Scholar Works - Scholarly Communication - Subject Guides at Grand Valley State University

Talking with your faculty about IRs

Make sure your faculty are aware of our institution's repository.
Use the relationships you have built as a liaison to promote ScholarWorks@GVSU.
Explain that the rising cost of journal subscriptions is not sustainable for libraries.
Show how the repository increases access to faculty work, equating to more readership and more citations.
Let the faculty know that the library will provide support so that their workload is not increased due to participation.
Highlight the repository's function as a long-term preservation tool.
Share current events impacting the scholarly communications field.
- Harvard faculty recently voted to mandate open access for publications.
- NIH has mandated public access to health science research via PubMed Central.

Libguide

Scholarly Communications Libguide created by Ryan DeCoster (12/2008)

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Library & Information graduate student

Thoughts to Consider

Rather than approach faculty with a set, one-size fits all promotional spiel, these library liaisons operate under the guidance that a personalized, tailored approach works best. As we learned from the work-practice study, what faculty members care about most is their research. Expressing interest in their research, for example by reading a recent article by the faculty member prior to the meeting and then asking a couple of questions about the work, will get their attention and will usually stimulate a very enthusiastic conversation.

Nancy Foster & Susan Gibbons, 2005

Faculty who choose to rely on institutional repositories to disseminate and preserve their work are placing a great deal of trust in their institution and in the integrity, wisdom, and competence of the people who manage it.

Clifford Lynch, 2003

Know your audience. Focus on the change-makers. Know their turf, use their issues.

Dean Lee Van Orsdel, 2007

Those benefit factors included and increase in (1) the chance to communicate research findings to peers, (2) potential impact of research work, (3) larger readership, and (4) an altruistic intention to make research work available to other researchers.

Reasons for IR contribution: