What is it like to manage open access publications? | Exchanges

"1. Can you please tell us about your role? My title is Open Access Publications Assistant for the School of Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh.  I’m one of 20 full-time PA’s embedded in each of the Schools here.  It’s a new role and I’ve just been in post for 4 months now.  We have been hired as part of a project funded by the block grant from the RCUK.  The main policy of the University of Edinburgh is to go the green route to open access.  The university decided to dedicate part of the RCUK funds to hire people embedded in each School to support green OA.  I think this is quite unusual as most universities decided to spend the bulk of the funds on APCs.  At Edinburgh we’ve tried very much to accommodate both routes. 2. What is the purpose of your role? The main purpose is to gather accepted manuscripts of papers from academic authors at University of Edinburgh and to upload the files in the Institutional Repository as a way of achieving green OA.  The secondary purpose is to be a point of contact for OA for academics within the school and to advise staff on various options for OA publishing.  For this I review papers and try to understand the author’s wishes for each paper.  I look at publisher requirements and funder requirements and then present the best options to the author.  It is always up to the author to make the final decision and they have the freedom to choose where they want to publish.  My job is to make sure the licensing terms are adhered to, including embargo periods which I check on a case by case basis, to format the files from authors, upload the manuscripts, check any set phrases required by publishers and put up a link to the final version of the article.  So far we’ve been able to accommodate all the requirements of the author, funder and publisher at same time and haven’t had any conflicts ..."