Librarians Versus the Machine: Leveraging Faculty Relationships to Increase Open Access Participation

Abstract

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) wanted to determine how liaison librarian intervention affected faculty participation in an Open Access (OA) Policy as compared to generic communication by the Library’s Center for Digital Scholarship (CDS). Liaison guidance for the OA policy participation was piloted with promising results in the School of Nursing. Using the pilot as a model, a working group was formed to determine how liaison librarians should be involved in the new, faculty-adopted OA Policy. Based on the Harvard Model, the OA Policy followed an opt-out style, meaning that scholarly output is included by default unless the author explicitly chooses not to contribute. Successful open access policy implementations at other universities show that author participation increases when library staff and faculty help to design and deploy the service. The charter group tested a workflow designed by the CDS, and offered guidance for refining this workflow and related OA services. During this trial period, faculty participation rates from the sample liaison group and the CDS were tracked and compared, which determined that librarian relationships with faculty members did result in higher participation rates.