Using open data and open services, a large-scale study of the state of open and free access has found both the number and proportion of articles freely available to the public is growing, having reached 45% of the literature published in 2015. Juan Pablo Alperin reveals more about this study and suggests we are at the beginning of a new […]
Category: green OA
Making research articles freely available can help to negate gender citation effects in political science
Advocates of open access (OA) argue that being freely available gives OA articles a citation advantage over pay-to-access-only articles. Indeed, while results are mixed, available research does tend to support that argument. However, is this advantage enough to overcome other factors that affect individual scholars’ citation rates, such as gender, race, and academic rank? Amy Atchison has conducted research into […]
2016 in review: round-up of our top posts on open access
Libraries and Open Journal Systems: Hosting and facilitating the creation of Open Access scholarship There is a growing availability of free tools and software for academic publishing. How might libraries leverage existing platforms? Anna R. Craft describes one experience of an academic library hosting locally-produced open access journals through Open Journals Systems (OJS). But even “free” software is not without […]
Five Minutes with @Livingstone_S on the benefits of open access publishing and practice.
Professor Sonia Livingstone shares her thoughts on the LSE’s institutional repository, LSE Research Online (LSERO). Since 2010, content in LSERO has received over six million downloads. For 2015, it has already received over one million downloads. LSERO is a rich resource containing a variety of LSE research, including journal articles, reports, book chapters, working papers, conference papers, datasets and video. Do you […]
Top ten tips for universities seeking to implement Open Access
With funders requiring open access and researchers increasingly aware of it, now is the time for universities to make significant headway in providing a coherent plan for encouraging wider open access adoption. Neil Jacobs from Jisc provides an overview of what actions have been taken around the sector and outlines ten specific areas that institutions should consider further in order to […]
How can universities increase Green Open Access? Article deposit rates soar after direct solicitation from library.
Universities have struggled to increase article deposit rates for their institutional repositories. Regardless of personal benefits and top-down mandates, getting faculty to change their publishing workflows does not happen overnight. At their institution, Michael Boock and Hui Zhang found that direct solicitation of author manuscripts has been the most effective method of reaching a higher deposit rate. Authors who wish to provide open […]
Elsevier’s new sharing policy is really a reversal of the rights of authors.
Virgina Barbour takes to task publishing giant Elsevier for their latest round of introduced restrictions on the sharing of academic research. Their new policy states that, if no article processing charge is paid, an author’s accepted version of the article cannot be made publicly available via their institution’s repository until after the embargo period, which can ranges from six months to four […]
Self-archived articles receive higher citation counts than non-OA articles from same political science journals.
The low level of research funding for the social sciences in the US is likely to have a direct and negative effect on researchers’ ability to pay the article processing charges associated with the most common Gold OA business model. But there are other options. Amy Atchison and Jonathan Bull look at the benefits of Green Open Access. Their research indicates self-archived/ Green OA […]
Open Access definitions vary but authors must be reminded that giving up copyright is just folly.
The heart of the debate on open access to research is over licencing. A sharp schism has emerged between those who think the no restrictions CC-BY licence is indispensable, and those who think other licences such as the non-commercial CC-BY-NC or non-derivative CC-BY-ND, is good enough. In the software world, licensing was a similar sticking point between free software and open source advocates. Glyn […]
Institutional repositories provide an ideal medium for scholars to move beyond the journal article.
Reflecting on their experiences supporting the growth of Columbia University’s Academic Commons digital repository, Leyla Williams, Kathryn Pope, and Brian Luna Lucero make a clear case for why other institutional repositories should look to broaden the scope of the materials they house. Institutional repositories (IRs) should actively collect the full range of work produced by scholars and researchers — not just “green” […]