Ruth O'Hara & Grace O'Brien, Maynooth University. Due to the evolving nature of Open Access many librarians find themselves managing an OA service on top of their main roles. Ruth O’Hara is a Collection Management & Resource Description Librarian and Grace O’Brien is an Electronic Resources Librarian at Maynooth University. Together they work on transformative agreements and deal with various queries on OA. In this talk they will offer tips on how to navigate challenges and share what they have learnt over the last few years. They will provide an overview on how to manage a successful Open Access service, while balancing the demands of their varied workloads.

1. How to Manage a Successful
Open Access Service in
Addition to the Demands of a
Primary Role
Grace O'Brien & Dr. Ruth O'Hara

2. Maynooth
University
• Maynooth University
• 25km from Dublin
• FTE of c. 15,000, 16% postgraduate (2022/2023)
• Small but fastest growing university in Ireland

3. Overview
OPEN ACCESS IN
MAYNOOTH
UNIVERSITY
MANAGING
TRANSFORMATIVE
AGREEMENTS
DATA COLLECTION
AND UTILISATION
WHAT WE HAVE
LEARNED

4. About Us
Ruth O’Hara
Collections & Content Librarian
• Resource description
• Collection review and service development
Grace O’Brien
Electronic Resources Librarian
• Manage the electronic resources
lifecycle: trials, acquisitions, licensing,
usage, renewals
• Improve discoverability, resolve access
& authentication issues

5. Key Relationships
IReL
US
Digital
Programmes
and
Information
Systems
Librarian
Research Data
Management
Librarian
Research
Support
Librarian

6. • ACM Open (Association for Computing
Machinery)
• ACS (American Chemical Society
• AIP (American Institute of Physics)
• APA (American Psychological Association)
• BMJ (British Medical Association Journals)
• CUP (Cambridge University Press)
• The Company of Biologists
• Electrochemical Society
• Elsevier (ScienceDirect)
• Emerald
• IEEE
• IOP (Institute of Physics)
• Microbiology Society
• OPG (Optica Publishing
Group)
• OUP (Oxford University
Press)
• PLOS
• RUP (Rockefeller
University Press)
• RIA (Royal Irish Academy)
• Royal Society
• Royal Society of Chemistry
• Sage
• SCOAP3
• Springer Nature: Springer
Compact
• Taylor & Francis
• Wiley

7. Key Relationships
IReL
US
Digital
Programmes
and
Information
Systems
Librarian
Research Data
Management
Librarian
Research
Support
Librarian

9. Creative Commons License Chooser
https://chooser-beta.creativecommons.org/

10. Growth
of Transformative
Agreements
• Growth of Transformative Agreements in Ireland
• Growth in the use of Transformative Agreements in Maynooth
• 20% uptake in APCs in 2023
• *2024 data up to date as of 03/04/2024

11. Managing
Maynooth's Open
Access Service
• Impact of growth of Transformative
Agreements on our service
• Not our primary role
• 1.5 people
• Requires a lot of flexibility
• "Workflows for transformative agreements
are not without problems and administrative
burdens. …...The multiplicity of article types,
publisher dashboards, funder policies and
author statuses means that staff need to
be adept at making judgements, and that it is
difficult to achieve consistency even within a
single institution.” Catherine Sharp, head of
OA services, UCL" (Brayman et al, 2024)

12. Tips on How to Manage the Service
Create a designated Open Access email
Create
Point users to a LibGuide or website
Point
Creative Commons License Chooser
Use
Do Handover
Do

13. Well-known Issues
• No two deals are the same
• “….TAs have improved workflows, but
variations in offers, processes and
systems between TAs mean that TA
management continues to be resource
intensive for institutions, requiring
specialised staff and financial
management.” (Brayman et al, 2024)
• Approvers workflow
• Terminology
• Number of APCs

14. Less Well-known
Issues
• Time Travel: Retroactive
approvals
• Deal Start Dates
• Articles that were not OA
• Authors moving institutions

15. Less Well-known Issues: Infighting
The Strange Case of Professor Doyle and Professor Flynn
Our tale of woe begins in a bustling university on the fringes of Dublin.
Professor Doyle who no longer worked at the university wanted to publish an
article using one of the pots of gold, nowadays known as transformative
agreements. However, the publisher informed the Librarians that the Professor
must still work at the university at the time of publication.
The Librarians wrote a letter to Professor Doyle to tell him the bad news. They
had noticed that Professor Flynn, a co-author, was still employed by the
university, they suggested that Professor Flynn become the corresponding
author and that way Professor Doyle could receive a pot of gold after all.
This made Professor Doyle very angry, who insisted that he must remain
the corresponding author. He declared that he would rather hide his article away
in a castle, behind a paywall, rather than have his name removed as
corresponding author.
Professor Flynn tried to reason with Professor Doyle and explained how doing
this would prevent all the townspeople and those in the surrounding kingdom
from reading the article. The Librarians assured Professor Doyle that although
he would no longer be corresponding author, he would remain listed as first
author. But it was of no use. Professor Doyle would not listen.
From that day forth there was bad blood between Professor Doyle and
Professor Flynn and to this day the article remains locked away, and only read
by a few souls inside the castle.

16. Less Well-known Issues: Affiliation
• "Managing APCs on behalf of individual
academics is challenging because the
Library is stepping into the middle of the
publisher-author relationship and attempting
to be an intermediary for one part of that
relationship – payment."
(Ashworth, Mccutcheon, & Roy 2014)
• How we confirm affiliation with Maynooth
• “Some publishers’dashboards provide
insufficient metadata, requiring us to liaise
with authors to obtain accepted manuscripts
or ask further questions before we can
approve a paper…….” Catherine Sharp,
head of OA services, UCL (Brayman et
al, 2024)
• Retired staff members, previous students
• Rejecting an article
Check University
People Finder
Check Library
Services Platform
Check with
Department
Approve/Reject
Contact Author
if rejecting

17. How to Reject an Article
Dear [Name] ,
Unfortunately, we could not approve your article to be published open access via the Maynooth University agreement.
[Publisher name] are very clear that the corresponding author must be a current staff member or student
at the time the article was accepted for [publication/submission].
We checked with the department, who advised us that you are no longer affiliated with Maynooth.
If you wanted to avail of the agreement you would need to ask a current MU staff member or
student to be the corresponding author instead or see if you could avail of an agreement at your new institution.
Please do not hesitate to contact us with any queries.
Kind regards,
[Grace/Ruth]
Open Access Team

18. Keep Track of Each Deal

19. Data Collection
Number of APCs
approved
Number of queries
received from authors
Hours worked

21. Tips on Engagement
USE SOCIAL MEDIA REPLY PROMPTLY
TO QUERIES
GO THE EXTRA
MILE
TALK AT
UNIVERSITY
EVENTS
REACH OUT TO
COLLEAGUES

22. Some Final Thoughts
SUCCESS IS A DOUBLE-
EDGED SWORD
BE REALISTIC ABOUT
WHAT YOU CAN
ACHIEVE
PUT THE DATA YOU
HAVE COLLECTED TO
GOOD USE

23. Thank You
GET IN TOUCH WITH
US!
GRACE.OBRIEN@MU.IE RUTH.OHARA@MU.IE @OHARARU

24. References
• Ashworth, S., Mccutcheon, V. and Roy, L., 2014. Managing open access: the
first year of managing RCUK and Wellcome Trust OA funding at the
University of Glasgow Library. Insights: the UKSG journal, 27(3), p.282-
286.DOI: https://doi.org/10.1629/2048-7754.175
• Brayman, K., Devenney, A., Dobson, H., Marques, M. & Vernon, A (2024).
“A Review of Transitional Agreements in the UK.” Zenodo, Retrieved on
13.03.204 at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10787392.
• Creative Commons License Chooser. Retrieved on
13.10.2023: https://chooser-beta.creativecommons.org/
• Images retrieved from creative commons, deviantart, flickr & open clip art.
• Image of the Russell Library taken by Alan Monahan. Retrieved on
20.10.2023: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iOfJxWK9kdw/XoH8lO2oUEI/
• Research Consulting (2014) Counting the Costs of Open Access: The
Estimated Cost of UK Research Organisations of Achieving Compliance with
Open Access Mandates in 2013/14. Retrieved on 13.03.2024
at http://www.researchconsulting.co.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2014/11/Research-Consulting-Counting-the-Costs-of-OA-
Final.pdf