Category / BRIAN

Preprints, what do we know about them?

BRIAN, BU Challenges, Publishing

Source: https://www.aje.com/arc/benefits-of-preprints-for-researchers/

A preprint is a version of a research manuscript published before peer review.  Normally, these are published electronically and made freely available on large databases or preprint servers.  Some of the popular preprint servers include arXiv, PeerJ, The Open Science Framework, OSF Preprints. Preprint servers provide a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) to enable you to link to your work and version control to curate the different versions as you make changes to your manuscript. Publishing a preprint can speed up the process of disseminating your research and avoiding any delays caused by the publication process.

Preprints achieve many of the goals of journal publishing, but within a much shorter time frame. The biggest benefits fall into 3 areas: credit, feedback, and visibility.

Credit – When you post a preprint with your research results, you can firmly stake a claim to the work you’ve done. If there is any subsequent discussion of who found a particular result first, you can point to the preprint as a public, conclusive record of your data. Most preprints are assigned a digital object identifier (DOI), which allows your work to become a permanent part of the scholarly record – one that can be referenced in any dispute over who discovered something first.

Feedback – In the traditional system, a submitted manuscript receives feedback from 2 or 3 peer reviewers before publication. With a preprint, other researchers can discover your work sooner, potentially pointing out critical flaws or errors, suggest new studies or data that strengthen your argument or even recommend a collaboration that could lead to publication in a more prestigious journal.

Visibility – Preprints are not the final form of a research paper for most authors. Thankfully, preprints and infrastructure providers like Crossref link to the final published article whenever possible, meaning that your preprint can serve to bring new readers to your published paper. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association saw notable increases in citations and Altmetric scores when authors had posted their work first as a preprint.

Normally journal publishers will not accept work that is published or submitted elsewhere.  Journal publishers in subjects where preprints are widely used will accept research that has been previously released as a preprint.   As preprints emerge as a normal part of the publishing process in new subject areas, questions about whether preprints are regarded as previously published are still being worked through.  It would be prudent to check the policies of publishers who may be the ultimate publishers of your research if you choose to publish your research as a preprint.

Journal publishers encourage the publication of preprints after a paper has been accepted. This is the Green Route to Open Access publication.  It is important that the publisher’s policies on preprints after publication / submission are checked on the SherpaRoMEO database.

In recent developments (2017) research funders The Welcome Trust, the Medical Research Council and others have accepted the inclusion of references to preprints in grant applications as evidence of current research activity.

However, there are some crucial points to consider, before you submit your preprint to a server. The preprint guidelines below from Wiley provide some useful points to consider:

  • Posting of a preprint may violate the copyright agreement or understanding held with a publisher. When you submit an article to a journal you are doing so with the implicit understanding that an accepted article will be published and the copyright for that article then transferred to the publisher. It is ethically wrong to post a preprint that has benefitted from the resources of a publishing house (revision after peer review, copy editing, publication on Wiley Online Library, etc.); especially where the revised, accepted article, and final published versions of a paper are concerned.
  • A preprint service provider may ask authors to sign an agreement that prevents publication of the work in a journal later. On ChemRxiv, authors may control the usage rights for their posted preprint with one of three CC BY attribution licenses. When posting on a preprint server, such as ChemRxiv, we recommend that authors retain the rights to their work through use of a non-exclusive license to distribute interim research products (e.g., with a CC-BY-NC-ND or no reuse license), so that their publication options are not limited in any way later on. If an author posts a preprint under one of these licenses, the author can grant the publisher rights to use in a commercial and/or derivative manner because the author has retained those rights.
  • Failure to declare the preprint(s) associated with submission to a journal may be non-compliant with the journal′s Notice to Authors and could be grounds for rejection of a submitted manuscript.
  • Publicity of preprints through media coverage (e.g., press releases) is not advised when publication of the work in a journal is envisaged. Authors run the risk of attracting media attention to the work before it has undergone a thorough peer-review process.

As mentioned above, different publishers have different policies regarding preprints so do check each publisher policy on the SherpaRoMEO database for accurate information.

For more information on preprints, please visit the links below:

https://www.aje.com/arc/benefits-of-preprints-for-researchers/

https://ambulance.libguides.com/c.php?g=661297&p=4671549

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/15213773/homepage/preprints

BRIAN Training

BRIAN, Publishing, Training

Nominating your outputs for the REF mock exercise

Thursday 27th February 14:00 -15:00 Talbot

BRIAN (Bournemouth Research Information And Networking) is BU’s publication management system.

BRIAN is also used to capture information regarding outputs to be submitted to the REF2021, and to the mock exercises related to REF2021.

This usage of BRIAN is the focus of this training session.

See here to book. Contact RKEDF@bournemouth.ac.uk if you have any queries.

 

Nominate your outputs now for the BU REF Mock exercise 2020

BRIAN, BU Challenges, open access, Research assessment

The BU REF Mock Exercise 2020 has just been launched on BRIAN.

Please select up to 5 of your research outputs for inclusion in the exercise by 8th March. Instructions on how to do this would have been disseminated to you via email.

Selected outputs should:

  • Embody original research. For the purposes of the REF, research is defined as a process of investigation leading to new insights, effectively shared. See Guidance on Submissions – Annex C, p.90;
  • Have been published after 1 January 2014;
  • Have been accepted for publication as a minimum and due to be published before 31 December 2020.

In some cases, additional supporting information will be needed to accompany your submission. Supporting information can be supplied either via the relevant textbox in BRIAN or, if preferred, uploaded as an attachment to your output, e.g. Word document or PDF. UOA-specific details of the REF requirements for supporting information are included in the guidance attached. See also Panel Criteria and Working Methods, Annex B, pp.90-92 and the related sections indicated.

For information on the REF2021 Submission process at Bournemouth University, please refer to the REF 2021 Code of Practice.

If you have queries about selecting outputs please feel free to contact ref@bournemouth.ac.uk (especially if it is a technical/BRIAN query) or a member of the UOA team who will be happy to help.

BRIAN is unavailable today and tomorrow

BRIAN, Publishing, Research assessment, staff profile pages

BRIAN is being upgraded and will be unavailable for use on Tuesday 28th and Wednesday 29th January.

The main improvements from this upgrade include:

  • New Assessment module for REF2021 functionality
  • More User Friendly Navigation

The new and improved features will make BRIAN easier and simplier to use for everyone, whilst also providing a valuable tool to academics helping them record the impact of their research.

We will communicate on the blog as soon as BRIAN is up and running again.

BRIAN will be unavailable due to upgrade – 28th & 29th January 2020

BRIAN, Publishing, Research assessment, staff profile pages

BRIAN will be unavailable to users next week on Tuesday 28th January and Wednesday 29th January for a scheduled upgrade.

If you need any help using the new system or if you encounter any problems after the upgrade, please do send an email to BRIAN@bournemouth.ac.uk and a member of staff will be able to assist you.

Staff are reminded that the REF Mock Exercise 2020 author outputs nomination on BRIAN will take place between 24 Feb and 8th March. For more information and guidance, please get in touch with ref@bournemouth.ac.uk.

In the meantime, if you do have general queries relating to the upgrade, please get in touch with BRIAN@bournemouth.ac.uk

Further information will be available once BRIAN is up and running again following the scheduled upgrade.

REF2021: the importance of Open Access compliance

BRIAN, BU Challenges, Guidance, open access, Publishing, Research assessment

      

Introduction

The four main HE funding bodies in the UK believe that ‘the outputs of publicly funded research should be freely accessible and widely available.’ The REF2021 Open Access Policy was introduced as a requirement for the next REF and it states that – all journal articles and conference contributions (with ISSN) accepted for publication from 1 April 2016 and published on or before 31 December 2020 must comply with the policy to be eligible for submission to the REF.

What does this mean?

Any non-compliant outputs that do not satisfy the policy requirements will NOT be eligible for the next REF.

What are the policy requirements?

  • The outputs must be available open access (via the gold or green open access routes), three months after their acceptance date;
  • The outputs must be discoverable through search engines on the internet, and free to download
  • The outputs must also be in a format where they allow anyone with internet access to search electronically within the texts, to read and to download them

What does this mean to you at BU?

Once you’ve received an official notification from your publisher that your manuscript has been accepted, you should take action right away!

First of all, you should ensure that the publication record is created in BRIAN – Bournemouth Research Information and Networking, clearly specifying the acceptance date. Once you’ve created a record, following instructions on the screen, click on the BURO deposit page as shown below –

To comply with the REF Open Access Policy, you only need to upload/deposit the final accepted peer-reviewed manuscript (and not the final published version). However, depending on individual publisher copyright and policies, this is not always the case. To verify the publisher copyright policies and to decide which version of your manuscript you should use, you can do so through the SHERPA RoMEO online resource, which is a reliable source of information recommended by Research England.

Some of these deposited manuscripts may also be subjected to a period of embargo before they can be made available. Again, this would depend on the publisher copyright policies, which you can also check out on SHERPA RoMEO.

On the ‘Deposit’ page in BRIAN, you will see this message –

BURO, which stands for Bournemouth University Research Online is the University’s Institutional Repository. All manuscripts uploaded on BRIAN will be deposited in BURO and are available to anyone in the world with internet access (subject to embargo).

BURO is supported by a team of colleagues from the Faculty Library Team. The BURO team is available to support and advise you through the open access compliance process and to ensure that you are compliant with all publisher copyright and policies.

Do remember, this process has to be done within three months of your publication acceptance date! Please see this video for more guidance.

What do embargo periods mean for compliance?

As mentioned above, use SHERPA RoMEO to find out more about deposit policies and embargo periods.  As long as your manuscript is deposited within 3 months of the acceptance date, the REF2021 Open Access Policy allows for an embargo period of up to 12 months for the REF Panels A & B and 24 months for the REF Panels C & D.

What if the output doesn’t meet the compliance requirements?

In some circumstances, some outputs cannot meet the open access policy requirements due to deposit, access, technical or other issues (for more information see here). If these circumstances fall under the permitted exceptions in accordance with the REF Open Access policy, these outputs may still be submitted to the REF. If you are unsure, please seek advice and guidance from ref@bournemouth.ac.uk as early as possible.

If you have questions regarding REF2021 or Open Access compliance, please feel free to contact ref@bournemouth.ac.uk or if you have questions specific to uploading of your manuscript, please contact BURO@bournemouth.ac.uk.

New Publication: Intersectionality as a hate crime research framework

BRIAN, Fusion, open access

Christmas came early for Jane Healy as her publication “Thinking outside the box: Intersectionality as a hate crime research framework” was published on 19 December in the conference journal for the British Society of Criminology.  Jane’s article was based on her paper presentation at last summer’s BSC annual international conference which was held at the University of Lincoln.

The conference theme was ‘Public Criminologies’ and the article draws upon Jane’s previous PhD research, her ongoing work on hate crime in the Dorset community and her undergraduate teaching for sociology and criminology students on intersectional criminology; demonstrating Fusion in action!

The article challenges the current single-strand approach to hate crime in the UK and uses case study examples to illustrate how applying intersectional analysis to hate crimes contributes to a greater understanding of the nature of victims’ experiences. This comes at a time when the Law Commission is reviewing current hate crime legislation which she argues is hierarchical and fails to provide equal protection across hate crime strands.

The full article is available Open Access at: https://www.britsoccrim.org/pbcc2019/

Further findings from Jane’s PhD are discussed in an article published by Disability & Society in June last year, entitled “‘It spreads like a creeping disease’: experiences of victims of disability hate crime in austerity Britain” which is available here:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09687599.2019.1624151

Dr Jane Healy is Deputy Head of the Department of Social Sciences and Social Work, in the Faculty of Health and Social Sciences.

CMMPH represented at The European Midwives Association (EMA) conference

BRIAN, conferences, international, Knowledge Exchange, Knowledge Transfer

EMA held its 6th triennial education conference in Malmo, Sweden from the 28-29 November 2019. Dr. Luisa Cescutti-Butler and Professor Sue Way had three abstracts accepted, two of which highlighted units of learning in our midwifery undergraduate programme (Evaluating the student experience of introducing newborn infant physical theory into a pre-registration midwifery programme in the UK and An evaluation of the student experience of peer facilitated learning) and a further one which was focused on a national collaborative project on grading practice (Developing a set of key principles to achieve consistency in assessing pre-registration midwifery competency in practice in the UK). The opening keynote speaker at the EMA Conference was Fran McConville – Midwifery Expert at WHO.  Fran presented on ‘Strengthening Quality Midwifery Education for Universal Health Coverage 2030’. Our takeaway message from her presentation was the following important statement: “When midwives are educated to international standards, and midwifery includes the provision of family planning……more than 80% of all maternal deaths, stillbirths and neonatal deaths could be averted”.

On the social side we were privileged to a hear a woman from the Sammi tribe in Sweden sing three traditional songs and a tradition adopted from Syracuse in Sicily which was the ‘Santa Lucia’ group of singers celebrating the start of Christmas who sang  Xmas Carols in Swedish. We were also able to network with some significant and contemporary midwifery leaders such as Gill Walton (CEO of the Royal College of Midwives), Fran McConville (WHO) and Grace Thomas, Reader and Lead Midwife for Education (Cardiff University).

Samreen wins Jane K. Fenyo Award!

BRIAN, Fusion

Samreen Ashraf has presented her research paper titled’ Between a Banker and a Barbie: The illusions of social media’ at the ‘Academy of Marketing Science Conference’ which took place in Vancouver in May 2019. Samreen has won the best research paper (PhD) at the conference and is awarded with the prestigious Jane K. Fenyo Award. Samreen’s paper explores the gap between students’ digital identities and their potential professional identities.

Samreen Ashraf- AMS

 

Shaping Media Policy and Regulation

BRIAN, Knowledge Transfer

Following a business engagement event on Digital Strategy and Business Transformation and subsequent publications in academic and practitioner journals, Dr Oliver’s work on the strategic digital transformations of the UKs Creative Industries and media firms has been credited with shaping Ofcom’s media policy and regulation. Ofcom recently commented that his research into the how Sky Plc had managed the digital transition over the past twenty years provided them with a unique insight into Sky’s strategic approach, and it enabled them to “think differently about their ‘growth strategy’ and diversification into new markets such as broadband, fixed and mobile telephony”. Ofcom concluded that Sky had in fact contributed to increased levels of competition in those sectors.

Ofcom also confirmed that the research had helped them to consider their remit as a communications regulator and the potential areas where they could use their expertise in the future, most notably in terms of the potential future regulation of the internet.

Dr Oliver’s research – ‘Strategic Transformations in the Media’ can be found on BRIAN.