How to better publicise OSM as a resource to academia

One of our goals (this year, but also in general) is to promote use and contribution of OSM in academia. My own observation is that there's substantial potential for a free geographic database most particularly outside of the expected university schools who likely already have access to paid for GIS, but this is hard to ascertain as someone outside of the sector.

I'm unsure of the best way to do this, but speaking with some friends who work in universities, a suggested starting point was to post to one of the JISCMAIL mailing lists (probably one of the LIS ones), rather than try and find individual university research resource managers.

There I'd ask how OSM is (hopefully) discoverable in a library or by researchers in general, any improvements that could be facilitated, and potentially publicise the talent directory.

What are your thoughts?