Interview


versions. ANU Press, a fully open access university press, is celebrating its 15th year; Australia has had a digital thesis programme for 20 years, whereas EThOS started in 2009. Of course there are very obvious


differences. Canberra recently celebrated 100 years since the first sod was turned on the new capital city but nowadays I regularly work in buildings that are centuries old. And the weather is a huge difference between the two experiences. Calling a 30 degree day a ‘heatwave’ is laughable to an Australian, but I can’t tell you how exciting it is to see snow!


Can you explain exactly how the Library works to enhance scholarly communications across Cambridge University? The Office of Scholarly Communication sits within the Cambridge University Libraries network. It consists of a team of 18


people who are highly specialised and trained in all aspects of scholarly communication. The nine-strong open access team process more than 1,000 articles a month into our institutional repository, and answer thousands of queries from our research community. Our Research Data Management Facility assists researchers with research data management plans, provides policy advice, manages data deposits to the repository and runs the highly successful Data Champions programme. We have a great technical team that not only runs the repository but also has managed to integrate the repository with the university’s CHRIS system and provides advice to the university about infrastructure needs. The remaining team members manage


our new digital thesis policy, provide training to the library and research community on scholarly communication matters, and run a strong outreach and engagement programme, both within and external to the university community. They all do this in a highly volatile and fast changing policy landscape that they need to stay abreast of. The university’s Research Excellence Framework return is dependent on the open accessibility of the papers put forward


for consideration. That’s a big responsibility.


You have spent a lot of time on advocating the use of ‘plain English’ in science communication. What’s the thinking behind this? As I mentioned before, I used


to be a science journalist. That is a job of translation,


interpreting and explaining what is interesting and relevant about research findings. Let’s


face it, most published research is written in impenetrable language. It is astonishing to think that at the turn of the last century the readability of academic articles was equivalent to that of The New York Times. That is not the case today. The (serious) book Learn to Write Badly: How to Succeed in the Social Sciences explains many reasons why it has come to this.


“We have been able to accelerate


progress across the sector by acting openly, transparently and inclusively”


It is something of a bugbear of mine that making papers open access alone, is not necessarily opening up research to the public. I appreciate there is a necessity to use specific language and jargon within certain disciplines because of accuracy and shorthand. But when communicating with those outside the immediate research discipline, it is important to explain concepts and ideas in an understandable way. Indeed, I argue that the ability to do so forces a clarity of understanding within the person doing the explaining.


What’s the biggest issue facing university librarians (in Cambridge and elsewhere) at the moment? The nature of the academic library is changing dramatically. When we look at who is using the digital library at Cambridge and who is accessing our research held in the institutional repository Apollo, in both cases only 15 per cent of accesses come from within the UK (let alone Cambridge). This is becoming a global endeavour. So academic libraries are moving from purchasers and gatekeepers of information to a closed community, to an environment where the role is to collect the research output of the institution and share it with the world. That’s exciting and frightening in equal measures. There is a risk, if libraries do not meet this challenge front on, that they become increasingly irrelevant. Many people in the research environment are already unaware of the library services they use – saying things like ‘I never use the library’ when of course they do on a daily basis when accessing subscription material. This reflects a job well done in terms of enabling access to material but can pose a problem when arguing for funding. But, on the positive side, the significant


focus on open access and, increasingly, open research, potentially puts the library once more at the heart of the institution, driving innovation and ideas. So chose which way you want to go. I think it is a truly exciting time.


Interview by Tim Gillett


December 2018/January 2019 Research Information 17


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