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!

From darkness to the light: raising the visibility of St Andrews research on the internet

"That’s why I filed the paper into PURE – the system does a great job of making materials widely visible." Dr Philip Roscoe, Reader, School of Management

PURE and Research@StAndrews:FullText have served as the University's research information system and Open Access repository for a number of years. As the mechanisms for curating and surfacing the University's research they also provide data and feeds that Schools can configure to present Open Access publications. A good example is Jennifer Kerr's and Mary Woodcock Kroble's work on the School of Management publications pages that also list theses and feeds into individual researcher profiles. The School of Classics was one of the first to incorporate PURE web services feeds and repository links into its web pages to present its publications lists dynamically. Dedicated IT staff  like Jennifer and Mary work within Schools to extract data from central services and present it in ways that showcase publications in attractive and appropriate styles for their research disciplines. This makes more efficient use of research publications data and allows Schools to build on developments in central services to present data dynamically instead of maintaining static lists of publications. We encourage Schools to consider using these services to make their research more visible and to support Open Access. Above all, we hope these services encourage researchers to deposit into PURE to raise their profile and the visibility of their publications on the internet.  PURE and Research@StAndrews:FullText are under active development.

PURE deposits
The Research Policy Office offers advice and training on accessing and using the PURE system and can provide more information on web services for School IT staff.
The Open Access and Research Publications Support (OARPS) team can help with questions about publication deposit, Open Access and PURE web services open-access-support@st-andrews.ac.uk
Our Theses web page provides support and contact details for questions about theses deposit and locating St Andrews theses.

Open Data is an increasingly important aspect of Open Access that researchers need to consider. The St Andrews Research Data Management website provides detailed information on funder compliance, policy, data management plans and other aspects of managing research data.

Making research data count

Are you a researcher interested in metrics that could track and measure the impact of research data? We invite you to contribute to a short survey which aims to learn what metrics would be useful to you. Responses will feed into a project with the ultimate goal of designing and developing metrics that track and measure data use, creating 'data-level metrics' (DLM).

California Digital Library (CDL), the Public Library of Science (PLOS), and the Data Observation Network for Earth (DataONE) are investigating researcher attitudes towards potential metrics for datasets.

See the Making Data Count project site for more information.

Access the survey at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/makedatacount

We all know that data are important for research. So how can we quantify that? How can you get credit for the data you produce? What do you want to know about how your data is used? If you are a researcher or data manager, we want to hear from you. Take this 5-10 minute survey and help us craft data-level metrics.

[http://blogs.plos.org/tech/how-do-you-do-data/]

Open Access at the Fringe

Last week, members of our Open Access support team visited Edinburgh for the annual Fringe.

Now in its 7th year, the event was the busiest yet with 150 attendees. As ever the programme included lots of audience participation, great food and some singing. (We are of course talking about the Repository Fringe – we just borrow some of the Edinburgh festival spirit!)

This year, the focus was on Open Access policies and how the community is reacting. Our keynote from Yvonne Budden, University of Warwick raised the question of whether Open Access is still a revolutionary concept. Do we still need to challenge the norms of scholarly communication - and if so is it researchers or librarians that should be leading the 'revolution'? The consensus seems to be that the power to create change is primarily in the hands of academics, but libraries have a role in finding workable solutions.

While we maintained the ‘unconference’ style of this event with informal discussions and encouragement of novel ideas, many people highlighted practical aspects of achieving an increase in open access. In particular we had presentations from several Jisc OA Good Practice Projects - St Andrews has just begun one of these projects in partnership with University of Edinburgh and Heriot Watt University. Unsurprisingly given the recent policy announcement from HEFCE, compliance with funder policies will be a major theme.

Live blogs from both days of the event are available from the conference website.

HEFCE's OA policy: guidance on key issues

Following the announcement by HEFCE of open-access requirements in the post-2014 Research Excellence Framework, guidance is being offered to the research community on practical steps towards implementation.

Ben Johnson, Research Policy Advisor, HEFCE and Neil Jacobs, Head of Scholarly Communications, Jisc will deliver a webinar on 15 May 2014.

This Webinar will provide delegates with an overview of HEFCE’s OA policy for the post-2014 REF and the implications on research and the assessment of research. It will also consider what services, tools and guidance are available or are forthcoming to support institutions in the implementation of this policy and what key issues will need to be addressed if full implementation is to be fully realised. 

Date: 15th May 2014
Time: 1400 GMT
Duration: 45 minutes including Q&A

Jisc Open Access Implementation Community Webinar: HEFCE's Open Access requirements for REF
Sign up at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/jisc-open-access-implementation-community-webinar-hefces-open-access-requirements-for-ref-registration-11446421555 

Using doctoral theses in your research: a guide to EThOS

Do you want to find out how UK PhD theses can be accessed? Here is a quick reminder of a training webinar which is being organised by the EThOS team at the British Library:

Using doctoral theses in your research: a guide to EThOS.
EThOS (http://ethos.bl.uk) is the national database for PhD theses, managed by the British Library. It’s a fantastic resource for researchers, with over 100,000 UK theses freely available to download and use for your own research, and another 200,000 available to search and scan on demand. Find out how to search for and download theses, and what to do if a thesis isn’t available. If you’re a PhD student, find out what will happen to your thesis once it’s completed. We’ll also explain how EThOS works with UK universities to support the whole research cycle, making the theses more visible and available for new researchers to use and build on. 

The session takes place on Thursday 13 Feb 2014 at 15:00

Register to attend the webinar at https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5974661878725146370
 
St Andrews is a fully participating member of EThOS. Find out more on our Library web pages

HEFCE proposals on open access - consulation

On behalf of UK higher education funding bodies, HEFCE has announced a consultation on open access in the post-2014 Research Excellence Framework. The funding bodies are committed to a policy that supports increased public access to research outputs. Advice was sought on developing a joint policy in Feb 2013, and an analysis of the advice received will be available from HEFCE's page on open access to publicly funded research.

Proposals for implementing an open access requirement in the post-2014 Research Excellence Framework have now been published, with responses invited by 30 Oct 2013. Proposals [PDF]

The policy covers journal articles and conference proceedings, and the main criteria proposed are:

• Outputs should be accessible through a UK higher education institution (HEI) repository, immediately upon either acceptance or publication, though the repository may provide access in a way that respects agreed embargo periods.
• Outputs should be made available as the final peer-reviewed text, though not necessarily identical to the publisher’s edited and formatted version.
• Outputs should be presented in a form allowing the reader to search for and re-use content (including by download and for text-mining), both manually and using automated tools, provided such re-use is subject to proper attribution under appropriate licensing.

Monographs are not currently included in the proposals, and there will be allowance for exceptions (either on a case-by-case basis or through an agreed percentage compliance) for example when papers have international co-authors or a publication has no open access option. There are 7 main questions in the consultation, including whether a notice period of 2 years is appropriate.

See the full report: Consultation on open access in the post-2014 REF

The University of St Andrews already provides infrastructure that allows researchers to easily make their outputs accessible. Publications can be recorded in PURE, with links to projects and data added where relevant. Full text can be deposited immediately on acceptance, and automated embargo dates can be set to make the output open access in Research@StAndrews:FullText at the appropriate time. Staff in the Library can help with this.

Contact the library for advice: Open Access support
See our Open Access support web pages

Thesis highlights academic value of Special Collections

Amidst the many treasures of Special Collections lies the Von Hügel Collection. At around five thousand volumes it represents a significant gathering of 19th and 20th century works on philosophy, religion, and history, as well as original and annotated manuscript papers. Assembled by Baron Friedrich von Hügel (1852-1925), Hon. LLD St Andrews 1921, it was bequeathed to the university upon his death in 1926.

Von Hügel’s philosophy is still debated, and this year St Andrews doctoral student Robyn Wrigley-Carr made a contribution to the scholarship with her PhD thesis: ‘The Baron, his niece and friends: Friedrich von Hügel as a spiritual director, 1915-1925’. This serves to prove that these documents, and many other Special Collection texts like them, although valuable for their beauty and antiquity, are also a key research tool for scholars.

Special Collections rightly keeps its valuable store well-guarded and looked after, so they probably wouldn’t be too pleased if you wandered in for a browse with a muffin, but you are welcome to read Dr Wrigley-Carr’s thesis whilst shedding as many crumbs as you like:
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/3588

Heather Curtis (Guest blogger & intern)

BBC request St Andrews thesis

Every student to pass through St Andrews leaves a legacy in one form or another, and for our postgraduates this often takes the shape of a thesis. The university requires students to submit a copy of their thesis to the library in order to graduate, but who is it that might end up reading your precious creation, years or even decades after you have gone?

Well, you’ll be pleased to know they’re not just propping up the desks here in the underbelly of the library where the repository work takes place, and unfortunately they make for rather unwieldy coasters. In reality, whether in digital or print form they are a tangible monument to our university’s research excellence, and recently an urgent call came through from the BBC. It’s not unusual for us to receive requests for viewings from scholars around the country, primarily through the British Library’s EThOS service, but last month the team behind ‘Coast’ requested a copy of F. M. Fraser’s 1977 PhD thesis: ‘The Lewisian and Torridonian geology of Iona’ – on the double!

With a tight filming schedule on Iona to be met, there was no time to send it off to London for digitisation as would usually happen, and so it was rushed off to Special Collections to be scanned in-house. One week later we presented the BBC with four hundred pages of geographical goodness, saving the day by assuring there would be sufficient educational content to match the moody shots of Neil Oliver’s locks flapping about in the wind. Whoever said that library work isn’t glamorous?

Season 9 of ‘Coast’ will be hitting our screens in 2014, but for the keener amongst you, here is a link to Dr Fraser’s thesis in Research@StAndrews:FullText:
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/3812

Heather Curtis (Guest blogger & intern)

Collective approach to open access by Science Europe

Science Europe has just released a position statement on the transition to open access. Their press release states:

Science Europe’s 51 member organisations are all committed to ensuring that results of publicly-funded research and innovation in Europe are available through an unrestricted, online access system, and have identified a list of ten principles that will ensure consistency and coherence in their efforts towards Open Access.

The principles include recognition for the role of repositories and the mixed approach of 'green' and 'gold' routes to open access. They also stress that 'the hybrid model, as currently defined and implemented by publishers, is not a working and viable pathway to Open Access.' The short position statement and shared principles can be found at http://www.scienceeurope.org/uploads/Public%20documents%20and%20speeches/SE_OA_Pos_Statement.pdf

Science Europe is an association of European Research Funding Organisations (RFO) and Research Performing Organisations (RPO), based in Brussels. It includes the UK Research Councils and aims to promote a collective voice for the European Research Area.

Transition to open access

Since the release of the Finch report in June 2012, open access has been high on the agenda for researchers, and many HEIs have been busy developing their support services to help navigate the changing landscape of scholarly publishing. Repository services in University of St Andrews Library currently provide support for deposit of full text ('Green' OA), advocacy for open access, advice on copyright and licensing, opportunities to start open access journals (through our journal hosting service), and co-ordination of open access payments for research outputs ('Gold' OA). The services are currently being developed to respond to the increase in demand for open access support, and in particular to help manage our compliance with the new RCUK policy on open access.

The University of St Andrews is one of the 30 research intensive Universities in the UK which is receiving a £10 million allocation of Government money to help with the exploration of and transition to open access publishing models. The University’s share of the fund totals £137k. The Library has contacted all Directors of Research to provide additional information about this funding and how we want to work with our academic community, so we can all gain a better understanding of the issues we will need to address in order to make this transition a success. This will help us prepare for the allocation of block grants from RCUK to pay for Article Processing Charges (APCs) for RCUK-funded outputs.

Our existing web pages about funders' open access policies will be updated, and members of the Library's Academic Liaison team will be consulting with researchers. We will operate two distinct phases:

• The initial “BIS funding” will allow us to investigate a range of open access options, seek feedback from our academic community and prepare for the transition towards open access
• Operation of the RCUK block grant to be received in April 2013, which will allow us to implement the new RCUK policy on open access and pay for ‘Gold’ open access

We welcome enquiries from St Andrews researchers:
Email open access support

Further information and contact details at http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/library/information/furtherhelp/researchsupport/researchoutputs/ 

Wellcome Trust suggests institutional responsibility for open access compliance

Times Higher Education has reported that the Wellcome Trust may require institutions to take more responsibility for ensuring that publications associated with a Wellcome-funded grant are made open access. This may go as far as holding back final installments, or restricting future grants, if research outputs are not openly accessible.

The Wellcome Trust’s grant condition 6(iii) states “All research papers that have been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, and are supported in whole or in part by the Grant, must be made available from UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) as soon as possible, and in any event within six months of publication, in line with the Trust’s Open Access policy: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/About-us/Policy/Policy-and-position-statements/WTD002766.htm

The tougher message from the Wellcome Trust coincides with a new draft open access policy from RCUK, with stronger requirements including reduced embargo periods. See the announcement from the Enabling Open Scholarship organisation.

Information about complying with the Wellcome Trust policy for St Andrews author is available on our Library web pages

More on research funders' open access policies

US Research Works Act: threat to open scholarly communication

The Research Works Act seeks to stop organisations from having conditions in their grants that require research outputs to be made open access. At a time when the UK Government are raising their commitment to open access, and increasing recognition of OA mandates from UK funders, the RWA would reverse the NIH Public Access Policy which requires outputs from publicly funded research to be made freely available on the internet. Further explanation in these posts, and updates to follow:

Stop U.S. legislation that would block public access to publicly funded research, Creative Commons blog http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/31184

Trying to roll back the clock on Open Access: Research Works Act introduced, ALA Washington Office blog http://www.districtdispatch.org/2012/01/trying-to-roll-back-the-clock-on-open-access-research-works-act-introduced/

Research bought, then paid for, New York Times opinion pages http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/opinion/research-bought-then-paid-for.html?_r=1

Can AAP Members stay neutral in the row over the Research Works Act?, Richard Poynder ‘Open and Shut?’ blog http://poynder.blogspot.com/2012/01/can-aap-members-stay-neutral-in-row.html “the RWA would be a major setback for the Open Access movement…”

Mendeley's response to RWA and SOPA http://www.mendeley.com/blog/academic-features/on-sharing-research-and-the-value-of-peer-review-mendeleys-response-to-sopa-and-the-research-works-act/ 

Increasing access to outputs of publicly funded research

Science minister David Willetts has announced that the UK Government is setting up an independent working group to look at how UK-funded research findings can be made more widely available. This follows the transparency agenda, which should apply to published research "to ensure that people are given the opportunity to know more about the projects that government funds".

The news has been welcomed by RCUK, saying "this new working group will help in the endeavour to make publicly funded research available to the public now and remain accessible for future generations.”

The InPharm.com portal comments that David Willetts is unhappy about published data resulting from publicly-funded research projects sitting "behind a pay wall".

It is interesting to see open access objectives appearing prominently on the Government's agenda.

Discovering open access repository contents

Our Library e-resources blog recently described how you can now find full text resources from OAIster through our Discovery Service SEEKER. See the full details in this post.

OAIster harvests records from worldwide institutional repositories including Research@StAndrews:FullText and makes them easily searchable.

A similar service that allows you to search and find open access resources in repositories is BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine). Outputs from a specific repository can be found by refining your search results in the Collection drop-down list.

The Directory of Open Access Repositories OpenDOAR also provides a search service for material in its directory at http://www.opendoar.org/search.php

HEFCE and RCUK agree on need for Open Access strategy

The Times Higher Education has reported that "Research Councils UK and the Higher Education Funding Council for England have agreed to work together to advance the transition to open-access publishing of research". The full statement from HEFCE is available at http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/hefce/2011/rcuk.htm

The bodies will look at how to support the practice of depositing papers into open access repositories, as well as the 'gold' method where researchers pay to publish in a journal that makes their article open access.

St Andrews researchers can currently deposit author versions of research publications into PURE so that they can be made publicly available in our institutional repository Research@StAndrews:FullText http://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/

Public visibility for St Andrews research activity

A new portal showcasing the excellent research at University of St Andrews, Research@StAndrews, is now publicly available from the University's Research pages.




The Research@StAndrews portal features activities, researcher profiles, links to Schools and research publications.

Open Access hot topic at Research Management event

Closing discussions were focussed on Open Access and compliance with research funder mandates at a recent event organised by the Centre for Research Communications.

Research Management: Smoothing the Way brought together library, IT and research managers to look at integrating research management in institutions and best practice in research support. The work at St Andrews to implement Pure and provide a joined-up service was presented as one of the case studies. We emphasized the close working relationships and sharing of knowledge that characterises our approach. Presenters from Glasgow and Newscastle provided useful insight into development of systems including features to support research assessment.

Representatives from Wellcome and NERC provided the funders' perspective, and both speakers highlighted the need for good acknowledgement practice. When data on funder names and grant IDs is properly exposed and linked, systems can make 'magic happen' by linking projects and resulting publications. The Grant Lookup feature in UK PubMed Central is an example of how this can work.

We also heard from Stephen Pinfield on funding streams for open access; reminding us that publishing models are in transition. Institutions will need to provide solid support to help researchers build open access publishing costs into their normal practice, from grant application to possible extended 'writing up' periods. Background and further discussion is in the article 'Paying for open access? Institutional funding streams and OA publication charges'

A roundup of the day with representative of CRC, ARMA, RLUK and SCONUL noted the need for shared systems and services where possible as we prepare for REF, while acknowledging the competitive nature of research assessment. Continued advocacy for compliance with funder mandates is needed from both institutions and the funders themselves, with better support for claiming open access costs. Open Access is undoubtably seen as a driving force for enhancing scholarly communication, and final thoughts turned to what can be done to continue bringing OA into mainstream practice.

Increasing our open access content

The results of a JISC project have been useful in populating Research@StAndrews:FullText. The MERIT project, which collated and enhanced RAE2008 submission data, provides a searchable database that can be analysed by institution and subject area. I describe how we have used the data on the RSP blog.

Alternative funding model for Open Access journals

A report for Knowledge Exchange puts forward a business model based on submission fees as a way to help journals become Open Access.

The report 'Submission Fees – a tool in the transition to open access?' by Mark Ware concludes that there could be benefits in adopting a model where authors pay a fee when submitting articles, but publishers are as yet unsure about the advantages. Funders also need to be more explicit about whether these costs could be claimed from research grants.