Open Access Week 2010: What did we learn

So that was it for Open Access Week 2010, and while we weren’t perhaps bowled over by the number of academics we got to see during it (happening during half-term can’t have helped) those we did see were fulsome with praise for us coming out to them.  Certainly it’s something I’ll happily keep offering throughout the year, given that it still netted us an additional 101 full text publications for deposit onto the LRA, and I’ll be encouraging the team to get this on as a matter of priority.

Time to start planning open access week 2011 I guess!  Thanks to all those who took part and supported us throughout, it was very much appreciated.

Open Access Week 2010: Thursday

A busy day yesterday, so to make up here’s  a couple of interesting open access related things to make up!

ROAR, based down in Southampton, is launching an interesting little widget called an Overview of Open Access which

showcases open access material from repositories around the world. Picking one recent deposit at a time, the animated map cycles around the world’s repositories showing a description of the deposit itself, together with a description and thumbnail of the repository’s home page. Every few seconds another deposit is chosen from another repository, making what we hope is an interesting trip around the World of Open Access! The title of each repository and each deposit is linked from the display, allowing viewers to explore repositories and open access research from around the globe.

I’d like to say more about it, but at the time of blogging the site appears to be down (potentially due to the number of people looking at it!).

The second item is a paper published in PLoS One on

• Gargouri Y, Hajjem C, Larivière V, Gingras Y, Carr L, Brody T, Harnad S. Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research. PLoS ONE. 2010;5(10):e13636+. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013636.

You can read more about the paper in this useful blog post from PLoS One.  The actual impact of open access on citation rates continues to be hotly debated topic, and so this paper is a welcome addition to the literature.

And two randomly selected full text papers of interest for your reading pleasure

• A catalyst for change: the social impact of the Open Museum
• On Corruption and Institutions in Decentralised Economies

Open Access Week 2010: Tuesday

So far this week I’ve been to the offices of three academics, and have one more coming to see me.  A small number, but I am quietly very pleased with the response – all those I have seen so far have been very fulsome in praise for the spur to deposit that Repository in your Office is.  What’s struck me today comes from looking at how academic have their file space organised, I’ve come away with a greater appreciation on how hard it is for them to exercise version control – which makes it harder for us (and them) to find the publisher permitted versions of articles to archive.

Today’s random article from the LRA: Prisoner’s Dilemma, Chicken, and mixed-strategy evolutionary equilibria

Open Access Week 2010: Monday

It’s day 1 of our 5 day celebration at the LRA for Open Access Week 2010.  Today we went live with our article in the daily ebulletin, which goes to every member of the university.  I’ve also been out and about meeting a couple of researchers as part of our Repository in Your Office push – my thanks to both Aldo Rona and Helen Atkinson for asking us in.  Plenty of slots left in the week for anyone else who’d like us to swing by and collect electronic versions of their publications!

I thought I should also highlight that the JISC has made some OA Week material available too, updating it on a daily basis.

Random paper of the day: Encounters with Vortices in a Turbine Nozzle Passage

Repository in your Office – Open Access Week 2010

Next week is the 4th SPARC International Open Access week.  Around the globe open access advocates and repository staff take this time to celebrate the successes of their repository, but also to redouble their efforts!  Various special events take place, and this year as part of the celebrations, the Leicester Research Archive Team are offering Repository in Your Office – adapting its name from the popular television show Restaurant in our Living Room (well popular with me anyway)

In essence it’s a chance for academics to call us over to their offices to collect any and all materials they’ve got for potential archiving on the LRA and a chance for them to have a handy 1-2-1 consultation on any and all aspects of open access.  I think it’s a great chance for us to fly the flag for the LRA and the brilliant research that Leicester produces, as well as interacting with our fantastic academic community on a more personal level.

Here’s just a sampling of some of the top rated research publications on the LRA from across the colleges.

• Emma Pitchforth et al (2005) Writing up and presenting qualitative research in family planning and reproductive health care. (Health Sciences/College of Medicine, Biological Sciences & Psychology) 825 accesses
• Gaia Garino & Christopher Martin (2007). The Impact of Labour Turnover: Theory and Evidence from UK Micro-Data (Economics/College of Social Science) 908 accesses
• Palitha Edirisingha, Gilly Salmon, John C Fothergill.(2007) Profcasting: a pilot study and guidelines for integrating podcasts in a blended learning environment (BDRA) 758 accesses
• Richard Sandell (2003). Social inclusion, the museum and the dynamics of sectoral change (Museum Studies/College of Arts, Humanities & Law) 1,115 accesses
• Ying Liu (2009). Advanced Photovoltaic converters (Engineering/College of Science & Engineering) 1014 accesses

Will it be a success?  At this stage I just don’t know, we’ve never tried this kind of advocacy here at Leicester so this is somewhat a bit of an experiment.  But win, lose or draw I’m sure the lessons we learn from the exercise will serve us well in planning Open Access Week 2011!

So if you’re a researcher here at Leicester, and you’ve been thinking about depositing with the LRA, but haven’t quite got around to it – why not take this opportunity to invite us in (coffee appreciated but not essential) to help make it

Repository in your Office – making it easier than ever to deposit with the LRA! 

Open Access Week: The LRA Team

Thinking back over this week, I think the one thing I’ve forgotten to highlight are the people here whom make the LRA work.  First off the core team, myself, Margaret – and from this week our newest member Valérie.  Margaret and Valérie are your first line of contact as a Leicester academic or postgraduate student when you want to get material onto the LRA.  They can also help out with general questions relating to your retained author rights, mandates and locating open access materials.  The easiest way to contact them is via email lra@le.ac.uk or ethesis@le.ac.uk.

The LRA Team’s full contact details can be found here: http://www.le.ac.uk/li/research/archive.html#contact

Then we have the supporting staff members, those people who aren’t working with the LRA on a day to day basis, but whom have more than a little understanding about the issues and common answers to questions relating to it.  First among these is Rob, our current Copyright and Coursepacks Administrator.  Rob can be reached at copyright@le.ac.uk.

His full contact details can be found here: http://www.le.ac.uk/li/about/CopyrightandResearch.html

On top of this the LRA is supported by our colleagues in the rest of the newly formed Document Supply & Repository team, and whom if you ring the LRA you may well get on the line.  As well as these staff, I must also acknowledge the work that the members of LRA Progress Group (LRAPG) from the library, ITS and Research Office play in supporting out work, and helping to discuss the often complex developing world of scholarly communication.

That’s it, a brief guide to the team and supporting staff that help us run the LRA here at Leicester.

Open Access Week: Federal Research Act

Those following the developments in open access and scholarly research publication often look to the US and Australia, and to a lesser degree the Scandinavian countries, whom are generally a year or so ahead of the situation in the UK.  Interestingly in the States at the moment there is a bill, the Federal Research Access Act of 2009, which is looking to legislate the following:

“…require researchers with grants from certain federal agencies — those that fund more than $100 million in extramural research annually — to make their final peer-reviewed manuscripts openly available in digital repositories within six months.”

Okay, it does look like this is a successor to a similer defeated bill back in 2006; but since then both the political landscape and the open access movement has seen considerable developments.  Funders mandates are now very much a central theme now, where as in 2006 we were only seeing the first ones emerge.  Would we see a piece of legislation like this in the UK?  Probably not anytime soon given the run up to the general election in 2010; I find it unlikely that with the state of the economy anyone’s going to be able to bring scholarly research access up the political agenda.  I certainly don’t think the vast bulk of public are aware, or even overly concerned, that so much of their taxes goes to pay for access to research we’ve given away. 

Maybe this is something that OA advocates should be doing – reaching out to the general public and getting the OA debate out of the ivory towers and into the press and media?  Perhaps it’s a role for UKCoRR or the reformulated RSP?

Either way, the reception and progress of this bill is certainly one to watch with interest.

Open Access Week: UoL OA Event 28th October

While it’s not falling within open access week there is still a chance for University of Leicester academics, researchers and postgraduates to find out more about the current developments in open access and scholarly publishing.  The Research Office (RSO) and the University Library are presenting an Open Access Information Event, Wednesday 28th October 1pm onwards (that’s a week today). 

The afternoon is broken into two sessions:

Session 1 is suitable for staff and research students in all disciplines.  Speakers include Christine Fyfe (UoL), Astrid Wissenburg (ESRC) and myself.  The focus is on the requirements of the UK HE funding councils and the Leicester open access perspective.

Session 2 is aimed at staff and research students working in disciplines covered by UK Pub Med Central (principally biosciences, health and medicine).  Margaret Hurley and Alison Henning (Wellcome Trust) will be speaking about their specific funding policies and the new UKMPC grant reporting services.  Finally Juliet Bailey (RSO) will talk about the Wellcome Trust OA fund at Leicester.

There will be a break for refreshments in the middle, as well as a chance for formal and informal questions to all the delegates.  The LRA team will be there in force, so it’ll be a really good chance to talk with us about what we can do to help you fulfil the various institutional, funding and theses mandates here at Leicester; as well as making sure your publications are read as widely as possible.

To reserve a place and for a full programme contact Laura Roberts

Open Access Week: JISC OA resources

JISC has rolled out a very useful page and set of resources today in support of open access week.

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/openaccess

In clear, plain english the page details the case for open access as well as the role JISC has been playing in supporting and developing the infra-structure in the UK to make it happen.  As well as the general overview of the benefits of OA there’s also a selection of resources for researchers, institutions and publishers; detailing why OA matters for them.  It includes a link to a wide range of resources and reports giving the scholarly background information that so many academics crave.  I’ll certainly be reading through some of these over the coming weeks.

The section for publishers is aimed mostly at those whom are embracing open access publishing – be it as a pure OA journal or a more traditional one offering a pay-up-front option (a fee to make an article available as open access where normally it would be available to subscribers only).

Interestingly the site also offers a section on the business case for open access, something that I know is close to the hearts of many senior institutional administrators.  I think this economic case is one I’d certainly like to know more about myself, as some of the discussions and 1-2-1 meetings I have with academics and staff at all levels move away from the philosophical “Open access is good for the research environment” and into the realm of “But what does it mean for the university as a business”.

The site also offers all the reports on a single page at the end, and while I know I’m never going to have a chance to read them all myself – they are certainly a worthy resource.  I can see that this site will be helping me shape the workshop I’m running in December for new academic staff, as well as those I offer to PhD students.

Open Access Week: Success Stories from Glasgow

I was pleased to see that the University of Glasgow is running stories about individuals who have experienced academic success on the back of making their work available on their Enlighten repository.  The first one concerns Dr Katherine Forsyth from the Department of Celtic and Gaelic who has had a phenomenal number of downloads of her out of print book (50,000). 

I wonder if there are any authors of out of print books here at Leicester who might like to consider exploring the possibility of making their texts available to all via the LRA?  Please get in touch if you are!