Marketing and promotion of OAR@UoM : the open access Institutional Repository of the University of Malta

Abstract

In 2014 the University of Malta Library launched its Open Access (OA) Institutional Repository: OAR@UoM. Since OAR@UoM is the first and only online institutional repository on the Maltese Islands, it also plays a major role in promoting OA nationally and in forming partnerships with other stakeholders who lack the infrastructure but are interested to deposit in OA. This pushes the boundaries of traditional IRs and creates a new sets of challenges. The Outreach Department of the library was tasked with promoting OAR@UoM and to develop training workshops to instruct academics on how to upload their research on the IR, whilst also providing some background information on OA and the benefits associated with it. A number of promotional material was created and disseminated on campus to help increase the awareness of OA and OAR@UoM. During its annual OA week in October, the library organizes OA-related activities and talks on campus. In 2015, in collaboration with FOSTER, the library organized a conference to address the misconceptions regarding OA brought forward by a number of academics. The one-day conference was entitled ‘Open Access and its impact on research and scholarship’. Discussions on the impact of OA on the Maltese research/academic community, and training on how to upload on OAR@UoM were the focus points. This paper will look into the effectiveness of the promotion and marketing strategy followed by the Outreach Department in relation to the (OA) repository. It will also look into the increase in submissions done willingly by academics and how their perception of OA has changed. This paper will also investigate the creation of an Open Science Department to assist academics with OA-related queries. Will the creation of a department exclusively responsible for OA have a big impact on the academics? How can the Open Science Department collaborate with the Outreach Department to create a more effective marketing strategy to promote OA publishing and submission of research papers on OAR@UoM? This paper will come up with suggestions for such questions by looking specifically at the case at the University but also compare this with other scenarios of how OA was promoted in different institutions.