Open Voices Interview on Rights Retention Strategy at the University of Aberdeen

Open Voices Interview with Emma Francis, University of Aberdeen

Rights Retention is a tool to help academic authors retain rights over their manuscripts. It means that an institution or an author asserts copyright to the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) of a publication and informs the publisher of that fact when submitting a paper. This enables the sharing of an AAM in a repository without an embargo in a legal way. In the past months a number of UK universities have published such Rights Retention policies. 

One of the early adopters is Aberdeen University. Today we speak with Emma Francis, Open Research Manager at the University of Aberdeen Library, about their institutional Rights Retention policy and other interesting Open developments in Aberdeen.

 

Hardy: Hi, Emma, thanks for talking to us! Before we get to the interesting things that you do at the University of Aberdeen can you please introduce yourself?

Emma: I'm Emma Francis, the Open Research Manager. I manage the Open Research Team which  has grown from an initially small  Scholarly Communications Team  to encompass a much wider remit, and I also manage the metadata aspects of our library. My team includes cataloguers, system specialists, metrics and data roles. We feel that this approach can bring a lot of benefit and expertise to our research staff and we are constantly adding and evolving our service.

 

Hardy: That's true. What is the size of your team?

Emma: Seven currently and we’ll shortly be interviewing for two more.

Emma Francis, University of Aberdeen Library

Hardy: The reason why we are talking today is that the University of Aberdeen, has recently announced that it will implement a new research publications policy from the 1^st of May 2023. Can you describe what will change with that new policy?

Emma: On a practical level we are putting in the groundwork for what we see as a need for real change in the future. At present, our Read and Publish deals are providing much of the Open Access elements that we need, but this is not a long term solution. We want to be ready and in a position to offer solutions to some of the longer term issues. We are trying to assert our rights, and to assert a position that can help produce real change to the current models, because we think about 60% of our publications are currently covered by these deals. Obviously, there is a long tail but change has to begin somewhere and can then be built on. It will be a process that incorporates a key aim to raise levels of understanding and support from academic colleagues. Why should anyone think it is right to give their research away to a commercial publisher, particularly at a University that prides itself on being open to all?

It felt like it was the right time for us to do this, with changes and policies that are happening at a very high level,  for example in the USA with the recent policy update of the White House Office of Science Technology & Policy (OSTP) [see also our blog post on that topic]. It just seems the ideal opportunity. More recently we've been looking more closely to the University’s ethos of being “open to all” and how we really make this happen. Personally, I don't feel that we are getting value from the vast amounts of money that we are giving to these big publishers, and I feel it is really important that we try and support more sustainable publishing formats as they become available. One way to do that is changing the narrative with those big publishers and leading the way with a rights retention policy.

While bringing the policy into effect we are trying to make the process as streamlined as possible for our staff. We have got a reasonable lead-in time and we are having some business development colleagues help us work out workflows. We expect that our researchers will only have to send the publishers the Rights Retention Statement that we will provide for them and we will support authors through the process and in any other way necessary.

 

Hardy: For those who are not fully immersed in the Open Access and Rights Retention agenda, what is the policy going to change?

Emma: Well, our current IP policy does actually provide the rights that we are embedding with this Rights Retention based policy. The agreements authors currently sign with publishers actually contravenes the IP policy, but there was a lack of awareness of this. We now hope to change custom and practice to encourage our academics to put a statement in their paper submissions that makes those rights explicit. This will allow the right to make our publications available Open Access prior to the authors signing any kind of deal with a publisher. It is important that we retain the rights to our works created at our institution by our own staff and that we are not passing those rights on to publishers who then act as they wish. This will ultimately allow us to reuse research and to share it with the wider community, a particular goal of our institution.

 

Hardy: Why did you decide to become one of the early adopters of a Rights Retention policy in the UK?

Emma: We really aren't keen on the activities of big publishers at present, and we feel that until now we have been on the back foot in terms of a response. We want to take some control back for ourselves and this is part of a suite of changes that we want to make at our institution to embed Open as an ethical standpoint. It is a founding principle that we are open to all. And as such it is important to show that in every step of the research process. As a Library, we decided to assert a leadership position and be confident in encouraging the University to be an early mover rather than a follower. It was very helpful that Edinburgh moved first, but we were determined to take Aberdeen on a journey that would put it in the vanguard.

 

Hardy: The main reason is ethical and not an expected push from funders?

Emma: Yes, that is correct from the Library perspective, but it’s fair to say that the legal view, and that of our Vice Principal for Research, was that noncompliance with funder polices was a very big risk. It shows our direction of travel regarding research overall, making it open at every point possible. We feel very much that these paywalls put barriers in place which stop people from being able to build on research in a timely way. When you look at what has happened with Covid research, being Open enabled the speed at which progress was made much quicker than with paywalls in place! We are really hampering progress of society by not being open.

But also, we feel very strongly that Read & Publish deals are easier to manage for big institutions. But for smaller institutions in the UK and the global South they often find themselves on the outside and these deals are stopping them from being able to publish. We've also recently relaunched Aberdeen University Press as an Open Access publisher to provide further opportunity to publish Open aAccess.

This is a suite of responses to what we are seeing in the global research environment where we see a need to encourage different groups to publish in different ways. At present we have a very standard established publishing method. That may not always be the best way for information to be disseminated. To be honest, electronic journals which basically represent exactly what was there in print, is not a forward thinking way of sharing information in the digital environment. And I think we are really at a point where we need to start engaging more with digital opportunities, and looking at representing research and disseminating research in different ways.

 

Hardy: Can you talk me through how it was like developing that policy and what the role of the library was in that process?

Emma: It was 100% the library that that drove the policy. We had a leadership role and looked into operational details. Lining progress up with committees at the right stage was important. And we had quite a lot of legal input. We really wanted to feel secure from a legal standpoint regarding our processes. As much as possible the policy should not provide a risk to our academics. But there is uncertainty as this is a new development, particularly in the UK. At this point, we can look to similar policies at Harvard and many other universities globally who have been doing this for a while. There has been no legal backlash at those institutions. Whether that will continue we are not sure, but we feel that we are as secure as we can be in that regard, having looked very carefully at the legal issues and risks.

 

Rights Retention info banner by Plan S

Hardy: What were the challenges of developing the Rights Retention Policy?

Emma: We work in an ancient university and they can be slow to change. Processes for making changes can take a long time. We were very honest about that legal risk and about the mitigations that we were putting in place. A lot of briefings took place, and engagement with senior staff, who were supportive but not really championing the proposed changes. It went to Senate, where a minority were concerned about the risks and the work involved. Further discussions took place to bring reassurance. There is the option to opt out of the policy for those that feel that they need it and we won't question staff if they choose to do so.

We took it as a very positive sign that the draft policy was passed in Senate by a very large majority. We felt initially that it was disappointing that there had still been some people that were not supportive, having gone through that discussion process, with everything having been laid out. But the process itself gives us the reassurance that the community has gained an understanding of why we are doing this, and we are now in a very robust position, having had a formal Senate vote in favour.

 

Hardy: What do you think will change in terms of Open Access? Will your repository suddenly be filled with extra content, or what will change for the library?

Emma: We are hoping that it will all ramp up slowly. Additionally, although the policy doesn't specify it, we have said that people can get in touch with us about other forms of publications. The policy is looking at short forms like articles at the moment. Obviously, there will be a UKRI policy change in 2024 which will cover monographs and we are trying to encourage people to engage with longer forms now.

We have a system where we take most of the administration away from the academics. They get in touch with us, they provide us with their accepted manuscript, and then we do everything from that point for them. There may be more coming through to us as a result of the new policy and we don't necessarily know what the impact will be till then, and also, what push back from certain publishers there might be. Publishers are responding in different ways, and they will continue to react as more institutions go down this route.

If we are trying to encourage the use of Rights Retention with other forms of publications, then our services are going to be busier. How much our support will have to expand we are not entirely sure yet. We are hopeful that a 2024 deadline for long form publications will give us a chance to scale up our services as required

 

Hardy: What publications are considered long form?

Emma: Monographs specifically which we probably can't do a huge amount towards at the moment, but we certainly can towards chapters in books. So that will be our next step. Although the policy doesn't specifically cover book chapters, we are trying to push out this message at the same time that Rights Retention is not restricted to articles. You can use the Rights Retention statement with chapters, and we will try and get onboard the part of the research community who maybe don't do a lot of publishing through journals. There are ways that we can support them, partly through the OA policy and partly through Aberdeen University Press.

 

Hardy: Finally, if we were to develop a Rights Retention ourselves what can we learn from your efforts?

Emma: Definitely, get legal support! We chose to take external advice. Then there is a lot of committee time. Get your committees on board early so they have that time to understand the changes. Find the champions that you can, there will be some, and also try and get senior backing before you go to higher levels like the Senate. Engage the wider community as well.

We learned a lot from Edinburgh University. They were incredibly generous with their time. We very much expect and are prepared to be as generous with our time for other institutions that are looking to go down this route.

Also consider contact details for publishers, and how you get the information out to them. It makes no sense institutions doing this on an individual basis. If you can, get a community working to gather that information. That is one of the things that we are going to have to work through now. We are getting legal advice on the best way to alert publishers. We initially hoped to launch the policy during Open Access week, but the time frame wasn’t possible.  We tried to launch it in a “loud way”, so that publishers couldn’t possibly say that they hadn’t been aware, as this is key to mitigating legal risk. We want to avoid commercial publishers being able to say that they have no awareness of this. We are also making sure that our legal experts look over communication before it goes out to publishers to make it legally as secure as possible.

And we are still learning. The St Andrews University policy has come out since ours and we’re delighted to have another institution heading in the same direction. Our policy is in no way a finished product. We know it is going to have to be revised for long form publications in about 18 months which will give us a chance to add and improve it. It is a learning process, but we felt it was really important to get it out early to show our commitment.

 

Hardy: Thanks Emma, that is good advice. Is there anything that you would like to add?

 Emma: Maybe one thing. We feel that if the larger institutions can develop Rights Retention policies even if they don't necessarily have to, due to the financial environment that they operate in, it is going to make it much easier for the smaller institutions. We really hope that we can build some momentum. On mailing lists there were people from smaller institutions saying: I have no idea how we are going to do this, because we can't deal with that level of risk and they have real concerns about staffing levels. I feel that larger institutions have a responsibility to make it easier for the smaller institutions and to shoulder some of that burden to pave the way for others.

Hardy: Yes, that makes sense. Thanks very much for talking to us, Emma, and good luck with your next steps!

 

You can follow Emma Francis on Twitter.