Humanising Open Access: taking a personal approach

Open Access can be daunting to researchers who don’t know the lingo, or are unused to the systems we use, and it can often seem like an additional chore to add to their workload. In my talk, I will discuss the barriers that I have come across in getting academics to engage in Open Access, and the solutions we have come up with. This in general means a more personal approach – scheduling 1:1 sessions so that we can use their own work for demonstration purposes, and allowing them to ask questions that are specific to their area. We have discovered that this encourages a better grasp of why they are making their work Open Access, rather than “because they have to”, as well as helping us to understand where common knowledge gaps are so that we can tackle them.