As librarians, we should embrace open research

Librarians have been at the centre of the university community for many years, our roles evolving and changing with new technologies and initiatives. Today, we’re are at the forefront of promoting open access and open research.

While the concept is a noble aspiration, it’s not always easy to achieve. The Nazarbayev University (NU) librarians have been promoting open access, working side by side with other key stakeholders since the early days to bring these ideas closer to reality.

• Three ways libraries are championing the open access movement
• Is open access tarnished?
• Why does open access make publishing more complicated?

We’ve been developing and implementing plans to become stronger partners in the university’s open research strategy. Here are some of the steps we’ve taken.

Guided by university’s strategic direction

The strategic direction of the library is closely aligned with the university’s overall organisational and research strategies. NU’s research output is growing, and the university encourages publishing its research in open access. We collaborate with the research administration to establish a shared vision and mission to align the services to support researchers.

The library developed its first open access policy in 2019 to support its institutional repository. While it served us well, it has become evident that the existing policy needs to be reassessed and updated to align it with the current national open research aspirations and to move Kazakhstan towards becoming a knowledge economy.

To improve its organisational positioning, the library has identified three key areas of attention from its own strategy: staff, services and spaces, with a strong focus on staff professional development. Staff are invited to upskill, undertake advanced training and attend relevant conferences. This is to enhance the quality of library services and the performance of librarians, particularly in the area of research support, and to improve library teaching and learning support and information literacy programmes for the university community.

Restructuring the library  

We restructured the library to ensure high-quality support for research and to meet the evolving needs of the research and learning community.

We did this by creating a Library Research Support team to provide scholarly communications education and open access support. The responsibilities of this team include working with university researchers and professors, becoming a part of the university-wide research support systems and improving the visibility of library contributions in the area of open research. The office also manages the institutional repository based on the open access principles.

We set up a Teaching and Learning Support team, focused on revising the existing information literacy programme to advance service, including training on the approaches to open access publishing, open educational resources platforms and research methodologies. Besides raising awareness of open access, the coordinated support covers the improved new guides and training sessions designed to develop actionable skills in research assessment, ethical practice and publishing routes.

The Electronic Resources Management team assists in the open access initiative by exploring transformative agreements and author publishing charges (APCs) with publishers.

Capacity building with staff development

Our strategy included upskilling the library staff on open access practices and the best dissemination methods. Alignment with the university’s open access strategy is essential – the library should tailor its research services to the needs of the university. We aimed to understand international trends concerning advocating open access in a university setting.

We decided to attend conferences with programmes that would help us shape the library’s future development. Networking and connecting with other higher education professionals has proved very beneficial to our mission.

After this, we developed internal training schedules to share the knowledge we gained at conferences and workshops with each other, and to also transfer this knowledge to other libraries in Kazakhstan. Interested staff can also pursue a degree or professional certificates.

Building stronger partnerships and relationships

We redesigned our research support services at the library to complement and assist the work of other units in the university. This included increasing collaboration with the university research administration team, the researchers and publishers, establishing the librarians as strong partners with a shared vision. The library further established its position by:

• Working directly with the researchers and faculty at the university
• Negotiating with publishers to obtain better agreements and contracts for publishing
• Advising faculty on APC and publications options
• Advocating the benefits of publishing in open access and the greater exposure to research articles
• Dissemination and promotion of NU scientific output via the institutional repository
• Training offered in collaboration with the university entities
• Co-organising Research Week and OA Week, increasing awareness activities to help open up university research to a global audience.

Becoming a stronger strategic partner in a university setting requires working together with other university entities with a common goal to achieve a shared idea. The library at NU has transformed its structures, upskilled its staff and championed the call for open access and open science. Remember, open science can open new doors.

Jerald Cavanagh, Darya Zvonareva, Monika Bukowska, April Manabat and Yelizaveta Kamilova are all members of the library team at Nazarbayev University.