Monthly Archives: January 2016

Changing ORO items

We have been making some improvements to ORO and one that has been top of our list for some time is enabling authors to edit their own items.

There is a good use case for this as authors are increasingly being expected to deposit items before final publication details are known (e.g. volume, issue and page numbers).

Our changes mean that authors can make these edits themselves without having to ask a member of the ORO team to do it on their behalf.  Just look for the “Submit Changes” button that appears at the bottom of the page of an ORO item.

submit changes

Click the button and then you can change the bibliographic details of an ORO item or add full text to the item. Only authors or depositors can make changes to live items.  Any changes to the bibliographic details are automatically made live – full text additions will be checked by ORO staff before they are made live.

 

Training for postgraduate research students

This morning I ran a session for research students on research data management. The aim of the session was to go away with an outline of a data management plan to discuss with supervisors.

The session was well attended and generated lots of interesting discussion. Students used this template for an outline data management plan.

Slides are available on SlideShare and will also be uploaded to the VRE (Virtual Research Environment).

 

FP7 Open Access Pilot

openaireAre you are publishing from a closed FP7 project?  If so a pilot Open Access scheme may be able to provide monies to make those publications Open Access via the Gold route.

Applications should be made at point of acceptance with the publisher, but reimbursements can be made for Open Access charges already paid for eligible publications.

The EU/OpenAIRE pilot allows you to claim:

  • Up to €2,000 per article, €6,000 for monographs.
  • Up to three publications per project (you may need to check with the project lead which publications should apply for the funding).

You are eligible for funds if:

  • The project finished after 1st January 2014.
  • The article is published in a fully Open Access journal i.e. not a hybrid OA journal. (Longer form publications are also be eligible for funding).

OpenAIRE have produced a useful checklist on the service: GoldOAPilot_Checklist_2016.

A list of current OU FP7 projects that are eligible for the funds is available: Closed OU FP7 Projects eligible for Open Access funding via the OpenAIRE pilot.

Applications for the funds should be made via the online central service.

If you have any questions please get in contact with us at library-research-support@open.ac.uk, we are happy to support you apply for this fund.

HEFCE Open Access Policy

hefceFrom 1st April 2016 to be eligible for any future REF exercise all journal articles and conference proceedings with an ISSN need to deposited with full text in a repository within 3 months of publication.  Generally the full text required is the Author’s Accepted Manuscript version of the paper. This is the version with the changes made from peer review but before copy-editing by the publisher.

A notable exception to this is outputs published Gold Open Access which are not subject to this policy, however please do add them to ORO so we know they exist and to increase their visibility.

We’ve been doing a lot of work to get the ORO service ready for this policy and a lot of open accessadvocacy to get the message out there – this will only increase in the following months including continued advocacy at departmental meetings, ORO deposit reports and other publicity.

Today I did a spot check on items deposited in ORO during December.  58 items deposited to ORO were subject to the upcoming policy and 69% of these items were compliant with it.  I reckon 58 items to be a bit low, probably due to the Christmas break.  I would expect that to be around 80 in a regular month.

Those items that were not compliant were overwhelmingly because an Author’s Accepted Manuscript had not been attached to the ORO record.  We will be identifying these items so that remedial action can be taken.  But we can only do this if they have been deposited within the 3 month deposit time frame – the earlier the better.

So to ensure eligibility with the next REF there are 2 simple messages:  deposit research outputs to ORO in time and with an Author’s Accepted Manuscript.

Useful links: HEFCE Open Access Policy & Open Access for the next REF (Internal).

Contact us at: library-research-support@open.ac.uk

 

 

 

ORCIDs at the OU

Open Researcher and Contributor ID (or ORCIDs) orcid-logoare unique identifiers for researchers that can be used to identify research outputs across platforms to a particular researcher.

ORCIDs are a good idea because:

  • They distinguish between researchers with the same or similar names.
  • It saves time – entering your ORCID will auto-populate personal details when completing online forms on compatibile systems.
  • ORCIDs are community driven and non-proprietary.
  • ORCIDs allow different platforms to talk to each other.  Signing up for an ORCID will allow the push and pull of data from one system to another e.g. from ORO to arXiv.

Nearly 2 million researchers already have signed up for ORCIDs and they are free. You can register on the ORCiD site here.

ORCIDs are increasingly important:

  • The Metric Tide Report recommends their use potentially for the next REF.
  • Publishers (e.g. RSC, AGU, IEEE and PLOS)  are beginning to require authors to have an ORCiD at point of submission.
  • Funders are beginning to require ORCIDs (e.g. The Wellcome Trust) in grant applications.

This year Library Services and Research and Academic Strategy will support OU researchers by linking their institutional identifier (OUCU) with their ORCID identifier. This will allow the transfer of data from ORO (in the first instance) to external systems via the ORCID registry. So updates to data in any system will update in linked systems – ORCIDs are the key links between systems. 

orcid hub

We will be out and about in 2016 promoting the use of ORCIDs at the OU and doing the work to exploit the full potential of ORCIDs for OU researchers.  Contact us for more details or if you would be interested in piloting the use of ORCIDs in your department.