What the university should do

A majority of respondents stressed the importance of the university advocating for OA, ensuring that both academics and students were trained and that they were aware of the benefits

143 of the IR. Furthermore, a number of respondents strongly spoke about the service being publicised to academics as most of them indicated they were not aware of their responsibilities and how they could benefit, with some even not knowing the IR existed. Below are some of the suggestions highlighted relating to awareness:

 “The institution needs to increase awareness and host workshops/seminars pertaining to IR”,

 “More training and publicity of IRs”,

 “The university should teach all staff and students about IR and its benefits”,  “Make staff and students know about it”,

 “Education, awareness, user training”,

 “More advocacy and efforts to train both students and staff”,  “Educate more staff about its existence and advantages”,  “More awareness and motivation”,

 “Make it known to academics that it exists and what it's benefits are”,  “Teach researchers about the university IR”,

 “Offering in-service training to academics/researchers on the process of using IR, offering staff time to attend these training sessions as compulsory training”,

 “Academics need to understand if the IR is simply a storage place for already-published research. We need to have more information about its purpose”.

One participant explained that academics are constantly moving from one institution to another looking for greener pastures. If they are not introduced to the repository during induction or early after joining the institution, chances are high that they will resist if this is introduced to them later.

It was also proposed that the university should support OA, ‘morally and financially’. A number of respondents felt that it would motivate staff if the university could come up with some form of incentive. One respondent explained that, for the academics to upload their work they needed to be incentivised, otherwise they would not create time for it. In the same vein, one respondent said, “Acknowledge academics who deposit”, another one said, “Recognise work published in the IR”, and quite a number indicated that the university should support academics. Thus, there is a general consensus that the university should give credit to those using the IR. It emerged in the interviews, as explained by one participant that:

144 “We have a gap in terms of incentivising the academics for uploading their research on the repository. To a larger extent, the incentives we have are for research and publishing that we receive from the department of higher education and training. We encourage our academics to publish on OA platforms. Whether we will have incentives schemes for that, l think it’s something that we will have to discuss because incentives would normally have some form of financial implications attached to it. We will have to look carefully at what the overall benefits would be for the institution”.

A few respondents cited the issue of developing an OA policy that will see all academics being mandated to submit their work on the IR. One respondent explained that; “The university must have a policy that compels all academics and researchers to ensure that whatever work they are involved with need to be published through the IR”.

One respondent was of the opinion that the university should “Assure academics of preservation and integrity of published works on the IR”. The same sentiments were shared by another who said, “Integrity and safety of the ideas or information published on the IR must be upheld”. Long term planning and long term commitment to the IR was suggested as a strategy that the university could consider, otherwise, without a maintenance plan, it would be a waste of time.

Copyright issues are of concern in OA publishing. Some respondents suggested that the university should take responsibility of copyright issues and negotiate with publishers so that academics are able to publish in the IR. Some respondents felt that it was the responsibility of the university to educate academics and researchers about copyright and OA.

Providing more human resources to manage the IR functions was mentioned as one of the strategies the university could adopt to improve the IR. One respondent called for the appointment of an independent outside person to take charge while another highlighted that the few library staff that are available should show enthusiasm, such that academics are attracted to the service.

A significant number of respondents were unsure of what the university should do to improve the development of the IR. They clearly indicated ‘unsure’, with some writing ‘N/A’, while another explained that, “Due to my lack of information regarding IR, I am unable to respond

145 to this question”. In addition to this, there was one respondent who said, “I don't know enough about the IR”.

This question requesting strategies was answered by 91 (55%) respondents, many could not propose any strategies while some had ideas as explained above.

The interviews yielded no feedback on what the university should work on to improve IR use. However, there was feedback on what the university is doing to advance OA. One interview participant highlighted that:

“At national level, there are discussions on how we store, access and utilise the knowledge that we produce. There is a strategy the university is taking, not only UKZN, but universities in South Africa, to go OA and discourage the publishing houses subscription model. In other countries like Germany, the government is now providing funding to the universities to publish with publishers like Elsevier, but on OA. Universities in South Africa are already developing a strategy in that regard. On top of this, one of the discussions we had with publishing houses like Elsevier, for example, was that, if we as an institution, purchase papers of our own authors, we should be given the opportunity to keep it in-house in our repository so that in the future, if we do not subscribe to Elsevier anymore, we still have access because it’s our research that we produced”.