You may be aware that UUK and JISC held an event on June 15th for VCs, PVCs for research and senior managers to examine the possible sector response to developments in open access (http://bit.ly/du84OD).

The event provided evidence to senior university managers on why open access matters to their institution, what benefits it brings and what they can do about it.

Open access offers the potential for both efficiency savings and economic benefits in the longer term.  In an Open Access world, efficiency savings for the sector could amount to over £100m p.a.  The economic benefits of open access to UK research, and therefore the additional contribution that universities could make to the UK economy and society, could be as much as £170m p.a.

Given the current economic climate, such figures are commanding attention and likely to promote action.  However, the costs and benefits may well fall unequally across individual institutions and have implications for institutional repository use, open access publication funds, open access policies and many other developments in this field.

To help institutions discover how the figures work out for them, the Research Communications Strategy project is organising free regional follow-up workshops aimed at institutions' research support officers, financial modellers and repository managers or administrators, who will be asked to collect certain data to bring with them to build their own customised models. All data used will be kept confidential to each institutional delegate.

We are holding events in Glasgow, London, Birmingham and Leeds.

*             Glasgow, University of Glasgow - 15th July

*             London, Woburn House - 21st July

*             Birmingham, Conference Aston - 23rd July

*             Leeds, Rose Bowl, Leeds Metropolitan University - 29th July

Delegates will be guided by consultant Alma Swan through an enhanced version of the model used in the Houghton Report and will be able to leave with financial projections for their own institution. They will also be able to hear from representatives of other universities how open access has been implemented in their institutions, the financial implications of this and how valuable they have found it to be.

Further information and booking can be found at: http://crc.nottingham.ac.uk/events

We look forward to seeing  many of you at one of these events. If you have any queries, please contact me at the address below.

Dr Amanda Hodgson
Open Access Adviser - Research Communications Project
Centre for Research Communications
University of Nottingham
Greenfield Medical Library
Queens Medical Centre
Nottingham
NG7 2UH
UK
+44 (0)115 84 68601