Open access - from oblivion to the spotlight

In 2008 Sherpa/Romeo was created, and for the first time there was a (relatively) easy way of checking the publisher’s policies for journal articles. At the same time, our University, Northampton launched it’s repository, NECTAR (Northampton Electronic Collection of Theses & Research). Since 2008 attitudes and awareness of open access amongst academics has changed considerably… or have they? Entitled Open Access… From oblivion to the spotlight, this 10 x 10 slide presentation will take a snap shot of our early days of using a repository, challenges faced, lessons learned and academic attitudes towards open access and how policies have impacted and shaped this and the growth of our repository. With particular emphasis on HEFCE’s open access policy, announced in 2014. From comments when asked for accepted manuscripts ranging from “It’s in the library” to “I don’t need to do anything until 2016” to “my article will likely be submitted to the next REF, can you pay the APC for it”! From zero visibility of research outputs in the repository, to an increase in downloads, correlations between open access and citations and new opportunities for reaching an audience beyond academia. The presentation will then move forward to REF2021 and beyond, as we start to enlarge the spheres of our influence, and not only curate research outputs, but to also have data repositories, to extend open access to chapters, monographs and other outputs. How do we best curate data sets and add value to not only our research outputs, but also to our datasets? What potentially will a repository of 2027 look like? Or will it be obsolete?