Royal Society call for submissions for new open access journal

The Royal Society will launch its second fully open access journal Royal Society Open Science in September of this year and is now calling for submissions. The journal is comprehensive in its scope covering life sciences, physical sciences, mathematics, engineering and computer science. The journal also aims to publish work without the length and scope restrictions observed by more traditional journals.

What is of particular interest is that the publishing model aims to offer open peer review as an option, will offer open access to data, implement article level metrics and offer researchers the opportunity to add post-publication comments.

Papers are made open access on publication on the Royal Society Open Science website and are deposited in PubMed Central on behalf of the author. Authors also retain copyright of their work and papers are made freely available under a Creative Commons Attribution License  (CC BY 4.0). The journal is therefore fully compliant with funder open access mandates.

Open access charges for Royal Society Open Science are waived by the publishers for an introductory period. If you are publishing after this initial period do not fret. The Library has Open Access membership with Royal Society Publishing and this will continue to give University of St Andrews authors a 25% discount on standard article processing charges. Contact open-access-support@st-andrews.ac.uk for details. 

To find out more about the journal and to submit research, visit the Royal Society Open Science website.

The future of books: what do researchers want?

Please help a major research project to understand how you use books.             

OAPEN-UK, an AHRC and Jisc-funded project on open access monographs, is currently running a survey to understand how researchers in the humanities and social sciences use books, and especially monographs.

The survey design has been informed by a range of funders including HEFCE and Jisc, and the findings will help build an evidence base for future policies to support monograph publishing in the UK.  

No identifiable data will be made public or shared beyond the OAPEN-UK project team. All respondents to the survey can enter a prize draw to win up to £100 of Amazon vouchers.

I hope you’ll spare 10-15 minutes to participate, and to help the researchers understand what you want as both authors and readers of books.

The survey can be found here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/K96XZD5 (closes 6 June 2014)

If you have any questions, please contact the survey researcher, Ellen Collins, on ellen.collins@researchinfonet.org


The survey will form an important input into the HEFCE Monographs and Open Access Project. This study aims to examine the difficulties facing open access publishing for monographs. HEFCE has set up an Expert Reference Group to establish what evidence is needed to inform understanding in this area, and to provide advice on an appropriate programme of work to gather this evidence.

Open Access theses and Research@StAndrews:FullText : a personal view

Even as a student studying towards a degree in Librarianship, there are still many services libraries offer which I never learned about at university. Fortunately, I was lucky enough to do a work placement at the University of St Andrews Library as part of the Digital Repository and Open Access team which opened my eyes to just how vital Open Access and the digital accessibility of research theses can be for the academic community and the exchange and creation of ideas.

Open Access – the free access to research publications – has become a central part of academic research practice. The free access to research publications is, however, not limited to journal articles, book chapters, and conference contributions, but includes free access to postgraduate theses as well. 

At St Andrews, postgraduate theses from a wide variety of subjects can be downloaded from the university’s institutional repository Research@StAndrews:FullText– it’s quick, it’s available to everybody, and it’s free!

In the repository, you will find theses from physics and astronomy to mediaeval history, theses published this year and theses published back in the 1950s – one thesis submitted in 1983 has proved particularly popular and has been downloaded 12 times in the week after its full text was uploaded intothe repository.

Imagine your thesis being still highly sought after several decades after you wrote and submitted it – if you’ve always dreamt of your dissertation being read by dozens of interested students and researchers, allowing your postgraduate thesis to be uploaded into the institutional repository might help you make this dream come true! 

Using our institutional repository benefits both those interested in a particular topic and the authors of the postgraduate theses. Readers gain free access to a hitherto largely unused resource of hundreds of postgraduate theses which they can use as inspiration for their own research, while authors are given the opportunity to reach a larger audience, thus raising the awareness of their research. 

Even theses written many years or decades ago at St Andrews could be of great interest today. This is evidenced by the fact that we recently have received requests from EThOS, the British Library’s UK-wide service for the digitisation of PhD theses, to provide them with theses from every decade since the 1950s. (To me, it was absolutely astonishing to see that theses written back in the day of my parents’ time at university were still read today. I finally have proof that they were wrong when they claimed that “nobody apart from your supervisor will ever read your thesis”!)

If you have written a postgraduate research thesis at St Andrews prior to 2007 and would like your thesis to be electronically available in the repository, please get in touch. With your permission, we will be able to digitise your thesis and make it available to others – you never know what brilliant research your thesis might inspire!

Maja Gusavac
(Guest blogger)

St Andrews thesis ranks highly in EThOS downloads chart

We are delighted to report that a PhD thesis written at St Andrews over 30 years ago has been the second most downloaded thesis from EThOS in March 2014.

‘The Gospel of Thomas and the earliest texts of the synoptic gospels’ by Kenneth V. Neller, who sadly passed away in January last year, has been downloaded 18 times this March. Owing to the kindness of Dr Neller’s widow, who gave permission in his name for the thesis to be uploaded as an Open Access thesis to our institutional repository, Research@StAndrews:FullText, we were able to make it available to researchers and students from all over the world.

Dr Neller’s thesis has been downloaded from EThOS by post-graduates, researchers, and teachers from Finland, Brazil, the US, the UK, and Australia.

Following a request made via EThOS by a post-graduate student from Australia, we uploaded Dr Neller’s thesis to our institutional repository last week. Since the upload, ‘The Gospel of Thomas and the earliest texts of the synoptic gospels’ has been downloaded 12 times in only a week – these are truly phenomenal statistics, more than 1 download per day.

We hope that Dr Neller’s thesis will inspire its readers, encourage further research, and that its popularity will motivate other researchers to make their theses publicly available as well. 

Our thanks go to Mrs Neller for kindly allowing us to upload the full text into our repository.

Maja Gusavac 

(Guest blogger)

Workshop on Open Access for St Andrews staff

Do you want a better understanding of what open access means for you? Do you need to know how to comply with your funders' requirements for open access? Would you like an understanding of how using PURE relates to open access publications?

Why not sign up for our course for St Andrews staff:

Open access: publishing options, funder policies, support services and more

Date: Wed 14 May 2014
Time: 1400-1630
Programme: Academic Staff Development Programme

See more details and sign up on PDMS

https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/pdms/index.php?Mode=Search&AudienceID=2&CourseID=3968

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 

HEFCE policy on open access announced

The UK has taken another huge step towards open access of its research outputs, with the announcement of a new policy from HEFCE on behalf of all 4 UK funding bodies. The policy describes new eligibility requirements for outputs submitted to the post-2014 REF.

The policy is interesting in its approach; separating out deposit, discovery and access requirements. It applies to journal articles or conference proceedings (with ISSNs) which are accepted for publication after 1 April 2016, with encouragement for institutions to work towards compliance as soon as possible. Certain exceptions will apply, provided these are justified in the eventual REF submission.

At the heart of the policy is the requirement to deposit publications in a repository within 3 months of acceptance. Bibliographic metadata should be made available to allow discovery by readers, and access to the full text must be provided as soon as possible (unless an exception applies). The full text is expected to be an author’s accepted (peer-reviewed) manuscript, and embargo periods are allowed.

Further details on how to comply and support available for St Andrews researchers will be available soon.

Policy for open access in the post-2014 Research Excellence Framework available at: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/year/2014/201407/#d.en.86771