UK Research & Innovation (UKRI), which oversees the UK Research Councils, has introduced a new open access policy which impacts upon research publications acknowledging their funding which are to be submitted on or after 1st April 2022.
The revised policy reflects the Open Access framework and principles established by Plan S, which has also been signed up to by major research funders such as the Wellcome Trust and European Commission which administers Horizon 2020. The most significant changes are a requirement that Open Access be provided immediately upon publication (embargo periods are no longer permitted) and that a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence should apply whether an author is publishing via the ‘Gold’ or ‘Green’ Open Access routes.
We have been provided with a UKRI Block Grant which runs from 1st April 2022 to 31st March 2023 which is designed to support compliance with the policy where authors are publishing in fully Open Access journals or journals on the approved Transformative Journal list. Authors wishing to apply for Open Access funding through the Block Grant are asked to complete this online form: https://forms.office.com/r/hiigQL6au6.
Online information sessions were held on 14th and 22nd March, which were attended by over 40 research and research support staff. The recording of the 22nd March session and presentation slides introducing the policy are available from the RSP team LibGuide.
If any Research Centre or Group would like to arrange for an information session about these new policy requirements, please contact Open Access Officer, Thomas Jenkins – ad1838@coventry.ac.uk.
The NIHR’s Open Access policy is changing from 1st June 2022.
Similar to the UKRI policy, the new NIHR requirements are for open access to be provided immediately upon publication via either the Gold or Green route and for a CC BY reuse licence to apply by default whether publishing via the ‘Gold’ or ‘Green’ Open Access route.
Please see our LibGuide for more detail in relation to this.
Our agreement with Elsevier went live at the end of March, this followed long-running negotiations between the publisher and the UK HE sector. The agreement allows Coventry authors to publish ‘Gold’ Open Access in the majority of their ‘hybrid’ journals, including some Cell Press and Lancet titles, where they are acting as the corresponding author.
A reminder that we have pre-existing agreements in place with the BMJ publishing group, Sage, Taylor & Francis and Wiley which can enable authors to publish via the ‘Gold Open Access’ route whether they are funded or unfunded. (The Wiley deal may be subject to additional author eligibility requirements during the second half of this year, July-December, depending on demand.)
Eligibility is based on the ‘responsible corresponding author’ being affiliated to Coventry University, the type of article being published and the journal being published in.
Launched in September 2021, the University has its own internal Open Access fund which can support authors affiliated to a Research Centre. Authors can apply if they wish to publish in a fully open access journal, or with a journal which features on the JISC ‘Transformative Journal’ list. ‘Longform’ publications such as monographs and book chapters will also be considered for funding.
Authors are asked to ensure that the output is first reviewed within their research centre prior to an application to the fund being made. When making an application we also ask that a supporting statement is provided covering the four criteria: Originality, Significance, Rigour and Impact. This information is then used by the Research Panel leads in evaluating the award of funds.
Further information and a link to the online application form is available on our LibGuide.
‘Open Research’ is an umbrella term which incorporates a number of practices, including Open Access to research publications and the provision of Open Data.
A number of Universities have started to introduce Open Research policies in their institutions and research funders are becoming increasingly vocal advocates in this area.
To help encourage researcher understanding as to what is meant by ‘Open Research’, our team have created a section within our LibGuide to help explain the range of practices which come under the term, the range of challenges which Open Research practices seek to address and links to further resources.
In conjunction with the Doctoral College we are in the process of developing an online Aula course for academic researchers and PGRs which we hope to launch in the coming weeks.
If anyone wishes to know more about the range of practices which ‘Open Research’ embraces or would like to arrange a talk for your Research Centre or Department, please contact: oa.lib@coventry.ac.uk.
The Library has recently signed up to a one-year subscription with LibKey to the end of 2022. LibKey is designed to make the process of obtaining access to academic articles more seamless with a minimal number of clicks.
Integrated with the Library catalogue, Locate, LibKey operates at an article level and will check whether an article is available open access, via one of our subscriptions or whether an accepted manuscript is available using the browser extension Unpaywall.
The LibKey Nomad plug-in also integrates with Wikipedia, Google Scholar and PubMed to help indicate whether content indexed on these platforms are available to Coventry University researchers. In the case of Wikipedia, Nomad will check the references and bibliography section for an article to identify material which is accessible and provide direct links for access.
LibKey.io is an additional service which allows authors to input individual article DOIs or PubMed IDs and then have it confirmed which version of the publication is accessible to them as a Coventry University affiliated researcher.
Our first Research Café of 2022 was held on Wednesday 2nd February. This was a special themed event, entitled ‘Beyond the Viva: Life after a PhD’.
We were happy to welcome three recent PhD alumni who spoke about their experiences after completing their PhD, within the context of both academia and the wider world.
We held a further Research Café on Wednesday 30th March, with presentations from Dr Annie Pettifer from the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health and Leitrim Doyle from the Centre for Financial and Corporate Integrity.
Research Cafés are designed as opportunities to present research within an informal environment to a cross-disciplinary audience, with an opportunity for questions and discussion.
To help archive and promote these events we have recently launched a Coventry Domains site available at: https://wp.coventry.domains/researchcafe/. Recordings from the last three events are available here. The next event in the series is likely to be held in June.
The week 31st January – 4th February was Research Hootenanny week, a week of events organised by the Doctoral College. The Research & Scholarly Publications team in the Library provided a number of events as part of this week, including:
Metadata Lego – Using gamification principles, participants learnt about the importance of good quality metadata to describe their research data in order to make it reproducible by others.
Research Data Management Escape Room – Designed by Dr Michelle Mayer and Karen Goodson from the RSP team, this interactive game challenges participants to crack a series of puzzles in order to ‘Escape FAIRly to Funding’. Along the way participants will learn about the ‘FAIR Principles’ which provide a best practice framework for the retention and sharing of research data.
Open Access Mystery Role Playing Game – Originally developed by Katrine Sundsbø at the University of Essex, this is designed as a fun, interactive game where players take on the role of a character with secrets to hide. The game is designed to be a light-hearted introduction to a number of topical issues such as arguments about the benefits of Open Access, the use and abuse of metrics and how academic prestige is measured and research evaluated.
If any Research Centre or Department within the University is interested in any of the events which we ran and would like to find out more, please get in touch with either Dr Michelle Mayer (apy153@coventry.ac.uk) or Thomas Jenkins (ad1838@coventry.ac.uk).
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