DWLresearch

'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...

The Library offers several services to help you publish and disseminate your research. We can help you publish reports, journals and conference proceedings. We also support the publishing of digital collections. Research publications  The Library can help you to publish one-off reports in an open access format. See this example  from the  SAPPHIRE Group in Health Sciences .  If you want to start a new open access journal or conference proceedings, we have our own version of Open Journal Systems (OJS). This is journal management and publishing platform for academic  publications. Articles published through this system are free to any reader, and no APCs are charged to authors.  Please contact Library Research Services for more information: librarians@le.ac.uk Digital collections  Some researchers will be collecting materials as part of a project, and may want to publish them online. The Lib...

Throughout July we ran a series of short talks about issues of interest to researchers. If you missed them you can now watch the recordings: Discovering the University’s unique archives An overview of what archives are and give an overview of the archives held by the University of Leicester library. Watch the webinar Publishing your own Open Access journal The Library has developed an online publishing platform (Open Journals System) that enables researchers at Leicester to set up and run their own open access journals.  This session offers an overview of the platform and what you need to consider before launching your own title. Watch the webinar Finding datasets for research One of the most common enquiries from researchers is “Where can I find data on my topic?”  This session provides advice on how to find datasets for your research. We will cover a range of subject areas, and also look at the specialist resources to which the Library provides access. ...