Open Access Week in St Andrews

A rather foggy start to Open Access Week in St Andrews (weatherwise), but we aim to use this week to clear any fogginess about open access! The Library has arranged a series of events to encourage all members of the University to find out how scholarly communication is changing.

Today we launch our new Open Access LibGuide - if you need a quick introduction or pointers to some OA resources, this is for you. You will also find links to the support that the Library can offer our authors, what's new in Research@StAndrews:FullText and some additional links.

The new guide is listed with all the Library's subject guides.

There will be information for visitors to the library about our repository, and about 'green' and 'gold' open access.

We will also have a drop-in session to answer informal queries, a workshop for academic staff, a Gradskills workshop and to round off the week on Friday 26th Oct our event Humanities and open access: opportunities and challenges is also open to external visitors.



Join the University of St Andrews Library to celebrate Open Access Week 2012!

St Andrews from West Sands 21 Oct 2012

Is open access the future of scholarly publishing?

Open access is bringing exciting changes to scholarly communication. It is currently a widely discussed and debated topic by government, institutions and publishers. Open Access Week provides an opportunity to come and find out why open access is important for you, your institution, your discipline, and everyone.

St Andrews University Library has organised a special event on Friday 26 Oct, 11.30-16.30:

The humanities and open access: opportunities and challenges in  Parliament Hall, South St, St Andrews

*Register (free) online*

Our invited speaker, Gary Hall, will explain why open access is important by focusing on a number of projects that creatively engage with open access research and publications:

This talk will explain why open access is important for the humanities, the University, indeed everyone. In will do so by focusing on a number of projects that creatively engage with open access research and publications, including Living Books about Life (www.livingbooksaboutlife.org), aJISC-funded series of over twenty open access books which provides a bridge between the humanities and the sciences. Produced by a globally-distributed network of writers and editors and open to ongoing collaborative processes with readers, these ‘living’ books repackage existing open access science research by clustering it around selected topics to form a series of coherent single-themed volumes - on air, bioethics, cosmetic surgery, extinction, human geonomics, pharmacology, veterinary science and so on. As the title of the project suggests, the theme that unites the volumes in the series is life, understood both biologically and philosophically.

Read more about Living Books about Life on @ the Library blog
All the books are available on our library catalogue

We will also hear about open access activities from academics in St Andrews, new journal hosting services in both St Andrews and Edinburgh University libraries, and more. While focusing on the humanities, this event will be relevant for anyone who needs to understand why open access is important.

Lunch and refreshments included - come and join us for a lively debate!

Major new open access journal publishes first articles

"eLife, the new open-access journal for outstanding scientific advancements, has published its first four research articles."

The new journal, backed by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society, and the Wellcome Trust, is due to launch officially later this year. eLife aims to publish high quality papers 'without delay' and so has chosen to make its first open access articles available on PubMed Central and UKPMC. All articles and supplementary material in eLife will be available under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence allowing unrestricted re-use of the content provided the original source and authors are credited.

The journal is promoted as a researcher-driven initiative and innovative platform, using digital media and open access to maximise its impact. Publishing in eLife is currently free of charge to authors, and its open access model ensures research results are available to all potential readers without barriers.

http://www.elifesciences.org/ "Publishing is just the beginning"

St Andrews events for Open Access Week 2012

Scholarly communication is changing!

Many research outputs are now published in open access (OA) journals, or deposited in open access repositories. Governments and funders support open access to publicly-funded research. New business models are emerging, and new opportunities are available to increase visibility of research.

Find out more about open access by joining us at one of our events to celebrate Open Access Week 2012, organised by the University of St Andrews Library.

Events for St Andrews staff and students:

Mon 22 Oct	Open Access LibGuide launch Visit the Library website and Main Library building to get yourself up to date and find out about open access resources
Tue 23 Oct	Open access 'coffee and cake' drop-in session (10:00-11:30) For support and admin staff - bring your questions to the Main Library, Level 2
Wed 24 Oct	Open access: publishing options, funder policies, support services and more (14:00-16:30) For St Andrews research staff - book CAPOD course online
Thu 25 Oct	Open access publishing: what is it? (15:00-16:30) For St Andrews postgraduates - book GRADskills course online

Event open to all:

The humanities and open access: opportunities and challenges

Friday 26 Oct, 11:00-16:30. Parliament Hall, South Street, St Andrews

Hear from St Andrews researchers and external speakers about some practical open access projects. While focusing on humanities, this event will be relevant for anyone who needs to understand why open access is important.

Main speaker: Gary Hall, Professor of Media and Performing Arts at Coventry University, co-founder of Open Humanities Press and Series Editor, Living Books about Life

More information and booking for this event.

Open Access Week "A global event, now in its 6th year, promoting Open Access as a new norm in scholarship and research."

The open access spectrum

The open access movement has been growing for 10 years since Open Access was first clearly defined in 2002. There is now a range of methods for making scholarly publications free to readers, and there is debate on the precise elements that make research outputs truly 'open' for all types of reuse.

SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) has released a new guide called How Open Is It? which describes the components that make up open access and analyses where a journal lies on the open access spectrum. The guide lays out Reader rights, Reuse rights, Copyright, Author posting rights, Automatic posting and Machine readability in a simple matrix and aims to help authors make informed choices about where to publish.

How Open Is It? is published with a request for public comment.

Setting the default to open

New recommendations for open access policy have been released by the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI).

An announcement from SPARC describes the guidelines that mark 10 years since the first clearly defined ideas about open access by BOAI.

"The Open Access recommendations include the development of Open Access policies in institutions of higher education and in funding agencies, the open licensing of scholarly works, the development of infrastructure such as Open Access repositories and creating standards of professional conduct for Open Access publishing. The recommendations also establish a new goal of achieving Open Access as the default method for distributing new peer-reviewed research in every field and in every country within ten years’ time." (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition)

The BOAI Recommendations for the next 10 years provide clear strategy for institutional, funder and publisher policy, guidance on licensing and infrastructure and advice on advocacy. The recommendations close with "truths about OA":

• OA benefits research and researchers, and the lack of OA impedes them.
• OA for publicly-funded research benefits taxpayers and increases the return on their investment in research. It has economic benefits as well as academic or scholarly benefits.
• OA amplifies the social value of research, and OA policies amplify the social value of funding agencies and research institutions.
• The costs of OA can be recovered without adding more money to the current system of scholarly communication.
• OA is consistent with copyright law everywhere in the world, and gives both authors and readers more rights than they have under conventional publishing agreements.
• OA is consistent with the highest standards of quality.

See also: Reflections on the BOAI-10 recommendations from Alma Swan (Key Perspectives Ltd & SPARC Europe), interviewed by Richard Poynder.

Massive shift to open access for UK

July 16 was a big day for open access in the UK. The latest SPARC Open Access Newsletter (SOAN) by Peter Suber describes the 'tipping point' for the open access movement.



SOAN #165 (Sep 2, 2012) gives a detailed analysis of 3 major announcements on 16 July 2012 from RCUK, HEFCE and the UK Minister for Universities and Science, including the potential consequences for journals and authors. The newsletter also covers the subsequent release of documents from the European Commission on OA policy. Taken together, these announcements appear to make the transition to open access for scholarly publishing innevitable - at least across Europe.

Discussions are now under way across institutions to decide how to manage the transition, including the costs involved and mechanisms for adapting to new business models from publishers. The UK government has recently announced additional funding for some universities, to 'kick-start' this process.

RCUK welcomes additional investment in Open Access