As part of its strategic commitment to Open Scholarship, Research Libraries UK has two working groups focusing on scholarly publishing and related issues, such as subscription costs and the transition to Open Access. The membership and remits of these groups are provided on RLUK’s Open Scholarship page.
The Open Access Publisher Processes (OAPP) Group, which I chair, works directly with publishers, and with Jisc, to improve the processes in place to make both Gold and Green OA as straightforward as possible for authors and OA administrators, and to ensure our OA research outputs comply with our institutional policies, and those of our funders. Our Terms of Reference provide more detail about the purpose of the group.
Since its formation in 2015, members of OAPP have worked with a number of publishers to test new workflows and to resolve issues. These include Elsevier, Springer, IEEE, RSC, Biomed Central and Hindawi, and we have also had recent discussions with the Copyright Clearance Center.
OAPP is not restricted to RLUK members, and aims to represent the wider UK HE sector in its work. We are also keen to connect with other related interest groups, such as UKCoRR. We invite colleagues to let us know of any relevant issues and we will be very happy to explore them, and will consider engaging with other publishers as necessary to tackle problems and introduce improvements.
We welcome new members, so if you are an experienced scholarly communications librarian with time available to contribute to this important work on behalf of your colleagues, please get in touch. The group meets formally twice a year, and members come together as required to speak with publishers.
All enquiries and suggestions can be directed to me, as Chair, at simon.bains@manchester.ac.uk
Simon Bains, University of Manchester
