The HHuLOA (Hull, Huddersfield, Lincoln Open Access) project is a two-year Jisc-funded project, which seeks to identify how open access (OA) support mechanisms can be used to assist with the development of research. One such area is policy landscape, which has shifted dramatically in the past two years. Many academic staff have been left confused, frustrated and stressed by new obligations placed upon long-established publishing practices and by the way in which these changes have been communicated. This paper describes the project's initial work undertaken in this area, with the aim of enabling academic audiences to better navigate the policy environment they find themselves in to comply and better understand the rights they have when using OA. Communicating the open access policy landscapeThe HHuLOA projectThe Universities of Hull, Huddersfield and Lincoln are three medium-sized institutions in the north of England. Each University has a growing research portfolio and, like other universities, each has been active in supporting open access (OA) for many years. This has included playing an active role in the development of their local institutional repository, looking to exploit technology to further OA services.All three are institutions seeking to develop their research capability and reputation further through a number of internal and external projects. One such project was the Jisc Open Access Good Practice Pathfinder programme, 1 which runs from 2014-2016. The institutions successfully bid for funding in this programme as the HHuLOA (Hull, Huddersfield, Lincoln Open Access) project.2 The aim of the HHuLOA project was to identify how OA support mechanisms can be used to assist with the development of research, working towards a more effective and rewarding submission to the post-2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF). Working together, the three institutions have been able to bring a wealth of experience and innovative thinking to capturing existing and novel good practice. This has then been shared with the aim of supporting other institutions to develop their research capability and to use OA as a means of supporting this. · developing OA life cycles from different stakeholder perspectives · developing local repository systems to meet policy requirements · exploring how OA can be managed across institutional stakeholders, including research support offices · working with Jisc to inform development of services that meet institutional requirements · understanding how OA access might be embedded within e-resource management processes to aid local streamlining of workflows.Alongside these, the key area of OA policies merited attention, as the landscape was becoming ever more complex. This is an area where all three institutions were struggling to understand the various policies that existed and develop ways of communicating these to local academic audiences. This paper describes the work undertaken in this area, with the aim of enabling academic audiences to better navigate the policy environment they find ...

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