Tagged / JISC

Jisc, UK institutions and SAGE agree open access deal

open access, Publishing, writing

BU authors can now publish open access in 900+ SAGE subscription journals at no extra cost!

The UK Jisc Agreement, open to all UK institutions who are members of the consortium, will run between 2020 and 2022 and includes back dating to the 1st January.

Corresponding authors publishing an article in 900+ subscription journals in the current SAGE Premier package, as well as in the IMechE Journal Collection and the Royal Society of Medicine Collection can now publish open access, free of charge. Eligible journals are those which offer hybrid open access publishing (SAGE Choice).

Please check with Open Access if you are unsure whether your journal is included.

Authors in subscription journals do not need to take any action to benefit from this offer – SAGE will contact all eligible authors to inform them of the Open Access agreement with Jisc and to invite them to the SAGE Open Access Portal to take up the offer as soon as their accepted article has been received into SAGE’s Production department.

Gold open access journals: Corresponding authors publishing an article in a gold open access journal are entitled to a 20% discount on the prevailing article processing charge (APC). This is available on 150+ pure Gold journals a list of which are available here.

Where an author is eligible for more than one discount, discounts cannot be combined but the highest discount available to the author will be automatically applied to the APC due.

Further information on the agreement and gold open access journals can be found here.
If you have any further queries, please email Open Access.

BOS Survey Tool unavailable 3-4 October 2017

There are changes to the service delivering the Bristol Online Survey (BOS) Tool as the service is transferring from Bristol University to Jisc.  The transfer of the BOS service from the University of Bristol to Jisc is scheduled to take place during the week commencing October 2, 2017.

To enable the transfer of its database, BOS will be offline from the morning of Tuesday October 3, for a period of up to 48 hours. During this time users will not be able to access BOS and all surveys will be offline.

From Thursday October 5, the service will be supported by Jisc.

Please note that the support email address and telephone number will change after the transfer. These will be advertised on the BOS website.

Users will be able to log in with the same usernames and passwords after the transfer, and should not notice any significant changes. All surveys and survey data will be transferred, and any surveys that were open prior to the transfer will be accessible to participants as soon as the service is restored.

A notification will be placed on all user Dashboards two weeks prior to the transfer to inform them of the upcoming downtime and transfer to Jisc, but please also make every effort to notify your account’s users.

If you have any questions please contact the support team at bos-migration-support@bristol.ac.uk or call on 0117 394 1783.

Need participants for your research? Check out this JISC-funded initiative

Advertise your surveys, interviews and other research studies to thousands of participants for free on Call For Participants:

Call For Participants is an online community for researchers and participants, funded by Jisc. University staff and students can use this service for free to advertise their surveys, interviews and other research studies to the public and recruit participants.

Researchers can also access other support and resources, such as webinars, guidance on communicating research to the public, ethics guidance, and case studies to support their research activities. Call For Participants is used and trusted by academic researchers from over 340 universities worldwide.

To advertise a survey, interview or other research study, visit the researcher homepage and create a study page. For resources and support for researchers visit the researcher support page, and the blog.

call for participants webpage

Open Data Mash Up Challenge – win development support!

Funding opportunities

Jisc, which is a United Kingdom non-departmental public body whose role is to support post-16 and higher education, has announced that it is looking for ideas for an app that uses open data sets to support university students through their learning journey. jisclogo

The app should help students navigate key points in their ‘student journey’ – from first thoughts about choosing a course through to leaving and looking for a job. Examples of questions they might seek answers to include: choosing a course and finding out what funding support is available; finding accommodation; locating library resources, lab equipment or computers; searching for work placements, jobs or volunteering. Winners will have their idea selected for development at an open data mashup day and win development support worth £5,000.

UK based developers, students and university staff can apply. The deadline for submitting ideas is 30th October 2015 and the mashup day is on 17th November.

You can find out more information here, which includes how to enter (by uploading a 3 minute video and short description).

UK specialists welcome launch of ORCID as tool to identify researchers

Guidance, Publishing

Jisc joins organisations from across the UK higher education network to welcome the launch of the Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier (ORCID).

There are more academic articles being published than ever before and more authors working together. In order to be able to identify an author correctly a unique identifier is needed that can then link to each author’s publications. ORCID provides this link and if widely used would:

• Ensure researchers get credit for their own work • Ensure researchers and learners looking for information will be able to find academic papers more accurately • Enable better management of researcher publication records, making it easier for them to create CVs, reduce form filling and improve reporting to funders • Create a means of linking information between institutions and systems internationally • Enable researchers to keep track of their own work with funders, publishers and institutions around the world.

It also provides researchers with their own ORCID. Researchers are able to control how much information it holds about them and who that is shared with. The adoption of ORCID is a solution to the current challenges of being able to search for work accurately. By researchers volunteering to adopt its usage it could improve discoverability and accurate referencing.

Neil Jacobs, programme director, Jisc comments: “We welcome the consensus that has been achieved on this issue, which should pave the way for a better research system, less work for researchers re-keying details, and more efficient operations across the sector. We recognise that this is only the start and that work needs to be done to implement ORCID in the UK. However, we have a solid beginning and we look forward to working with our partners across the sector to build on it.”

Alongside Jisc, the organisations below are encouraging the adoption of ORCID:

• The Association of Research Managers and Administrators (ARMA) • The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) • The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) • Research Councils UK (RCUK) • The Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association (UCISA) • The Wellcome Trust.

Find out more about the benefits of ORCID on Jisc’s website.  <http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/di_researchmanagement/researchinformation/orcid.aspx>

Read Jisc programme director, Neil Jacobs opinion piece in Research Information <http://www.researchinformation.info/news/news_story.php?news_id=1029>

Do you have a smart idea for using technology at BU?

Funding opportunities

If you’re looking for rapid project funding, pitch your idea on a new JISC website and receive feedback from your peers.

The JISC Elevator is a new beta platform for people to pitch ideas for projects up to £10,000 using video and short descriptions.

Once an idea has been submitted to the site, people working and studying in UK higher and further education will be able to vote if they like the idea.

When an idea receives the target number of votes then JISC will decide whether or not to fund the idea.

Andrew McGregor, who is managing the JISC Elevator, said: “JISC’s remit is to fund cutting edge innovation – so we hope that by creating a different platform for bidding we’ll be able to capture the brainwaves of many more people in colleges and universities, perhaps people who haven’t previously bid for JISC funds.  The voting mechanisms on the Elevator will also allow us to respond directly to what’s important for people in further and higher education.”

The JISC Elevator is open to all kinds of ideas, with suggestions including:

  • Innovate with e-books
  • Start a student led project
  • Open a can of worms – propose a technical project that starts a big conversation in your institution
  • Use gaming principles to improve research or teaching processes
  • Apply work previously funded by JISC to your own situation
  • Create online services to help students make decisions about university
  • Develop cloud solutions to account for and monitor cloud security

For details on what kinds of idea JISC are looking for please see the submission criteria.

Successful projects will be notified in April and expected to complete by the end of July 2012.

Visit the JISC Elevator

Find out about our other funding opportunities

Give your feedback on the JISC Elevator

 

JISC offer advice on making your grant application stand out

Funding opportunities

JISC funds a wide range of infrastructure, services, innovative projects and studies.  As competition grows for funds, JISC have offered some advice on successful bidding that can help you make a strong application that stands out from the crowd.  Their advice is worth considering for all grant applications.

Sarah Porter, Director of Innovation at JISC, said:  “We want to attract bids from a wide range of universities and colleges, those that know JISC well and others that might be bidding for the first time or need additional help with their application. We know bidding for funds is a time-consuming process and we are therefore aiming to give organisations the best possible chance of being successful in their applications.”

JISC advice for successful bidding includes:

 

  • Describe how your proposed project meets the criteria set out in the call

 

  • Demonstrate how your idea  is aligned with the objectives of your college or institution, including what buy-in you have from senior management

 

  • Carry out an initial assessment of the risks of undertaking the project – and then mention this in your bid

 

  • Include an initial project plan and show how the project will be managed

 

  • Think ahead – include information about dissemination, embedding and evaluation mechanisms

 

  • Show that your project is sustainable once the funding has ceased – not just financially but also in terms of the skills sets of the people involved, and any data/software preservation

 

  • Go green – show that you have considered the environmental impact of your project, eg. server power and data storage space you need

 

  • Consider the wider benefits of the project  for UK education and research to show that your project is good value for money.  You might think about generating workshops, briefing papers or web pages to help disseminate the findings of your project more widely

 

  • Don’t let your bid fail on the easy stuff: make sure you stick to the page limit and get your bid in on time

 

More information on specifically what JISC are looking for and the funding available can be found on their website.