Open Access+ Service: reframing library support to take research outputs to non-academic audiences

Scott Taylor

doi:10.1629/uksg.499

Abstract

The University of Manchester Library has established a key role in facilitating scholarly discourse through its mediated open access (OA) services, but has little track record in intentionally taking OA research outputs to non-academic audiences. This article outlines recent exploratory steps the Library has taken to convince researchers to fully exploit this part of the scholarly communication chain. Driving developments within this service category is a belief that despite the recent rise in OA, the full public benefit of research outputs is often not being realized as many papers are written in inaccessibly technical language. Recognizing our unique position to help authors reach broader audiences with simpler expressions of their work, we have evolved our existing managed OA services to systematically share plain-English summaries of OA papers via Twitter. In parallel, we have taken steps to ensure that our commercial analytics tools work harder to identify and reach the networked communities that form around academic disciplines in the hope that these simpler expressions of research will be more likely to diffuse beyond these networks.

Highlights

The University of Manchester Library has established a key role in facilitating scholarly discourse through its mediated open access (OA) services, but has little track record in intentionally taking OA research outputs to non-academic audiences
Driving developments within this service category is a belief that despite the recent rise in OA, the full public benefit of research outputs is often not being realized as many papers are written in inaccessibly technical language
We have taken steps to ensure that our commercial analytics tools work harder to identify and reach the networked communities that form around academic disciplines in the hope that these simpler expressions of research will be more likely to diffuse beyond these networks

Summary

Research Services Manager University of Manchester Library

Is moving the collection from behind the paywall enough to realize the public benefit? For better or worse, research funding agencies play a key role in shaping institution-wide behaviour, but few require authors to ensure their work is described in a way that makes it comprehensible to non-specialist audiences.[6]. Media Relations teams work with authors to produce summaries of research designed to attract journalists but it is often only more established academics who tend to liaise with media relations colleagues.[8] A review of EurekAlert suggested no more than 3% of University of Manchester papers are mentioned in a press release each year, and of these only a fraction will gain attention from the mass media.[9] This leaves a very long tail of research not benefiting from any support from the University and not reaching the full range of potential audiences. We link to the Simple Writer app which challenges authors to explain their research using only the thousand most common words in the English language.[22]

Creating a Twitter thread

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Possible next steps