Scoping the Landscape of Open-Access Monographs in the ERA. Methodological Considerations

One of the main objectives of the 2-years project PALOMERA (Policy Alignment of Open Access Monographs in the European Research Area) funded by Horizon Europe is to investigate the landscape of Open Access (OA) policies regarding academic books and provide access to relevant documentation via the Knowledge Base. The project’s first phase focused on collecting different types of data, both qualitative and quantitative. During ten months, the research team gathered documents pertinent to Open Access policies and strategies from 39 ERA countries, surveyed the key stakeholders (around 500 completed responses), and conducted over 40 in-depth interviews. Various materials on policies: policy documents, grey literature, research articles, reports, and outputs of other projects, as well as transcripts from interviews, were gathered by researchers from 16 partner organizations. This process would not be possible without design thinking methods that have helped to organize activities, orient them towards a specific goal and keep track of progress. The poster aims to present the effective data collection process, from drafting the methodology to ready-to-analysis, in an international research environment. It emphasizes existing project management methodologies that prove useful in research. This methodology could be replicated in similar landscape analyses and further work with the European scholarly communication community.