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Hi! This morning I'm going to be at #CISPC2020 talking about our Open Access+ service (obvs) with @Phil_Gooch from @scholarcy. It'll be slightly different to the other OA+ presentations I've done because I'll be focusing a bit more on how we use Scholarcy.
*SPOILER ALERT*
*SPOILER ALERT*
I only have ten minutes and will probably be talking very quickly, so I'm dumping stuff on here in case I don't manage to articulate myself very well (quite likely) or I forget to say something important.
I'm going to talk a bit about how the work that we do on open access and open research supports @OfficialUoM's strategic aim to foster an "open and responsible research environment" but also contributes to things like civic engagement and social responsibility too.
I'm also going to mention that both @UoMLibrary's Imagine2030 strategy and @OfficialUoM's position statement on open research both a) talk about removing barriers to knowledge and b) position the library as a core enabler in this area.
ICYMI the open research position statement (which is actually due to be updated soon) is available here: https://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/using-the-library/staff/research/open-research/position-statement/index.htm
And you can read all about Imagine2030 here: https://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/about/imagine-2030/index.htm
And you can read all about Imagine2030 here: https://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/about/imagine-2030/index.htm
I'm always banging on about open access and its potential to help remove barriers between academia and research audiences (particularly non-academic research audiences) so I'll be doing a bit of that too.
If you're interested in open access for people outside of academia, @EBNunn's thesis on this subject is really good and is definitely worth reading.
http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/23582/
http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/23582/
I'll then pivot to talking about Twitter and how it (despite its many flaws) has eroded barriers as well. E.g. I can talk to @TheRock any time I like! https://twitter.com/UoML_Steve/status/1332987621648306176?s=20
It can also potentially erode barriers between researchers and their research audiences too. I pick out this example of the threads functionality being used to help break down the findings of a research article into digestible, bitesize chunks: https://twitter.com/dsfranca/status/1332249512505733120?s=20
We can't hope to do that in @UoMLibResearch! @tmUoML has a PhD in Politics (or something like that) and my highest qualification is in Librarianship, so we look to @scholarcy to help us do something similar.
I'm going to quickly whizz through this video showing the cool bit of the process. I'm omitting all the faffing about that we do with spreadsheets and files. As they often say in the small print, the sequence has been shortened here.
Please don't judge me for all the open tabs.
Please don't judge me for all the open tabs.
I'll then boast a bit about the nice feedback that we've received and offer some not especially robust evidence that the papers we tweet about get more online attention (I could spend ages talking about all the non-OA+ reasons why that might be).
By this point I'll be talking v quickly so will rattle through some of the limitations of our approach:
- Tweet threads take ages to put together
- ^ lots of faffing about within our workflows doesn't help (my fault)
- It is famously quite difficult to break out of echo chambers
- Tweet threads take ages to put together
- ^ lots of faffing about within our workflows doesn't help (my fault)
- It is famously quite difficult to break out of echo chambers
We're working on automation across the team (my colleague Winnie is especially good with robots and things) which should hopefully help us speed up and scale up. We're also super excited about new @scholarcy features that will help us improve our threads too!
I think that's everything I plan on saying. Slides are available via http://bit.ly/oa_cispc . By the time you read this I might already be having a post-conference-presentation lie down.
One last tweet: I got to the end of typing all this and thought I'd accidentally deleted it all. Not fun. But here it is.
A sneak peek backstage at #CISPC2020.
Going to do this now https://twitter.com/uoml_steve/status/1333722243818545153
Just popping back in to this thread to say that we had some very nice conversations in our Meet the Speakers Breakout Zoom™ (totally normal combination of words). Thanks so much to those that came along, and to @scott__tweets for fielding the harder questions!
