A liaison’s role in implementing an open access policy on campus

Abstract

As a new subject liaison librarian, I arrived at IUPUI in the fall when our “Harvard-model” Open Access (OA) policy was passed. Our institutional repository, ScholarWorks, has existed for several years, but now the opt-out policy requires faculty authors to deposit copies of their manuscripts for scholarly articles that were published on or after Oct. 7, 2014. Liaison librarians are contributing to this process through usability testing for a new submission portal for articles, educating faculty about our repository and policy, preparing and uploading manuscripts and contacting publishers for permissions to disseminate work. I will talk about the confusion, questions, and support this change has generated on campus. I will also speak about the impact on my faculty members in terms of receiving personal recognition, inquiries and collaboration requests, and numbers of downloads. I am an advocate for open access and I have shared my own work through the repository.