Skip to main content

Colours of Open Access

By

International Open Access Week 2018 celebrates 10 years of promoting open scholarship worldwide. Let’s go back to basics and see how the publishing landscape has changed over the last decade.


Open Access was defined in the Finch Report (2012) stating that ‘research outputs arising from publicly funded research should be freely accessible at the point of use with minimal if any limitations on how they can be used’. In fact, Open Access is all about reaching wider audience and increasing the impact of your research. According to Universities UK Report on transition to Open Access (2017) the proportion of UK-authored, open access articles increased from 12% in 2012 to 30% in 2016. Currently 37% of research outputs in UK and 25% worldwide are freely available at the publication date.

The movement supporting discoverability and accessibility of research outputs sparked a change in policies of the HEI, funders and most scholarly publishers. Two options for making publications open were set out:
  • Gold – requires payment of article processing charge (APC), the article becomes freely available at the publication date and is published under the most permissive copyright licence (CC-BY). Some funders like UKRI, COAF and Wellcome Trust provide additional pots of money (block grants) to support their researchers in making research outputs open access via gold route.
  • Green – no payment required, authors deposit accepted version of the manuscript (not a publisher version) in Institutional Repository (such as Leicester Research Archive) ensuring its discoverability, but there is usually delay in making the manuscript accessible (embargo period). The length of embargo period is specified by the publisher/journal.

The journals can support one or both options of open access described above and depending on their policy they can be classed as:
  • Open access only journals – supporting gold OA only (without green option). Authors must pay the APC, but there is no need for subscription to the journal for anyone willing to access the articles. 
  • Hybrid journals – supporting both green and gold OA, leaving the choice to the author and funds available. The downside is the articles published as green OA will be hidden behind paywall for the length of the embargo. Please bear in mind that most HEI will have subscription packages which remove the need to pay for access.

OA guidance, requirements and policies can be (and are) confusing and information overload for many of us but the good news is – there is help available! The Research Services team at the University of Leicester provides support for all researchers across the institution, if you have OA related query - please do not hesitate to contact us or visit our Open Access Website for more information.

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Searching ABS Journals in Business Source Premier

By
In Business and Management Studies, researchers undertaking a literature review sometimes search across a defined group of journals. This is a way of focusing the literature search to make the results more relevant to the questions in hand. Groups are often chosen from the Association of Business Schools (ABS)'s  Academic Journal Guide . Read more how about how they put together the guide here . There are several ways to search across ABS journals. Here is how to do it in Business Source Premier, a leading literature database for this subject area.  1.     Login into the ABS journal guide. If you have never used it before you will need to create an account. 2.     You can use the guide to draw up a group of journals either by using the Rankings information or the Fields. Fields divides up the journals into categories of research focus e.g. Accounting, Finance etc. In this example we will use the Fi...
Read more

You can now export multiple citations from Google Scholar

By
You can now export multiple citations from Google Scholar if you have a Google Account. Go to Google Scholar and sign into your Google Account. Conduct your search. Click on the Star icon (Save) under each reference you want to export. Then click on My Library in the top, right of the screen. Select all the references and click on the Export option: Click the Star/Save Icon Choose Export Option To Export into EndNote Choose the EndNote option. Open the EndNote file that is created. The references should automatically import into EndNote. To Export into RefWorks Choose the RefMan option. Save the RIS file that is created. Login to your RefWorks account. Click on the plus (+) button. Choose Import References. Add the RIS file you just saved. Set the file import option to RIS - Reference Manager. Click import and your references will be imported. --- Good Practice Tip: Always check that all the reference information you need has been...
Read more

How to find a Journal Impact Factor

By
What is a Journal Impact Factor? An impact factor is a measurement provided by Thomson Reuters looking at the average number of citations articles in a particular journal receives.  It is calculated by: The number of times that all items published in a journal in the previous two years (e.g. 2012 & 2013) were cited by indexed publications during the year of interest (e.g. 2014) divided by The total number of "citable items" published by that journal in those two years (e.g. 2012 & 2013) Finding a Journal Impact Factor Go to Web of Science In Web of Science - Click on the link at the top of the page for Journal Citation Reports. Start typing the name of the journal and choose from the list that appears: Remember - not all journals are indexed by the Journal Citation Reports, so not all journals have an impact factor. You will then get an option to click on the Journal Profile, which includes the Impact Factor:  Find th...
Read more