Listen ... Benefits of Open Access You can listen to an audio only podcast version of this video here.
This resource is licenced under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence by Claire Sewell, the Office of Scholarly Communication, Cambridge University Libraries.
One of the most important things librarians can do in terms of Open Access is advocacy. Open Access is still a relatively new concept to many researchers and they can sometimes feel as though it has been forced upon them by funders (and librarians). Making them aware of the wider benefits of sharing their work openly can go a long way towards helping them make the change to open practices.
Think about what you know about the open access to research outputs. What would you say are the main benefits to both researchers and the public? Think about the similarities and differences between these benefits and how you would explain these to your audience.
Hopefully you will have come up with a list of benefits to both audiences of making research outputs open and noted some of the similarities and differences. The short video below highlights some of the main benefits of Open Access to both researchers and the wider public:
As you can see there is a quite a lot of overlap between the two groups. When talking to people about Open Access the most important thing is to find the reason(s) that will appeal to them. By using a combination of reasons you will find it easier to persuade them of the wider benefits of Open Access.
