open access policies from around the world and provides summaries of publisher copyright and open access archiving policies on a journal-by-journal basis.
• ROARMAP is an international registry of Open Access mandates and policies (adopted by universities, research institutions and research funders) that require or request their researchers to provide Open Access to their peer-reviewed research article output by depositing it in an Open Access repository.
• Unpaywall – API or browser extension used to locate OA versions of papers.
• CORE – Aggregates Open Access research outputs from repositories and journals globally.

Persistent Identifiers

Persistent identifiers support the tracking, attribution and identification of outputs and authors:

• ORCID – a free unique persistent identifier (PID) for individual researchers to use to aid discovery and attribution of their work..
• DOI– Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) are a unique, persistent string of characters used to permanently identify a piece of digital content, such as a journal article or research paper. It acts as a stable, permanent link to the online resource, unlike a URL which may change or disappear over time. Typically publishers will assign a DOI on publication. However services CrossRef and DataCite offer DOI registration services which may be useful to researchers seeking to make their work Open Access via alternative publishing routes.

Licensing

Typically, Open Access research outputs will be licensed with a Creative Commons Licence. Creative Commons offer free, public licenses that copyright holders can use to grant permission for others to share and use their work under copyright law. Creative Commons licences are specifically designed for Open Access and are designed to make creative works as accessible as possible. A range of licences are possible from the most restrictive CC-BY-NC-ND (allowing non-commercial redistribution only) to the most liberal CC-BY (which allows distribution, adaptation and for the work to be built upon as long as attribution is given).

Library Publishing Services

Libraries increasingly serve as publishers on behalf of their community of researchers. Some of the following services and solutions may be used as part of the management of this:

• Library Publishing Coalition (LPC) – LPC is an independent, community-led membership association of academic and research libraries and library consortia engaged in scholarly publishing
• Manifold – open source software for publication of Open Access monographs
• Fulcrum – open source publishing platform used by University Presses for publishing and hosting.
• Open Journal Systems -an open source platform for editorial workflow, hosting and publishing of Open Access journals.
• Janeway – A newer alternative for journal editorial workflow, publishing and hosting developed by Birkbeck, University of London.

Research management