Implementing Open Access APCs: the role of academic libraries

On 5 July 2013, a group of 10 UK librarians, along with representatives from Sage and Jisc, met together at Jisc headquarters in London to discuss the role of academic librarians in implementing gold open access (OA) article-processing charges (APCs).

This event follows on from a roundtable commissioned by Sage and held at the British Library in 2012 which set out some of the challenges and opportunities faced by librarians around the world with moves to OA. Since that event, there have been significant policy moves towards OA in the UK in particular, with the publication of the Finch report and subsequent revisions to OA mandates from Research Councils UK (RCUK) and the Wellcome Trust.

In view of these trends, the latest roundtable set out to consider the practical implications for academic librarians of helping researchers in UK higher education to comply with funder mandates.

The meeting was chaired by consultant Simon Inger. Participants were from a range of different types of UK academic institution and many also had key involvement in other industry groups and activities, including Research Libraries UK (RLUK) and Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL).

As an introduction, participants in the roundtable each presented brief summaries of their experiences with managing OA repositories, OA APCs and the approaches taken by their institutions. The discussion then moved on to considering the challenges and how these might be tackled.

This report records the themes, experiences and recommendations from the roundtable.