The University of Texas at Austin has a significant support system in place to support OA at the university. UT Libraries has several OA publishing initiatives and OA infrastructure projects that they financially support. They have contracts that allow UT faculty, staff, and students to publish for free with 7 different OA journals. UT Libraries is a member of Texas Digital Library (TDL), a collaborative consortium. TDL hosts UT’s institutional repository (Texas ScholarWorks) for general scholarly works including journal articles, conference papers, posters, theses and dissertations, presentations, white papers, technical reports, and other content of scholarly or historic importance, as well as their OA data repository (Texas Data Repository). TDL also hosts their electronic thesis and dissertation submission system (Vireo).
In addition to financial support and infrastructure, UT Libraries "provide support in the form of online resources, workshops, consultations, and advice to faculty, committees, and working groups on campus." (Lyon) UT Libs maintains an active blog and twitter with relevant and up to date information about their OA initiatives and their institutional repositories. UT has an ongoing working group called the Sustainable Open Scholarship Working Group that met during the 2020-2021 academic year to engage the campus in the development and articulation of strategies for how the University of Texas Libraries could "transform access to information resources in support of the educational and research missions of The University of Texas at Austin." (Lyon) Their final report will be released this Fall.
To assess the success of UT’s OA initiatives, a librarian would need to begin by gathering information. A survey of faculty, staff, and graduate students would be a cost-effective way to begin gathering information. A survey might include the following questions:
What department/field are they affiliated with?
Senior, Junior Faculty, Student, or Staff?
(If comfortable disclosing) Demographic information
How often do they pre-print or OA publish research and/or submit data to repositories
With which journals have they published in the last 2 years? OA and non-OA
Which OA journal(s) do they submit to most frequently:
How often do they use OA journals UT has contracts with in their research and professional work?
Are there any OA journals they would like to see the University have contracts with in the future?
A librarian would then use the survey data to determine how best to increase awareness and current usage of OA journals and UT repositories, as well as identify any discrepancies across departments, fields, tiers, or demographics. An OA or assessment librarian could then identify barriers and obstacles for groups who do not participate in OA via focus groups. During the focus group a librarian and participants could workshop actionable plans for sustainable scholarship using CBPR methods.
While the survey would have quick turnaround, the focus group project could take a while. If the university is looking for justification of OA initiative investments, this assessment method may not yield results fast enough. Moreover, you would need to incentivize and compensate participants financially, and not all budgets can afford this kind of assessment. Surveys are affordable, but focus groups are cost-prohibitive, usually costing between 4,000 and 12,000 dollars.
The project would serve to educate users about OA as well as provide the university libraries with a community informed action plan. It is a model that, if successful, would be replicable and repeatable for perennial assessment of OA initiatives.
References
Lyon, Colleen. "Open Access at UT Austin." University of Texas Library. Web. 01 Nov. 2021.