Speaking at the launch of a new global Research Data Alliance, she said that we are entering a new “era of open science”, which will be “good for citizens, good for scientists and good for society”.
New scientific research must be published for free online, the vice-president of the European Commission said, in a move designed to increase the knowledge pool open to small business and lead to more innovative products.TechEurope.
So it is up to us, particularly the more senior, not only to push RCUK to state categorically that impact factors will not be used in the assessment of researchers in the future, as Stephen urges and as is the stated case in the current REF guidelines, but also to reinforce that position any time we find ourselves in a position of ‘judging’ others: appointments, promotions and so on. We should not use impact factors as a spurious proxy for judging the science itself.
Athene Donald’s Blog.
We discuss the results of a survey conducted in fall 2012 and covering 2,151 researchers in Germany. We show that there are significant differences between the scientific disciplines with respect to researcher’s awareness of and experience with both open access (OA) journals and self-archiving. Our results reveal that the relevance of OA within a discipline may explain why researchers from particular disciplines do (not) publish OA. Besides, several aspects like copyright law, age, profession or the inherent reward system of a discipline play a role. As a consequence, the paper emphasizes that a “one-size-fits-all” approach as promoted by most recent policy approaches is little promising for providing an effective framework for shaping the future of scholarly publishing.Abstract.
Natalia Madjarevic, Dave Puplett, and Neil Stewart clarify the existing capabilities of institutional repositories and highlight the powerful transitional role they can play in providing greater access and benefits for individuals, institutions and disciplines.LSE Blog.
The OA bargain is becoming a bit more fraught as more people get involved and as founding concepts are stress-tested by practical matters. If the OA movement remains dogmatic about the details, and is not willing to compromise or improve on ideas established years ago and never thoroughly validated on a large scale, it run some serious risks of losing support in the wider world.Times Higher Education.
The public currently has to wait 35 years after publication to have free access to articles, according to a spokeswoman for the group. That will change early next year, when the journal Cultural Anthropology switches over to a fully open-access model.The Chronicle.
EconStor is the new Open Access server of the German National Library of Economics – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics. EconStor provides a basis for the free publication of academic literature in economics. Any research facility wishing to publish and permanently preserve relevant publications in economics under the terms of Open Access can do so on EconStor. EconStor offers a full service for entire working paper series and e-journals. This includes the uploading of PDF files as well as the processing of all corresponding title data such as abstracts, keywords and JEL codes. Scholars have the option of self-archiving their so-called postprints (free author’s versions of articles from publishers’ journals) to make them accessible. At “Publisher copyright policies & self-archiving (SHERPA/RoMEO database)” authors can find out whether a publisher permits parallel, free publication of previously published articles as postprints on EconStor.
Following the success of 2012 and 2011 grant competitions, the EIFL-OA programme invites new proposals for organising national or institutional open access advocacy campaigns to reach out to research communities. We particularly wish to involve researchers and students, research administrators and policy makers, university presses and society publishers.
This is the second in our Series of Interviews with PeerJ Editors, giving them a voice to express their thoughts about academic publishing, open access and PeerJ. This time around we spoke to Fabiana Kubke who is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Medical Sciences (Department of Anatomy with Radiology) and a member of the Centre for Brain Research at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
Anyone who has been tracking the rapid transition from the recommendations of the Finch Group to the emergence of RCUK’s policy must admit that the horse-trading around OA embargoes caused considerable confusion. The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee report into the policy published on 22 February 2013 produced this graphic to highlight how it should work.
Ask your university press todisavow the AAP stance on FASTR. Universities, as major recipients of federal funding for research, should be in support of a strong public access bill; their own publishing shops should not, by default, subscribe to the AAP’s position.Letter to use provided on website.
The College of Wooster Library, Information Resources, and Technology Committee (LIRTC) that introduced the policy believes that the resolution supports the institutional mission. LIRTC’s informational page highlighted the benefits of the policy.
Longer embargo periods of up to 24 months for green open access will only apply when universities’ annual block grants for “gold” article fees have run out, Research Councils UK has confirmed.Times Higher Education.
David Parry, an assistant professor of emerging media and communications at the University of Texas at Dallas, argues that scholars have an obligation to publish their research in journals that make free copies available online. The Tech Therapy team talks with him about how the debate over open access to research has heated up in recent months, and invites journal publishers to give their views on next month’s podcast.The Chronicle.