Author: Michelle van den Berk

UBL Helps with Open Access

At the University Library staff from different departments collaborate in the project 'UBL Helps with Open Access' with Leiden researchers to help them make their publications Open Access.

The idea seems quite simple: to make as many publications as possible Open Access by uploading them into the Leiden Repository, if necessary with the appropriate embargo period.

One important goal of the project is to make Open Access publishing truly easier for our researchers. We started with the assumption that researchers increasingly want to make their publications Open Access but that somehow these publications did not always make their way to the Leiden Repository, whether that be through a lack of time, knowledge, opportunity, money, expertise, or a combination of all or any of the above.

Within the project we have several activities to facilitate Open Access by means of the Leiden Repository:

• Information and specific communication about Leiden University's Open Access policy.
• Information and specific communication about the deals that we have with publishers.
• We set up a pilot to upload all publications that have been registered in LUCRIS into the Leiden Repository.
• An investigation into the possibility to use imported metadata about publications from databases such as Web of Science, Scopus, etc.

By doing so, we aim to create a sustainable and valuable archive for the publications of our researchers and to increase the visibility of our academic work.

Rutger de Jong developed a useful searching tool and Nick van Asperen joined our team lately to do the searching and then the uploading of more than 350 journal articles from 2017 and 2018.

So far, so good, but these months we finally reached the stage of contacting the researchers to inform them about our findings and to ask them for the PDF files of their articles. Over 800 authors so far have received an email from us during the past few weeks...AND surpassed our expectations in their numerous and enthusiastic replies telling us that this action really helps.

To all these people I would like to say: thank you for your kind words, your heartwarming encouragements ... and your PDF files.

Keep on sending us your articles at openaccess@library.leidenuniv.nl and we shall do our best job to make them Open Access for you!

This table presents an overview of work in progress: this was the state of affairs on 10th April 2019; more publications have been added since that date.