Monthly Archives: August 2015

Change of address

In order to simplify things (for you and for us), we have amalgamated all email inboxes for Library Research Support services into one email address: library-research-support@open.ac.uk

This new inbox replaces the following:

We have set up forwarding from these inboxes, although there have been a couple of reports of it not working, so if you’ve emailed any of those addresses recently and not received a reply, please try sending the email again to the new address.

Open Access Books

The Jisc OAPEN-UK project has produced a new Guide on Open Access Books for Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

Guide-to-open-access-monograph-publishing-for-researchers-final

The Guide to open access monograph publishing for arts, humanities and social science researchers is available online and as a pdf download.

I’ve had a quick browse and it’s looks a really useful introduction to the state of play of Open Access book publishing.

The premise of the guide is that publishing books Open Access is some way behind publishing journal articles Open Access, and that is undoubtedly true.

Nevertheless, several publishers mentioned in the guide have been used by OU researchers to make their books Open Access. Martin Weller recently published “The Battle for Open” using ubiquity press, Ruth Finnegan has published both”Oral Literature in Africa” and “Why do we Quote? The Culture and History of Quotation” using OpenBook Publishers, and Alexander Mikroyannidis has recently co-edited an Open Access collection Responsive Open Learning Environments published by Springer.

So, it seems, OU researchers are taking the leap when it comes to publishing Open Access books.

Quarterly ORO Report

ORO 2015 Q4 Report

 

I’ve completed the quarterly ORO report for final quarter of 2014-15.  Highlights include:

Deposits

The last quarter saw a significant increase in the number of deposits to ORO; over 750 items were deposited in the quarter which is one of the highest counts we’ve ever had.

Open Access

Even though the percentage open access fell from the previous quarter we still see an extraordinarily high level of Open Access deposits from both KMi (71%) and IET (62%).

In fact our overall level of 27% of content being fully Open Access compares well with the percentage of Open Access content in similar repositories.  A quick survey of a set of similar repositories gives an average Open Access level of 24 % (based on data from 39 hybrid UK eprint repositories).

 

PDF of the quarterly report is available here: ORO 2015 Q4 Report

 

Article Processing Charges

Stuart Lawson (@lawsonstu) has produced a nice chart showing the current average price of an APC, based on data from 27 UK HEIs during the first half of 2015.

No surprises but what a range!

average_APC_2015

 

Lawson, Stuart (2015): Average APC price 2015. figshare.

http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1509861

Retrieved 08:16, Aug 13, 2015 (GMT)

Data available from http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1509860.  

 

 

 

 

 

The Metric Tide: Report of the Independent Review of the Role of Metrics in Research Assessment and Management

Over the last few years there has been lots of discussion about the use of metrics in research assessment.  An Independent review was commissioned by the government in April 2014 to investigate the current and potential future roles that quantitative indicators can play in the assessment and management of research. Through 15 months of consultation and evidence-gathering, the review looked in detail at the potential uses and limitations of research metrics and indicators, exploring the use of metrics within institutions and across disciplines. Its report, ‘The Metric Tide’, was published in July 2015

One of the main findings of the report is that no metric can provide a like-for-like replacement for REF peer review though carefully selected indicators can complement decision making.

The report also recommends that ORCID ID’s should be mandatory for all researchers submitted to the REF.  ORCID’s are permanent identifiers for researchers and enable researchers to protect their unique scholarly identity. Many funders and journals have adopted ORCID’s so it is worthwhile getting one if you haven’t already.