Advocacy presentations

A key project task has been the creation of a bank of advocacy slides that can act as a generic resource for anyone to reuse in their institution. The project team worked together to draw up 2 pilot presentations, one for senior management/academics and the second for the researchers.
These pilots were then delivered to a group of academics and library staff from the University of Leeds and we asked for their feedback. This was a really valuable exercise to roadtest the pilot presentations.
Key messages from the feedback:

• Must have evidence and examples to back up statements eg around citations
• Presentations were too long and needed condensing
• Strong advocacy points were "quick and easy", "one place one deposit" "raises profile" (both individually and as an institution).
• Hot topics - copyright, versions, external/subject repositories, internationalization, how others access repository contents. It was felt that the "public" aspect of access would be more relevant if phrased as "practitioners". Strong view that researchers would want to know "what is in it for them" and this was echoed at the rsp winter school.

It was clear to the project team that whilst we had the basis of the presentations, more work needed to be done especially around the production of "supporting evidence". Also reinforced was the idea that the presentations would need to be more tailored to each institution depending on such factors as maturity of repository/CRIS and particular drivers. However a key aspect of the project outcome is that the slides need to be reusable by other HEIs.

So to achieve this generic but still tailored approach, project partners are going to take the pilot slides and tailor them to their institution. These presentations will then be pooled along with the supporting evidence. Others can then see what points are being made, how they have been made and examples of supporting evidence. There has been other JISC work done on OA answers and this will be drawn upon as well as adding institution specific case studies.

I have completed the 2 presentations for UoP and I will be asking for feedback from the PVC for Research. I also mentioned Pearl, UoP's research repository at the end of a session about our CRIS and this generated lots of questions and comments on a variety of topics and so I know that having the body of supporting evidence will be essential. I see finalising the presentations as an ongoing process as UoP examples and facts are only going to be available after Pearl is launched plus the hot topics here at UoP will also be raised so they will need to be fully addressed.

Nicola Cockarill, Senior Subject Librarian, University of Plymouth