Blog Archives
The NECTAR journey: from acceptance to compliance
The University’s new Open Access policy – driven by HEFCE requirements for the post-2014 REF – has a simple message at heart for publishing researchers: act on acceptance. In practice, this means timely deposit of items in NECTAR, and we’ve made a few changes to help with this. This post takes a look at the NECTAR workflow, from acceptance to publication.
The future of printed academic books
If you haven’t previously read ‘The Conversation‘ then let me introduce you to this excellent blog with this post on the future of academic print books.
Written by Donald Barclay, Deputy University Librarian at the University of California Merced, the article highlights the impact of falling budgets and rising prices on academic book sales and proposes the open access monograph as a viable alternative. But first, he argues, academic distrust of digital publication has to be overcome…
OA and the research lifecycle 7: disseminating your research
In deciding whether and how to provide open access to your published work you need to consider:
- The nature of the research output
- Your funder’s open access policy
- The availability of funds to pay article processing charges (if necessary)
- Your publisher’s open access policy
- The availability of an open access subject or institutional repository
OA and the research lifecycle 6: writing up
In terms of writing up, the preparation needed for open access is not dissimilar from that required for other types of publication.
A major consideration is whether you have made use of third party copyright material, i.e. material that you did not create or for which you are no longer the rights holder.
There are a number of useful websites which cover this topic, for example the University of Exeter’s Third party copyright page or Taylor and Francis’ Using third party material in your article, but the bottom line is that, unless you qualify for an exception to copyright, you will need the rights owner’s permission to use third party material in your open access work. If you were publishing your paper in a traditional journal, the publisher would make sure that you sought the appropriate permission; if you are making your work open access yourself (for example by uploading your thesis to NECTAR) then it is your responsibility to ensure you do not break the law.
OA and the research lifecycle 3: bidding for funding
Open access to published work
Many funders, especially those awarding public monies, now make it a prerequisite of funding that all published outputs should be made open access. You should make it clear in your bid how you intend to comply with this requirement.
The main issues you need to address at the bidding stage are:
- Does your prospective funder have a policy on open access?
- If so, have they opted for ‘gold’ (made OA by the publisher) or ‘green’ (deposited in an OA repository) open access to published outputs?
- If ‘gold’, are they willing to pay article processing charges (APCs)?
- Do they require open access outputs to be released under a particular licence (e.g. CC BY)?
- Are you and your collaborative partners willing to comply with the funder’s OA requirements?
OA and the research lifecycle 1: identifying a new research area
Open access to published work
Whether you already have an idea for a new research area or are uncertain where to start, gaining an overview of the current literature is critical. Fortunately, not all of this is hidden behind paywalls. Thanks to those researchers who have been willing to disseminate their work through open access repositories and journals, there is now a substantial quantity of research available freely to all.
Much of this is harvested by CORE (COnnecting REpositories). CORE’s mission is to “aggregate all open access research outputs from repositories and journals worldwide and make them available to the public” (About CORE). CORE currently indexes nearly 25 million open access articles.
Online tutorials for PGR students and early career researchers
There are now five new interactive tutorials on the Skills Hub. You will find them in a new section ‘Postgraduate Research Skills‘ on the ‘Academic Skills‘ tab.
- Author bibliometrics – examines the key author bibliometrics and their use
- Journal bibliometrics – explores the use of impact factors and other metrics for ranking journals
- Journals and articles – addresses your publication strategy, journal types and what makes a ‘good’ paper
- Other forms of publishing – covers posters, exhibitions, creative works, website authoring and Open Access publishing
- Networking – making the most of face to face and online networking with fellow researchers
Free webinar: How to improve your chances of getting your research published
Early career researchers may be interested in a short webinar being led by Simon Linacre of Emerald Group Publishing later this week.
Publish Not Perish: How to improve your chances of getting your research published promises an overview of the academic publishing process and what you need to know to increase the odds of getting your paper published.
The webinar is running twice: at 5pm and 7pm on Friday September 18th. Each session will last for 30 minutes. Visit the Cabell’s website for further information and to register.
Guide to open access monograph publishing
The OAPEN-UK project has just published a Guide to open access monograph publishing for arts, humanities and social science researchers. 
The guide has been produced to “assist arts, humanities and social sciences (AHSS) researchers in understanding the state of play with regards to open access in the UK and what it means to them as current and future authors of scholarly monographs” (p.4).
It starts with an overview of open access publishing and business models for monographs and then goes on to address some common concerns of researchers such as legal issues, financial concerns, quality etc.
It is available to read online or download as a PDF.
Open access and the research lifecycle: a guide for researchers
Recent funders’ requirements for open access have presented researchers with both opportunities and challenges: opportunities to re-use and re-purpose published outputs and datasets, and challenges in making one’s own work legally and ethically available to others.
Intended for researchers who wish to engage with the open access agenda, but aren’t entirely sure how best to achieve this, this short guide highlights some of the issues to consider at each stage of the research lifecycle and the tools that are available to support you.
Further information about OA at each of the lifecycle stages can be found in these posts.
Download a copy of the guide: PDF (341 KB); DOCX (110KB) [Last updated 10 August 2016]
Acknowledgement: this guide was developed from work undertaken by Nick Dimmock, Katie Jones and Miggie Pickton as part of the JISC-funded Open to Open Access project. We welcome feedback from both Northampton researchers and our professional colleagues.
UON Graduate School Blog 