5.2 How to Reach a Wider Audience with Open Access Publishing: What Research Universities can Learn from Universities of Applied Sciences

In Amsterdam, the libraries of the research university (UvA) and the university of applied sciences (AUAS) work closely together. In this cooperation, differences between these institutions become particularly clear when we look at the aim and implementation of open access policies. Here, we show what research universities (RU) can learn from the open access policy of a university of applied sciences (UAS).

A fundamental difference between a RU and UAS is that research at the latter is mainly practice-based and demand-driven. Whereas researchers at a RU primarily transfers their results to fellow scientists, a UAS transfers its results mainly to professionals and enterprises. These target groups of a UAS are becoming more important for the RU as well, in the search of co-financing by enterprises and other stakeholders, to fulfil their valorisation requirements. In the Netherlands, the latter includes a government initiative to democratize the research agenda by means of a National Research Agenda, in which all citizens could propose research questions.

Recently the library of UvA/AUAS has written a plan on open access based on the FAIR-principle (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) for the AUAS. The plan has been approved by the Executive Board, and will be executed by the Library, the Centres for Applied Research, the Legal Affairs and the Education and Research Office. The reason that this ambitious plan to go for 100% open access (with an open access fund, a new AUAS ‘Open’ series, and a mandatory deposit in the repository) could be approved, is that in general there is not a strong (scientific) publication tradition at the AUAS. That is in contrast with the RU where publish or perish and academic freedom form an essential part of the publication tradition. At the AUAS, researchers and boards quickly became enthusiastic about open access.

Researchers at the AUAS find it most important that output of their research will be optimally accessible, disseminated and reused by professionals, enterprises, scientists, schools and other stakeholders, etc. To facilitate this, authors can easily register and upload their research output (ranging from manuscripts to games) in the current research information system (CRIS) combined with a repository. The CRIS then disseminates the results to all kinds of platforms. Because the AUAS is copyright owner of the output of its employees, all products will be granted a CC-BY license and can easily be reused. In addition, a layman summary (both in English and Dutch) and keywords will also be provided in the CRIS to ensure that the research is truly accessible to a wide audience, including non-experts.

With the AUAS plan, not only financial and legal barriers to access have been removed, but also the language barrier. This makes the research output FAIR to the primary target group of the product, but more importantly, it enables interaction between the AUAS and a broad audience, consisting of researchers from other disciplines, and a wide range of professionals, enterprises, civil servants, schools and citizens.