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The effects of open access mandates on institutional…

The effects of open access mandates on institutional repositories in the UK and Germany :

“Purpose :
This research project explores the effects of institutional open access mandates on institutional repositories in Higher Education Institutions in the UK and Germany. Therefore, it analyses the experiences, opinions, and expectations of institutional repository managers from both countries.

Methodology : A thorough literature review and a questionnaire-based survey were conducted to gain background information regarding open access publishing, institutional repositories, and institutional open access mandates. Semi-structured follow-up interviews provide an in-depth insight into the views of institutional repository managers regarding the effects of institutional open access mandates. The results are presented thematically.

Findings : There is evidence that institutional mandates do have effects on institutional repositories in different ways, e.g. on content deposited and service provision. The effects vary according to the characteristics of repositories and the approach taken by institutions. The research results also indicate that the experiences of institutions with a mandate and the expectations of institutions without one are almost identical across both the UK and Germany, although the developmental context of institutional repositories and institutional mandates in these two countries are very different.

Impact : The findings of the dissertation are of interest for Higher Education Institutions considering the implementation of an institutional open access mandate.

Research limitations : The research was limited in the comparative analysis of the experiences of institutional repository managers as there are almost no mandates implemented in Germany. The limited time did not allow to follow-up further questions after the
interviews were transcribed and analysed. A study of larger scale, for example on European level, should be interesting.

Value : The value of this dissertation is the exploration of the effects of institutional open access mandates on institutional repository services, a neglected field within the vast research about open access publishing and mandates so far.”

URL : https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/handle/2134/9327

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Open peer review by a selected papers network…

Open peer review by a selected-papers network :

“A selected-papers (SP) network is a network in which researchers who read, write, and review articles subscribe to each other based on common interests. Instead of reviewing a manuscript in secret for the Editor of a journal, each reviewer simply publishes his review (typically of a paper he wishes to recommend) to his SP network subscribers. Once the SP network reviewers complete their review decisions, the authors can invite any journal editor they want to consider these reviews and initial audience size, and make a publication decision. Since all impact assessment, reviews, and revisions are complete, this decision process should be short. I show how the SP network can provide a new way of measuring impact, catalyze the emergence of new subfields, and accelerate discovery in existing fields, by providing each reader a fine-grained filter for high-impact. I present a three phase plan for building a basic SP network, and making it an effective peer review platform that can be used by journals, conferences, users of repositories such as arXiv, and users of search engines such as PubMed. I show how the SP network can greatly improve review and dissemination of research articles in areas that are not well-supported by existing journals. Finally, I illustrate how the SP network concept can work well with existing publication services such as journals, conferences, arXiv, PubMed, and online citation management sites.”

URL : http://www.frontiersin.org/Journal/FullText.aspx?ART_DOI=10.3389/fncom.2012.00001&name=Computational_Neuroscience

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Case Studies on Institutional Open Approaches The Open…

Case Studies on Institutional Open Approaches: The Open University :

“Interpreting openness has been part of The Open University’s mission since its foundation in 1969. As a distance teaching university it has always developed extensive educational resources for its students and occasionally for a wider audience but the emergence of open educational resources (OER) has challenged the ways in which it both develops and uses such teaching materials, in particular an over-reliance on in-house authoring and embedded third party materials and income from sales and licensing of such content. As educational resources are integral to the university’s teaching and business model a large scale, institution-wide, action research project aligned to University strategic objectives was established to examine the potential impact of OER in those models (with funding support from a US Foundation). Extensive research and evaluation activities plus widespread staff acceptance and experience in the use of OER in various parts of their work has enabled a gradual bottom-up adoption and planned top-down embedding of OER and other aspects of openness into most facets of University work after five years, including a defined open media policy.”

URL : http://oro.open.ac.uk/33245/

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Survey on open access in FP7 Open…

Survey on open access in FP7 :

“Open access refers to the practice of granting free Internet access to research outputs. The principal objective of an open access policy in the seventh framework programme (FP7) is to provide researchers and other interested members of the public with improved online access to EU-funded research results. This is considered a way to improve the EU’s return on research and development investment.

The European Commission launched in August 2008 the open access pilot in FP7. It concerns all new projects from that date in seven FP7 research areas: energy, environment, health, information and communication technologies (cognitive systems, interaction, and robotics), research infrastructures (e-infrastructures), science in society (SiS) and socioeconomic sciences and humanities (SSH). Grant beneficiaries are expected to deposit peer-reviewed research articles or final manuscripts resulting from their projects into an online repository and make their best efforts to ensure open access to those articles within a set period of time after publication.

In addition to the pilot, FP7 rules of participation also allow all projects to have open access fees eligible for reimbursement during the time of the grant agreement (1) (‘open access publishing’, also called ‘author pays’ fees).

In May 2011, the Commission identified the 811 projects designated at the time and sent a questionnaire to all project coordinators in order to collect feedback on their experiences of both the implementation of the pilot and the reimbursement of open access publishing costs. A total of 194 answers were received by the end of August 2011. They provide important input for the future of the open access policy and practices in Horizon 2020 (the future EU framework programme for research and innovation), and for the preparation of a communication from the Commission and a recommendation to Member States on scientific publications in the digital age.”

URL : http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/survey-on-open-access-in-fp7_en.pdf

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Institutional repository `eKMAIR’ establishing and populating a research…

Institutional repository `eKMAIR’: establishing and populating a research repository for the National University “Kyiv Mohyla Academy” :

“University libraries have an increasingly important role to play in supporting open access publishing and dissemination of research outputs. In particular, many libraries are playing a leading role in establishing and managing institutional repositories. Institutional repositories are, most often, Open Access Initiative (OAI)-compliant databases of a university or other research institution’s intellectual output, most typically research papers, although many other forms of digital media can also be stored and disseminated. Their main function is to provide improved access to the full text of research articles and improve retrieval of relevant research.
The National University “Kyiv Mohyla Academy” is a small-sized institution with approximately 3,000 students and 500 academic staff. Although it is a teaching-intensive university, developing research and knowledge-transfer capacity is a strategic priority and four research institutes have been established, with further research activity going on in the academic schools and research centres.”

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.2434

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Trends from the Canadian IR ETD Survey 2012…

Trends from the Canadian IR/ETD Survey 2012 :

“The purpose of the 2012 Canadian IR/ETD Survey was two-fold. The first was to show the growth of Institutional Repositories (IRs) across Canada. The second was to illustrate the state of the electronic theses and dissertations (ETD) submission programs at Canadian institutions granting graduate degrees, where a thesis or dissertation is a requirement for graduation. The survey was a follow-up to one conducted in April/May 2009. We had 38 responses to the survey, with 5 duplicates. The duplicates were caused by two responses from the same institution. Therefore a total of 33 institutions responded. The trends below are based on the responses from the 33 institutions. The IR address was an optional field, but it did indicate that the responses were evenly distributed across Canada.”
URL : http://dspace.library.uvic.ca:8080/handle/1828/3845