Driving Compliance with an Equitable Access Policy: Departmental Partnerships and Open Access Agreements in Action
Wilson, Michelle E.; Ingalls, Allison
- Publisher
- Zenodo
- Language
- en
Abstract
Institutional repositories are a primary avenue for expanding free and open access to university research and scholarship. However, consistent challenges persist in acquiring content, particularly in regard to faculty participation in institutional open access policies. At the University of Maryland, College Park, University Libraries implemented an open access policy (the Equitable Access Policy or “EAP”) in April 2022. Despite this mandate, faculty compliance has remained limited. To address this gap, the Open Scholarship Services (OSS) team launched a pilot project in Fall 2025 to test scalable strategies for increasing deposits into the Digital Repository at the University of Maryland (DRUM). The pilot project pursued two complementary approaches to gather and bulk ingest materials to a DSpace repository, tackling both workflow and technical challenges. First, OSS engaged with department-level administrators and their Chairs to act as liaisons between faculty and University Libraries and collect metadata and full text documents representing their publishing output. To facilitate these efforts, the team created a practical toolkit comprising email templates, a bulk deposit form, a comprehensive checklist and workflow, and access to the OSS team for regular check-ins and support. Second, the team leveraged current University Libraries Open Access publishing agreements to extract publication data from databases like Scopus and OpenAlex for bulk deposit into DRUM. Following the collection of materials in each process, the team cleaned and mapped the datasets to IR metadata and completed bulk deposits of eligible items into DRUM. In this presentation, authors will share key findings and deliverables with those who are interested in replicating this process at their own institutions. The presentation will focus on strategies for improving faculty engagement, streamlining administrative workflows, and scaling bulk deposit processes.
Full text
Driving Compliance with an Equitable Access Policy: Departmental Partnerships and Open Access Agreements in Action Open Scholarship Services University of Maryland Libraries © Michelle Wilson & Allison Ingalls 2025 CC-BY-SA 4.0
A Snapshot of UMD’s Equitable Access Policy Passed by the University Senate and signed by the President in April 2022 ●Applies to all University Faculty Members ●Grants a license to UMD to make peer reviewed, scholarly articles available to public through our institutional DSpace repository called DRUM ●Copyright ownership remains with faculty member ●Link to UMD’s EAP website
How to Participate in UMD’s EAP Faculty must provide the Version of Record or Author Accepted Manuscript to UMD Libraries, as permitted by their author agreement Faculty may request: ●A waiver if their publisher does not permit deposit ●Embargo of the work
A Timeline of Equitable Access Policy Outreach April 2022: EAP Passed and signed by President Pines January 2023: Equitable Access Policy website and deposit form launch Sept 2023: Equitable Access Deposit option added to faculty annual review October 2024: OA Week -Email campaign with Provost Rice + Open Forum events
MLIS Field Study Pilot Project: Increasing Participation in EAP using Scalable Strategies ●Two components: departmental collaboration and bulk deposit ●Addresses workflow and technical challenges
Departmental collaboration (pilot project component #1) ●Goal: engage department-level administrators and Chairs to act as liaisons between faculty and University Libraries to collect metadata and full-text articles for deposit ●Participants: College of Arts and Humanities (7 of 14 departments) ●Timeline: October-December 2025 ●Materials: Toolkit to facilitate liaison activities
Pilot Project Workflow 1 Chair Emails Faculty (Copies Coordinator) 2 Faculty Respond with List of Publications 4 Coordinator Emails Faculty to Request AAMs 3 Coordinator Fills Out Metadata 5 Faculty Send Back AAMs 6 Coordinator Sends Spreadsheet & AAMs to Library 7 Library Publishes Articles as Part of a Collection in Repository
Lessons Learned: Departmental Collaboration ❖Generally positive initial reaction (most departments were willing to meet) ❖Uniqueness of each department, even within the same College •Some departments more receptive than others •Lots of questions, some easy and some more complex •More challenging for departments that don’t already participate in Open Access •Bottom line: Easier to speak face-to-face as opposed to through email ❖Timing of “ask” •Requires flexibility for workflows (i.e., no standard procedure) •Aligning with other workflows ❖Leveraging existing processes (e.g., annual faculty data collection) ❖Considerations for staffing (e.g., having a dedicated coordinator)
Departmental toolkit ●Shared Google Drive folder ●Includes: ●Email templates ●Bulk deposit form ●Checklist ●Workflow ●Short presentation on UMD’s EAP ●Access to OSS team for check-ins and support
