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Publish an OSPO Newsletter §

Pattern Summary §

Create a regular, curated newsletter to maintain awareness of and engagement with the OSPO amongst a broad audience of stakeholders.

Problem / Challenge §

Academic OSPOs need to maintain visibility and demonstrate value to diverse stakeholders (e.g. university leadership, alumni and external partners). These stakeholders are likely to be interested in the OSPO's work but don't have time or inclination to follow detailed discussions.

OSPOs also need a simple entry point for students, researchers, open source projects and potential contributors who want to learn more about potential opportunities.

Without regular, digestible updates, the OSPO risks becoming invisible and losing support from decision makers and missing opportunities to engage with interested parties

Pattern Category §

  • Advocacy, Governance & Policy
  • Awareness
  • Community Building
  • Demonstrating value as an OSPO

Context §

A university or research institution creating large volumes of research outputs across every discipline.

An OSPO has been established.

Forces §

Stakeholders are busy people who receive many emails and may quickly unsubscribe from anything that wastes their time.

The university may have existing newsletter platforms and brand guidelines that must be followed.

OSPO staff have time and resources to produce a newsletter on a regular basis.

Solution §

Publish a regular newsletter to raise awareness and visibility of the OSPO.

Gathering subscribers §

Subscribers can be added or identified in a number of ways: * Adding a join button to the OSPO website. * Providing an opt-in for attendees during registration for OSPO events. * Providing a join link on any email/digital communications from the wider university (including the newsletter itself). * Providing an opt-out via self-subscription on the wider university lists service. * Direct promotion of the newsletter to interested groups on campus (e.g. tech groups, coder clubs etc.) * Direct promotion of the newsletter to maintainers and contributors identified in the discovery process for OSS projects on campus. * Direct promotion of the newsletter to key decision makers and leadership with an opt-in (or simple opt-out) to join.

Subscription opt-in should include a clear description of the frequency and content of the newsletter.

A prominent unsubscribe option should also be included in all newsletters.

Select tool or platform §

  • Liaise with communications colleagues on requirements to use university-approved platforms or tools for newsletters.
  • If an existing university system for newsletters is not in place, explore a range of self-hosted solutions.

Plan content and format of newsletter §

The content and format of the newsletter should take into account the OSPO’s priorities, its audience and the staff time available to produce the newsletter on a regular basis.

A regular newsletter may contain some or all of the following content: * Spotlight/Feature: One major story, achievement, or community profile. * Highlights: Brief updates on projects, contributions, or milestones. * Upcoming opportunities: Events, workshops, contribution requests, important deadlines (bulleted list). * Resources: 2-3 links to useful tools, guides, or relevant external content. * Call to action: Clear next step readers can take to engage with OSPO activities.

The newsletter also presents an opportunity to model open source practices by actively promoting contributions from the academic community. An open source platform inviting updates from the community can be signposted in the newsletter and/or on the OSPO website.

Publishing cadence §

The publishing cadence should take staff time into consideration.

While monthly newsletters tend to be a popular option. Publishing on a semesterly basis may also be an option.

Build consistent readership by scheduling the newsletter publication for the same time/date.

Publish ‘Special editions’ for major OSPO announcements relating to achievements or deadline-sensitive information that would benefit subscribers.

Production process §

Set an internal deadline of 1-2 weeks before publication for content gathering.

Have at least one other person review before sending.

If possible, maintain a content backlog for slower months.

Document the process in a playbook to ensure continuity.

Newsletter metrics §

Track basic metrics (open rates, click-throughs) to understand engagement.

Resulting Context §

An academic Open Source Program Office (OSPO) gains several strategic benefits from publishing a regular newsletter:

  • Increasing visibility of the OSPO and its services: The newsletter serves as a regular channel for promoting the OSPO, signposting supports for open source projects and the academic community; and also attracting new contributors/participants to open source projects.
  • Showcasing the OSPO’s impact and value: The newsletter can be used as a vehicle to amplify the OSPO’s contributions to the academic community and the wider institution.
  • Communicating the importance of open source as a research tool/artifact: Newsletter articles can highlight how open source work connects to research, teaching, and the institution's mission.

Additional Learning from the Advanced Research Computing Centre (ARC), University College of London §

We have a general mailing list, which covers everything ARC does - not just the OSPO.

We have a join button on our website and we also offer an opt-in for the newsletter in our event registrations.

Our newsletter is published once a month with room for sending out-of-schedule messages for events that wouldn't be practical to advertise on the newsletter day.

Additional learning from the University of California, Santa Barbara OSPO, UC OSPO Network §

The sign up link to the UCSB OSPO newsletter can be found on our website and in the newsletter itself.

In an open source survey that we conducted as part of the OSS discovery process on campus, we included a question where people could consent to be added to the mailing list.

We also advertise our events on other groups' Slacks/Google chats, (e.g. the IT Google group, Women in Tech Google Group, UC-Tech Slack, etc.), which helps boost mailing list sign-ups.

We use Constant Contact as part of the Library Communications Department's license and we use templates created by a staff graphic designer.

Our newsletter is published on a monthly basis with a brief reminder email the day before our monthly meetups. All other announcements go on Slack.

Additional Learning from the University of California OSPO Network §

Each campus in the UC network now has their own mailing list.

Before each campus’s first meetup, we used the results of a GitHub scraping for our repo browser, and sent meetup invites to a subset of that scraping. The Principal Investigators on each campus also added relevant people to the invite list.

We didn’t subscribe invitees to the mailing list. They opted-in using a link in the invite or the meetup slides.

Each campus is using different platforms, including Google Groups and Mailchimp. Apart from UC Santa Barbara, we liaised with the Library Communications teams on the mailing platforms.

Additional Learning from the George Washington University Open Source Program Office §

We have a few different categories in our subscribers list: contacts from our stakeholders; attendees and speakers from our Open Source Conferences; students who have directly reached out to us; and a list of student organizations that are related to engineering, coding, computer science etc.

We have also added a "join our newsletter" button to our website. This button resulted in about 20 new contacts over a couple of months.

GW's mass email software is Emma. We have a sub account in the library and we requested access from the GW Comms Team.

We send out a once monthly newsletter and sporadic announcement emails for various events/workshops.

Additional Learning from the University of Texas OSPO §

We used a discovery process to find OSS projects on campus and added all relevant emails.

We also have an add button on our website and are findable and open to all in the UT Austin lists service.

We also collect emails from all events and add everyone who attends.

We do not use a formal template but we have our own ‘homegrown’ format where we use or adapt sections from the previous newsletter.

UT has a lists service through the central IT office. We use that lists service. Our central communications team does use Emma for campus wide communications, but we don’t use the central communications team or software.

We publish each semester and we also announce training, events, funding opportunities, requests for partnership/help on the list when appropriate.

We also provide a sharing function for people subscribed to the list.

Known Instances §

References §

A sample of TODO Group’s OSPO News. Scroll down the accompanying README.md for information about contributing.

Contributors & Acknowledgement §

In alphabetical order: * Angela Newell, University of Texas at Austin * Ciara Flanagan, https://orcid.org/0009-0005-3153-7673 * David Lippert, George Washington University, https://orcid.org/0009-0003-6444-9595 * David Pérez-Suárez, University College London, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0784-6909 * Laura Langdon, University of California, Davis * Rosemary Pauley, George Washington University, https://orcid.org/0009-0008-9354-4301 * Virginia Scarlett, University of California, Santa Barbara, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4156-2849