UCD Library News

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Palgrave Macmillan launch initiative offering Open Access publishing to scholars in the social sciences

Palgrave Macmillan today announces the launch of Palgrave Open (www.palgrave-journals.com/palgraveopen/) offering authors of accepted primary research papers the option to publish their articles with immediate open access.

Working in collaboration with scholarly institutions and learned society partners, Palgrave Macmillan has selected eighteen journals to offer Open Access at launch:

* BioSocieties
* British Politics
* Comparative European Politics
* Contemporary Political Theory
* European Journal of Development Research
* French Politics
* International Politics
* Journal of Asset Management
* Journal of Brand Management
* Journal of Banking Regulation
* Journal of Derivatives & Hedge Funds
* Journal of International Business Studies
* Journal of Public Health Policy
* Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management
* Journal of Simulation
* OR Insight
* Social Theory & Health
* Subjectivity

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Large survey of author attitudes towards Open Access publishing

8,000 authors favour Open Access and see direct evidence of the positive impact/



Today InTech, an Open Access publisher, has made available results from a recent survey of over 8,000 authors to determine their attitudes towards Open Access.

The benefits of the Open Access (OA) model continue to be debated by publishers and librarians, but relatively little research has been undertaken to understand the attitudes of researchers. It was with this in mind that InTech, a commercial Open Access publisher with a focus on book publishing, commissioned TBI to survey its 25,000 author- base to help better understand researcher awareness of and attitudes towards this evolving model.

The survey attracted a very high response rate – 32% (over 8,000) of InTech authors responded, showing a high level of interest and engagement. Responders were drawn from all over the world, and most defined their role as ‘researcher’ (78%) covering a broad range of specialties.

Royal Society launches Open Biology

Open Biology is an open access journal covering research in cellular and molecular aspects of biology.
Open Biology will publish original, high quality research in cell biology, developmental and structural biology, molecular biology, biochemistry, neuroscience, immunology, microbiology and genetics.

Submissions begin July 2011


Open Biology will begin receiving submissions of research articles starting in July 2011. The criteria for acceptance will be high quality, importance and originality.

Friday, May 6, 2011

United Nations Economic Commision for Africa (UNECA) institutional repository launches

In its 50 years of existence, UNECA has created and holds a vast quantity of information and Knowledge in a variety of formats, including printed and electronic. These represent the corporate memory, providing historical evidence of its actions and decisions. The information resources include published materials such as flagship publications, journal articles, conference proceedings, technical reports, mission reports, annual reports, working papers, speeches and other grey literature, all which outline important research or decisions that have been made on the economic and social developmental aspects in Africa.


The Institutional Repository of the Economic Commission for Africa offers unique knowledge and information not available elsewhere pertaining to regional programmes, decisions and resolutions promoting social and economic development in Africa.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Heading for the open road: costs and benefits of transitions in scholarly communications

This new report investigates the drivers, costs and benefits of potential ways to increase access to scholarly journals. It identifies five different routes for achieving that end over the next five years, and compares and evaluates the benefits as well as the costs and risks for the UK.

Monday, March 14, 2011

UCD Open Access Institutional Repository informational sessions

A series of talks and workshops will be held on a new service that allows you to put your research publications online, free of charge, without subscriptions or other barriers to access, open to all UCD researchers and staff engaged in scholarly publication .

Providing open access to your publications through the UCD Institutional Repository will increase your visibility, showcase your research, enhance your School, College or Research Centre's reputation, fulfil funding requirements and build valuable research and industry connections.

An informational leaflet is available at: http://www.ucd.ie/library/repository/files/guide.pdf

Each talk will cover reasons and incentives for putting your research online via the Institutional Repository; workshops will be practical sessions on how to upload items and track usage trends (downloads) for individual items, Schools, Colleges and Research Centres.

Talks:
1:15 Tuesday 22nd March, C108 Arts building
1:15 Thursday 24th March, B109 Health Sciences Building

Workshops:
1:15 Tuesday 29th March, Health Sciences Library Information Skills room
1:15 Wednesday 30th March, G30 Agricultural Sciences Building

Expressions of interest are welcome but booking in advance is not required.

For more information, please contact Joseph Greene, Institutional Repository Project Manager on 01 7167398 or joseph.greene&ucd.ie

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Open Access Citation Advantage: An Annotated Bibliography

Ben Wagner's recent publication considers and weighs the evidence on the OA citation impact advantage.

Key findings: the overwhelming weight of the evidence suggests a strong OA citation impact advantage, with a download differential found across studies averaging at least 100%, followed by a citation impact differential of between 25-250% in favour of open access for the majority of studies, and particularly for larger studies, with a minority of studies finding no effect. Possible explanations for these anomalies include small sample size (one study refers to an a statistically insignificant OA impact advantage), disciplinary citation patterns, and failure to allow sufficient time to observe the citation impact difference. As the author points out - NO studies found a citation disadvantage for OA.

Article: Wagner, A. Ben. "Open Access Citation Advantage: An Annotated Bibliography" (Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, Winter 2010), available at:
http://www.istl.org/10-winter/article2.html

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Wiley announces launch of Wiley Open Access

Hoboken, NJ, February 1st, 2011 - Wiley announces the launch of Wiley Open Access, a new publishing program of open access journals. The first journals will launch shortly, publishing primary, peer-reviewed research in a range of broad-based subject disciplines in the life and biomedical sciences, including neuroscience, microbiology, ecology and evolution.

Wiley Open Access will provide authors wishing to publish their research outcomes in an open access journal with a range of new high quality publications which meet the requirements of funding organizations and institutions where these apply.

"The development of Wiley Open Access is an example of our commitment to offer authors the widest possible choice in publishing with Wiley", said Steve Miron, Senior Vice President, Wiley-Blackwell. He added, "Wiley has a strong history of innovation in journal publishing and we see this as a natural extension of our service to our learned society partners, authors, and the scholarly community in its broadest sense".

The new journals are being launched in collaboration with a group of international professional and scholarly societies with which Wiley currently partners. Each journal will appoint an Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board responsible for ensuring that all articles are rigorously peer-reviewed, and each journal will be offered with the full functionality of Wiley Online Library.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Submission fees could pave way to open-access future

From Times Higher
Most open-access journals are currently funded solely via charges to the authors of papers accepted for publication.

However, high-profile journals such as Science and Nature do not offer open-access options on the grounds that their high rejection rates would force them to impose prohibitively high charges in order to cover the cost of administering peer review.

But a new report commissioned by Knowledge Exchange, the European association of organisations committed to open access, says that a better business model for journals that reject more than 70 per cent of submitted articles would be to combine charges for accepted papers - known as article-processing charges - with submission fees.

The study, Submission Fees: A Tool in the Transition to Open Access?, says that for such journals, the combined cost of processing charges plus submission fees would allow the charges to be set at a substantially lower level, while also allowing publishers to increase and diversify their revenue.

Submission fees "would most likely limit author acceptance" if they were not offset by processing charges, it says.

The report concedes that while there is interest among publishers in introducing submission fees, they are concerned about higher administration costs and lower submission rates to journals.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Scientific Reports now accepting manuscripts for publication June 2011

Online and open access, Scientific Reports is a brand new primary research publication from the publishers of Nature, covering all areas of the natural sciences — biology, chemistry, physics and earth sciences.

Scientific Reports exists to facilitate the rapid peer review and publication of research that is of interest to specialists within any given field in the natural sciences, without barriers to access.

SAGE Open now accepting manuscripts

SAGE Open is a new open access publication. It publishes peer-reviewed, original research and review articles in an interactive, open-access format. Articles may span the full spectrum of the social and behavioral sciences and the humanities. Find out more, including manuscript submission guidelines, at www.sageopen.com.