Open Access monograph - Wellcome Trust OA funding in action

Just a few weeks after the Wellcome Trust strengthened their open access policy to include monographs, the first OA monograph funded by the Trust has been published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Fungal Disease in Britain and the United States 1850-2000, by Dr Aya Homei and Professor Michael Worboys, is now available as a free ebook. See the full details, and download under a Creative Commons licence from http://www.palgraveconnect.com/pc/doifinder/10.1057/9781137377029

In an LSE blog post, the author stated:

We are delighted that our book is being published open access and feel that it will ensure that our subject, the history of fungal disease, will enjoy a much wider audience than would otherwise have been the case.

Professor Worboys goes on to describe the process as being the same as it would be for a print version, other than a little extra work on obtaining image permissions - none of which were refused. Sam Burridge of Palgrave Macmillan describes their approach to publishing open access across all their formats, and hopes this book will be the first of many.

Blog post: The Wellcome Trust funds its first open access monograph, helping medical humanities reach wider audiences

To build on the theme of this OA book, we took a look in Research@StAndrews:FullText and found this thesis - rather different in scope but of interest locally:

Patterson, Stephen (1989) The control of infectious diseases in Fife, c. 1855-1950

and via our Research@StAndrews portal we found this article, partially funded by Wellcome, and available free from Europe PMC:

Telford, J. C., Yeung, J. H. F., Xu, G., Kiefel, M. J., Watts, A. G., Hader, S., Chan, J., Bennet, A. J., Moore, M. M., & Taylor, G. L. (2011). The Aspergillus fumigatus sialidase is a KDNase: structural and mechanistic insights. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 286(12), 10783-10792

We hope it won't be long before we can add a Wellcome Trust-funded open access monograph to our collection!

Impact of open access on teaching

During this year's Open Access Week, BioMed Central highlighted a number of open access articles that address questions of impact on society. Having just caught up with the collected tweets, we are delighted to see an article in BMC Bioinformatics by St Andrews authors Daniel Barker et al. mentioned as a way that open access can benefit the public:

.@univofstandrews lecturers use @raspberrypi & #OpenAccess materials to teach bioinformatics http://t.co/PZLjSxUdKw #OAWeek #imFact
— BioMed Central (@BioMedCentral) October 23, 2013

The article is about teaching bioinformatics to biologists at the University of St Andrews with a low-cost computing environment, and an embedded open access course:

By including an explicit Open Access licence, and removing or replacing material incompatible with this from 4273π Bioinformatics for Biologists, we have been able to share it with anyone interested, the world over, in such a way that they can – with minimal care – re-use and adapt it without accusation of plagiarism or copyright violation.

The article is of course open access itself, paid for by the University's membership of BioMed Central

The full list of stories are available from the BioMed Central blog

Information about Creative Commons added to libguide

Are you new to open access or hearing about Creative Commons for the first time? Do you want to know how to find content that has a specific open access licence? Have you had an article accepted for publication and need to know which Creative Commons licence you should apply to your work?

As part of our Open Access Week inititatives, we have added another page to our open access libguide which addresses these questions and points to useful resources where you can find out more.

See the new page of our guide on Creative Commons licences at http://libguides.st-andrews.ac.uk/oalicences

Celebrating Open Access @ St Andrews

We are always delighted at the wealth of content we discover through our open access services, and the insight we get on the amazing research going on in our academic community. To celebrate this, we have created a range of bookmarks with images illustrating some items in our repository. The first three in the series are shown below, and we will be adding more soon.

 Image from Byrne, RW, Bates, L & Moss, CJ 2009, 'Elephant cognition in primate perspective' Comparative Cognition & Behavior Reviews, vol 4, pp. 65-79. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/1612 

Image from Jaeger, A, Selmeczy, D, O'Connor, AR, Diaz, M & Dobbins, I 2012, 'Prefrontal cortex contributions to controlled memory judgment: fMRI evidence from adolescents and young adults' Neuropsychologia, vol 50, no. 14, pp. 3745-3756. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/3243

Image by Tiago Marques, fieldwork for: Aars, J, Marques, TALO, Andersen, M, Belikov, S, Boltunov, A, Buckland, ST & Wiig, O 2009, 'Estimating the Barents Sea polar bear subpopulation size' Marine Mammal Science, vol 25, no. 1, pp. 35-52. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/1879

 

University of St Andrews Open Access Policy

To coincide with Open Access Week 2014, the University of St Andrews has published a position statement on open access. John MacColl, University Librarian & Director of Library Services introduces the new Open Access Policy:

Open Access to scholarly outputs is one of the key challenges for those of us working in research institutions at the present time. Researchers want to have their words read, their data presented and their ideas disseminated. The machinery which makes this happen is complex, necessarily involving businesses, funders, library customers and web-based content providers. What is a reasonable price to pay for research dissemination, and at what point in the transaction chain between reviewers accepting an output for publication and the world getting sight of it is it fair to say that the work has been paid for and can now be made open? Which model best suits different academic disciplines with varying cultures of confidentiality and review? Despite the significant difficulties in finding a way to balance the multiple interests involved, the UK has sought to face up to these challenges in order to arrive at systems of open access which are economically viable and provide for public good and the advancement of knowledge. With research funding now being utilised to develop the Open Access agenda, it is important for us to have a shared vision as an academic community on the means as well as the ends of the publication of research by this University. Our new Open Access Policy provides a statement of that shared vision.

The University of St Andrews Open Access Policy states:

Our preference in respect of publishing in journals is for Open Access by means of the Green route.[...] To achieve Green Open Access compliance, researchers should record their publications in PURE at the time of acceptance, and deposit a postprint in the University’s repository via PURE - or in another appropriate repository.

We also support ‘Gold’ Open Access which usually involves paying Article Processing Charges to publishers of Open Access journals. [...] The Library administers Open Access publication funds which are available to academic authors in certain cases where Article Processing Charges require to be paid.

The policy also encourages academic authors to "consider Open Access publication of monographs where possible".

See the full policy at http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/library/services/researchsupport/openaccess/oapolicy/ [print version]

Open Access support and further information is available from the Library webpages and from the Open Access Support team

Information about open access books added to libguide

To start this year's Open Access Week, the Library has added to its Libguide on open access with a page about open access monographs.

In addition to developments in journal publishing, there are many exciting things happening with book publishing. We have provided some basic information, with links to details on recent developments including new business models. You can also find information about projects and publishers, and how to search for open access books.

See the new guide at http://libguides.st-andrews.ac.uk/oabooks

Open Access training workshop

Are you confused by 'Green' and 'Gold'? Unsure what your research funder requires or whether your publisher allows it? When can you get funding to publish open access? How can you deposit your work in our institutional repository, and where doe PURE fit in to all this?...

These questions and more will be answered at our workshop for St Andrews academic staff, held as part of Open Access Week 2013.

Open access: publishing options, funder policies, support services and more
Wed 23 Oct, 1400-1630

This workshop, presented jointly by the Library Academic Liaison Team, Research Policy Office (RPO) and with information from Financial Advice and Support (FAS), will give an introduction to open access and new publishing models.  It will give an overview of the publishing options available to researchers in the open access environment.

Suitable for Academic staff, postdoctoral staff, and support staff

For more details, and to sign up, go to PDMS Course booking site