Open Access is here! Make sure you are ready

Open Access is now an essential feature of scholarly communications. As well as maximising visibility of the University’s research outputs, Open Access is now a requirement of many funders. It is also critical for ensuring eligibility for submission of journal articles and conference proceedings to the next Research Excellence Framework (REF).

The Policy for open access in the post-2014 Research Excellence Framework is in force from April 1 2016, and states "to be eligible for submission to the next REF, authors’ final peer-reviewed manuscripts must have been deposited in an institutional or subject repository". For St Andrews, this means that all researchers must deposit the accepted version of journal articles and conference proceedings in Pure as soon after acceptance as possible. In common with other institutions, the Library has been promoting the message ‘Act on acceptance: deposit in Pure’. This applies not just for REF and all authors should deposit their manuscripts. The Library's Open Access support team can help with this process.

Poster with message 'Act on acceptance: deposit in Pure'

To help researchers we can:

• answer queries about Open Access options, embargoes, copyright and licensing 
• check relevant OA policies for you 
• provide guidance and training on how to deposit – see our guide, checklist and video
• visit Schools on request to give presentations or workshops 
• provide funding in some cases for 'Gold' Open Access

Please get in touch with any queries. Contact the Open Access team – openaccess@st-andrews.ac.uk 

Tickell report positive on the future of Open Access in the UK

Following the Burgess Review of Research Councils UK Open Access Policy and RCUK’s response, this report considers the wider scope of UK Open Access generally and how scholarly publishing markets and the policy landscape are developing including Open Data.

The advice was provided by Professor Adam Tickell, the respected Provost and Vice-Principal, University of Birmingham and Chair of Universities UK (UUK) Open Access Coordination Group.

Its main conclusion was positive on progress to date:

• Open Access to research continues to be a public benefit and the UK remains a world leader.
• Research Councils UK should continue to support Gold Open Access charges. 

Figure 3: Gold OA charges paid to publishers from a sample of institutions, 2015 (Open Government Licence)

However, some changes are suggested in the recommendations.

Some key recommendations:

• Universities should be encouraged to sign up to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA)
• UUK Open Access Coordination Group to support the development of agreed service standards around Gold
• UK Open Access policy should offer greater choice to research producers
• UK Open Data Forum to coordinate work associated with a ‘roadmap’ for sector infrastructure

The DORA recommendation is intended to reduce the effect of researcher preference for traditional prestige publications and move towards the type of responsible metrics advocated in Hefce’s The Metric Tide report.

Jo Johnson, Minister of State for Universities and Science, was encouraging and supportive in his response:
“I am confident that, by 2020, the UK will be publishing almost all of our scientific output through open access.”

Report and ministerial response.

REF2020 open access policy: guides and deposit video now available

The REF2020 Open Access policy comes into force on the 1st of April 2016. To recap, the REF2020 Open Access policy requires UK academics to deposit their peer-reviewed accepted manuscripts for articles and conference proceedings in a repository. The policy also states that deposit should occur as close to the date of acceptance as possible. We are using our research information system Pure to comply with this policy as it links to our institutional repository. The University has called for early compliance to ensure all researchers know how to comply, and all outputs will be eligible for submission to the next REF.

To assist researchers with the deposit process the Open Access Team has produced a Deposit Guide for Academics. This is a step by step guide showing the information needed for REF Open Access compliance, as well as providing further information about the Pure record fields. We also have a similar guide for administrative staff who have responsibility for updating Pure records on the behalf of researchers, this is available from the Open Access Team on request.

We have also produced an updated screencast of the deposit process demonstrating how to create a Pure record, input the publication information, and deposit the accepted manuscript:

"

The deposit guide and screencast, along with further instructions on how to deposit in Pure, can be found here: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/library/services/researchsupport/openaccess/deposit/.

Think, Check, Submit: a publication check list

Think, Check, Submit is a cross-industry initiative designed to help researchers choose the best place to publish their work. It has the support of major publishers such as Springer Nature and BioMed Central, and also organisations such as DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) and Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA). A full list of supporting organisations can be found here: http://thinkchecksubmit.org/about/

http://thinkchecksubmit.org/think/. CC BY

Is the journal trustworthy?

http://thinkchecksubmit.org/check/. CC BY

Use the check list to assess the journal's trustworthiness

http://thinkchecksubmit.org/submit/. CC BY

Only submit when you can answer 'yes' to questions like: will publishing in this journal raise my professional profile? Will the article be indexed and discoverable?

Drop-in sessions for Open Access and Research Data Management

As part of the Library strategy to extend our support for open access and research data management we are organising a series of drop-in sessions open to University of St Andrews researchers from all Schools.  During the sessions, members of staff and research students will be able to drop-in at any point and ask any questions relating to funders’ requirements on open access and research data, how to upload manuscripts and data into Pure and general research data management queries.

With the new Open Access policy for the next Research Excellence Framework (REF) fully in force very soon and already adopted across the University, we need to ensure all researchers know the essential steps to ensure eligibility for the next REF. We also want to make sure researchers know how to gain all the benefits of Open Access. The increasing requirements to manage data as part of funded projects, and new policies on data sharing in place from funders such as EPSRC, mean we want to ensure our community knows how to get the support they need.

St Andrews researchers are welcome to drop in and ask any questions regarding:
-          Open Access for REF2020
-          Uploading your publications in Pure
-          Funding for ‘Gold’ Open Access
-          Open Access options for specific publishers
-          Funders’ requirements on research data and publications
-          Data Management Plans
-          Uploading your data in Pure
-          Sharing your data
-          Storing your data
-          General data management
-          Any other topic


The Library’s Open Access (OA) and Research Data Management (RDM) drop-in sessions are on:

•    Mon 1 February, 13:00 – 15:00, Buchanan Building Room 103
•    Fri 5 February, 12:00 – 14:00, Hebdomadar’s Room
•    Mon 22 February, 13:00 – 15:00, Buchanan Building Room 103
•    Fri 26 February, 12:00 – 14:00, Hebdomadar’s Room

Please do come and meet members of your OA and RDM support teams!

Hail Caledonia!

To mark St Andrew's Day 2015 the Open Access Support team is pleased to publish a guest post by Janet Aucock, Head of Metadata and Content Acquisition.

St Andrew's Day is a good day to reflect on Scottish influences on the world. Perhaps it’s also a good day to consider alternative Caledonias and one in particular on the other side of the globe.

We are constantly looking to see how St Andrews research is used and reused across the world. Each month we get a usage report from EThOS the national thesis database for the UK, a service provided by the British Library. St Andrews open access full text theses are made available in EThOS as well as in our own institutional repository Research@StAndrews:FullText. The report from EThOS indicates how many theses have been viewed and downloaded and it gives us some limited information about the reader, chiefly their professional sector, if provided, and their geographical location. Most readers are involved in education and research and the majority are in Europe and North America. But we can see an increasing readership from all continents and our interest is particularly sparked by unusual new locations.

Our most recent report showed a number of thesis downloads from a small island nation some 9928 miles away (as the crow flies) in the Pacific Ocean:

Source: http://www.distancefromto.net/

Someone in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia was clearly interested in 3 of our social anthropology theses:

• Kinship and the saturation of life among the Kuna of Panamá by Margherita Margiotti http://hdl.handle.net/10023/891
• Carving wood and creating shamans : an ethnographic account of visual capacity among the Kuna of Panamá by Paolo Fortis http://hdl.handle.net/10023/523
• Fertile words : aspects of language and sociality among Yanomami people of Venezuela by Javier Carrera Rubio http://hdl.handle.net/10023/1003

We couldn’t help but wonder who might this be? Was it one of New Caledonia's 268,767 inhabitants? Are they studying at L’Université de la Nouvelle-Calédonie?

Do they do their research looking out over views like this and sitting on this pine fringed beach?

By Bahnfrend (Own work) 

Kanumera Bay, Isle of Pines, New Caledonia, 2007

 [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Perhaps there were some connections between St Andrews research interests and New Caledonia?

A quick search of the University website uncovered a remarkable relationship:

A University press release aptly entitled “When crows connect” had been issued on 4th November 2015. St Andrews researchers recently published an Open Access paper in Nature Communications that revealed evolution-environment interaction that might explain New Caledonian crows’ hooked tool making skill. Their experimental approach contrasts this with tool behaviours in primates to hypothesise about regional variations observed. The New Caledonian environment and the types of raw material available to make tools are critical. In fact those very pine trees in the image above are crucial to support the crows’ activities 

Detail from Figure 1. St Clair, J. J. H. et al. Experimental resource pulses influence social-network dynamics and the potential for information flow in tool-using crows. Nat. Commun. 6:7197 doi: 10.1038/ncomms8197 (2015). (Open Access)

A further search of Research@StAndrews:FullText revealed other publications on the same topic.

This highlights how Open Access, whether digital theses or articles, can stimulate open discussion among academics of research publications, increase their visibility and improve public understanding of research that is often funded by taxpayers.

We don't really need to know who in New Caledonian has been reading St Andrews research. The whole point of open access to our research is that it can easily be consumed by a global audience and that it can be of benefit and use without barriers to a variety of users. 

However in the meantime we have found out a lot about this other Caledonia....named by Captain James Cook in 1774 because part of the archipelago reminded him of the north of Scotland, perhaps the Isle of Pines. It took him 3 years to complete his voyage across the world to the South Pacific. It’s reassuring to know on St Andrew's Day 2015 that Caledonia and New Caledonia can communicate instantly in the digital age to carry on this international conversation.

RCUK Open Access compliance report

The University of St Andrews has increased its compliance with the RCUK Open Access Policy for papers published in the year to 31 July 2015. We have reported 91% of RCUK-funded papers as open access, up from 71% in the period April 2013 - July 2014. 

RCUK require a report from all universities in receipt of an Open Access Block Grant, using a standard template. Our report shows that open access was split almost equally between gold and green routes. We itemise our spend on APCs, and outline other costs including staffing. The creation of 2 posts enabled us to support researchers effectively, and make this progress in implementing the policy.

Collecting data for the report was done using our Research Information System, Pure. The total of 400 RCUK-funded papers includes those linked directly to Projects in Pure, as well as papers where external RCUK grants were identified in acknowledgements.

Included with our report is a short statement outlining our approach, and highlighting some of the remaining challenges in the transition towards open access publishing.

The report has been published in the University of St Andrews research repository, and is available here: http://hdl.handle.net/10023/7810