Establishing the role and impact of academic librarians in supporting open research: a case study at Leeds Beckett University, UK

This practical paper presents findings of a small scale study undertaken at a large UK University. The purpose of the study was to encourage academic engagement with Open Access (OA) and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) mandate with the measurable impact being increased engagement with the Repository and dissemination of research whilst circulating information to the wider community. In order to promote research, a series of ‘Focus on’ webpages were created aligned to a particular theme, and were then disseminated via social media. It was anticipated that by potentially increasing access to research outputs, academic staff would be motivated to make their work available following OA models and use the institutional repository (IR) as a means to achieve this. The main drivers for the study were the Finch Report (2012), the HEFCE Policy for open access in the post-2014 Research Excellence Framework (2014) and the institutional strategy for research. Data was collected through a statistical analysis of both the ‘Focus on’ pages and journal article downloads via the IR, with results indicating increased engagement with the IR making research openly accessible