Automated research output retrieval and self-archiving notification service for authors (AURORA)

Abstract

With the Swiss National Open Access (OA) Strategy’s goal of all research publications from public funding being freely accessible by 2024 drawing closer, actions generating immediate impact are of utmost importance. We believe that encouraging authors to self-archive their publications in professionally managed institutional OA repositories is an effective, if so far underutilised approach on the way towards full OA. For instance, an internal analysis at the ZHAW has revealed that up to 30% of journal articles published from 2018 onwards are not openly accessible despite publisher policies allowing authors to self-archive the content in their institutional repositories (i.e., Green OA potential). Tackling this untapped OA potential will be at the core of the project. By teaming up once again, the ZHAW and FHNW university libraries will develop a highly automated workflow to increase the OA share at Swiss HEIs through targeted measures for Green OA, as already pioneered in the GOAL project that is co-funded by swissuniversities (2022-2024). An automated notification service will actively inform authors about their self-archiving options based on their publication data. Additionally, we aim to pilot an improved workflow for self-archiving, considerably reducing the efforts of authors by sending the full text document directly to the repository. We believe that this approach will proactively address the biggest concerns authors have when it comes to Green OA. By the end of the project, we will have developed an innovative feature in the DSpace repository software which will be reusable for other institutions. We will also have evaluated whether a simplified submission process is a useful incentive to foster OA publishing via the Green OA road. Our overall objective is to foster self-archiving of research publications at our institutions, making them easily discoverable and freely available for a broad audience, and so contributing considerably to the national OA goal.