A group of researchers at St Andrews recently published an assessment of their public engagement activities in the open access journal PLoS ONE. One of the authors, Mark Bowler stated:
It's great to have it in a high impact open-access journal so that zoos can access it freely as well as universities.
Not only have they made sure that the results of their research can be accessed by anyone, the authors have promoted their work in a guest blog post for the Wellcome Trust: The Science of Public Engagement. The blog highlights the point that 'while assessment of engagement is increasingly a requirement for some funders, it is still far from the norm'. It also describes the continuing importance to researchers of having their research peer reviewed and published on a recognised platform.
See the article on the University of St Andrews Research portal and of course in our repository Research@StAndrews:FullText
Bowler, M., Buchanan-Smith, H., & Whiten, A. (2012). Assessing Public Engagement with Science in a University Primate Research Centre in a National Zoo PLoS ONE, 7(4) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0034505
(This research was supported by a Wellcome Trust People Award to Prof Andy Whiten.)
Monday, 16 April 2012
Friday, 13 April 2012
Discovery service for open access books
The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) has just been launched with over 750 academic books available under an Open Access licence.
Books are available in a range of subjects with a particularly strong presence in History and Social Sciences.
DOAB ensures that books are available to readers with as few restrictions as possible, and requires that academic books in the directory are peer reviewed prior to publication.
DOAB is a service of the OAPEN Foundation, and policies have been developed in conjunction with the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA).
Press release:
Books are available in a range of subjects with a particularly strong presence in History and Social Sciences.
DOAB ensures that books are available to readers with as few restrictions as possible, and requires that academic books in the directory are peer reviewed prior to publication.
DOAB is a service of the OAPEN Foundation, and policies have been developed in conjunction with the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA).
Press release:
Tuesday, 10 April 2012
Open access 'revolution' in the news
The Guardian has published 2 articles using the term 'academic spring' to describe revolutionary changes in academic publishing, and Radio 4's Today programme highlights a call to 'share research papers'.
'Academic spring: how an angry maths blog sparked a scientific revolution' is a lengthy and very informative article covering academic publishing, the REF, the rationale for open access, and background to the boycott of Elsevier which now has over 9000 signatories.
The Director of the Wellcome Trust, Sir Mark Walport, also spoke on Radio 4's Today programme about the 'enormously important' developments in academic publishing, and described open access as the best way to maximise impact of research. The new journal eLife, jointly supported by Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society and the Wellcome Trust, will be available later this year.
'Wellcome Trust joins 'academic spring' to open up science' makes front page news, and explains how Wellcome is supporting the transition to open access publishing with a new journal - eLife - as well as with tougher demands on institutions to ensure Wellcome-funded research output is made open access.
The Director of the Wellcome Trust, Sir Mark Walport, also spoke on Radio 4's Today programme about the 'enormously important' developments in academic publishing, and described open access as the best way to maximise impact of research. The new journal eLife, jointly supported by Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society and the Wellcome Trust, will be available later this year.
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