Open Research & Scholarly Publications

Library Research Newsletter - Edition 1, May 2021

Please find below the articles from our first 'Library Research Newsletter'. 

We intend to publish bi-monthly newsletters with the latest news and upcoming events related to the Library's support for academic research and scholarly publishing.

__________________________________________________________________

The Library’s Role in supporting REF 2021

As many of you will be aware the University REF submission was successfully made toward the end of March. Congratulations to everyone involved in getting everything in place for the deadline, despite the challenges caused by working from home.

The Library played a significant role in supporting the Research Excellence Unit in relation to the 2021 REF, this included:

• Supporting authors with Open Access compliance requirements - this has been a major focus since 2016 when the REF Open Access policy was first introduced, and this work remains ongoing as we look ahead to the next REF!
• A range of metadata and compliance checking work in advance of the REF 2021 submission.
• Sourcing electronic content for the online REF submission, where this wasn’t otherwise Open Access or available through Library subscriptions. This has resulted in additional e-books being acquired in some cases, linked to Coventry University research.
• Acquiring print copies of those items being submitted in physical format for REF. Sixty-four print books were delivered to the REF. Once the REF exercise ends in early 2022, these books will become part of the Library’s holdings. This provides the welcome benefit of more of the ‘monograph’ format research authored by our academic staff being made available to our staff and students through the Library.

UKRI Block Grant for 2021/2 confirmed

We had confirmation in late March that we have been awarded an Open Access Block Grant fund by UKRI to cover the period April 2021 – March 2022. Our Block Grant has increased from the previous year, from the region of £20,000 to a little over £30,000. This is a reflection of the increased number of successful funding applications from Coventry researchers.

Peer-reviewed research and review journal articles and Conference Proceeding publications which acknowledge funding from one of the UK Research Councils (excluding Innovate UK and the UK Space Agency).

Funds are typically allocated on a first come, first served basis. We welcome authors to apply for funds at the stage when they are about to submit for publication. To make an application we ask that authors complete our Block Grant application form which is available from our Libguide. 

Completed forms can be emailed to: oa.lib@coventry.ac.uk.

The Research & Scholarly Publications team will then check whether the proposed publication is compliant with the UKRI Open Access policy and whether adequate funds are available.

Open Access Publishing Deals

Coventry University authors, whether in receipt of research funding or not, can benefit from our ‘Read & Publish’ deals with the major publishers Wiley, Sage and Taylor & Francis. The latter of these deals having come into effect only in the past few weeks.

These deals offer the ability for research and review articles to be published ‘open access’ at no extra cost to the author or the institution, provided a Coventry University affiliated author is listed as corresponding author on the publication.

The Wiley deal covers both ‘hybrid’ journals (those publishing a mixture of subscription access and open access content) and fully open access journals. Following the recent merger between Wiley and the journals published by The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), the 40 IET journal titles are also included in the arrangement.

The Sage and Taylor & Francis deals just cover their ‘hybrid’ journals. Authors wishing to publish in fully open access titles published by these publishers will still need to account for an Article Processing Charge (APC) to publish in such journals.

Some exceptions may apply, and terms and conditions are liable to change over the course of the year. For more information please see our Open Access Libguide, or contact: oa.lib@coventry.ac.uk.

Research Data Repository – Latest News

Colleagues from the Library and ITS have completed the tender process for the research data repository platform.  A supplier has been chosen and formalities are currently being completed.  This tender has been undertaken as we need a research data repository:-

·         To ensure we are compliant with research funders’ requirements on the preservation of datasets arising out of funded research.

·         To improve the visibility and discoverability of Coventry research outputs.

We surveyed the research centres for feedback on requirements and have identified a number of data champions across the University who will continue to provide valuable input to this project, for which we are grateful of their assistance.

Further details will be made available in due course.  We are aiming to have the service running by Summer 2021.

Migration of Research Theses from Curve platform

The Library is currently working with ITS on the decommissioning of the CURVE Open Access collections.  As part of this work, the research theses are being moved into Pure and we will be working with collection owners to identify content where access needs to be maintained. The Research & Scholarly Publications team are currently in the process of moving over the more than 700 PhD and Masters by Research thesis records to the Pure Thesis module. Pure offers some additional functionality, including the ability to add supervisor details. This information will then be displayed against an academic’s Pure profile. The CURVE open collections will not be available after the 31st August 2021.

Please note that this only affects the CURVE Open Collections. The University Collections, including the Teaching Collection will remain available. If anyone has any queries regarding content in the Teaching Collections, we would suggest that you contact ITS via log my call, or the Faculty Learning Technologists, in the first instance.

Research Cafés – Views Sought

We have been running ‘Research Café’ events since October 2019. Initially these were held in the Library, but since May 2020 have been run online due to the Covid-19 pandemic. To begin with these events were primarily targeted at PGRs, but since moving events online we have broadened the target audience to include academic researchers.

As we slowly emerge back into some semblance of normal life, we are inviting the views of those who have previously presented at or attended past Research Cafés to see how these events can be best held in the future to support our University Research Community.

It is expected that a Survey in relation to this will be made available in the coming weeks.

Forthcoming Sessions for Post-Graduate Researcher May Intake

The next ‘Becoming a Professional Researcher’ week organised by the Doctoral College is due to take place from 28^th June – 2^nd July. The Library will be offering a number of sessions as part of this, including:

• Library Support for Research Skills
• Introduction to Research Data Management
• Creating Data Management Plans
• Navigating Copyright in your Thesis
• With Open Access in Mind: Academic publishing in the 21^st Century
• Social Media to Metrics

Sessions are available to PGRs to book on to from the Doctoral College’s RECAP Event listing.

Online Drop-In Sessions being offered

Whilst we are still unable to offer in-person sessions on campus, we are offering informal online ‘drop-in’ sessions.

Please see dates below and links to register for a session. When registering please indicate what your specific area(s) of interest are and we will try and ensure a member of staff is on hand who can answer your question.

Forthcoming events:

• Tuesday 18^th May – 10am-11am
• Friday 28^th May – 10am-12pm

Further dates are expected to be scheduled for June, please keep an eye on our twitter account @CoventryRSP for further details.