Abstract
Open access (OA) has had, and will continue to have, a significant effect on the scholarly publishing landscape in academia, yet many academic staff publish OA in order to comply with policies, rather than engaging with the value of open scholarship and in debates that ultimately affect them. Training sessions and workshops are often arranged to increase knowledge and awareness in the academic community, but engagement is often low. On the other hand, some academic staff, who already do engage, will happily attend sessions and workshops to increase their knowledge even further. The struggle to increase OA engagement overall could be due to the training not being appealing enough, and academics not being aware of benefits until after they have attended workshops. At the University of Essex, we took a bold, brave and curious approach to increasing engagement during Open Access Week 2018, and created an OA-themed escape room. This resulted in great engagement from students, academic staff and professional services staff, some of whom reported that they never knew how relevant OA was for them. The Open Access Escape Room was a success, and provided a positive environment for conversations around OA.
Highlights
Background and ideaOpen access (OA) has been a hot topic in academia for the last decade and more, not least because subscription costs keep increasing
Open access (OA) has had, and will continue to have, a significant effect on the scholarly publishing landscape in academia, yet many academic staff publish OA in order to comply with policies, rather than engaging with the value of open scholarship and in debates that affect them
The struggle to increase OA engagement overall could be due to the training not being appealing enough, and academics not being aware of benefits until after they have attended workshops
Summary
Open access (OA) has been a hot topic in academia for the last decade and more, not least because subscription costs keep increasing. The research community and funders have been calling for more transparency, accessibility and openness in research. In the UK the Finch report in 2012,1 the REF OA requirements for 20212 and the international Plan S3 are all initiatives to help accelerate the uptake of OA – but are all academic staff aware of why OA has become such a huge imperative or are they just engaging in order to comply with the rules? Some academic staff members are really engaged and know a lot about OA and the impact it has on the academic community. Some do not even know that green OA is an option, and pay out of their own research funds for gold OA in order to comply with policy
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