Category Archives: Library research support

New ORCID and ORDO Integration

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As of September 2021, Figshare and ORCID have a new integration with significantly improved functionality. We’ve updated our webpage to give you all the details but here are the main points you need to know –

First you’ll need to connect your ORDO profile to your ORCID account. In order to do this, please follow these steps:

  • In your profile page in ORDO (pictured), click the CONNECT button to enable syncing with your ORCiD
  • This will take you to ORCID. Log in and click to authorise ORDO/Figshare to access your ORCiD account

You’ll then be presented with 3 options, all off by default.

FAQs

1. Push data to my ORCID

This option creates a record in your ORCID account of any items that you publish on ORDO. This will create a record using the base DOI only, versioned DOIs are omitted. The base DOI will always point to the latest version of your item. This long-requested functionality avoids the issue of significant duplicate entries within your ORCID account.

An important note, if you have a synchronisation set up from a DOI provider like Datacite and you enable this option, there is a chance you’ll get duplicate records in your ORCID account.

This feature will only kick in for items created after the integration has been performed. Any existing items in your ORDO account will not be pushed using this method. If you need to get historic items into your ORCID account and they have not been captured by the existing Datacite integration, this will need to be done manually.

2. Pull data from my ORCID to my ORDO account

This one is all about your ORDO profile and your profile only. Nothing imported here will interact with your My Data area (that’s where option 3 comes in).

This will import everything in your ORCID works section to the publications area of your ORDO profile. Unlike the previous setting, this will import everything before the integration was performed as well as anything created ongoing.

3. Create draft records from my ORCID data

After the integration has occurred, any new records created within the works section of your ORCID account will automatically create a new draft metadata record within your My Data area. As much available metadata as possible will be pulled in, and this option will also create the metadata record with the DOI of the original object.

Once a new draft item has been created from this integration, you’ll get two kinds of notifications: an email to your account email address and a notification within the platform. You can then choose to add a file for this record, such as an open access version of a publication, and any additional metadata or delete the draft record if it’s not needed.

Please note: Usually, open access versions of publications should be added to ORO rather than ORDO, however there may be reasons for adding a metadata record for a paper published elsewhere to ORDO (e.g. for gathering evidence of knowledge exchange/impact) – if you are unsure, please contact the Library Research Support team for advice.

For further information and answers to some FAQs head over to our webpage.

UKRI Open Access Policy: new requirements

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If you are publishing research articles and are funded by UKRI you need to be aware that there are changes to the Open Access policy from 1 April 2022.

The new policy requires immediate open access for research articles and conference proceedings that acknowledge UKRI funding from AHRC, BBSRC, EPSRC, ESRC, MRC, NERC, STFC, Innovate UK or Research England submitted for publication on or after 1 April 2022. This can be achieved by 2 routes:

    • Route one: publish the article open access in a journal or publishing platform. The version of record (final published version) must be immediately open access via its website with a Creative Commons attribution (CC BY) licence. Funds for Gold Open Access may be available from the University’s UKRI Open Access Block Grant. The Library has been taking out Journal Transitional Agreements with Jisc that include gold open access publishing in them.
    • Route two: publish the article in a subscription journal and deposit the Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM) (or Version of Record, where the publisher permits) at the time of publication in an institutional or subject repository with a CC BY license. A publisher embargo period is not permitted.

The policy also requires a Data Access Statement on research articles, even where there are no data associated with the article or the data are inaccessible

It is important that any UKRI funded researchers check before article submission that the journal they are submitting to is compliant with the UKRI Open Access Policy.

The policy has also been widened to include monographs, book chapters and edited collections published on or after 1 January 2024 and requires:

  • the final version of a publication or the author’s accepted manuscript (AAM) being made open access via an online publication platform, publishers’ website, or institutional or subject repository within a maximum of 12 months of publication.
  • CC BY licence is preferred to maximise opportunities for sharing and reuse. The open access version should include, where possible, any images, illustrations, tables and other supporting content.

UKRI will be providing dedicated funding to support open access monographs, book chapters and edited collections. Funding will be via a centralised fund held by UKRI that must be applied for by authors. Publication costs for monographs, book chapters and edited collections can also continue to be included in research grant applications. UKRI will provide updated guidance by the end of 2022.

Further details can be found on the Library Research Support website and the full policy can be found here along with a list of frequently asked questions.

The Library Research Support Team will be running two briefing sessions in Microsoft Teams (please note these will not be recorded):

10-11am Tuesday 5th April 2022. Book here.

3:30-4:30pm Thursday 7th April 2022. Book here.

For help and advice, please contact library-research-support@open.ac.uk.

 

Speed Data-ing

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Join us for our Speed Data-ing event next Monday in honour of Love Data Week

Speed Data-ing

Speed Data-ing: Mon, 7 March 2022, 12:00 – 12:45

 Five different speakers will have five minutes to present an interesting aspect of data management or sharing to the audience, followed by a Q&A panel session at the end.

Confirmed speakers:

  • Sarah Vicary (Associate Head of School, Nations, WELS)
  • Alessio Antonini (Research Associate, KMI)
  • Jacob Obodai (Research Student, FASS)
  • Gareth Davies (Research Impact Evidence Manager, RES)
  • Isabel Chadwick (Research Support Librarian, Library)

Here are a few examples of what will be covered:

  • data collection
  • impact data
  • different approaches to data management

Book your place on Eventbrite

UK Data Service training opportunities

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The UK Data Service provides access to a wide range of social science data for reuse. To help you get the most from our service, they run free introductory level online workshops every spring and autumn to introduce different aspects of the Service.

The UKDS training events in spring 2022 are listed below and you can also browse the events pages for a full list of what is available:

UKDSTraining

New Subscription to Overton!

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The OU Library now has a subscription to Overton!

Our mission is to help users find, understand, and measure their influence on government policy – Overton.

Overton is the world’s largest searchable policy database. It includes access to over 5 million policy documents and guidelines from over 29,000 organisations in over 185 countries which then link them to the research, people and other policy documents that they quote or reference.

It can be accessed via the Library database A-Z list Databases | Library Services | Open University.

To save searches, tag or bookmark items you will need to create an account. For further information or help please contact us here. 

HAPPY LOVE DATA WEEK

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Love Data Week is an international celebration of data, with the goal of raising awareness and building a community to engage on topics such as research data management, sharing, preservation, reuse, dissemination, and library-based research data services.

This year’s events are based loosely on the theme “Data is for everyone.” The hashtag is #LoveData22.

The OU Library are hosting some fun activities and events to commemorate Love Data Week (14-18 February 2022).

1. ORDO Treasure Hunt (ongoing for the duration of Love Data Week)

To take part you need to answer a range of questions using ORDO to find the answers. Once all the clues have been solved you will be able to access a surprise. Follow this link to start the hunt.

2. Upload competition (for the duration of Love Data Week)

This competition opened shortly after midnight today (14 February 2022). It will close at midnight on Friday 18 February 2022. For your entry to be valid, all data must be uploaded and published on The Open University’s Open Research Data Online (ORDO) repository between Monday 14 February 2022 and Friday 18 February 2022. All entries are free. Competition winners will receive their prizes by post.

3. POSTPONED due to the UCU strike. The Speed Data-ing webinar will now take place on the 7th March 12-12.45pm. Click the link for more details and how to sign up.

Researchers and research staff will give 5 minute quickfire presentations on their research projects and data, followed by a Q&A session at the end.

Creating a mailbox alert for new items in ORO

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If you wish to be kept up to date on new items being added to ORO you can do so by pushing an RSS alert into your Outlook Mailbox. (If you don’t use Outlook you can use services like Blogtrottr to transform RSS alerts into email alerts.)

  1. Identify the set of items you want to be alerted on. You can choose to be alerted on all new items by department or a subset of items by faculty, or any way you can conduct an advanced search in ORO.
  2. Go to ORO Advanced Search and enter your search terms. In this example I have selected Item Type : Thesis AND Computing and Communications
  3. Image of ORO Advanced search page with thesis and Computing and Communications selected.Select “Search”. From the ORO results page go to the Subscribe to these results page. Right click on the RSS 2.0 icon and select “Copy Link Address”.
    Image of ORO Subscribe to these results pane.
  4. Now go to your Inbox in Outlook and navigate to the RSS Subscriptions subfolder.
  5. Image of RSS subscriptions subfolder in MS Outlook.Right Click on “RSS Subscriptions” and select “Add a new RSS feed”. The New RSS Feed dialog box will pop up and you can paste the url you copied from ORO. Click “Add”.
  6. This should return any relevant results and update in real time for new items added to ORO.

Image of populated ORO results in email folder in Outlook.

PDF Version of instructions: Creating a Mailbox Alert for new Items in ORO [PDF]

NEW OU Digital Archive Exhibition: PhD Pioneers

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Have you ever wondered who the first OU PhD graduates were?

Today, the OU Digital Archive – in collaboration with the Graduate School – has launched a fantastic new exhibition that features the stories and experiences of twelve of the OU’s first PhD graduates from 1973-79.

It focuses on video interviews taken in 2021, mixed with photos and TV footage from the 1970s, that illustrates the often exciting, ground-breaking activities, and sometimes emotional reflections, of this outstanding group of OU PhD alumni.

It really is a truly fascinating and insightful exhibition, so please do go check it out: Exhibition: PhD Pioneers

Open Research Online (ORO) Update 2020-21

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Deposits in 2020-21

There were 3,103 deposits to ORO in the 2020-21 academic year.  Importantly, that’s not the same as published research outputs of OU research staff and students in the academic year, which would be around 1,200.  The reason the number is greater is because ORO includes:

  • PhD theses
  • Student projects
  • Publications deposited in 2020-21 but published earlier (or later!)
  • Items published by current OU staff who were not affiliated to the OU at point of publication

The deposit rates across faculties both reflect the different sizes of the faculties and different practices in scholarly communications across the faculties.  Simply put, AHSS disciplines have fewer, longer form single authored research outputs, whilst in STEM disciplines there will tend to be more short form multi-authored papers.

Deposits – 10 year trend data

When you look at the trends, the significant story is the peak in 2019 when the library digitised 1,600 PhD level theses and added them to ORO.

Consistent deposit of items across the years has been supported by our adoption of mediated deposit via Jisc Router and publisher alerts – we no longer rely solely on authors to add their papers to ORO.

Downloads

ORO continues to receive a significant number of downloads of Open Access content.  According to IRStats2 (the native ePrints counter) of downloads ORO received over 2 million downloads of Open Access content last year.  But remember many of these will be downloads from web bots, let’s not confuse a download with a human actually reading a paper!   Another count from IRUS, that provides more rigorous filtering of bots, provides a more conservative estimate of 880,612 downloads over the same period.

Downloads – 10 year trend data

Not surprisingly, trend data shows an increase in downloads (however you choose to filter them) over time.  Inevitably as the repository grows in size, counts of downloads will grow year on year.  These are the impressive results of having a repository indexed by Google and Google Scholar.

Open Access

ORO strives to be a valuable University asset in providing Open Access to the research outputs of OU research staff and students.  Last year 52% of items added to ORO were immediately Open Access, these will either be:

Gold Open Access – where the published version is freely available from the publisher and added to ORO,

Green Open Access – a non-final version (often the accepted version), will be available in a repository like ORO.

When looking at Faculty breakdown it’s apparent how Open Access remains contingent on the dominant modes of scholarly communication within academic disciplines.  Books and book chapters remain harder to make Open Access than journal articles.

Open Access – 10 year trend data

Nevertheless, ORO trend data show a growing increase in Open Access over time.

The dip in the last 2 years is due to publisher embargoes on Green Open access papers added to ORO.  Often, commercial publishers will prescribe embargoes of up to 12 months for STEM and upwards of 24 months for AHSS disciplines.  This embargoed content is not counted here as Open Access as it’s not freely available, however once the embargoes end they will count as Open Access (at least for the purposes of these ORO data!)

This upward Open Access trend in ORO deposits has been bolstered by the Open Access mandate on OU PhD theses and the digitisation of legacy theses.

University and Faculty Infographics

All these data (and more!) are available in PDF renditions.

University 2020-21 Update

FBL 2020-21 Update

FASS 2020-21 Update

STEM 2020-21 Update

WELS 2020-21 Update

IET 2020-21 Update

New DORA Open University Case Study!

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“The Open University used a top-down/bottom-up approach to research & create a new promotion route to recognize & reward social engagement for promotion & tenure”.

The OU has worked with DORA to publish a case study:

“In 2015 the UK’s Open University (OU) published “An Open Research University” a book outlining the outputs from a three-year project to create and implement an evidence-based strategy to embed the principles and practices of engagement with new processes for research assessment within the university. In keeping with the OU’s existing commitment to open research and knowledge exchange, the project aimed to steer their research culture toward recognizing and rewarding a broader range of contributions, specifically in “engaged research”. There were multiple examples of top-down/bottom-up cooperation to inform and promote the policies outlined in the report, such as the sponsorship of a working group to reform the university’s academic promotion criteria by the then Pro-Vice-Chancellor responsible for academic professional development. In 2020, the OU signed DORA and released a statement describing the university’s aim of creating a DORA Implementation Plan by 2021. These actions represent a continuation and codification of a growing institutional movement toward research assessment reform.”

Check out the full study here!