Open Access / Repositories
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PeerJ leads a high-quality, low-cost new breed of open-access publisher | Science
Agile and cheap open-access publishers, led by PeerJ, make the traditional publishing model look a little dated. Photograph: Getty Images We all know by now that traditional academic publishing is in an appalling mess . Locking publicly funded research behind a paywall is completely unacceptable , and happily our government understands this . The Finch Report has rightly mandated that research must be published as open access. So profiteering publishers, seeing the writing on the wall, are offering authors open-access options.
Open access will cause problems for learned societies' journals, accepts Finch
The UK’s move towards open-access publishing will inevitably place some learned societies’ journals into financial jeopardy, according to the chair of the committee that recommended making the transition. Dame Janet Finch today told the first hearing of the Lords Science and Technology Committee’s open-access inquiry that the government-convened Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings, which she chaired last year, spent “a lot of time” debating the likely effect of a move to open access on the viability of journals. She pointed out that the group, which included representatives from learned societies, librarians, publishers and universities, envisaged a “mixed economy” of open access and subscription publishing persisting during a steady transition to full open access. But she conceded there was “no doubt” that some journals produced by learned societies would “find some difficulty finding a business model that will work in the mixed economy”.
Finch access plan unlikely to fly across the Atlantic
Report draws US notice but experts say journals will not ‘play RCUK game’. Paul Jump reports Felice Levine, executive director of learned society the American Educational Research Association, told the Academy of Social Science’s Implementing Finch conference last week that the Finch report on open access had been “noticed” in the US. However, she said she did not expect its strong preference for author-pays gold open access over self-archiving green open access - which has been endorsed by the UK government and the research councils - to be echoed in US policy. The report, which was headed by former Keele University vice-chancellor Dame Janet Finch, made clear that the speed at which other countries moved to implement gold open access would be crucial to minimising the cost of the transition in the UK.Report reveals impact of open access on libraries
4 September 2012 Academic libraries need to evolve to continue to meet the needs of their users in an open-access world, reports Sian Harris Open access (OA) has been making the headlines recently – and not just in industry-specific publications. The interest stems from large-scale studies and big policy decisions over recent months.
While the Australian Research Council considers its policy on open-access publication and others within the scientific community call for the increased sharing of scientific data, the British are already a step ahead. They are implementing plans to make all publicly funded scientific research available to anyone by 2014 – for free. This signals a dramatic change for British universities and academics whose current scientific research is only available through expensive subscription-based journals. But as we edge closer to open-access publishing, there has been much hand-wringing among the scientific community. The dilemma is this: all scientists want to publish in high-impact journals but we also want our work accessible to as wide an audience as possible.
Open access will change the world, if scientists want it to
Information & Guidance »
In support of the aims of the OAIG, to provide “accurate information about Open Access and the relevant work of its members to the sector and more widely.” This resource pack provides guidance on key aspects of Open Access, links to recommended resources and advice for action across 7 major themes for repositories. This guidance draws on a wide range of national and international information which has been reviewed and selected by Open Access advocates in the UK. William Nixon, Service Development Manager for the Institutional repository Enlighten, at the University of Glasgow, talks about the Open Access Resource Pack. <p style="text-align:right;color:#A8A8A8"></p>Exploring open access to save monographs, the question is – how?
You’ve just spent years researching and then writing your monograph. This is the book that will kick start your career – your proposal was accepted by your top publisher – you got great comments back from the peer reviewers – you’ve negotiated a great front cover and the blurb is short and snappy. You can’t wait to have the book in your hands and show your mum, flaunt it under the nose of the VC and place it on your bookshelf. Yes it’s going to look great in your new office and the citations will start flowing soon. Yep. This is the beginning of….
Licensing Data as Open Data
One of the findings that has emerged clearly from the UK OER Programme and from the UK Discovery work is that for a healthy content ecosystem, information about the content needs to be available to many different systems, services and users. Appropriately licensing the metadata and feeds is crucial to downstream discovery and use. The OER IPR Support Project have developed this fabulous animation to introduce the importance of open data licensing in an engaging way. It was developed out of the UK OER Programme but informed by the work of several other areas including UK Discovery, Managing Research Data, the Strategic Content Alliance, and sharing XCRI course feeds. With thanks to the many people who helped in the storyboarding, scripting and feedback: particularly Phil Barker, Tony Hirst and Martin Hawskey.Open access
Open access is free online access to the outputs of publicly funded research. It is typically focused on peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers. Benefits Opening the knowledge base to all means researchers can reach a greater audience and find that their work is more widely read and cited, institutions gain an enhanced reputation as their research becomes more visible, funding agencies see a greater return on their investment, and publishers find that the impact of their journals increases. Explore open access
Inventor of the world wide web Sir Tim Berners-Lee after his turn at the Olympics opening ceremony. The growth of the web has driven open access publishing. Photograph: Getty Images Read all about it: academic publishing is changing faster than anyone has realised, according to a new study reported today in BMC Medicine .
The inexorable rise of open access scientific publishing | Stephen Curry | Science
Gold is good, but it's not the only colour, RCUK says
Research councils try to convince that their open-access policy is not monotone. Paul Jump writes Research Councils UK is "staggered" by the widespread misunderstanding of its new open-access policy, which it insists is not "anti-green". The comments were made by Mark Thorley, chair of RCUK's Research Outputs Network, at a discussion event called Open Access: Going for Gold?A Q&A with co-architect of the Big Deal Jan Velterop follows this introduction The scholarly communication system has been in serious difficulties for several decades now, a problem generally referred to as the “ serials crisis ”. The nub of the issue is that the price of scholarly journals has consistently risen faster than the consumer price index. This has seen research libraries increasingly struggle to meet the costs of subscribing to all the journals their researchers need. In the early 1990s, publishers found themselves in a situation where every time they increased the price of a journal they were confronted with a wave of cancellations.
Open and Shut?: Open Access in the UK: Reinventing the Big Deal
Push for Open Access to Publicly Financed Research Swells Abroad - Technology
By Jennifer Howard Researchers, publishers, and librarians have spent a lot of this year firing up the longstanding debate over access to published research. You've probably heard the big questions: Who gets to see the results of work the public helps pay for, when should they get to see it, and who's going pay for it? This summer, the fervor has gone global, with policy makers in Britain, elsewhere in Europe, and in Australia signaling that they're ready to come up with some answers. Details vary from country to country and proposal to proposal, but the overall warming trend looks very clear. Last month, David Willetts, the British minister in charge of universities and science, announced that the government had accepted almost all the recommendations in a June report from the Finch Group, a committee set up to explore how to broaden access to published research.by Louise Morrison ( @ljmorr ) With the publication of the Finch Report , Open Access and Institutional Repositories are hot topics at the moment. So it seems like an opportune moment to bring up an issue that’s been bothering me for a while. Why is it so hard to find Open Access publications? I’m not talking about the problem of research being behind paywalls (that’s another issue) but about the practical difficulties of accessing the freely available content currently available via Institutional Repositories.
5 reasons why I can’t find Open Access publications « MmITS Blog
Research Intelligence - 'Predators' who lurk in plain cite
Paul Jump on dubious open-access journals keen to attract unwary academics - and their cash Credit: Kobal Wolves in the fold ‘predatory’ journals are sinking their teeth into the opportunities presented by open-access publishing models When Alastair Harden began receiving emailed invitations earlier this year to submit papers to various similar-sounding open-access journals with what he saw as little obvious relation to his discipline, the PhD student and sessional lecturer in Classics at the University of Reading smelled a rat. Closer examination revealed that the journals were all published by the Centre for Promoting Ideas, which, despite its British spelling, claims on its website to be based at what appears to be a non-existent address in New York City.repository management
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