Research blog from RPO

The University's Research Policy Office have just launched a blog to bring you highlights of research activity in St Andrews.

Research@StAndrews:FullText grows by 60%

St Andrews reasearch repository has grown significantly in the last year, with the number of items it contains increasing by 60% since 2009.

175 theses and 116 research publications were added in 2010, to bring the total content to 783.



Research publications have more than doubled since the University's Research Information System (Pure) was launched in June 2010. 100 journal articles and 16 other items were submitted, bringing the total to 194. Virtually all research publications are available in full text.


In the last year there were over 31,000 visits to Research@StAndrews:FullText from 157 countries.




The top 5 downloaded items in November 2010 were:

Infernal imagery in Anglo-Saxon charters [Thesis]
Retrospective power analysis [Journal article]
WinBUGS for population ecologists: Bayesian modeling using Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods [Journal article]
Os vínculos culturais Galicia-Uruguay [Cultural connections between Galicia and Uruguay] [Book]
Lewis, counterfactual analyses of causation, and pre-emption cases [Thesis]

Balancing rights

Pushing the boundaries for Open Access while maintaining good relationships with publishers can be a tricky balancing act.

Organisations are constantly negotiating on a global scale to ensure a 'balance of rights' between stakeholders concerned with scholarly communication - the Statement of Principle published by the Research Information Network is a good example of this, describing how to take advantage of new technologies to move practice forward while recognising publishers' concerns.

SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) aims to "correct imbalances in the scholarly publishing system" and has produced a briefing paper on how to change copyright transfer agreements - http://www.arl.org/sparc/bm~doc/SPARC_AuthorRights2006.pdf

The Copyright Toolbox produced by JISC and the SURF Foundation states that rights "need to be managed in a way that respects the interests of both author and publisher", in keeping with the Zwolle Principles.

The RCUK, in its position statement supporting open access, also acknowledges the need for both authors and publishers to respect this balance: "Full implementation of these requirements must be undertaken such that current copyright and licensing policies, for example embargo periods or provisions limiting the use of deposited content to non-commercial purposes, are respected by authors. The research councils' position is based on the assumption that publishers will maintain the spirit of their current policies."

We encourage our researchers to take full advantage of the benefits of making their research outputs available in Research@StAndrews:FullText, while respecting the current scholarly publishing framework.

UK alliance backs Open Access

The Wellcome Trust has announced the formation of the UK Open Access Implementation Group to " coordinate evidence, policies, systems, advice and guidance, to make open access an easy choice for authors and one that benefits all universities."

The high level group is chaired by Martin Hall, Vice Chancellor at the University of Salford who spoke at the recent Future of Research conference, and includes senior members of RLUK, the UK Research Councils and the Wellcome Trust. They aim to drive debate and maximise the impact of UK research.

Practical steps for implementing Open Access

Anyone interested in finding out what they can do in a practical way to achieve Open Access to research outputs will find the Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook a valuable tool.

The site provides relevant and current information for researchers, funders, publishers, librarians, students, policy-makers... in fact anyone who has an interest in the possibilities offered by OA.

One of the latest resources to be added is a brief guide to Copyright and authors' rights which describes actions that academic authors can take. See lots more on the benefits for research dissemination including topics such as Open Access Repositories and Citation impact.

Wellcome Trust Open Access funding

We have just completed our return to Wellcome detailing how our Open Access award was spent last year, and we have been notified of continued funding to support our researchers pay Open Access publishing costs.

The library has also introduced new procedures to manage this fund, and details have been circulated to Wellcome Trust grant recipients. You can find out more on our web pages.

The Wellcome Trust website provides useful Author FAQ and a summary of publisher policies to help you decide where to publish.

The UK PubMed Central blog has an interesting analysis of journals that have published Wellcome-funded research.

Roundup of Open Access Week

As Open Access Week 2010 draws to a close, here is a quick summary of some activities that sought to increase awareness of Open Access:

The Repository Support Project highlights promotional activities in UK institutions

The University of Salford’s VC, Martin Hall, gave an excellent presentation at the Future of Research conference in which he suggested that the university of the future might be built around the repository. Video of the session is available under Strand Two Plenary: Efficiency and Effectiveness. Appropriately, the slides are already available in the University's digital repository.

Neat animated map has been created by the ROAR/Eprints team at Southampton; the Overview of Open Access showcases repositories around the world.
(NB. works best in firefox)

OA Mandate Adoption Challenge for Institutions and Funders - invitation from Steven Harnad to register Open Access policies at ROARMAP

Chats, tweets, forums and blogs at the Open Access Week website and elsewhere, for example contributions from the Directory of Open Access Journals and the useful OA Answers from the RSC.



Not forgetting 18 new deposits in Research@StAndrews:FullText

and of course there were the free cakes

Toolkit addresses researchers concerns

In the midst of Open Access Week the JISC Scholarly Communication Action Handbook has been released:

"This handbook addresses scholarly communication concerns and provides actions that individuals can take to help make positive changes. These actions are targeted for use by key stakeholders, such as researchers, librarians, research mangers, and senior managers, and can also be used by advocates to recommend actions to those they are lobbying."

With helpful navigation and full of useful, practical suggestions this guide is well worth a look. You might want to start with the hot topics section.

Open Access (free) cakes

We gave away free cakes in the library this afternoon to encourage people to come up and ask about Open Access.

Students were pleased to hear about how they can easily view electronic theses or see what our researchers are publishing in our repository. They were also interested to find out about funding models for Open Access journals, as well as all the material they can access without depending on subscriptions or interlibrary loans.

JISC Open Access site

JISC explores a hot topic in the area of Open Access each day this week. Visit their Open Access Week site to find out about policies, funding, exploring the benefits of Open Access and copyright issues.

Celebrating Open Access Week

18-24 Oct 2010 - expanding awareness of Open Access.

To start the week off we have created a display area in the main library with loads of information about Research@StAndrews:FullText and how to benefit from Open Access.

Our new web pages are also live, with information on 'self-archiving' and Open Access publishing, complying with Wellcome Trust requirements and our BioMed Central membership.

A New Model for Scholarly Communications

SPARC Europe provides a very short guide to Open Access, and how to achieve it, called An introduction to the new model for scholarly communication.


They note the benefits for authors: "Rather than their paper being seen by readers at the few hundred institutions lucky enough to have a subscription to the journal, the paper can now be seen by all interested readers. This increases the dissemination and impact of the papers and so raises the profile of the authors and their institutions."

The guide also highlights the 2 routes to Open Access: Self-archiving and Publishing in Open-access journals

A useful resource supported by SPARC Europe, is the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

Open Access Week 18-24 Oct 2010

Open Access Week is a global event, now in its 4th year, promoting Open Access as a new norm in scholarship and research. It is organised by SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition who advocate "new scholarly communication models that expand the dissemination of scholarly research".

Open Access Week, 18-24 Oct 2010 will be the focus for events, campaigns and awareness-raising activities around the world. Information and promotional resources are available from the website, including a Very Brief Introduction to Open Access by Peter Suber.

New Research Information System for St Andrews

A new Research Information System (RIS) using PURE software is currently being implemented at the University of St Andrews. The new PURE system brings together related content to build up an overview of St Andrews research activity including information about projects, events and publications.

The full text of research outputs can be added to Pure and where possible will be passed to Research@StAndrews:FullText, our open access digital repository.

A new Research@StAndrews portal will provide links to the full text of research publications which are stored in the repository.