The Library is pleased to announce that we have secured access for all staff and students to the Times Higher Education online through our institutional subscription.

Setting up a personal account will enable access to the latest and archive editions of Times Higher Education including news about the latest trends and issues in the Higher Education sector from across the world.

Are you interested? It is straightforward to set up an account for online access using your OU email address, visit the Library website for details.

HAZARD! OPENING UMBRELLAS.

With a (big) hat tip to Dr. Susan Gibbons, (Yale University) whose presentation at Researcher to Reader 2018 triggered this post.

Spending as much time as I do trawling the academic literature, one becomes immune to the plethora of icons that inhabit publisher, library, content aggregator, repository and other services that hook onto scholarly communications.  At a glance these icons are supposed to tell us something useful.  However, we now have so many different icons, I doubt they now serve any useful purpose.

YES

The basic information these icons are supposed to convey is YES or NO; YES you can access this content, or NO you cannot.   Access to these subscribed journals may be indicated by green ticks, green unlocked padlocks, green rectangles, green squares, a green circular button or a green “S” – there may be a standard colour but there is no standard icon.  Moreover, even within the same website you can get different icons at article level or journal level, there is a lack of consistency across platforms and within them.

or NO

The scholarly content libraries do not subscribe to are often variations of locked padlocks – a variety of colours.  However, they are never red or crosses – that would definitely give the wrong impression!  Some cut to the chase and just present you with a shopping trolley, get your purse ready!  But, my favourite is just an existential empty white box – there’s nothing here to see…

or YES, for everyone

Then we get Open Access (YES for everyone – not just those that have subscription access).  “But that’s simple!” you might say “use the regular orange Open Access icon!”  Yes, well, but some publishers like their own flavour of this; some like a different coloured variation of the open padlock, and others just like an “O”.  Some like to have two varieties, orange for hybrid Open Access and blue for pure Open Access!  Some purely Open Access publishers like to get in on the act and have an open padlock icon too – even though everything in the journal portfolio is Open Access – erm why bother?

or YES, for a period of time

And then we have “Free Access” – access to papers bound by a time period or free access to particular types of journal items (e.g. editorials).  These can be notoriously difficult to tell apart from icons indicating subscribed content.  Different shades of green (or blue) open padlocks, or just plain “F” icons.  Perhaps the most successful of these resort to simple text stating “Free Access”.

or MAYBE…

Then we have partial access to this journal content; when you can read some journal issues but not others.  Mmm, getting tricky.  So we have green squares split into 2 – half green, half white. Or paler shades of green to indicate a more washed out type of access.  And then purple squares with an O split into 2 – partial access to Open Access journals – now that’s a niche use case!

and the ARCANE

“B” icons indicating Backfiles, “N” for New, “E”  for Earlycite (???) and “H” icons for “Held at the library”.  Library discovery systems aren’t great – Orange buttons with “Check Holdings” (what are holdings, again?).  Repositories with embargoed content have PDF icons with (or without) padlocks.  Some publishers have custom items to distinguish Open Access paid for by the author and that paid for by the journal.  Really, does the reader care?

Somewhere along the line we’ve lost the plot – publishers and librarians have requirements that the scholarly reader does not!  The best answer appears to be publishers who have just ditched icons and use clear text to indicate the nature of the journal content.  Nevertheless, wouldn’t it be lovely if it was all rationalised and we had a simple small set of uniform indicators/icons?

Hi, I’m holding an Open Research Online (ORO) drop in next Wednesday 23rd May from 10-12.

I’ll be in the Library Bookends cafe area (by the book swap) and will be happy to answer any questions on ORO, Open Access & the REF Open Access policy.

Chris

The 6th Annual ReCon Event Conference is taking place  on 29th June in Edinburgh. The conference is designed for early career researchers and PhD students who would like to find out more about scholarly publishing, copyright, peer review, boosting your research profile and research metrics from the experts. The conference includes speakers from major publishers etc. such as Springer/Nature in addition to scholarly communication professionals who will share their own experiences. The conference is a unique opportunity to learn about the publishing process, copyright and how to enhance your research career. More details can be found at https://reconevent.com/programme/

This morning, I ran a session on Practical Strategies for Research Data Management, where we talked about the basics of research data management, including options for data storage and organising data. We also looked at how to write a data management plan using a DMP template, and ended with a game of DMP Bingo.

Thanks to everyone who took part and contributed to the discussions.

The slides are available here:

We have produced a new video outlining HEFCE’s open access policy for REF2021, including details of the changes HEFCE implemented as of 1st April 2018.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rU5alAu7GC0