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Planning scholarly communication training in the UK

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In June 2017 a group of people (see end for attendees) met in London to discuss the issues around scholarly communication training delivery in the UK. Representatives from RLUK, UKSG, SCONUL, UKCoRR, Vitae, Jisc and some universities had a workshop to nut through the problem. Possibly because of the nature of the attendees of the group, the discussion was very library-centric, but this does not preclude the need for training outside the library sector. This blog is a summary of the discussion from that day.

Background

The decision to hold a meeting like this came out of the a library skills workshop run at UKSG recently. In ensuing discussions, it was agreed that it would be a good idea to get stakeholders together for a symposium of some description to try and nut out how we could collaborate and provide training solutions for scholarly communication across the sector. There is plenty of space in this area for multiple offerings but we do want to make sure we are covering the range of areas and the types of delivery modes and levels required. In preparation for the discussion the group created a document listing scholarly communication training on offer currently.

What is scholarly communication?

An informal survey of research libraries in the UK earlier this year showed that while all respondents had some kind of service that supports aspects of scholarly communication, only half actually used the term ‘scholarly communication’ to describe those services.

A discussion around the table concluded that the term scholarly communication encompasses a wide range of definitions. Some libraries take the boundary that it refers to post-publication. Others address the pre-publication aspect and meet the need of Early Career Researchers for advice on publishing. Services can focus on the academic’s profile of themselves and their research, or the research lifecycle. In some cases there is a question about whether research data management is part of the equation.

The failure of library schools to deliver

It is fairly universally acknowledged that it is a challenge to engage with library schools on the issue of scholarly communication, despite repositories being a staple part of research library infrastructure for well over a decade. There are a few exceptions but generally open access or other aspects of scholarly communication are completely absent from the curricula. (Note: any library school that wishes to challenge this statement, or provide information about upcoming plans are welcome to send these through to info@osc.cam.ac.uk)

This raises the question – if library schools are not providing, how do we recruit and train the staff we need? Indeed, who are we actually recruiting? Is it essential for staff to have a library degree, or experience in an academic library? Or are our requirements more functional such as the ability to manipulate large data sets, or experience working with academics, or an understanding of the Higher Education environment?

While libraries are starting to employ post-graduate researchers because they can lend skills to the library, library culture is a consideration. Employing researchers who are not librarians has the benefit of bringing in expertise from outside, but there are challenges to integrate their work into the library culture. We need to look at competencies in terms of the structure and size of the organisation, both for current staff and staff of the future.

In the absence of scholarly communication instruction within the basic qualification, skills training in this space would appear to need to be addressed at the profession level.

One possible route to prepare the next generation is offering some modular approach of on the job learning with very practical experience. An option could be to work with people who have come from outside the library space. Given libraries seem to be starting to bring skill sets in, we need to consider how this sits with the existing profession.

Audiences and their training needs

The goal of the meeting was to resolve what kinds of training the sector needs, for whom and how it is delivered. For example, with many general library staff there is a basic need to understand the issues with scholarly communication. The number one question is ‘what is scholarly communication’? The possibly it is enough for these people to just be familiar with the terminology.

It is possible we need lots of short courses on the general topic of: this is what OA is, basics of RDM etc (that could potentially be delivered online), but probably fewer more complex courses on issues like analysing publisher and funder policies. There are also debates and higher order areas which require face to face debate.

  • Front facing staff
    • Need an overview so the language is familiar and they can refer queries on
  • People working in scholarly communication
    • Day to day practicalities of funder open access compliance
  • Specialist roles in scholarly communication
    • Specific areas
  • Senior managers
    • Very much need a refresher so they can help their staff.
    • Similar overview training, leadership is around the advocacy
    • Need conceptual framework for scholarly communication – how do the technical parts sit together for the infrastructure and governance of institutions
    • Stakeholder management skills.

Skill sets in scholarly communication

It was agreed that budgetary, presentation and negotiation skills are needed in this area as general skills. When it comes to specialist skills these include:

  • Research Integrity
  • Bibliometrics
    • Involved in providing specialist advice on metrics within a school discussion
    • Providing advice on impact
  • Pushing the open research agenda
  • Academic reward structure
  • Technical and infrastructure eg: integrating ORCIDS etc

Considerations – Lack of perceived need?

There appears to be a problem with a lack of perceived need for training in this space. We are encountering issues where people in libraries are saying ‘I don’t think this is our job’. This points to what should we be presenting librarianship as – what kind of people do we want in the profession? A ‘traditional librarian’ of 20 years ago is not the same job now, the skills are different. Today much of an academic librarian’s job is about winning over people who don’t want to hear the message. It is possible there does need to be a different sort of person who is pushing an open access agenda.

There have been other innovations in library work that required engaging different behaviours and tasks in the past. For example, is this move towards a scholarly communication future different from when the discovery search was introduced? The eResources experience is similar in terms of new competencies required in the profession. However the difference in the scholarly communication environment is there is an external driver – we need to understand the politics of how open access can move forward in the UK.

Considerations – budgets

There is a mismatch between what people would love to have, what can be designed and what people can afford. Anecdotally the group heard that training budgets are really squeezed so priority and focus might be heavily influenced by this, with geography and travelling costs being central to decisions.

The group discussed the need to make training accessible to all. Even free events can be prohibitive in terms of travel, and hosting them in off-peak periods can be helpful with costs. The blockage is not just money, it includes time – in terms of loss of a team member while they are away. This is particularly problematic if scholarly communication is only a part of their job. Most of the need comes from really small institutions where the work is part of a bigger role, however that is where there is little money. This also raises challenges for the time available for those people to self educate.

UKSG run events in London which is expensive for organisations north of London to attend. To increase participation UKSG are now trying to put regional events on, and have shifted their training to a webinar programme rather than face to face.

SCONUL has done basic copyright training and this has thrown up price sensitivity. One solution is trying to keep it local, and members can volunteer staff in kind.

One option could be online training where participants log on at a certain time once a week for 10 weeks. Many of the people in scholarly communication work in universities, and have distance education software available to them. An alternative is having courses done in house – that could part of a modular package (but how do you link this?). The course content needs to be agnostic enough to be useful (not discussing DSpace or PURE for example) before delving into institutional specifics. Make it modular with core principles and then have options.

There was a suggestion that we create a nonprofit making shared collaborative service. The costs to developing this type of deliverable include the development of the training materials, infrastructure costs, room hire, catering etc. Can we make it all online and available? This could work if it were modular.

Next steps

We have not yet bottomed out the need yet – perception of needs at the practitioner level and senior management might be different. Cost is an issue here. Universities need to work out how much it costs to do in-house training – what is the opportunity cost to employ a staff member without experience or training and then get them up to speed?

It would be useful to have an understanding of what training is happening within institutions. What subjects/topics are being taught, who is doing it, what language is being used, is there a dedicated staff member. Where else do people get information and support?

The general plan is to reconvene in September.

Useful Resources

Skill sets analyses

Here are links to work that has already been done on the required skill sets:

Organisations providing or coordinating training

Organisations are running similar events and then participants have to choose what to focus on. If we divvy it up across the sector it might help the situation.

The Society for College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL) does basic copyright training. There is more focus on the leadership end of the equation. The Collaboration Strategy Group is considering a shared service. People come from non traditional groups and this reflects a broader skills sets required in libraries than traditional library courses give you. SCONUL are about to scope out where those services might be and try to identify needs into the future. There are challenges are in recruiting people given the slightly moralistic nature of library culture and whether they are welcoming of people from different background. How do we promote, retain and incentivise people who may not come from this area?

Research Libraries UK (RLUK) don’t do direct training, but they do have programmes of works and networks around these issues. The RLUK board recently had a meeting to look at a new strategy – updating the existing 2014-2017 RLUK Strategy. They are looking at the bigger picture for scholarly communication – the infrastructure challenges, the bigger picture related to licensing and costs and how to leverage members in the consortia. Their role is very much supporting and helping out.

UK Serials Group (UKSG) runs a conference programme. One day events are a mix of standing repeated courses and one off sessions. In conferences often the breakout sessions are the things that people find really valuable. These include soft skills like mindfulness in leadership. The audience tends to be practitioners, people in their mid-career. Traditional areas such as library have been focused around collection management because that is where publishers are. But it is not just about traditional publishing. They are our members and that is moving our agenda to meet those needs. UKSG cannot get anywhere in contributing to university publishing courses. Libraries are starting to employ people who have publishing backgrounds.

The Association of Research Managers and Administrators (ARMA) has special interest groups in open access. (Note: ARMA were invited to this meeting but unfortunately couldn’t attend.)

The Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) conducts training at a local level. It was agreed we can’t have the conversation without having CILIP in the room – they are wanting to offer more support for academic libraries and seem to be recognising that the library schools program for CILIP is not the be-all and end-all any more. This is partly why they have developed a recognised trainer programme. (Note: CILIP were invited to this meeting but unfortunately couldn’t attend.)

Representatives attending the discussion

  • Helen Dobson – Manchester University
  • Danny Kingsley – Cambridge University
  • Claire Sewell – Cambridge University
  • Anna Grigson representing UKSG
  • Fiona Bradley – RLUK
  • Ann Rossiter – SCONUL
  • Katie Wheat – Vitae
  • Sarah Bull – UKSG
  • Stephanie Meece -UKCoRR
  • Frank Manista – Jisc
  • Helen Blanchett – Jisc (a member of the group coordinating the meeting, but was unable to attend on the day)

ARMA and CILIP were also invited but were not able to send a representative.

Published 15 August 2017
Written by Dr Danny Kingsley 

Sustaining open research resources – a funder perspective

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This is the second in a series of three blog posts which set out the perspectives of researchers, funders and universities on support for open resources. The first was Open Resources, who should pay? In this post, David Carr from the Open Research team at the Wellcome Trust provides the view of a research funder on the challenges of developing and sustaining the key infrastructures needed to enable open research.

As a global research foundation, Wellcome is dedicated to ensuring that the outputs of the research we fund – including articles, data, software and materials – can be accessed and used in ways that maximise the benefits to health and society.  For many years, we have been a passionate advocate of open access to publications and data sharing.

I am part of a new team at Wellcome which is seeking to build upon the leadership role we have taken in enabling access to research outputs.  Our key priorities include:

  • developing novel platforms and tools to support researchers in sharing their research – such as the Wellcome Open Research publishing platform which we launched last year;
  • supporting pioneering projects, tools and experiments in open research, building on the Open Science Prize which with the NIH and Howard Hughes Medical Institute;
  • developing our policies and practices as a funder to support and incentivise open research.

We are delighted to be working with the Office of Scholarly Communication on the Open Research Pilot Project, where we will work with four Wellcome-funded research groups at Cambridge to support them in making their research outputs open.  The pilot will explore the opportunities and challenges, and how platforms such as Wellcome Open Research can facilitate output sharing.

Realising the long-term value of research outputs will depend critically upon developing the infrastructures to preserve, access, combine and re-use outputs for as long as their value persists.  At present, many disciplines lack recognised community repositories and, where they do exist, many cannot rely on stable long-term funding.  How are we as a funder thinking about this issue?

Meeting the costs of outputs sharing

In July 2017, Wellcome published a new policy on managing and sharing data, software and materials.  This replaced our long-standing policy on data management and sharing – extending our requirements for research data to also cover original software and materials (such as antibodies, cell lines and reagents).  Rather than ask for a data management plan, applicants are now asked to provide an outputs management plan setting out how they will maximise the value of their research outputs more broadly.

Wellcome commits to meet the costs of these plans as an integral part of the grant, and provides guidance on the costs that funding applicants should consider.  We recognise, however, that many research outputs will continue to have value long after the funding period comes to an end.  Further, while it not appropriate to make all research data open indefinitely, researchers are expected to retain data underlying publications for at least ten years (a requirement which was recently formalised in the UK Concordat on Open Research Data).  We must accept that preserving and making these outputs available into the future carries an ongoing cost.

Some disciplines have existing subject-area repositories which store, curate and provide access to data and other outputs on behalf of the communities they serve.  Our expectation, made more explicit in our new policy, is that researchers should deposit their outputs in these repositories wherever they exist.  If no recognised subject-area repository is available, we encourage researchers to consider using generalist repositories – such as Dryad, FigShare and Zenodo – or if not, to use institutional repositories.  Looking ahead, we may consider developing an orphan repository to house Wellcome-funded research data which has no other obvious home.

Recognising the key importance of this infrastructure, Wellcome provides significant grant funding to repositories, databases and other community resources.  As of July 2016, Wellcome had active grants totalling £80 million to support major data resources.  We have also invested many millions more in major cohort and longitudinal studies, such as UK Biobank and ALSPAC.  We provide such support through our Biomedical Resource and Technology Development scheme, and have provided additional major awards over the years to support key resources, such as PDB-Europe, Ensembl and the Open Microscopy Environment.

While our funding for these resources is not open-ended and subject to review, we have been conscious for some time that the reliance of key community resources on grant funding (typically of three to five years’ duration) can create significant challenges, hindering their ability to plan for the long-term and retain staff.  As we develop our work on Open Research, we are keen to explore ways in which we adapt our approach to help put key infrastructures on a more sustainable footing, but this is a far from straightforward challenge.

Gaining the perspectives of resource providers

In order to better understand the issues, we did some initial work earlier this year to canvas the views of those we support.  We conducted semi-structured interviews with leaders of 10 resources in receipt of Wellcome funding – six database and software resources, three cohort resources and one materials stock centre – to explore their current funding, long-term sustainability plans and thoughts on the wider funding and policy landscape.

We gathered a wealth of insights through these conversations, and several key themes emerged:

  • All of the resources were clear that they would continue to be dependent on support from Wellcome and/or other funders for the long-term.
  • While cohort studies (which provide managed access to data) can operate cost recovery models to transfer some of the cost of accessing data onto users, such models were not appropriate for data and software resources who commit to open and unrestricted access.
  • Several resources had additional revenue-generation routes – including collaborations with commercial entities– and these had delivered benefits in enhancing their resources.  However, the level of income was usually relatively modest in terms of the total cost of sustaining the resource. Commitments to openness could also limit the extent to which such arrangements were feasible.
  • Diversification of funding sources can give greater assurance and reduce reliance on single funders, but can bring an additional burden.  There was felt to be a need for better coordination between funders where they co-fund resources.  Europe PMC, which has 27 partner funders but is managed through a single grant is a model which could be considered.
  • Several of the resources were actively engaged in collaborations with other resources internationally that house related data – it was felt that funders could help further facilitate such partnerships.

We are considering how Wellcome might develop its funding approaches in light of these findings.  As an initial outcome, we plan to develop guidance for our funded researchers on key issues to consider in relation to sustainability.  We are already working actively with other funders to facilitate co-funding and make decisions as streamlined as possible, and wish to explore how we join forces in the future in developing our broader approaches for funding open resources.

Coordinating our efforts

There is growing recognition of the crucial need for funders and wider research community to work together develop and sustain research data infrastructure.  As the first blog in this series highlighted, the scientific enterprise is global and this is an issue which must be addressed international level.

In the life sciences, the ELIXIR and US BD2K initiatives have sought to develop coordinated approaches for supporting key resources and, more recently, the European Open Science Cloud initiative has developed a bold vision for a cloud-based infrastructure to store, share and re-use data across borders and disciplines.

Building on this momentum, the Human Frontiers Science Programme convened an international workshop last November to bring together data resources and major funders in the life sciences.  This resulted in a call for action (reported in Nature) to coordinate efforts to ensure long-term sustainability of key resources, whilst supporting resources in providing access at no charge to users.  The group proposed an international mechanism to prioritise core data resources of global importance, building on the work undertaken by ELIXIR to define criteria for such resources.  It was proposed national funders could potentially then contribute a set proportion of their overall funding (with initial proposals suggesting around 1.5 to 2 per cent) to support these core data resources.

Grasping the nettle

Public and charitable funders are acutely aware that many of the core repositories and resources needed to make research outputs discoverable and useable will continue to rely on our long-term funding support.  There is clear realisation that a reliance on traditional competitive grant funding is not the ideal route through which to support these key resources in a sustainable manner.

But no one yet has a perfect solution and no funder will take on this burden alone.  Aligning global funders and developing joint funding models of the type described above will be far from straightforward, but hopefully we can work towards a more coordinated international approach.  If we are to realise the incredible potential of open research, it’s a challenge we must address

Published 26 July 2017
Written by David Carr, Wellcome Trust (d.carr@wellcome.ac.uk)

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Whose money is it anyway? Managing offset agreements

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Sometimes an innocent question can blow up a huge discussion, and this is what happened recently at an RCUK OA Practitioner’s Group meeting when I asked what was appropriate for institutions to do when managing money they receive as refunds from publishers through offsetting arrangements.

When an institution pays for an article processing charge (APC) in a hybrid journal, it is doing so in addition to the existing subscription. This is generally referred to as ‘double dipping’.  I have written extensively about the issues with hybrid in the past, but here, I’d like to discuss the management of offset agreements.

Offset agreements are a compensation by a publisher to an institution for the extra money they are putting into the system through payment of APCs. Most large publishers have some sort of offset agreement for institutions in the UK which are negotiated by Jisc, based on the principles for offset agreements. (There is one significant publisher which is an exception because it insists there is no need for an offset agreement because it does not double dip.)

Offset agreements are not equal

While offset agreements are negotiated nationally, there is no obligation for any institution  to sign up to them. Cambridge makes the decision to sign up to an offset agreement or not through a standard calculation. If we are spending RCUK and COAF funds on the offset it must show benefit to the funds first. If the numbers demonstrate that by signing up to (and sometimes investing in) the agreement, the funds will be better off at the end of the year then we sign. The fact this agreement may have a broader benefit to the wider University is a secondary consideration. The OSC has a publisher and agreements webpage listing the agreements Cambridge is signed up to.

In a fit of spectacular inefficiency, all offsets work slightly differently. Here’s a run down of different types:

  • In some instances we have a melding of the costs into one payment and there are no transactions for open access. The Springer Compact is an example of this. At Cambridge we have split the cost of this deal between the subscription spend the previous year with the top up being made by our funds from RCUK and COAF in proportion to the amount we publish between these two funders with Springer.
  • Other offsets are internal – where the money does not leave the publisher’s system. The Wiley OA Agreement is this type. By signing up we receive a 25% discount on each APC that is managed through their dashboard. We also receive a 50% discount in a given year based on the number of APCs we bought the previous year. This money is calculated at the beginning of the year and the ‘money’ is put into a ‘fund’ held by Wiley. The APC payments for future articles can be made out of this credit. It is is bit like a betting app – you can’t get the money out without some difficulty, you can only ‘reinvest’ it
  • There is a different kind of internal offset where the calculation is made up front based on how much you spent the previous year on APCs. These manifest as a discount on each APC paid. Taylor and Francis’ offset works this way which is a bit of a hassle because you still have to process each APC regardless of whether you spend $2000 or $200 on it. But again there is no extra money anywhere in this equation because the discount is applied before the invoice is issued. 
  • A different kind of arrangement relates more to fully open access journals. These include a membership where you get a discount on APCs for being a member. Sometimes there is a payment associated with this (BMC for example, which for an upfront membership you can get 15% discount), and others where there is no payment (MDPI – 10% discount for now). Alternatively you can ‘buy’ membership for researchers in exchange for the right to publish for free (PeerJ).
  • The last type of offset is the most straightforward – where the institution gets a cheque back based on the extra spend on APCs over the subscription. Currently IoP is the only publisher with whom Cambridge has this type of agreement.

Managing offset refunds

When Cambridge received its first IoP cheque in 2015 there were questions about what we could or could not do with it. The Open Access Project Board discussed the issue and decided that the money needed to remain within the context of open access. Suggestions included paying our Platinum membership of arXiv.org with it, because this would be supporting open access.

The minutes from the meeting on 31 March 2015 noted: “Any funds returned from publishers as part of deals to offset the cost of article processing charges should be retained for the payment of open access costs, but ring-fenced from the block grants and kept available for emergency uses under the supervision of the Project Board.” We have since twice used this money to pay for fully open access journal APCs when our block grant funds were low. 

Whose money is it anyway?

When the issue of offset refunds and what institutions were doing with it was raised at a recent RCUK OA Practitioners Group meeting it became clear that practices vary considerably from institution to institution. One of the points of discussion was whether it would be appropriate to use this money to support subscriptions. The general (strong) sentiment from RCUK was that this would not be within the spirit, and indeed against the principles, of the RCUK policy.

I subsequently sent a request out to a repository discussion list to ask colleagues across the UK what they were doing with this money. To date there have only been a handful of responses.

In one instance with a medium-sized university the IoP money is placed into a small Library fund that is ring-fenced to pay for Open Access in fully Open Access journals only. This fund has the strategic aim to enable a transition to Open Access by supporting new business models and contributing to initiatives such as Knowledge Unlatched, hosting Open Journal Systems, as well as supporting authors to publish in Open Access venues when they have no other source of funding.

A large research institution responded to say they had a specific account set up into which the money was deposited, noting, as did the other respondents, that the financial arrangements of the University would mean that if it were deposited centrally it would never be seen again. This institution noted they were considering using the funds to offset the subscription to IoP in the upcoming year due to a low uptake of the deal.

Another large research institution said the IoP cheques were being ‘saved’ in the subscriptions budget.

Sussex University

In their recent paper “Bringing together the work of subscription and open access specialists: challenges and changes at the University of Sussex” there is a section on how they are managing the offset money. They note: “It seemed a missed opportunity to simply feed it back into the RCUK block grant, but equally inappropriate to use for journal subscriptions or general Library spending”.

The decision was to support APCs for postgraduate researchers (PGRs) who did not have any other access to money for gold open access, and could only be spent on fully open access journals. They noted that this was a welcome opportunity to be able to offer something tangible and helpful in their advocacy dealings with postgraduate researchers.

Only the start of the conversation

This discussion has raised questions about the decision making process for supporting access to the literature.

Subscriptions are paid for at Cambridge through a fund that is not owned by the Library – the fund consists of contributions from all the Schools plus central funds. Representatives of the Schools, Colleges and library staff sit on the Journal Coordination Scheme committee to decide on subscriptions. However decisions about open access memberships and offsets are made by the Office of Scholarly Communication. Given the increased entanglement of these two routes to access the literature, this situation is one the University is aware needs addressing. The Sussex University paper discusses the processes they went through to merge the two decision making bodies.

This is a rich area for investigation – as we move away from subscription-only spend and into joint decision-making between the subscription team and the Open Access team we need to understand what offsets offer and what they mean for the Library. This discussion is just the beginning.

Published 30 June 2017
Written by Dr Danny Kingsley 
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