Category / Open Access

UNCLASSIFIED

Publishing, REF Subjects, Research assessment

Picture the scene… it’s 2016 the 1st April 2016 to be precise and you’ve had an article you have been working on for the past 6 months accepted by your first choice journal – well done you – you spend the next 3 months eagerly waiting to read your hard work in print. When it finally it is published you are ecstatic, it is well  received by your colleagues, peers, journalists and the public – your research is out there and making a real impact to society, you couldn’t have imagined a better reception. Well done you again!

Now fast-forward to submission of the next REF where you enthusiastically submit your lovingly crafted, well received, well cited article for submission with the full expectation that it will certainly be assessed as a 4* publication but then the bomb drops… the article is “UNCLASSIFIED”. Why I hear you cry?! Well back in 2016 when your article was accepted you did not make it open access – simple.

HEFCEs decision on non-compliance of their Open Access Policy really couldn’t be clearer in this aspect:

“Any output submitted to the post-2014 REF that falls within the scope of this policy but does not meet its requirements or exceptions will be treated as non-compliant. Non-compliant outputs will be given an unclassified score and will not be assessed in the REF.”

We have 12 months to get ready for to comply with HEFCEs Open Access policy and we have to start now. Only the author and the publisher know when an article is accepted and this is the key point for the policy. So, if you want to have the full benefit of all your hard work, then make sure that when an article is accepted by a publisher you upload it to BRIAN – simple.

For further information on how to you go about making your outputs open access, please see the guidance here. Email openaccess@bournemouth.ac.uk with queries or attend one of our Open Access Workshops over the next few months.

Further information on HEFCEs policy can be found here

Thinking about monographs in a world of open access – blog post by Professor Geoffrey Crossick

Guidance, Post-award, Publishing

Original article is published on 22 January 2015 via – http://blog.hefce.ac.uk/2015/01/22/thinking-about-monographs-in-a-world-of-open-access/

Distinguished Professor of the Humanities, School of Advanced Study, University of London

In this post, Professor Geoffrey Crossick introduces his report on monographs and open access, outlining the key messages of the report and giving his personal take on the issues and the wider contexts. Professor Crossick is Distinguished Professor of the Humanities, School of Advanced Study, University of London and led the HEFCE Monographs and Open Access Project.
Open access to research publications has in recent years emerged as a major issue for academics, publishers and funders. Discussion and policy have, however, overwhelmingly focused on articles in journals. That is where funders, including HEFCE and RCUK, have announced mandates which require open access, and with most academic journals now published in digital format it is easier to think about making them open access.

There has been only limited discussion of how open access might apply to books, even though these are an important way in which academics in the arts, humanities and social sciences communicate their research. This classically means a monograph, but research books also include works such as scholarly editions, books of research essays by different authors, and scholarly exhibition catalogues.

I say only limited discussion, but underneath the surface there has been a great deal of paddling going on. This has meant debates about how monographs (I’ll use the term from now on to refer to all research books) might be made available on an open access basis, and a variety of initiatives to find financially and organisationally viable ways of doing so.

The Finch Report on open access focused above all on journal articles, and acknowledged that more work was needed to understand the issues with respect to monographs. HEFCE explicitly recognised this when it announced that it would not require them to be open access for the next REF.

And that is where I came in. Late in 2012 HEFCE invited me to lead some work on the implications of open access for monographs. The aim was not to come up with Finch-style policy recommendations, because the development of open access for books is at too early a stage for that. What was needed was some consultation, collecting of information and thinking with a view to producing a report that would be helpful to those interested in developing policy though not in itself setting out what policy might be.

I readily accepted the invitation. Book-centred disciplines have been part of my life as an academic (I’m a historian) and in my roles in higher education and research management. The arts, humanities, and social sciences matter to me, and I appreciate the importance of securing the future of the research book in a changing world of scholarly communication.

I put together an Expert Reference Group drawn from academics, librarians, publishers, funders and others to support me in this work. Together we set about a project that from the outset was not about open access alone, but about the whole position of the monograph today. If we didn’t understand the role of the monograph in research activity and communication, if we didn’t understand its function in the cultures of disciplines and departments, if we didn’t know what was happening to the monograph today, then we really couldn’t begin to understand what open access might mean for it.

My report to HEFCE (and to the AHRC and ESRC who supported the project) was published on 22 January. It covers a lot of ground in exploring the key issues that need to be understood by anyone wanting to think about policy in this area. It needs some 70 pages plus annexes to engage with the reality of what books mean, as well as the potential and the challenges of their moving to open access. The report, therefore, has much to say about the world of research and publication in universities.

As a humanities scholar I’m used to reporting complexity where complexity exists, as it does here. Some things are nonetheless clear. Talk of the monograph in crisis is hard to sustain – they’re being published in ever-increasing numbers, academics are writing and reading them, and libraries and individuals are buying them. That doesn’t mean that all is rosy, but it is important to see open access as an opportunity rather than as a response to a crisis.

It is essential that any future for open access monographs sustains their fundamental importance in most arts, humanities and social science disciplines. That means better technology to enable many of the material qualities of the book that go beyond words alone (the format, images, layout, references and much else) to be retained in a digital future. Though few academics told us that they enjoyed reading a whole research monograph on a screen – if they like it they buy or borrow a print edition. Printed books will not disappear.

It also means being flexible about the kind of licences required for books on open access, it means overcoming the potential high charges that owners of third-party rights (to images, texts, bars of music or dance notation) might impose, and it means finding the business models that will make it work. On this last issue there are many experiments underway and it seems to me improbable that any one of them will become dominant – the future will be one with a diversity of business models.

There is much more in the report and I really look forward to its discussion, and to see how HEFCE and others will take the issues forward. Open access carries with it great potential for larger readership and easier access, and also for new ways of engaging with and using the results of research. I was struck by the constructive approach that I found in responses from academics to the question of open access for monographs.

There were, of course, anxieties and policy needs to take these into account, but there was also real recognition of the potential. My advice to HEFCE and other policy makers is that there is much to be gained by working with the grain of academic opinion, and much to be lost by not doing so. I look forward to the debate!

Major HEFCE study of monographs and open access sheds light on complex issues

Guidance, Post-award, Publishing

Original article appeared on 21 January 2015 via – http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/newsarchive/2015/news99909.html

The Monographs and Open Access Project considers the place of monographs in the arts, humanities and social science disciplines, and how they fit into the developing world of open access to research. It concludes that open access for monographs has a great deal to contribute to scholarly communication, but that the challenges of introducing it will be real and policy should take account of the various issues identified in the report.

The Monographs and Open Access Project was led by Geoffrey Crossick, Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London [Note 1]. It was commissioned by HEFCE in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

Important messages in the report are that:

  • Monographs are a vitally important and distinctive vehicle for research communication, and must be sustained in any moves to open access. The availability of printed books alongside the open-access versions will be essential.
  • Contrary to many perceptions, it would not be appropriate to talk of a crisis of the monograph; this does not mean that monographs are not facing challenges, but the arguments for open access would appear to be for broader and more positive reasons than solving some supposed crisis.
  • Open access offers both short- and long-term advantages for monograph publication and use; many of these are bound up with a transition to digital publishing that has not been at the same speed as that for journals.
  • There is no single dominant emerging business model for supporting open-access publishing of monographs; a range of approaches will coexist for some time and it is unlikely that any single model will emerge as dominant. Policies will therefore need to be flexible.

Evidence to support the project was gathered through an extensive programme of consultations, surveys, data-gathering and focused research activities. The research was supported and shaped by an Expert Reference Group of publishers, academics, librarians, funders, open access experts with the additional help of distinguished representatives from overseas.

This project was set up following advice to HEFCE that monographs and other long-form publications should be excluded from requirements for open access in the post-2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF).

Professor Geoffrey Crossick said:

‘This project has demonstrated very clearly the vital importance of monographs to the academic community as a way of developing research thinking, a vehicle for research communication, a demonstrator of academic quality, and much more. Open access offers significant short- and long-term advantages for monograph publishing that should be pursued, but the clear message is that the academically essential qualities of the monograph must be sustained in any moves to open access.

‘The project has shown that, for open access to be achievable, a number of key issues must be tackled. Open access depends on a satisfactory transition to digital publishing that hasn’t yet happened for books in the way that it has for journals, and the various business models that can support open-access monographs are still largely experimental. Furthermore, the potential costs of third-party rights could pose serious problems, and there are issues around licensing that will need careful handling.

I have been encouraged by the very positive way in which academics and others have engaged with this project; it is important that this engagement continues, because there is much to be gained by working with the grain, and much to be lost by not doing so.’

Welcoming the report, David Sweeney, Director, Research, Education and Knowledge Exchange at HEFCE, said:

‘This report makes a huge contribution to the evolving debate around open access, shedding much-needed light on the issues around delivering open access to books. The wealth of evidence and commentary that this project has generated will spark continued debate among academics, learned societies and publishers, as well as provide important guidance to research funders and others interested in developing policies in this area.

‘I am very grateful to Professor Crossick for the open and engaged way that he has handled his investigation into this complex and sensitive area. The report is firmly grounded in the perspectives of the communities that rely so much on monograph publishing, and is all the stronger for it.

‘Monographs sit outside the open-access requirements for the next REF. But the long timescales for book authorship and publishing mean that any policy for open-access monographs in future REF exercises would need to be established soon to give due notice to the sector.’

Read the report

Next steps

HEFCE will consider this report and discuss its policy implications with other research funders including AHRC and ESRC, recognising that any steps towards policies for open-access monographs should be preceded by a thorough process of consultation and engagement.

Tweet #OpenAccess

Notes

  1. A monograph is a long academic book on a single research topic, normally written by one or sometimes two authors. For this project, the term was used more broadly to include edited collections of research essays, critical editions of texts and other works, and other longer outputs of research such as scholarly exhibition catalogues.
  2. The HEFCE Monographs and Open Access Project launched in late 2013. It was led by Professor Geoffrey Crossick and was overseen by a steering group, comprising membership from HEFCE, AHRC, ESRC and the British Academy.
  3. In March 2014, the UK higher education funding bodies announced a new policy for open-access in the post-2014 REF, requiring that certain outputs be made available in open-access format to be admissible to the next REF. Monographs and other long-form publications were excluded from these requirements.
  4. The report, setting out the findings of the project and the results of the various strands of research, is available on the HEFCE web-site.
  5. The remit of the HEFCE Monographs and Open Access Project was:
  • To develop an understanding of the scale and nature of the difficulties that are thought to be facing monograph publishing.
  • To develop an understanding of the place, purpose and appropriateness of the scholarly monograph within the overall ecology of scholarly communication in those arts, humanities and social science disciplines where it plays a significant part. This should include, among other issues, the importance of the monograph to scholarly communication and to reputation and career progression.
  • To examine the role that innovation in publishing and access models can play in ensuring that the various benefits and attributes associated with the monograph can be sustained and, where possible, enhanced. This will involve examining a range of opportunities, risks, challenges and solutions, which should include identifying and examining current and emerging models for monograph publishing, with particular reference to open-access models.

 

RKEO Coffee Morning – Today!

Guidance, Info Days, Post-award, Publishing, Research Ethics, Research Integritiy

The RKEO coffee morning is today in the RKE Office on the 4th Floor Melbury House (Lansdowne Campus) starting at 9.30am. The morning will concentrate on the wonders of the Project Delivery Team within RKEO, its personnel, the work they do and how they can help you with live surgeries and demonstrations on open access, BRIAN, the online ethics checklist and RED so please come along!

The Team has three specialist areas: Finance, Outputs and Governance which feed into Faculty dedicated teams. So if you want to know more about managing projects, applying for ethics approval, how to use BRIAN, Open Access or anything else Research and Knowledge Exchange focused please come along and have a chat with us, or just to enjoy a coffee and cake.

 

The coffee morning will be held in the RKE Office on the 4th Floor Melbury House (Lansdowne Campus) starting at 9.30am on Wednesday 4th February.

 

We look forward to seeing you!

Philip Leahy-Harland, Project Officer

Awarded & submitted bids, Post-award, R & KE Operations

Hi dear reader.

I am one of a team of five project officers (PDO), I am the lead PDO for BUBS and Professional Services and support parts of all faculties, currently I am available only via MS Teams.

So what does my role cover? Well pretty much anything after the award of funding, so for example, contract negotiation, invoicing funders, monitoring and end of award audit support. Too much to list here!

I have worked here at BU since May 2013 but prior to that I was a finance manager and project manager in various guises over the last 30 years working in the third sector, local government and Royal Mail. Going back even further in time I was an engineer – which is why my handwriting is so poor (any excuse will do).

Out side of work I am a self taught traditional building conservation guru, if you have damp or rot issue in your house talk to me.

Maternity research in Afghanistan

PG research, Publishing, student research

Just after I blogged about the first publication for 2015, I was informed by BU PhD student Rachel Arnold that our article: “Understanding Afghan health care providers: A qualitative study of the culture of care in a Kabul maternity hospital” is included in the first issue of 2015 of the journal BJOG.

 

BU has provided Open Access funding to make this paper freely available, which is especially important for readers in low-income countries such as Afghanistan or Nepal.  The paper can be found at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1471-0528.13179/pdf

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health , Bournemouth University

Reference

Arnold R, van Teijlingen E, Ryan K, Holloway I. Understanding Afghan healthcare providers: a qualitative study of the culture of care in a Kabul maternity hospital. BJOG 2015; 122: 260-267.

 

Congratulations to PhD student Rachel Arnold

PG research, Publishing, student research

HSC postgraduate student Rachel Arnold just had the first paper from her research in Afghanistan accepted by the scientific journal BJOG.  Her paper analyses the culture of a Kabul maternity hospital to understand its impact on the care of perinatal women and their babies.    A heavy workload, too many complicated cases and poor staff organisation lead to a low quality of maternity care. Cultural values, social and family pressures influenced the motivation and priorities of healthcare providers.

The centrality of the family and family obligations in Afghan society has emerged as a major theme. Another theme is the struggle for survival – as health care providers work to support their families, to maintain the power that they have, and to survive within a hospital system where fear rather than compassion appears to drive and motivate.  Rachel presented some of the key issues at the 2013 GLOW conference in Birmingham.   Rachel is supervised by Professors Immy Holloway, Kath Ryan (LaTrobe University, Australia) and Edwin van Teijlingen.

Rachel’s paper Understanding ‘Afghan healthcare providers: a qualitative study of the culture of care in a Kabul maternity hospital’ can be found here.  The paper is Gold Open Access.

 

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health

Money available for you to publish your articles Open Access! – International Open Access Week

Guidance, Post-award, Publishing, Research assessment

Back in April 2011 we launched the BU Open Access Publication Fund. This is a dedicated central budget that has been launched in response to, and in support of, developments in research communication and publication trends. The fund is also to support research in complying with some of the major funding bodies who have introduced open access publishing requirements as a condition of their grants.

The fund is available for use by any BU author ready to submit a completed article for publication who wishes to make their output freely and openly accessible.

If you are interested in applying to the fund then you need to email Pengpeng Hatch in RKEO with the following information:

  • Name of the open access publication
  • Confirmation this will be a peer reviewed paper
  • A short justification (1 paragraph) of why it is beneficial for your research article to be published open access
  • The cost of the open access publication
  • Likely publication date
  • Likely REF Unit of Assessment (UOA)
  • A copy of the paper

If you have any questions about the Fund then please direct them to Pengpeng via email.

Further information: BU Open Access Fund policy

Beware of rogue journals.

Guidance, Publishing, REF Subjects, Research themes

Open Access: not every new journal is rogue!

Open Access publishing is the hot topic in academic publishing.  It comes from the idea that publicly funded research used to end up in expensive journals which are difficult to access and which are expensive to users.  It also made for real ivory tower research and it did not give the general public, often the funder of research through taxation or charity access to the studies which they ‘paid’ for in the first instance.   The success shows in (a) the rising Impact Factors of online Open Access journals, such as, for example BMC Pregnancy & Childbirth; (b) the requirement for the UK funding bodies that all research its funds needs to be published as Open Access by 2016; and (c) the growing number of traditional academic journals that now offer authors the option to pay for online Open Access in addition to the traditional paper-based journal publication, for example Midwifery.  Two further signs of success are:  (d) the growing popularity of Open Access Week, this month (20-26 Oct.) we celebrate for the 7th time Open Access Week ( http://www.openaccessweek.org/); and (e) the growing number of rogue journals trying to cash in on the Open Access trend.

 

The latter is the ugly face of capitalism whereby opportunists, i.e. unscrupulous publishers jump on the bandwagon cashing in on a successful service.  BU librarian Jean Harris recently shared an interesting article about Predatory Publishers (see: www.cilip.org.uk/cilip/blog/are-we-doing-enough-warn-users-about-predatory-journals?utm_source=Communicator_membership_list&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=Untitled21&utm_campaign=Weekly+News+from+CILIP%2c+18+Sept+2014).   Predatory publishers create a convincing looking scientific journal on the web, often borrowing details from other journals. They then email academics and researchers for both manuscripts and the offer to sit on the journal’s editorial board.  Submissions are then “peer reviewed” and an invoice for Open Access publishing emailed by return. No submission is rejected!  Many of us will have received such spam emails.

The message is not the fall for the scam.  Prospective authors should check the webpages of the journal (although some fake ones can be convincing).  Talk to more experienced colleagues in your field or your librarian to find out what they know about the ‘new’ journal, do they know someone on the editorial board.   Is the journal listed in reputable electronic databases such as SCOPUS?  Please, do not rely on information from Google on the journal you are trying to suss out!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

 

 

Open Access Salons! – Phil Ward

Publishing, Research assessment

In June Research Professional reported that Prof Adam Tickell, successor to Dame Janet Finch, will be holding a series of salons to discuss Open Access.

Open Access salons! What a great idea.

A hairdressing salon. A row of women sit under hard hat dryers along the back wall, flicking through out of date copies of Grazia magazine. At the front a stylist fusses around a client in front of a large mirror.The bell on the door tinkles as a woman enters. Everyone turns to look at her.

STYLIST: Can I help you, love?
WOMAN (nervously): Yes, I was wanting a quick trim..?
STYLIST: Open Access, is it?
WOMAN: Pardon?
STYLIST: Do you want your haircut to be Open Access?
WOMAN: I don’t really understand…
STYLIST: Do you want your hair to be freely viewed by members of the public? Or do you want to wear this over your head?

She holds up a paper bag.

You’ll only be allowed to take it off if people pay to view it, or have bought a general subscription to my salon. Could get quite complicated.
WOMAN: But that’s crazy!
STYLIST: I’m just allowing others to benefit from this salon whilst protecting my business. It’s a tough world out there. It’s not as easy to make money out of hairdressing these days, you know.
WOMAN (patting her hair, and looking at the women at the back): Well, I guess I don’t really have a choice, do I? If I want others to see my hair.
STYLIST: You’ve made the right choice, love. Right then: if you want it to be Open Access, you’ll have to pay me a Hair Processing Charge, in addition to any other money I might get from you.
WOMAN: How much is that?
STYLIST: It varies. Averages about a thousand pounds.
WOMAN: A thousand pounds! But that’s outrageous!
STYLIST: It’s actually very good value. There’s a huge amount of unseen work involved in haircutting. Of course, we do offer a discount for pre-payment. If you buy 10 haircuts up front, we’ll give you a 20% reduction.
WOMAN: But still that’s £800!
STYLIST: Take it or leave it. You could go for the green option, of course.
WOMAN: What’s that?
STYLIST: You submit your hair to your local wig shop. However, it can’t be the final version. It might include bits I’ve missed, and won’t include any final changes we might make.
WOMAN: So my option is to have an incomplete haircut and put it on display in a wig shop, or pay a grand so that other people can look at it?
STYLIST: Essentially yes. Alternatively you could opt not to go Open Access. But then you will have to wear the paper bag.
WOMAN: But…but…
STYLIST: Look, love, it’s for your benefit! We need to protect your reputation and uphold the esteem and profile of this salon. And think what Open Access hair will do for you: More people will see your hairstyle, and will mention it to others. And people from the poor parts of town will be able to freely look at your hair.
WOMAN: And…and what if the people who see my hair decide they don’t like it? What if they disagree with my choices?
STYLIST: Well, if they make a good case we might have to retract it.
WOMAN: Retract it?
STYLIST: Yes. We might say we no longer agree with the hair and the underlying decisions which informed it. We might even decide to glue back any hair we’ve removed to restore the cut to its previous state. And I’ll put an apology note in the window.
WOMAN: This is ridiculous! I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want a trim any more.

She storms out of the salon.

STYLIST: I don’t know. No pleasing some people. (She returns to the client in the chair). So what style do you want, my love? A David Sweeney, you say? Right you are.

Written by Phil Ward, Deputy Director, Research Services, University of Kent.

Going to America? Open Access Conference Funding for ECRs & Students

Publishing

On the 15-17 November the Right to Research Coalition and SPARC will launch OpenCon, a new conference to support, connect, and catalyze student and early career researcher-led projects across Open Access, Open Education, and Open Data in Washington, DC.

The full cost of attendance for the majority of participants will be covered by travel scholarships provided through the generous support of sponsor organizations. However, application deadline is midnight PDT on Monday, August 25th.

All students and early career researchers with an interest in Open Access, Open Education and Open Data are encouraged to apply at www.opencon2014.org/apply. The application includes the ability to apply for a travel scholarship.

Further information on the conference can be found here – http://www.opencon2014.org/

If anyone is interested in applying, please liaise with me (Shelly Anne Stringer) by 9am Thursday (20th).

BUs Open Access Event in Video!

Guidance, Info Days, Publishing, Research assessment, Training

open access logo, Public Library of ScienceIn May, we were privileged to welcome experts on the topic of Open Access to speak at Bournemouth University (BU) in an event well attended by delegates from HEIs across England, Scotland and Wales.  BU’s Open Access Event was enjoyed by all who attended, if you missed the event or would just like to recap on the presentations the videos from the event are now available for your viewing pleasure –

Benefits of Open Access – Alma Swan

Open Access in a Post-2014 REF – Ben Johnson, HEFCE

Open access + social media = increased downloads – Jane Tinkler, LSE Impact of Social Sciences Project

Open Access publishing and emerging networks of open research – Catriona MacCullum, PLoS

Implementing open access at the University of Oxford – Catriona Cannon, Bodleian Libraries

Open Access: BU Style – Emma Crowley, Jean Harris and Shelly Maskell