The Director’s View: Triumph for UCL at OAI9 in Geneva

OAI9 took place in the University of Geneva on 17-19 June 2015. The CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication takes place every 2 years and is a magnet for all those in Europe (and from further afield) who are interested in new modes of communication for scholarly outputs.

Scholarly Communication issues are global issues. No institution on its own has an answer to the myriad of challenges which new technologies and new forms of research, teaching and learning outputs pose. Working in a European context is an excellent way to seek solutions in the brave new world we have entered.

The Workshop attracted 229 attenders from Europe and further afield and the Programme for this innovative Workshop can be seen here. There were 7 main sessions:

• Keynote from Michael Nielsen on Beyond Open Access
• Technical Session, led by Herbert Van De Sompel
• Barriers and Impact, led by David Prosser and Melissa Hagemann
• Open Science Workflows, led by Neil Jacobs
• Quality Assurance, led by Frank Scholze
• The Institution as Publisher, led by Paul Ayris
• Digital Curation and the preservation of large and complex digital objects, led by Gilles Falquet

There were also 6 Tutorials, poster sessions with over 20 posters, and 6 Breakout Groups. The social Programme involved the now-traditional Drinks Sharing event, where attenders are invited to bring a bottle of their local wine/beer/spirits to share. The formal Workshop Reception took place in the iconic setting of Musée Ariana, the Swiss Museum of Ceramics and Glass.

The Workshop sessions themselves took place in 2 stunning new research buildings – the Graduate Institute and Campus Biotech (pictured here).

UCL was well represented at the Workshop. Jaimee Biggins from UCL Press presented in one of the Tutorials on the opening day on the role of the Institution as Publisher. Speaking personally, I chaired the OAI9 Programme Committee, the plenary session on the Institution as Publisher and also led a Breakout Group with 25 attenders on the same theme. The innovative Open Access Business model of UCL Press received nothing but praise from attenders and the download figures – over 3000 for our 3 launch titles in June alone – was widely seen as a sign of success by Workshop attenders.

All the plenary sessions have been filmed and these videos are available online linked to the Programme. Accompanying powerpoints are also available here too – very useful for my CPD after the Workshop and for placing UCL’s scholarly communication developments in a European context. OAI9 awaits feedback from the Evaluation Forms, but the Programme and Local Organising Committees are already planning OAI10 in Geneva in June 2017!

Paul Ayis

Director of UCL Library Services

CEO, UCL Press