United Kingdom

Our 2021 and 2024 competitions highlight the diversity of contributions, from librarians and technicians to research software engineers and administrators — vital roles often overlooked in traditional assessments. In 2023, the Festival of Hidden REF gathered professionals and policymakers to discuss creating a more effective and equitable research environment.

The Hidden REF campaign recognises all research outputs and roles that make research possible.

I will share our initiatives, outcomes, and strategies for gaining recognition for these roles, inviting the UKSG community to collaborate and discuss strategie

UKSG Annual Conference 2025

The hidden REF, celebrating all research outputs

The UKSG Annual Conference is a major event in the scholarly communications calendar which attracts delegates each year from around the world - librarians, publishers, content providers, consultants and intermediaries.

UKSG Annual Conference 2024

lightning talk

Lancaster University is a typical, mid-sized UK institution. With a small research support team, the library needs innovative technology and partners to meet the ever-increasing challenges of the rapidly evolving Open Research World. This presentation focuses on solutions to the cumbersome depositing of publications in institutional repositories (IR).
World-wide almost every university has an IR, and nearly everyone faces the challenges of lacking data quality and coverage, with faculty frustrated over the clunkiness and overwhelming manual workload of data entry. Furthermore, research outputs increasingly require a plethora of checks necessitating FAIR and evermore extensive meta-data. Is this article eligible for APC funding or covered by an agreement, and compliant with our and the funders OA policies?

Lessons Learned in the UK from Navigating the FAIR Open Research World: A Collaborative Approach to Transforming Library Workflows

Jisc’s Open Policy Finder, formerly Sherpa Services, has undergone significant changes over the past year as part of our commitment to building a future-ready, streamlined, and efficient product to support open access workflows. These changes represent not just a fresh identity but also the foundation of a platform designed to adapt and scale for future use cases, ensuring continued relevance and impact in a rapidly evolving environment.

This lightning talk will showcase the key enhancements we’ve implemented, including the launch of our unified website and the rebranding of the service in November 2024. We will share our roadmap for further development, focusing on creating solutions that anticipate and respond to the changing demands of our users.

Jisc’s open policy finder – re-developing Sherpa and looking to the future

This session explores the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in the research and knowledge ecosystem, drawing on the ARL/CNI 2035 Scenarios report. Dr. Leo S. Lo, Dean of University Libraries at the University of New Mexico, will present four divergent scenarios developed through extensive stakeholder engagement, highlighting critical uncertainties and strategic focal points for libraries and research institutions. These scenarios range from democratized and socially integrated AI to autonomous AI systems, offering insights into potential challenges and opportunities.

Navigating AI Futures: overview

Education and AI: between principles for the present and speculative futures.

In relation to AI, Universities can be seen to be shaped through contradictions:

• driving developments in AI through research, while being destabilised by them in education;

• providing stability and stewardship in relation to technocultural knowledge production, while undergoing significant disruption, instability and transformation;

• adapting and reacting in the present while anticipating speculative futures.

An engagement with the speculative futures of the ARL/CNI 2035 Scenarios report, and the role of speculation, can help to enrich strategic thinking about these contradictions and others playing out in Higher Education.

AI for Academia

Alan Oliver, Director of Community Engagement at Clarivate, will then discuss the work of Clarivate’s Academia AI Advisory Council, which includes Leo and 12 other Council members representing libraries and academia across 9 countries and 4 continents. The Advisory Council addresses key issues identified in the scenarios, such as bias mitigation, data integrity, and the evolving role of libraries.

This session aims to stimulate strategic thinking and foster dialogue on preparing for an AI-influenced future in scholarly communication and research practices.

Advising and guiding AI Initiatives

Academic libraries are ripe targets for cyberattack, given both the high value of the content they licence and the sensitive data hosted in the campus networks to which they are a portal. Criminals use social engineering as well as brute force attacks to try to gain access to both campus information and campus systems – and too often, they are successful. In this presentation, a publisher, an academic library director, and a higher-education cybersecurity consultant will share experiences that illustrate these dangers and share strategies libraries can use to help safeguard their institutions’ networks

Cyber Security and the Academic Library: What to Be Worried about and What to Do

Neurodiversity is increasingly recognised as a natural variation in human cognition, encompassing conditions such as ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and dyspraxia. Neurodivergent individuals possess unique strengths and face distinct challenges in academic environments. As a librarian with ADHD, I have experienced at firsthand the barriers and frustrations that neurodivergent students and staff can encounter when navigating academic libraries. This presentation will draw upon those personal experiences and wider research to explore how libraries can create more inclusive and supportive environments for neurodivergent users by tailoring digital resources and training to their specific needs.

The panel discussion will begin by sharing personal experiences of being neurodivergent within the workplace, examining the challenges faced by neurodivergent individuals in academic libraries, such as information overload, sensory sensitivities, and difficulties navigating complex systems. It will then highlight the opportunities for libraries to provide targeted support through a range of digital resources and training initiatives. These could include curated collections of accessible tools and resources, online tutorials and guides with alternative formats, assistive technologies, and self-paced online courses. The presentation will also emphasise the importance of fostering a neurodiversity-affirming culture in libraries through staff training, inclusive design practices, and the development of peer-to-peer support networks, such as buddy schemes.

This presentation will support library staff in creating a more inclusive and supportive library environment for all users. It will also contribute to the ongoing conversation about neurodiversity and inclusivity in higher education, aligning with the UKSG conference’s commitment to diversity and the exchange of ideas on scholarly communication.

Empowering Neurodivergent Staff, Learners and
Researchers: The Library as a Partner in Success

This talk provides an overview of some of the sector-specific challenges facing marginalised researchers in the UK and highlights the work universities and funders are doing to begin tackling these obstacles. Approaching the issue from a research culture perspective, this session focuses on data collected from staff surveys, HR records, and funding databases at University of Leeds to outline the challenges facing marginalised researchers. While these data do not provide an exhaustive list of challenges, they provide early insights into the deep-rooted systemic inequities in the research sector as well as opportunities for making a more inclusive, supportive, and equitable research culture.

Challenges and Opportunities: Building an Equitable Research Culture for Marginalised Researchers

Research metrics are widely used in recruitment and promotion decisions but reliance on these metrics has led to unintended consequences, including gender disparities within the academic landscape. It is well documented that women in research, particularly those in early to mid-career stages, often face challenges such as lower publication rates and fewer citations than their male counterparts, while remaining underrepresented in senior positions. However, the underlying causes of these discrepancies remain unclear; this project proposes an investigation into the relationship between research culture, gender, and career outcomes, aiming to identify scalable metrics that can better support gender equity in research.

Metrics that Matter: Identifying and Testing Scalable Metrics for a Gender Equitable Research Culture

The panel discussion, titled “Stopping Short of the Goal: Is Open Access Really Fulfilling Its Promise to the Public?” will delve into whether Open Access truly serves the public interest as it often said to be aiming to.

While Open Access is often described as making taxpayer-funded research freely accessible, the conversation will explore if access is sufficient, or if the concept falls short by not addressing the accessibility of information in a way that the general public can understand and apply in their lives. And if it is insufficient, what should be done to support this part of the mission of OA. Is the purpose of Open Access solely to facilitate academic exchange, or should it be evolving to bridge the gap between researchers and the public, increasing public engagement and understanding of scientific findings? This panel will tackle these complex questions and discuss if there’s a need to differentiate between Open Access and science communication, assessing the distinct but complementary roles both play in disseminating trusted, comprehensible information.

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Next from UKSG Annual Conference 2025

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