Archives des mots-clés : United Kingdom

Advancing research data publishing practices for the social sciences: from archive activity to empowering researchers

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Authors : Veerle Van den Eynden, Louise Corti

Sharing and publishing social science research data have a long history in the UK, through long-standing agreements with government agencies for sharing survey data and the data policy, infrastructure, and data services supported by the Economic and Social Research Council.

The UK Data Service and its predecessors developed data management, documentation, and publishing procedures and protocols that stand today as robust templates for data publishing.

As the ESRC research data policy requires grant holders to submit their research data to the UK Data Service after a grant ends, setting standards and promoting them has been essential in raising the quality of the resulting research data being published. In the past, received data were all processed, documented, and published for reuse in-house.

Recent investments have focused on guiding and training researchers in good data management practices and skills for creating shareable data, as well as a self-publishing repository system, ReShare. ReShare also receives data sets described in published data papers and achieves scientific quality assurance through peer review of submitted data sets before publication.

Social science data are reused for research, to inform policy, in teaching and for methods learning. Over a 10 years period, responsive developments in system workflows, access control options, persistent identifiers, templates, and checks, together with targeted guidance for researchers, have helped raise the standard of self-publishing social science data.

Lessons learned and developments in shifting publishing social science data from an archivist responsibility to a researcher process are showcased, as inspiration for institutions setting up a data repository.

URL : Advancing research data publishing practices for the social sciences: from archive activity to empowering researchers

DOI : doi:10.1007/s00799-016-0177-3

Offsetting and its discontents: challenges and opportunities of open access offsetting agreements

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Author : Liam Earney

The growth of open access (OA) via the payment of article processing charges (APCs) in hybrid journals has been a key feature of the approach to OA in the UK. In response, Jisc Collections has been piloting ‘offsetting agreements’ that explicitly link subscription and APCs, seeking to reduce one as the other grows.

However, offsetting agreements have become increasingly contentious with institutions, advocates and publishers.

With reference to issues such as cost, administrative efficiency, transparency and the transition to open access, this paper provides an update on the status of UK negotiations, reflects on the challenges and opportunities presented by such agreements, and considers the implications for the path of future negotiations.

URL : Offsetting and its discontents: challenges and opportunities of open access offsetting agreements

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.345

Organization and Delivery of Scholarly Communications Services by Academic and Research Libraries in the United Kingdom: Observations from Across the Pond

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Author: Christine Fruin

INTRODUCTION

The U.K. library community has implemented collaborative strategies in key scholarly communication areas such as open access mandate compliance, and U.S. librarians could benefit from learning in greater detail about the practices and experiences of U.K. libraries with respect to how they have organized scholarly communication services.

METHODS

In order to better understand the scholarly communication activities in U.K. academic and research libraries, and how U.S. libraries could apply that experience in the context of their own priorities, an environmental scan via a survey of U.K. research libraries and in-person interviews were conducted.

RESULTS

U.K. libraries concentrate their scholarly communication services on supporting compliance with open access mandates and in the development of new services that reflect libraries’ shifting role from information consumer to information producer.

DISCUSSION 

Due to the difference in the requirements of open access mandates in the U.K. as compared to the U.S., scholarly communication services in the U.K. are more focused on supporting compliance efforts. U.S. libraries engage more actively in providing copyright education and consultation than U.K. libraries. Both U.K. and U.S. libraries have developed new services in the areas of research data management and library publishing.

CONCLUSION

There are three primary takeaways from the experience of U.K. scholarly communication practitioners for U.S. librarians: increase collaboration with offices of research, reconsider current organization and delegation of scholarly communication services, and increase involvement in legislative and policy-making activity in the U.S. with respect to access to research.

URL : Organization and Delivery of Scholarly Communications Services by Academic and Research Libraries in the United Kingdom: Observations from Across the Pond

DOI : http://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2157

 

Who support open access publishing? Gender, discipline, seniority and other factors associated with academics’ OA practice

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Author : Yimei Zhu

This paper presents the findings from a survey study of UK academics and their publishing behaviour. The aim of this study is to investigate academics’ attitudes towards and practice of open access (OA) publishing.

The results are based on a survey study of academics at 12 Russell Group universities, and reflect responses from over 1800 researchers. This study found that whilst most academics support the principle of making knowledge freely available to everyone, the use of OA publishing among UK academics was still limited despite relevant established OA policies.

The results suggest that there were differences in the extent of OA practice between different universities, academic disciplines, age and seniorities. Academics’ use in OA publishing was also related to their awareness of OA policy and OA repositories, their attitudes towards the importance of OA publishing and their belief in OA citation advantage.

The implications of these findings are relevant to the development of strategies for the implementation of OA policies.

URL : Who support open access publishing? Gender, discipline, seniority and other factors associated with academics’ OA practice

Alternative location : http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11192-017-2316-z

UK University policy approaches towards the copyright ownership of scholarly works and the future of open access

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Author : Elizabeth Gadd

Purpose

Considers how the open access policy environment has developed since the RoMEO (Rights Metadata for Open Archiving) Project’s call in 2003 for universities and academics to assert joint copyright ownership of scholarly works. Investigates whether UK universities are moving towards joint copyright ownership.

Design

Analyses 81 UK university copyright policies are analysed to understand what proportion make a claim over i) IP ownership of all outputs; ii) the copyright in scholarly works; iii) re-using scholarly works in specific ways; iv) approaches to moral rights. Results are cross-tabulated by policy age and mission group.

Findings

Universities have not asserted their interest in scholarly works through joint ownership, leaving research funders and publishers to set open access policy. Finds an increased proportion of universities assert a generic claim to all IP (87%) relative to earlier studies.

74% of policies relinquished rights in scholarly works in favour of academic staff. 20% of policies share ownership of scholarly works through licensing. 28% of policies assert the right to reuse scholarly works in some way.

32% of policies seek to protect moral rights. Policies that ‘share’ ownership of scholarly works are more recent. The UK Scholarly Communication Licence (UK-SCL) should have an impact on this area.

The reliance on individual academics to enforce a copyright policy or not to opt out of the UK-SCL could be problematic. Concludes that open access may still be best served by joint ownership of scholarly works.

Originality

This the first large-scale analysis of UK university policy positions towards scholarly works. Discovers for the first time a move towards ‘shared’ ownership of scholarly works in copyright policies.

URL : https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/2134/23166

 

A ‘gold-centric’ implementation of open access: Hybrid journals, the ‘total cost of publication’ and policy development in the UK and beyond

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Authors : Stephen Pinfield, Jennifer Salter, Peter A. Bath

This paper reports analysis of data from higher education institutions in the UK on their experience of the open-access (OA) publishing market working within a policy environment favouring ‘Gold’ OA (OA publishing in journals).

It models the ‘total cost of publication’ – comprising costs of journal subscriptions, OA article-processing charges (APCs) and new administrative costs – for a sample of 24 institutions. APCs are shown to constitute 12% of the ‘total cost of publication’, APC administration, 1%, and subscriptions, 87% (for a sample of seven publishers).

APC expenditure in institutions rose between 2012 and 2014 at the same time as rising subscription costs. There was disproportionately high take up of Gold options for Health and Life Sciences articles.

APC prices paid varied widely, with a mean APC of £1,586 in 2014. ‘Hybrid’ options (subscription journals also offering OA for individual articles on payment of an APC) were considerably more expensive than fully-OA titles, but the data indicate a correlation between APC price and journal quality (as reflected in the citation rates of journals).

The policy implications of these developments are explored particularly in relation to hybrid OA and potential of offsetting subscription and APC costs.

URL : http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/96336/

Large scale implementation of open access: a case study at the University of Edinburgh’s College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine

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Authors : Anna Krzak, Dominic Tate

Journal papers and conference proceedings accepted for publication from April 2016 must be deposited in an institutional and/or subject repository within three months of acceptance, and following this must be made open access, in order to be eligible for submission to the next Research Evaluation Framework in the United Kingdom.

This paper describes the programme to facilitate this at the University of Edinburgh’s College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine.

URL : http://hdl.handle.net/1842/16058