Survey of Academic Library Efforts to Enhance Faculty Cooperation with Open Access 08/2015 (ISBN No:978-157440-352-7 )

The study presents data from 50 mostly research oriented colleges and universities about how their academic libraries approach faculty and administration about their open access initiatives.  Some of the kinds of questions that the report helps its readers to answer are:  how much staff time are libraries devoting to open access initiatives and specifically to efforts to educate faculty and administration about them?  How successful have they been?  How have they reached out?  To what percentage of faculties have library OA experts made presentations at faculty meetings?  How many talks or addresses have they made?  What have been their most effective arguments? Are some faculties more sympathetic than others? What kind of open access initiatives are libraries developing? How many are publishing their own OA journals?  How do they go about obtaining publication permissions?  How much staff time is expended in the permissions process?  How have statistical reports on digital repository use been received by faculty?  Have the reports enhanced cooperation? What has been the impact of the OA program on the college’s scholarly reputation?

Just a few of the report’s many findings are that:

• The three year average for the number of formal talks or demonstrations given to faculty about open access was 22 for public colleges in the sample versus 8 for private colleges.
• Four year schools in the sample made presentations about open access to a mean of 16% of subject faculties at their institutions though a few colleges accounted for much of the activity and the median percentage of faculties reached was only 3%. 
• Forty four percent of surveyed libraries have sponsored lunches, dinners, coffee hours, or other social events to familiarize faculty with open access. 
• Private colleges in the sample have reached out to 19% of their subject faculties at departmental meetings with talks to explain the advantages of various open access initiatives.
• Schools with a mean annual tuition level of more than $30,000 tuition averaged 765 hours of staff time spent on reaching out to faculty about open access initiatives; the median was 100 hours.