Posted by Alexander Clarke
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In 2002 the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) began acampaign for Peer-reviewed Research to be made Open Access. They defined Open Access as this:
By “open access”, we mean its free availabilityon the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy,distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawlthem for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawfulpurpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than thoseinseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint onreproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain,should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and theright to be properly acknowledged and cited.
Ten years on from the declaration, Open Access remainsrelevant and important. In a recent statement BOAI wrote:
“We reaffirm our confidence that ‘the goal is attainable and notmerely preferable or utopian.’ Nothing from the last ten years has made thegoal less attainable. On the contrary, OA is well-established and growing inevery field.”
At The UWE Research Repository we agree with this belief andprovide an open access solution for UWE Researchers. Where permissible bycopyright we can make the full text of UWE research openly accessibly to alarge audience who might not otherwise be able to make use of it. In doing sowe raise the profile of our researchers and their research.
To learn more about adding your research to the repository,or to see the research we already have, visit eprints.uwe.ac.uk
To learn more about BOAI and their recommendations for the next10 years, visit http://www.soros.org/openaccess/boai-10-recommendations
Posted by Alexander Clarke
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This week the UWE Research Repository is taking part in Open Access Week, a global celebration of Open Access to research. Open Access means free and immediate access to scholarly research, allowing researchers to find the information they need without worrying about journal costs and other barriers to access.
As the Open Access Week’s Webpages say:
Open Access (OA) has the potential to maximize research investments, increase the exposure and use of published research,facilitate the ability to conduct research across available literature, and enhance the overall advancement of scholarship. Research funding agencies,academic institutions, researchers and scientists, teachers, students, and members of the general public are supporting a move towards Open Access in increasing numbers every year.
In order to help promote this important concept, the UWE Research Repository are doing the following:
- New blog posts about open access every day this week
- Displaying information about the Repository and Open Access in the Bolland Library
- Launching our new 5 minute tutorial video, to show just how easy it is to add something to the repository
- Going for Gold: A chance for PhD students to discuss the concepts of Open Access: Tuesday 23rd October, 9.30-10.30, Room 3S512
- A training session: Thursday 25th October, 14.30-15.30, Frenchay Library room 4D24
Keep reading the repository blog this week for more information.
In the past, this blog has tended to cover news about the UWE Research Repository. However, there are of course many other useful repositories and services out there which are also of great benefit of researchers. One example is the Oxfam GB iLibrary.
The Oxfam iLibrary showcases Oxfam research, programme and policy information from anti-poverty and campaign work worldwide. The repository came about after a realisation that there was no single, secure deposit location for the charity's digital assets. By having simple search and deposit functions, it aims to be usable by everybody, whether or not they have a background in repository use.
Oxfam iLibrary is supported by BioMed Central, and uses their hosted solution, Open Repository. The repository is available on the new Oxfam Policy & Practice website at
http://policy-practice.oxfamhosted.co.uk/publications, and there is more information about it at
http://www.openrepository.com/news/press/153
Don receiving his prize
During Open Access Week (24-28 October 2011), the UWE Research Repository ran a competition to promote the benefits of open access at UWE. These include free, immediate online access to research and better visibility for your research, leading to increased citations.
The competition rules stated that whoever entered the most full text items on to the UWE Research Repository between the 24 and 28 October would win a bottle of wine. Any item that counted as research could be added, from a book chapter to a journal article to an exhibition – as long as it had some form of full text attached.
The winner was Don Webber, a Professor of Applied Economics in the Faculty of Business and Law. He added a total of twenty full text journal articles during the week. These publications range from a 2011 journal article entitled “Which exhibition attributes create repeat visitation?” to a 2008 journal article entitled “Student participation in sporting activities.”
You can view the full details of Don Webber’s publications, and, where copyright allows, the associated full text, on the UWE Research Repository. In addition, look out for an article in a future issue of the UWE Bulletin focusing on Don’s research and the benefits of open access.
'Open access... makes sure that our work, our knowledge, is disemminated as widely as possible. It is about application and knowledge, and also about creating opportunity'
(Paul Gough speaking at the lunchtime talk on Open Access Publishing, 26 Oct 2011)
As part of Open Access Week 2011, last Wednesday (26 Oct) we organised an event on open access publishing. The event was introduced by Professor Paul Gough, and Jackie Wickham from the
Repositories Support Project came along to talk about the importance of, and recent developments in, open access publishing.
Jackie's presentation resulted in a lively discussion, with lots of interest in the different routes to open access, reasons why open access hasn't yet been fully achieved, how open access affects publishers metrics, and the cost of closed access publications.
Jackie has written a great
summary of the event on the Repositories Support Project blog. You can also view the slides from her presentation via the link.