The Library research services team and its services pivoted to an online/virtual only service delivery offering in March 2020 due to COVID-19 lockdown, and we have been connecting and meeting with our users and internal and external stakeholders this way since. We regularly update our blog post, which outlines the services and support we are providing for our PhD students and researchers during this period.
We have had to adjust and in some ways reinvent and evolve some of our services to reflect the COVID-19 restrictions and we are also doing our annual planning as well as specific COVID-19 service and scenario planning. I attended (virtually of course) some of the excellent LIBER2020 conference sessions and workshop sessions last week, and I was particularly struck by something that Dr Bertil F. Dorch, Library Director and Associate Professor, University Southern Denmark, said in his presentation, along the lines of: "Plans are useless, but planning is essential", especially during the challenging times we are currently facing. If you have a spare ten minutes, his presentation 'An open window: Lessons derived from managerial challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic' was really interesting and well worth a watch. It is available here.
So, apart from our everyday activities, we are also continuing our horizon scanning and monitoring of the open research/open scholarship environment, and one thing is for sure this global pandemic has shown the necessity and importance of open access to research outputs. If we think of open research as the practice of applying principles of openness to every stage of the research lifecycle, then practising open research means sharing research outputs as early and as quickly as possible in the research process, that enables access and possible reuse by others.
University of Leicester Open Research Survey
Along with our colleagues in the Research and Enterprise Division REF environment team, we have created a survey to collect data on open research practices, engagement and perspectives.
We’re keen to understand how University of Leicester staff and PGR students are making research freely accessible and usable. The survey is still open and it would be great to hear from you: https://leicester.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/open-research-practices-engagement-perspectives
Some of the open research publications and resources that have caught our attention recently:
We have had to adjust and in some ways reinvent and evolve some of our services to reflect the COVID-19 restrictions and we are also doing our annual planning as well as specific COVID-19 service and scenario planning. I attended (virtually of course) some of the excellent LIBER2020 conference sessions and workshop sessions last week, and I was particularly struck by something that Dr Bertil F. Dorch, Library Director and Associate Professor, University Southern Denmark, said in his presentation, along the lines of: "Plans are useless, but planning is essential", especially during the challenging times we are currently facing. If you have a spare ten minutes, his presentation 'An open window: Lessons derived from managerial challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic' was really interesting and well worth a watch. It is available here.
So, apart from our everyday activities, we are also continuing our horizon scanning and monitoring of the open research/open scholarship environment, and one thing is for sure this global pandemic has shown the necessity and importance of open access to research outputs. If we think of open research as the practice of applying principles of openness to every stage of the research lifecycle, then practising open research means sharing research outputs as early and as quickly as possible in the research process, that enables access and possible reuse by others.
University of Leicester Open Research Survey
Along with our colleagues in the Research and Enterprise Division REF environment team, we have created a survey to collect data on open research practices, engagement and perspectives.
We’re keen to understand how University of Leicester staff and PGR students are making research freely accessible and usable. The survey is still open and it would be great to hear from you: https://leicester.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/open-research-practices-engagement-perspectives
Some of the open research publications and resources that have caught our attention recently:
- Science, Digital; Hook, Daniel; Porter, Simon (2020): How COVID-19 is Changing Research Culture. Digital Science. Report. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12383267.v1 which analyses publication trends, regional focal points of research, collaboration patterns, and top institutional producers of research in COVID-19
- Gates Open Research https://gatesopenresearch.org/ which provides a platform for rapid author-led publication and open peer review of research funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
- The MIT Press and UC Berkeley Rapid Reviews: COVID-19 RR:C19 new open access, rapid-review overlay journal to combat misinformation about COVID-19 research https://rapidreviewscovid19.mitpress.mit.edu/
- Sharing and using preprints is on the increase https://github.com/nicholasmfraser/covid19_preprints
- Research Libraries UK (RLUK) are reflecting on what the 'new normal' may look like for research libraries https://www.rluk.ac.uk/a-framework-for-thinking-about-the-new-normal/