Abstract:

Providing access to faculty publications through the creation of an online campus Institutional Repository (IR) is a valuable service for academic libraries to offer. It is not, however, a service that existed when today's presenters began their work at the Cal State LA library in the spring of 2014. Presenters will begin their talk with a review of the literature regarding faculty outreach and institutional repositories. We will then describe the steps we’ve taken on our campus to develop the institutional repository and to educate faculty about authors’ rights and the benefits of self-archiving their scholarship.

One of the presenters had been involved in spearheading a campus-wide open access resolution at her previous institution and was enthusiastic about initiating this process at her new university. In trying to understand the organizational culture and the best way to navigate this project, we began our IR project by determining the extent to which faculty were already publishing in open access journals and their general understanding and attitudes towards open access publishing.

During our first year at Cal State LA, we created an extensive LibGuide that showcased CSULA faculty open access publications from the campus’ six colleges and the university library. Compiling this list was a complex process since previously there had been no organized way to search of the publications of Cal State LA faculty. After identifying faculty OA publications, they were then added to CSULA’s Digital Repository. The LibGuide also included information about authors’ rights as copyright holders.

In celebration of Open Access Week, 2014, presenters organized a faculty panel discussion about open access publishing. In today's session, we will share comments, concerns, and misconceptions that arose from campus faculty during this discussion. During Open Access Week 2015, presenters sent out an e-mail to all professors soliciting publications from last three years. We are happy that we received positive responses and articles from faculty members across disciplines that enabled us to populate our digital repository with faculty publications. We created another LibGuide of Cal State LA Faculty Publications to provide information on publishers’ copyright policies and authors’ rights.

Since universities operate through carefully established policies, we knew we had to develop a more systematic way to provide access to faculty publications through our library’s IR. Our first step in this process was to generate a conversation about adopting a campus-wide open access resolution. We attended important campus committee meetings, including those of the Academic Senate, and gave presentations to raise awareness about authors’ rights and open access to faculty publications.

For the future, presenters have several long-term goals in mind. The first is continued outreach to professors regarding authors' rights and the benefits of self-archiving their work. Next is to make repository deposition a routine activity for all professors. We will continue our work to make the institutional repository an integral part of academic life and culture at Cal State LA. In the final part of our session, we will respond to questions and ask participants for institutional repository strategies that have worked on their campuses.

Keywords:

Open Access, Institutional/Digital Repository, Faculty Outreach.