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)

'Open Access' now open access

Essential reference book Open Access, by Peter Suber, is now available in multiple open access formats from MIT Press:

In this concise introduction, Peter Suber tells us what open access is and isn’t, how it benefits authors and readers of research, how we pay for it, how it avoids copyright problems, how it has moved from the periphery to the mainstream, and what its future may hold. Distilling a decade of Suber’s influential writing and thinking about open access, this is the indispensable book on the subject for researchers, librarians, administrators, funders, publishers, and policy makers.

Peter Suber is  Director of the Office for Scholarly Communication Office at Harvard, Director of the Harvard Open Access Project, a Faculty Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and Senior Researcher at SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). He is widely considered the de facto leader of the worldwide open access movement.

The book continues to be available in paperback, and is now freely available in ePUB, Mobi, PDF and HTML from http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/open-access

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.

RCUK Open Access Policy briefing

1st April 2013 is the start date for the new RCUK policy on Open Access. We have compiled a short two page document which describes the key points in the new policy and gives useful guidance information on how to comply for St Andrews authors. The RCUK OA policy key points and guidance document is available from the Library web pages at http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/library/information/furtherhelp/openaccess/ .

The latest RCUK open access policy revised on 6th March 2013 is available at http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/Pages/outputs.aspx

RCUK are expected to issue revised guidance early in April 2013 as a result of further consultation with stakeholders. We will keep you updated on announcements through this blog and on our webpages. Help and guidance is always available at open-access-support

UPDATE: Latest revisions to the policy guidance and new FAQ available from RCUK OA policy page at http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/Pages/outputs.aspx

Highlighting open access outputs in School of Classics

Following collaboration between the Library repository team and School computing officers, the University of St Andrews School of Classics has developed new web pages highlighting content from Research@StAndrews:FullText.

Using RSS feeds and scripts to repurpose the data, the new Classics site provides a dynamic list of completed theses, with options to view abstracts and link to the full text. There are also handy links back to Library web pages with further information on finding theses and general advice on open access. (Note, not all theses are available to download immediately due to embargoes).

In addition there is a page that links to open access research publications by staff in Classics, all of which have full text available in Research@StAndrews:FullText

Our embedded usage stats show healthy downloads for some of these research outputs, for example 'Written Into the landscape : Latin epic and the landmarks of literary reception' (PhD thesis by James S McIntyre, 122 downloads) and 'Training athletes and explaining the past in Philostratus' Gymnasticus' (Book chapter by Dr Jason Konig, 70 downloads).

Link to School of Classics Postgraduate research and staff publications from http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/classics/research/

Evidence for BIS open access inquiry

The UK Government's Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) committee has published the written evidence for its inquiry into open access. The inquiry was announced at the end of Jan 2013.

98 pieces of evidence have been submitted by societies, publishers, researchers, institutions and other contributors such as Research Libraries UK and SPARC Europe. These deal with topics including use of Creative Commons licences, cost of APCs and the role of repositories.

The written evidence is available at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmbis/writev/openaccess/contents.htm

This follows a  similar inquiry heard by The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, and ahead of a request from RCUK for feedback on its revised open access policy. Despite various consultations, there are still some points that require clarification before the new policy comes into effect on 1 April 2013.

Revised RCUK open access policy

Research Councils UK (RCUK) has today published the latest version of its guidance for its revised Policy on Open Access, which comes into effect on 1 April 2013. The guidelines contain additonal information on how block grants are to be used to enable open access for RCUK-funded research outputs. The University of St Andrews will receive £203,593 in April to cover these costs.

RCUK are seeking feedback on the revised guidelines, to be submitted by 20 March 2013.

A finalised OA policy will be published with any further clarifications on the RCUK OA Policy page.