Opportunities for a wider collaboration across institutional OA support services?

The implementation of Open Access policies such as the HEFCE's or the RCUK's is a collective effort. By doing their bit, all institutions are effectively collaborating in the joint progress towards a fully Open Access landscape. However, by chasing Open Access for every single institutional publication, each institution is actually operating like an island. With the current co-authorship patterns for publications, having the manuscripts for all papers chased by all institutions at the same time looks like an unnecessary duplication of effort. Automated brokering tools like the Publications Router are bound to introduce some efficiencies in this complex workflow. This presentation argues that on top of the automation, there is much value in a strong, collaborative exchange of information across institutional research support services. A number of processes will be examined where this cross-institutional collaboration is actually required, and some practices carried out at Strathclyde will be presented as examples.