DWLresearch

T here is a great answered question in British open access policy: what will happen to books? It has long been signalled that OA policy for the next REF, and for research funded by UKRI, will require books to be made open access. Perhaps the real question is how will books be made open access?  The current proposal by UKRI is as follows: Monographs, book chapters and edited collections that acknowledge UKRI funding to be made OA.  The version of record, or author manuscript, should be made available via an online platform...  ... using a maximum 12 month embargo and CC BY or CC BY-ND licence.  This policy would apply to works published on, or after,  1 January 2024 . UKRI are still to decide on some issues including: definitions, exceptions (there are quite a few listed), author copyright.  This policy will also inform  future REF  open access policy. We provided more details on these proposals and the accompanying consultation ear...

  The University of Leicester is celebrating International Open Access Week 2020: ‘Open with Purpose: Taking Action to Build Structural Equity and Inclusion’. Today we would like to focus on the research outputs deposited in the institutional repository and their dissemination and reach to a global audience. The University of Leicester was the first UK HEI institution to go out for tender and procure a single solution for joined research data and publications repository  in 2017, which was fully launched and operational in November 2019. Since then we had over 1,5m views and over 1.1m downloads for both data and publications. The vast majority of deposited items are journal articles followed by theses, conference contributions and datasets. Even though the journal articles are the majority of items deposited, the 'Top 10' accessed items (over the past year) consists of 4 theses, 3 reports, 2 datasets and a book chapter: 1.        School Visi...

'Equity' is the theme of International Open Access Week this year. An important goal for the open access movement has been equality of access to academic publications. The aim is to reduce the barriers that readers outside the well-funded university system in Europe and North America face in accessing journals and books.  It is telling that many of the journals and working papers we support through University of Leicester Open Journals have emerged from disciplines and projects with strong practitioner participation or geographic focus. Museum and Society  publishes articles by both academics and museum professionals, reflecting a long-standing agenda within the School of Museum Studies. The museum sector has many small institutions within it, with correspondingly small budgets. Outside of national institutions like the V and A, which houses the UK's National Art Library, a library budget becomes a 'nice to have' rather than an essential service. Open access greatly...

Early observations from the ‘Open research practices, engagement and perspectives’ survey. By Tom Moore  With the 2020 Open Access Week theme “Open with Purpose: Taking Action to Build Structural Equity and Inclusion” we thought this would be a good opportunity to give some early observations from the survey conducted between May and October 2020 of Leicester researchers on ‘Open research practices, engagement and perspectives’. The observations will focus on two areas: Potential for local structural inequity and exclusion: Role (the position in research career) External research funding The survey was jointly produced by the REF environment and library research services teams. For the research services team, the primary purpose of the survey was to take stock and get a picture of where the research community at Leicester are with the Open Research agenda. To identify potential case studies and to help us target and develop our advocacy, training and engagement program. ...

  Welcome to our University of Leicester celebration of International Open Access Week, I do hope you will join us and be involved in this important community event, which aims to make openness the default for scholarly research and ensuring that equity is at the heart of open access and open research initiatives and practice. Theme for Open Access Week The theme this year is “Open with Purpose: Taking Action to Build Structural Equity and Inclusion” and we have a variety of resources, recordings, and planned blog posts on topical Open Access (OA) challenges and benefits, all of which will support this important OA week theme, and more importantly, we hope this week will be an opportunity for new conversations, and an opportunity to think about the importance of opening up research in order to build more equitable foundations for opening up scholarly research outputs to all.  Even though we have seen a dramatic increase in the growth of open access  and evidence that...

The University Library Research Services Team are looking forward to celebrating International Open Access Week 2020 which runs from 19-25 th October 2020. The theme this year is ‘Open with Purpose: Taking action to build structural equity and inclusion’. During OA week we shall be publishing a series of themed blog posts, open access recorded conversations with UoL research stakeholders covering a variety of OA topics, and as usual we will be available for a virtual consultation on any open research topic (e.g. via MS Teams).  Celebrating open data, open publications, and open theses on Figshare with an Open Access Week upload competition We shall be taking part in the Figshare international OA week upload competition  where the University of Leicester, among other institutions worldwide, will be taking part in this exciting competition.  Figshare is the platform for our institutional research archive and we encourage you to deposit your data (via our figshare platfor...

 This video is aimed at our PGR students, but gives anyone an overview of what our team does in the library: