Tri-Campus Teamwork: Open Access at the University of Toronto Libraries
At the University of Toronto Libraries (UTL), there has been a concerted effort to move forward in the area of scholarly communication. As academic librarians know, working with faculty and students on these issues is challenging. At the University of Toronto this is especially true, as the University cover three geographically distinct campuses (downtown Toronto, Mississauga and Scarborough).
The University of Toronto Libraries have a foundational infrastructure of tools: T-Space, our research repository; the Open Journal System which supports a range of journals, and the Open Conference System. In addition, UTL's work with the Synergies project is building infrastructure for Canadian scholarly communication. Most recently, working together as a tri-campus team, the UT libraries have focused energy on outreach and awareness strategies. Key highlights of the tri-campus work include organizing a scholarly communication workshop, which engaged 17 Southern Ontario libraries and developing talks and events in support of Open Access week and beyond.
UTL established its research repository, T-Space (https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca), an installation of D-Space, in 2003. Its prime purpose is to showcase and preserve faculty’s scholarly work. Clearly, there is an audience for the over 24, 000 items – in 2010, T-Space had 1,162,412 unique visits from over 200 different countries. Like many repositories, T-Space supports the University’s e-thesis program. As of November, 2010, graduate students are required to upload their theses/dissertations to T-Space. T-Space has a number of strengths. It supports a range of formats. For example, our faculty can archive journal articles, videos, images or datasets. As T-Space is searchable by Google, Google Scholar and other search engines, material can reach a much wider audience, with the additional possibility of increasing citation rates. Materials that are uploaded also receive a permanent URL – no more broken links!
Despite these advantages, faculty members have been slow to add their research to T-Space. This unfortunately is not a situation unique to UTL; many other academic libraries are experiencing this challenge. One of the prime reasons for this reluctance is the time factor – for many faculty, time is already a precious commodity and they feel unable to take on another task. Some faculty are also uncertain about the copyright clearance work that must be done in order to add materials to T-Space. They look to us for guidance. To support faculty, a few UTL librarians have engaged the University’s iSchool practicum placement students. Under librarian supervision, students are trained to upload materials to the T-Space collections on behalf of faculty – negotiating the copyright clearance, creating the appropriate metadata and uploading the necessary file(s). This is an ideal solution as it reduces pressure on faculty who support the principles behind T-Space, but struggle to find the time to undertake the necessary steps. As well, it provides valuable work experience to potential new members to our profession.
UTL also offers a Journal Production Service (http://jps.library.utoronto.ca), using the Open Journal System (OJS), as well as an Open Conference Service (http://ocs.library.utoronto.ca). These tools allow for the production of a journal or a conference from start to finish, including the necessary peer review of submissions and the eventual online publication of journal issues or conference proceedings. OJS has been enthusiastically received by faculty and students. UTL is currently hosting 27 journals on a wide range of subject areas – anthropology, clinical and investigative medicine and queer studies in education, to name a few. Of these, 11 are student-led and 20 are completely open access. Library policy requires all journals provide some content openly with the remaining seven subscription titles offering delayed open access. These services are also proving to be popular. The most heavily used article in OJS in 2010 was viewed over 99,000 times.
The University of Toronto is a partner in the Synergies consortium (http://www.synergiescanada.org), which is a SSHRC funded effort described as “a not-for-profit platform for the publication and the dissemination of research results in social sciences and humanities published in Canada.” (http://www.synergiescanada.org/page/about) The intent is to provide a national platform for scholarly research in a variety of formats – journal articles, theses, conference proceedings, etc.
Most recently, librarians from the three campuses have come together to share experiences and strategies that have worked (or not!) when connecting with faculty on issues related to scholarly communication and open access. Our Tri-Campus Scholarly Communication Group meets bi-monthly. We are made up of librarians who have scholarly communication as a significant part of their portfolios or who have a strong interest in this area. The Group’s focus, initially, was on program development in support of Open Access Week, but has grown to be far more encompassing. We realized that we were each working to promote the UTL suite of tools to faculty and to work with them on copyright issues and other concerns, yet we were doing so in relative isolation from one another. The group has given us an ongoing opportunity to talk through our common concerns and to collaborate.
Scalability remains a problem. Although we are working hard to promote T-Space, OJS and OCS, it is difficult to connect with the sheer number of faculty (over 10, 000) that populate our campuses. They teach and conduct research in a wide range of disciplines, each with their own distinct cultures. Building up relationships, when faculty are so geographically dispersed is challenging. Through our group, we have been able to identify messages that resonate with faculty in order to make the most effective use of our time with them. We strategically time our faculty outreach – we connect with them at the beginning of a research grant or when we become aware that they are publishing an article – times when we feel that faculty will be most receptive. We emphasize that support from the library is available, so that they can concentrate on the benefits of T-Space, rather than focusing on barriers that would preclude their participation. We also promote the SPARC/CAUT Author Addendum (http://www.carl-abrc.ca/projects/author/EngPubAgree.pdf) to encourage faculty to be proactive in the preservation of their author rights.
We are confronting the challenge of how to manage the wealth of material available for archiving as faculty retire. A faculty member recently approached us seeking support as she wishes to archive her lifetime’s research in T-Space. Her work includes boxes of materials: papers in non-digital form, data sets with identifying/confidential information and other files on floppy discs in an obsolete form of Nota Bene. Her research is of national value; however, the barriers to making her work available online are numerous – both time-wise and technologically. A team of librarians are collaborating together; they are treating her material as a test case to assess issues and identify best practices.
We have had a range of different events, including hosting John Willinsky, Professor at the Stanford School of Education/Director of the Public Knowledge Project and an outspoken open access advocate. He spoke engagingly about open access and how institutions can move forward with its promotion. Check out his informative and humorous talk here: http://142.150.98.64/OISE/20091022-120527-1/rnh.htm. We have also hosted presentations on open education/scholarship by Stian Haklev, a very forward-thinking graduate student (http://142.150.98.64/OISE/20101021-120919-1/rnh.htm) and organized a panel discussion with representatives from the funding agencies (SSHRC, CIHR and NSERC) who discussed their agencies’ approaches to open access (http://142.150.98.64/OISE/20101018-120110-1/rnh.htm). We aim to hold events throughout the year in order to keep these issues at the forefront of the academic agenda, rather than concentrating all of our efforts on Open Access Week.
The most ambitious event that we have initiated was a workshop for Ontario academic librarians on scholarly communication entitled ‘Sharing Experiences and Inspiring Action’. To show that we walk the walk, we used the OCS software to organize the event and publish our workshop materials: http://ocs.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/onscholcomm/SEIA. The workshop, held in May, 2010, had participants from 17 Ontario universities. The morning featured a series of poster sessions from eight different libraries, with the aim of celebrating our successes and articulating our collective challenges. The afternoon was filled with discussion and the day was an excellent opportunity to network. Just a glimpse at our Flickr page will show the amount of conversation that occurred: http://www.flickr.com/photos/50752179@N08/sets/72157624177020834.
There is still much to be done. Although there are pockets of strong interest among faculty on our campuses, we plan on raising the profile of scholarly communication issues more broadly through a stronger web presence. Our group is planning the development of a LibGuide to cover the scholarly communication process. This guide will provide support to faculty and students by covering a broad spectrum of content from the start of a research project through to publishing or disseminating of research results. Realizing our initial connections with our Ontario library colleagues were highly productive, we need to re-establish that network and continue to work together. With the many changes erupting in our information landscape related to copyright, publishing and data archiving, we know we can be true partners with faculty on these issues. The challenge remains to do the necessary outreach and communication to build these relationships.
Members of the Tri-Campus Scholarly Communication group include: Sarah Forbes (UT Scarborough), Marcel Fortin (Robarts, Map & Data Library), Julie Hannaford (Robarts/& OISE Libraries), Pam King (UT Mississauga), Gale Moore (faculty colleague), Gail Nichol (Gerstein Library), Marian Press (OISE Library), Berenica Vejvoda (Robarts, Map & Data Library) and Rita Vine (Gerstein Library). Rea Devakos is UTL’s Scholarly Communication Coordinator.