Tagged / BURO

Open access publishing – common minsunderstandings!

Publishing

open access logo, Public Library of ScienceReflecting on the experience of our recent mock REF exercise I noted that there were some negative views towards open access publishing that were expressed during the process. This is a little concerning considering the UK government is planning to make all outputs arising from publicly-funded research available via open access outlets by 2014 and considering the open access mandates the major research funders have as part of the terms of their grant funding (including the research councils, the Wellcome Trust and the European Commission).  In addition, the four UK funding councils are currently consulting with the sector regarding their proposal to introduce a requirement for all outputs submitted to the post-2014 REF exercise to be published on an open access basis, wherever the concept of open access is relevant.  As an institution and as individual researchers we need to ensure that we are able to comply with these requirements and that we are able to positively embrace open access publishing.

I did a bit of research and came across an excellent article by Peter Suber, Director of the Harvard Open Access Project.  In the article, Peter addresses the common misunderstandings and misconceptions about open access publishing, many of which we part of the concerns raised during the recent mock REF exercises.  I’ve selected the ones I most frequently hear and provided a summary below, and would urge you to read the article in full here – A Field Guide to Misunderstandings About Open Access.

1. “All open access is gold open access” – not at all! Gold open access refers to open access through journals and green open access is via repositories.  Suber notes that researchers often overlook the existence of green open access or think they will not be permitted by their publisher to deposit a copy of their paper in an open source repository.  At BU we have our own institutional repository, BURO, and BU researchers can add the full-text version of their papers via BRIAN.  Suber notes that between 50-70+% of journal publishers give permission for postprint achiving in repositories.  BRIAN will check the copyright of the publisher for you and let you know which version of your paper can be added to BURO. Easy peasy!

2. “Open access is about bypassing peer review” – not true!  The goal of open access is to remove access barriers, not quality filters.  Open access journals can, and usually do, use the same peer review processes, the same standards, and even the same reviewers as traditional print journals.  Many traditional print journals offer an open access route as part of publishing in their journal (hybrid publishing).

3. “Authors must choose between prestigious publication and open access” – incorrect!  There are two reasons why open access is compatible with prestige:  a gold reason and a green one.  First, a growing number of open access journals have already earned high levels of prestige, and others are earning it.  Do your part to move things along as an editor, referee, reader, and as an author, by submitting your best work to suitable open access journals.  In the meantime consider the second reason.  Most traditional print journals allow open access archiving, such as in an institutional repository.

4. “Open access makes sense for second-rate work, but not for first-rate work” – again, not true!   The idea behind this misunderstanding is this:  the best work generally winds up in the best journals, where it has the best chance of being seen.  At least it should be steered toward the best journals, where it will have the best chance of being seen.  When we add the suggestion that this path doesn’t allow open access, or that open access can’t improve upon it, then an idea that was largely true becomes completely false.  It assumes that the best journals are never open access (not true – Nature, Science and IEEE for example all offer open access options); that only journals can deliver open access (not true – green open access); that the best journals never allow open access archiving (not true – see SherpaRomeo, Science for example permits achiving of post-print of the publisher’s PDF); and that open access archiving can’t increase the visibility and impact of work published in the best journals (not true). 

Suber notes 20 other common misunderstandings about open access and his article is well worth reading!

At Bournemouth University we are committed to supporting the open access movement and have been running the BU Open Access Publishing Fund for two years now and will continue into 2013-14.  For information on accessing the Fund please visit this page – BU OAPF.

We’re interested to hear your thoughts on open access publishing!  Have you tried it, are your sceptical, are you a supporter?

BRIAN – Depositing Full Text Articles

BU research, Guidance, Publishing

Full Text Articles should be uploaded through BRIAN to comply with Bournemouth University Academic Publications Policy on Open Access.

As most publishers allow the Accepted Version of journal articles to be made available this is the version we recommend authors deposit via BRIAN. The Accepted Version is the author-created final version that incorporates referee comments and is accepted for publication. It should not have the publisher’s typesetting or logo applied.

Supplementary files of various file formats can also be deposited as files or as zipped folders.  A listing of publishers, their journals and policy on archiving in BURO is provided by theSHERPA/RoMEO project; see http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php.  BURO staff will liaise with the copyright holder regarding the inclusion of full text for other publication types.

Depositing files step by step

When in BRIAN, click on ‘my publications’ to see your full list of publications.  Each record will show a summary screen and below the title of each record you will see a set of six tabs. Click on the ‘Full text’ tab (the second tab from the right).

  

Click on the link ‘Manage full text’ where it says ‘Manage full text for this publication’.  The File management box will open. Browse and select the file(s) you wish to deposit. Click on Upload’. As indicated above, please include your final version in the first instance.

Books are rarely allowed, although some publishers will permit the use of a sample chapter.  BURO staff can liaise with the publishers on your behalf to check permissions.

Click on ‘Grant’   to confirm you are depositing the file(s) for possible dissemination via BURO. This process does not transfer copyright to BURO.  When you have deposited the files you wish to transfer to BURO click on ‘Home’ in the top left hand corner of the screen to return to your BRIAN profile home page.

If you have any queries about BRIAN, please contact BRIAN@bournemouth.ac.uk/.  If you require help assessing whether an open access version of your work can be contributed to BURO please contact your Subject Library Team or SAS-BURO@bournemouth.ac.uk.

Definitions of BRIAN and BURO

BU research, Guidance

Clarification is required of what BRIAN is and what BURO now does.

BRIAN

BRIAN (Bournemouth Research Information And Networking) is BU’s publication management system.  Staff can manage their research outputs on BRIAN, as well as other information such as biography, academic group, memberships, website and social media links, plus many more options.  Information input to BRIAN will be displayed in the BU staff profile web pages.  BRIAN enables a single point of data entry which will enable research information to be used in multiple places.  It will also enable BU to meet Research Excellence Framework (REF) requirements by improving administrative efficiency and data accuracy.  All academic staff automatically have a login and you can access it with your normal university username and password (you don’t need to add staff\ in front of your username).  Help and guidance can be found on the system and via the documents below.  If you have any problems accessing the system or you have any queries please contact BRIAN@bournemouth.ac.uk

If you require any help with BRIAN, please contact BRIAN@bournemouth.ac.uk

BURO

Bournemouth University Research Online [BURO] is the University’s Institutional Repository. BURO is supported by Eprints software. It gives access to academic outputs created by Bournemouth University staff and researchers. Where available BURO contains open access full text of unpublished works (pre-prints) and the author’s version of published works (post-prints).  BURO is located at http://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk – it has a well-designed interface and is easy to use. BURO is open to anyone to search, however, only Bournemouth University staff and researchers can contribute material.  Material is contributed to BURO via BRIAN.  BURO contains records of outputs with full-text attached – a full list of outputs can be viewed in the BU staff profile web pages http://staffprofiles.bournemouth.ac.uk/.

If you require help assessing whether an open access version of your work can be contributed to BURO please contact your Subject Library Team or SAS-BURO@bournemouth.ac.uk .

I will shortly be updating the FAQ’s for BRIAN and so watch this space.

BURO Stats – who’s downloading your open access research?

BU research, Publishing

What’s your impact?  Did you know that you can access statistics for your open access research outputs in BURO?

Simply go to BURO, browse your items by author and view a variety of statistics about your individual full text research outputs, including:-

  • Number of full text downloads (daily and monthly)
  • Top ten search terms that led people to your research
  • Number of unique visitors

To run a variety of other searches on your research outputs use the BURO IRStats Dashboard

Remember – to add your full text items to BURO you need to submit them via BRIAN.

 

 

BRIAN – Full Text items in BURO now accessible

BU research, Guidance

All full text articles in BURO can now be accessed via BRIAN.  You can view these via the ‘Full Text’ tab within your BRIAN publications screen.  Where there is a full text article for a publication, a number will appear on the tab, i.e. ‘Full Text (1)’.

In order to comply with BU’s Academic Publications Policy on Open Access, academics are responsible for uploading their research outputs, including full text articles. See page 5 of BRIAN – Quick Start Guide v1 to see how to deposit full text articles into BURO via BRIAN.  For further information on the publications policy, please contact the BURO staff.

 

BURO and Academic Staff Pages to become read-only

Guidance

The new publications management system, BRIAN, will be available from 22 June.  In order to migrate current data into BRIAN (Bournemouth Research, Information & Networking), the BURO and Academic Staff Pages will only be available in read-only mode from Monday, 28th May 2012.  Staff will be able to modify their profile using BRIAN from the 22 June.

I would advise you to stop inputting any further information into BURO from today, which will enable the BURO team within the Library to complete any outstanding actions.  From the 22 June staff will be able to use BRIAN to manage their BURO records.

You can update your Academic Staff Pages up until Sunday, 27th May 2012.  This information will migrate across to BRIAN and so any amendments made this week will be imported into the new system.

For those who have never heard of BRIAN – watch this space for a series of articles on the BU Research Blog and staff portal over the coming weeks.  We recently published details  link on a series of demonstrations for staff about the new system.  If you have any concerns or queries then please contact Jo Garrad in the Research Development Unit who is coordinating the BRIAN launch.  

I appreciate your cooperation over the next few weeks while we make the necessary transition.

Best wishes

Matthew

Register now for BRIAN Demonstrations – the new Publication Management System

BU research, Guidance

The new publication management system BRIAN (Bournemouth Research, Information and Networking) will go live on 22 June 2012.  BRIAN will provide a facility for academics to quickly and easily update their research activity via a single point of data entry which will enable research information to be used in multiple places, including BURO and the BU Staff Profile web pages, without the need to duplicate or enter additional data.  Academic staff will no longer add records direct to BURO, but via BRIAN.

BRIAN will allow you to have ownership of your staff profile web pages so these are easily kept up to date, allowing you to promote yourself for potential research collaborations, research grants and enterprise opportunities, research assessment exercises, etc.  It will also provide a search function for staff to find out about potential collaborative opportunities with colleagues from across BU.  BRIAN will enable BU to meet research assessment requirements by improving the administrative efficiency and data accuracy.

Demonstrations of the new system have been arranged and each will run for one hour and will also allow time for you to interact with the new system.  These are being held on the following dates:

24th May – 1pm – to be held in CG21, Christchurch House

29th May – 10am – to be held in CG21, Christchurch House

29th May – 2pm – to be held in CG21, Christchurch House

6th June – 10am – to be held in P231-5, Poole House

6th June – 2pm – to be held in P231-5, Poole House

It is highly recommended that all academics attend a demonstration of BRIAN as the system will be extremely important to your research profile.

To register for a session, please select your preferred date and a second choice (as demand will be high) and email this to Joan Bonnici at: ovctemp@bournemouth.ac.uk by 22nd May 2012.

Open Access publishing event is a success!

Guidance, Publishing, Research news

Despite a near accident with a jug of milk, 30 cups and a projector screen twenty minutes before the start of the event, Wednesday’s open access (OA) publishing seminar was a huge success! Roughly 30 BU academics, researchers and PGR students attended the event which was aimed at increasing awareness, dispelling some of the myths, and demonstrating the benefits of open access publishing. There was also an opportunity for attendees to find out about the recently launched BU Open Access Publication Fund.

The event opened with a fantastic presentation by Dr Alma Swan (Key Perspectives Ltd) who spoke passionately about the benefits of open access publishing and archiving, showing clear demonstrations of how making your research available in open access outlets (and in BURO) dramatically increases the number of citations and leads to more people downloading the research papers. Of particular interest were her stats on who actually downloads open access papers published via the PubMed outlet: other academics and university students only account for 25% of downloads, and by far the biggest consumer of open access literature are ‘citizens’ (i.e. independent researchers, patients and their families, teachers, amateur or part-time researchers, other interested minds), who account for 40% of the research papers downloaded from PubMed. These are almost always people who would not normally have access to research published in traditional print journals.

The second speaker was Willow Fuchs from the Centre for Research Communications (CRC) at the University of Nottingham. Willow gave an excellent presentation on the Sherpa Services that were developed and maintained by the CRC. These include RoMEO, Juliet and OpenDOAR. Authors can look up journals using the RoMEO database to check whether archiving in repositories is permitted (such as BURO) and, if so, what version of the paper can be made available. Authors can also easily check the publisher’s policies and see whether the journal offers a hybrid publishing option (i.e. the paper will still be published in the traditional print journal but will also be made freely available via the internet). It currently covers over 1,000 publishers and is an excellent source of information. Willow also mentioned the Juliet database which lists funder open access requirements, and the OpenDOAR  database which is a searchable directory of open access repositories, such as BURO. All three of the Sherpa Service resources are freely accessible via the links in the text above.

The event then focused on BU’s experience of open access publishing with presentations from Prof Edwin van Teijlingen and Prof Peter Thomas. Prof Edwin van Teijlingen (HSC) talked of the benefits of making his research findings freely available in terms of free access to the information, the quick turnaround times, and the high quality of the open access publications available in his field. Prof Peter Thomas primarily focused on the quick publication times which are particularly beneficial for the publication of the study protocols for the randomised control trials he has been involved with (his experience is that there is usually only 2-5 months between submitting the paper and its publication). He also displayed the access statistics from BioMed Central showing how many downloads there had been each month of his paper (between 18-77 downloads per month).

Prof Matthew Bennett closed the event by emphasising that the consumers of research not just academics; as BU moves to society-led research then the need to communicate research findings with non-academics will become even more important. He gave an overview of the recently launched BU Open Access Publication Fund, explaining how BU academics can access central funds to publish their papers in open access outlets (including traditional print journals with a hybrid option to make the paper freely available on the internet in addition to the print journal). Two BU academics have already benefited from the central fund and published their research in open access outlets – Prof Colin Pritchard (HSC) who published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, and Dr Julie Kirkby (DEC) who will shortly have a paper published by Plos ONE.

All in all this was an excellent event and a fabulous launch for the new open access fund! Expect to read more on open access publishing on the Blog over the coming months!

You can access the slides from the event from this I-drive folder: I:\CRKT\Public\RDU\Open access\event 261011

Have your say! What should the new research management system be called?

Research news

Last month I wrote a post announcing Symplectic Elements as the new research management system that BU is implementing this summer (you can read this post here).

We’re now at the exciting stage of naming the system! The steering group has come up with a list of possible names for you to vote on. Cast your votes below!

If you’d like to add some alternative suggestions, please do this by adding comments to this post. You can also add comments to this post about the alternative suggestions that have been added!

The poll will be open until 19 August. Happy voting! 🙂

[polldaddy poll=5372385]

Symplectic Elements: BU’s new research management system

Research news

I’d like to introduce you to Symplectic Elements – our soon-to-be new research management system. You might have heard colleagues talking about Symplectic Elements for a while now – the supplier (Symplectic Ltd) first visited BU to demonstrate the application in August 2009. I’m pleased to announced that we have now signed the contract with Symplectic and are in discussions with the supplier to determine the implementation plan. The aim is to have the system up and running this autumn.

Symplectic Elements is already used by lots of other UK universities, including Imperial College, Oxford, Exeter, Cambridge, UCL and Plymouth.

So what is Symplectic Elements and what benefits will it bring to BU? Symplectic Elements is a research management system. It will not replace any of our existing BU systems (such as BURO or RED) but it will link to them and join them together, sharing data between the systems. This means that BU staff will be able to add information to Symplectic Elements and it will be used in multiple systems. You will also be able to access research information from a single place. A single point of data entry will enable research information (such as publications data) to be automatically formatted and reused in other forums, such as in BU’s open access repository (BURO) and the BU staff profile webpages, without the need for duplicate or additional data entry. You will also be able to query data that appears to be missing or incorrect.

Symplectic Elements will provide academics with a simple ‘dashboard’ from which to view and manage their research information. This will also help when BU begins compiling data to meet the requirements of the REF.

How will Symplectic Elements link with the existing systems?

  • Symplectic Elements will link to our Research and Enterprise Database (RED) so you can see your current bids and projects. From within Symplectic you will also be able to link yourself to the PGR students you supervise.
  • It will link to BURO so that your research outputs are entered into the repository.
  • It will also link to a number of external publication databases (including Web of Science and Scopus) and automatically search these for your publications. When it identifies a paper it thinks might be yours it will send you an email and ask you to confirm it is your paper. If it is then all you will need to do is to tick ‘yes’ and Symplectic will create a record of your publication automatically. You will simply need to add a full-text copy of the paper (copyright permitting) and it will be uploaded into BURO.
  • Symplectic Elements will link to the new content management system and you will be able to choose which information is used on your staff profile webpage.

Timeframe for implementation: A broad steering group of representatives from across BU’s Schools and Professional Services has been formed to help feed into and guide the system’s implementation. A core project management group is currently overseeing the day-to-day tasks and will manage the initial data integration and checking. A meeting with the suppliers is scheduled for the end of the month. The system is due to go live in autumn 2011.

Further updates about Symplectic Elements will be posted on the BU Research Blog in due course!

Unlocking Attitudes to Open Access

Guidance

open access logo, Public Library of Science Emma Crowley and David Ball, Student and Academic Services, discuss open access publishing, and the role of the institutional repository BURO, and launch a short staff survey on open access publishing…

 

  • What do you understand by Open Access? 
  • Do you deposit your research outputs in BURO, BU’s online repository? 
  • Who owns the copyright to your research papers?
  • Would you consider publishing in an Open Access Journal? 

At BU these are exciting times for research and one of the key ways of ensuring that your work has impact is to make it available Open Access.  Most of you will be familiar with BURO, our online research repository, and are hopefully contributing your research outputs on a regular basis as per BU’s Academic Publications Policy.  As a strategic part of your personal research processes it is essential that you retain your own pre-print (pre peer review) and post-print (post peer review) copies of your journal articles as most publishers will allow you to make either of these formats available open access, but not the branded publisher PDF.  You can check copyright permissions in BURO using the Sherpa Romeo tool.    

So, how do we know how impactful our research really is?  The answer to this challenging question, discussed at length at this week’s Developing and Assessing Impact for the REF Conference, is not necessarily here, but clearly research that is being viewed and downloaded by large numbers of global web users has a greater chance of influencing policy and attracting more citations.  Below are the 3 most downloaded full text journal articles in BURO during the last quarter.  You can even see which search terms people are using to find your work. 

Buhalis, D. and Law, R., 2008. Progress in information technology and tourism management: 20 years on and 10 years after the Internet – The state of eTourism research. Tourism Management, 29 (4), pp. 609-623. 517 Downloads

Edwards, J. and Hartwell, H., 2006. Hospital food service: a comparative analysis of systems and introducing the ‘Steamplicity’ concept. Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics, 19 (6), pp. 421-430. 506 Downloads

van Teijlingen, E. and Hundley, V., 2001. The Importance of Pilot Studies. Social Research Update (35), pp. 1-4. 405 Downloads

In addition to BURO BU recently launched its own Open Access Publication Fund that will support BU academics in publishing their research in Open Access journals, where a fee is required to publish, but everyone can view your article.

We would be very grateful if you could participate in a short survey, the results of which will help inform BU strategy on Open Access and wider developments for Open Access in UK HE.  There is only one page of questions which will take you less than 10 minutes to complete.  The survey will remain open until Monday 30th June.

Please note: if you experience any technical difficulties using the survey please contact Learning Technology

BU’s Open Access Publishing Fund to go live!

Guidance

open access logo, Public Library of ScienceThe Senate R&E Committee has approved plans for a BU Open Access Publishing Fund. The fund is due to be launched in August 2011 and will be managed by the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research, Enterprise and Internationalisation) and the Research Development Unit. But what is the BU Open Access Publishing Fund and why is this such a big dea for Research at BU?

What is open access publishing? Open access publishing turns the traditional publishing route (readers paying subscriptions to publishers) on its head as researchers pay a fee to the publisher to publish their research and in turn the publisher makes the article available free of charge to readers immediately on publication.

Why is this beneficial? Open access publishing enables research findings to be disseminated to a wider public audience, typically with significantly faster publication times, than traditional journal publishing. The European Commission’s policy on open access publishing notes that the broad dissemination of research findings can accelerate scientific progress and has significant benefits to both the scientific community and to society.

What is the view of research funding bodies? Many funders require the research they fund to be made freely available, free of charge to any readers upon completion of the project. A full list of funders with open access requirements can be found on the Sherpa Juliet website, and includes all seven Research Councils, the European Commission, the Wellcome Trust and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). These requirements have been put in place by funders to maximise the public dissemination of research findings. However, despite these open access mandates funders are reporting that researchers and therefore HEIs are not compliant; recent research undertaken by the Wellcome Trust indicates a compliance rate of less than 50%. An institutional open access publishing fund can increase compliance rates with funding body open access requirements.

How will this help our submission to the REF? Open access publishing has three potentially significant benefits for BU’s submission to the Research Excellence Framework in 2013:

  • Publication times – Papers can be published significantly faster than traditional journal publishing methods and therefore BU would not be as constrained by traditional publishing deadlines; more articles could therefore be published prior to the REF publication deadline and be eligible for submission.
  • Citations – Open access publications are more widely available and are therefore more likely to be cited.
  • Research impact – Open access publication is a way of enhancing the visibility and increasing the impact of research findings. Research findings made freely available to society at large are likely to have wider societal impact.

Do other institutions have open access funds? A number of international research institutions have already established institutional budgets and processes for open access publishing, such as the Max Planck Society’s Central Open Access Fund and the University of California Berkeley’s Research Impact Initiative. In the UK the University of Nottingham has led the way by establishing an institutional open access publishing fund.

How can open access costs be met? A number of funding bodies (such as the Research Councils and the Wellcome Trust) allow researchers to include open access publication costs as a directly incurred cost providing that the costs are included in the original costing and are incurred prior to the end of the grant. For all other open access publishing costs, researchers will be able to apply to the new BU Open Access Publishing Fund. Requests to the fund will need to be made to the Research Development Unit and will then need to be approved by the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research, Enterprise and Internationalisation) and the relevant REF UOA Leader.

When will further details be announced? We are currently working on a policy, process and communication plan and further announcements will be made via the blog before August 2011.

What about any open access requests between now and the end of July 2011? If you have any open access publishing requests before the BU Open Access Publishing Fund is launched in August 2011, please discuss these with your Deputy Dean (R&E) / equivalent and Julie Northam. Where requests are justifiable (i.e. high quality open access outlet, likely to be submitted to the REF, likely to increase the impact of the research findings, etc) then we will endeavour to accommodate these within the CRE budget where possible.RIN logo

For further information on open access publishing the Research Information Network published a guide to Paying for Open Access Publication Charges in February 2011.

Also see the Public Library of Science (PLoS) website.