This document summarizes Iryna Kuchma's presentation on libraries advocating for open access at the Fifth Belgrade International Open Access Conference in 2012. The presentation discusses best practices and lessons learned from advocating for open access in libraries. It highlights that high-level stakeholders and influential researchers are important allies for advocacy campaigns. The presentation also provides tactics that have proven effective, such as identifying champions, engaging young researchers, and presenting case studies of open access repositories and journals. Challenges discussed include the importance of timing advocacy efforts strategically and having a trained team to develop open access infrastructure. Some results of advocacy campaigns included new open access policies and repositories being established.

1. Libraries advocating for
open access: Best practices
and lessons learnt
Iryna Kuchma
EIFL Open Access Programme Manager
Fifth Belgrade International Open Access Conference 2012
National Library of Serbia, May 18, 2012 – May 19, 2012
www.eifl.net Attribution 3.0 Unported

2. Removing barriers
to knowledge
sharing
EIFL-OA: open access

3. EIFL-OA
achievements
440+ OA repositories & 3,400+ OA journals in
EIFL partner countries
OA policies have been adopted by 33 institutions
in the EIFL network
62 awareness raising, advocacy & capacity
building events & workshops in 2003-2011 in 32
countries with participants from over 50
countries

6. “Open access to
research is a must for
the competitiveness of
Europe”

7. OA in the European
Union
Chapter 2.5.2 of the Digital Agenda for
Europe – Driving ICT innovation by
exploiting the single market – refers to
effectively managed knowledge transfer
activities & states that publicly funded
research should be widely
disseminated through Open Access
publication of scientific data & papers

8. OA in the European
Union (2)
Europe 2020 Flagship Initiative
Innovation Union: the Commission will
promote open access to the results of
publicly funded research; & it will aim
to make open access to publications
the general principle for projects
funded by the EU research Framework
Programmes

9. OA in the European
Union (3)
Since August 2008 the European Commission
(EC) is conducting a pilot initiative on OA to
peer reviewed research articles in its Seventh
Research Framework Programme (FP7)
The EC requires grant recipients in 7 areas to
"deposit peer reviewed research articles or final
manuscripts resulting from their FP7 projects into
an online repository & make their best efforts to
ensure OA to these articles"

10. OA in the European
Union (4)
7 areas are: Energy, Environment (including Climate
Change), Health, Information and Communication
Technologies (Cognitive Systems, Interaction,
Robotics), Research Infrastructures (e-
infrastructures), Science in society and Socio-
economic sciences & the humanities
OA to these publications is to be ensured within 6
months after publication in the first 5 areas listed;
and 12 months in the last 2 areas listed

11. OA in the European
Union (5)
The EC wants to ensure that the results of the
research it funds are disseminated as widely
and effectively as possible to guarantee
maximum exploitation & impact in the world of
researchers and beyond;
OA to research articles helps to increase the
impact of the EU's investment in research &
development & to avoid wasting time &
valuable resources on duplicative research;

12. OA in the European
Union (6)
With access to a wider selection of
literature, researchers can build upon
this knowledge to further their own
work;
Small & medium sized businesses &
entrepreneurs can also benefit from
improved access to the latest research
developments to speed up
commercialisation and innovation.

13. OA in the European
Union (7)
The ERC Guidelines for Open Access (Dec
2007):
The ERC requires that all peer-reviewed
publications from ERC-funded research
projects be deposited on publication into
an appropriate research repository where
available, such as PubMed Central, ArXiv or
an institutional repository, and subsequently
made OA within 6 months of publication.

19. Strategies
High-level stakeholders are important for
effective national advocacy

21. Tactics
When libraries run OA advocacy campaigns
they need to recruit more allies

22. “OA can only be positively evaluated... In
my opinion, if there is no classified
information, the results of scientific
research should be freely accessible. The
research is paid from EU funds or from the
budget of Lithuanian Republic, so it should
be freely available...”
Nerija Putinaitė, Vice-Minister of the
Ministry of Education and Science
(Lithuania)

23. “I think that OA is a good thing and it should
constantly expand. I hope that gradually there will
be more openness, because it is very important
that the publications are widely read. For me it is
important how research supported by us
[Research Council of Lithuania] is read, used, and
what impact it has. Eventually OA should
prevail...The positive aspect is that it is free.
Another positive aspect is that science crosses
the boundaries of a narrow circle, opens the
space for a wider evaluation of scientific works,
and reduces the number of falsifications”
Professor Ruta Marcinkevičienė, Vice-Chairman
of the Research Council of Lithuania, Vytautas
Magnus University (Lithuania)

24. Tactics (2)
It is important to identify influential research
administrators and prominent researchers
who support OA

25. “OA results have more visibility, and at the
same time they better represent the
scientist or group of scientists to the whole
society. OA helps to strengthen the relation
between science and society.”
Professor Juozas Vidmantis Vaitkus,
Vilnius University, Faculty of Physics
(Lithuania)

26. “We launched an OA journal to give our
researchers an opportunity to freely publish
their research results and make them
visible globally. If you want to keep up with
the current research, you need fast access
to research results. As a scientist I am
interested in larger audience for my papers.
And I support and practice OA to research
publications.”
Dr. Roman Hladyshevskii, Ivan Franko
National University of Lviv, editor-in-chief,
Chemistry of Metals and Alloys Journal
(Ukraine)

27. “Providing global access to our research outputs
is an action line in our Research Development
programme. This is why about three years ago we
launched an OA institutional repository where you
can find almost all our publications. If we wouldn’t
use this tool, who would have access to our
research? And who had before we launched the
repository? OA also protects research materials
from being plagiarised. Who would plagiarise from
openly available sources? So this also an
important prevention tool for unethical
researchers.”
Anatoliy Zahorodniy, Vice Chancellor for
Research and Teaching, Lviv National Polytechnic
University (Ukraine)

28. Tactics (3)
It is also important to partner with young
researchers' groups and associations

29. Tactics (4)
For the institutional-level advocacy
project to succeed, one of the tactics is to
involve the highest authority in the
University/College and to convince them to
become the champions of the project, to self-
archive/provide their research materials for
mediated depositing

30. Tactics (5)
Bottom-up approach starting from the
faculties and up to the University
management also proved to be a successful
approach

31. Tactics (6): University
of Zimbabwe
- faculty librarians included into the Library OA
Committee;
- were trained at a half-day workshop to be library
champions in faculty-based advocacy work;
- each faculty librarian was tasked to come up with
an academic member of staff who he/she could
work with in the campaign;
- Each faculty librarian worked up a strategy that
suited a particular faculty.

32. Tactics (7)
For the campaign to be successful there
should be a dedicated committee that
includes librarians, researchers (and students
if possible) and research administrators

33. Tactics (8)
Tying to actions works well
For example, having draft OA policies

34. Tactics (9)
If you plan educational programmes, it is
important to identify real educational
needs of your target audience

35. Tactics (10)
Try to actively engage your target
audience: not only in a group but also one-
on-one
Work with OA supporters from the faculty
as champions in your advocacy activities

36. Tactics (11)
It is very efficient to present case studies
of OA repositories and OA journals to
research communities
Live examples are always powerful
Demonstration of already established OA
repositories/journals advocates for itself

37. “Presentations about OA inspired us to
launch a new OA journal “Tobacco Control
and Public Health in Eastern Europe” and
register it in the Directory of OA Journals”
Tatiana Andreeva, National University of
Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Ukraine)

38. Tactics (12)
When OA is a new concept for the audience,
try present the topic of OA along with other
more familiar issues that have gained some
attention

39. Tactics (13)
Try to keep journalists writing about science
informed

42. Tools (2)
Radio talk shows seem to be a useful tool to
engage with general public

43. Tools (3)
Promotional materials such as flyers,
brochures, posters, T-shirts, branded
pens/pencils help to market the
events/projects

45. Tools (5)
A repository usage module is a powerful
advocacy tool

46. Challenges, Lessons
Learnt and
Recommendations
The right timing for proposing an OA policy is
extremely important
When working with university administrators
(or any major stakeholders) you should be
aware of their priorities

47. Challenges, Lessons
Learnt and
Recommendations (2)
Any institutional-level advocacy
project should be designed for
multi-stakeholder communities

48. Challenges, Lessons
Learnt and
Recommendations (3)
Try to start planning all project activities
as early as possible, especially main events
like workshops
Try to avoid last minute rush

49. Challenges, Lessons
Learnt and
Recommendations (4)
Research lunches proved to be a big
success

50. Challenges, Lessons
Learnt and
Recommendations (5)
In-person visits with directors/leadership
of departments and institutions is a very
effective way to cultivate a shared
understanding of the concept of OA, as well
as to get a buy-in

51. Challenges, Lessons
Learnt and
Recommendations (6)
It is possible to achieve ambitious objectives
on a tight budget when the enthusiasm is
there as a driving force
However, it is extremely important that there
is a strong institutional commitment to the
project when trying to develop an OA
infrastructure from scratch

52. Challenges, Lessons
Learnt and
Recommendations (7)
It is absolutely necessary to have a
trained team available with the required
technical and managerial capacities
Training of the trainers is necessary

53. Challenges, Lessons
Learnt and
Recommendations (8)
Plan continued advocacy activities and
don't limit your strategy to one event

54. Some results
Over 1700 national policy makers, research
administrators, researchers, students,
journal editors/publishers, and librarians
attended workshops/other outreach events;
New partnerships with various stakeholders;
Educational materials in 7 languages have
been developed, including 6 short videos;

55. Some results (2)
30 new OA repositories set up;
Increase in research output deposited in
OA repositories;
OA publishing initiatives launched in
Estonia, Botswana & Malawi;
2 OA theses mandates: Kwame Nkrumah
University of Science & Technology,
Ghana, & University of Zimbabwe

56. Some results (3)
University of Tartu Library takes part in the
Estonian Ministry of Education and Research
programme for monitoring Estonian research
policies and is involved in national policy
discussions;
A core group of OA advocates acts as the advisory
body on OA in Slovenia;
National and institutional OA policy discussions in
Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, Botswana, Ghana,
Sudan, Zimbabwe.

57. Acknowledgements
The work presented in this paper would not be possible without the key
contribution of the OA advocacy campaigns managers and authors of EIFL-OA
case studies: Rania M. H. Baleela, Faculty of Science, University of Khartoum
(Sudan), and Pablo de Castro, GrandIR (Spain); CB.Bożena Bednarek-
Michalska, Nicolaus Copernicus University, and Karolina Grodecka, Akademia
Gorniczo-Hutnicza University of Science and Technology (Poland); Agnes
Chikonzo, University of Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe); Richard Bruce Lamptey,
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Ghana); Reason
Baathuli Nfila, University of Botswana (Botswana); Elena Sipria-Mironov and
Merit Burenkov, University of Tartu Library (Estonia); Ugis Skele, University of
Latvia (Latvia); Dr Luka Šušteršič, Jožef Stefan Institute Science Information
Centre (Slovenia); Gintarė Tautkevičienė, Kaunas University of Technology
(Lithuania); Kondowani Wella, University of Malawi, Kamuzu College of Nursing
(Malawi); Tetiana Yaroshenko, National University “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy”, and
Oleksii Vasyliev, Informatio Consortium (Ukraine); supported by the Information
Programme, Open Society Foundations as a part of EIFL-OA programme
activities

58. Thank you! Questions?
iryna.kuchma@eifl.net