Summary of effort to date

• Open Access discussion paper presented to VC's Committee by UL in late March 2013
• VC's Committee endorsed concept of OA and recommended policy be drafted for Research Committee
• Draft policy prepared and submitted to 9th April meeting of Research Committee
• Working party established to report back to Research Committee in June 2013
• First Meeting of the UQ OA working party meeting held 23 April
• Minor edits to the Draft Policy, specifically the wording related to the transfer of copyright was edited from "should" to
"recommends" the transfer of copyright to the publisher be avoided.
• Wanted more information about the procedures
• Agreed OA Policy would not dictate where to publish
• Wanted more information about their disciplines and self-archiving
• Wanted the process to be EASY!
• Agreed to undertake a pilot to determine best practice

Preliminary Findings

A sample of the top 60 ERA journals (mainly Science, Technology and Medicine) and the top ten journals in each 2 digit FoR code (Built Environment, Education, Economics, Commerce, Human Society, Law, Creative Studies, Language, History and Philosophy) has revealed that:
Mostly STM 13/60 = provide delayed or immediate access. Only eight of the sixty allow the publishers PDF to be made available via the repository and some allow the post print to be loaded subject to publisher agreement. Of the non-STM titles reviewed only 1 allowed delayed or immediate OA. Based on this we are preparing for challenging times ahead when the UQ policy is implemented.

We are proposing that an OA pilot will be managed by the UQ Library and the Office of the DVC(R), working with three UQ Schools or Institutes, covering different disciplinary areas, over three months. The pilot will commence after the HERDC data has been submitted (around mid-June 2013)

Pilot will seek to:

- Ensure UQ compliance with NHMRC and ARC mandates (already in effect)
- Encourage self-archiving of researcher publications in eSpace
- Establish efficient workflows and centralised support that minimises compliance overhead for researchers
- Negotiate UQ-specific agreements with key publishers (e.g., Elsevier), to facilitate bulk deposits to eSpace

A librarian will be seconded to work fulltime in the SPADS/eSpace team to undertake the pilot and this staff member will report on the key performance indicators set for the project.
A second Working Party meeting is scheduled for Friday 31 May and will be followed by a discussion on the work at the next Research Committee in June.