News Roundup November 2017

REF 2021: Decisions on Staff and Outputs

Following the release of their initial decisions and further consultation earlier this year, the UK higher education funding bodies have now released a document finalising details of how the Research Excellence Framework (REF2021) will operate. The document outlines which staff members will be eligible for submission, the number of outputs required for each staff member, rules on the portability of outputs, the number of impact case studies required, and further information on UOA structures. It also confirms the next stage of the Open Access policy, and encourages institutions to include ORCID identifiers when submitting their staff, something that may become compulsory in later exercises.

An Open Access Mandate for Monographs?

Although monographs are not currently part of the REF open access mandate, it has been suggested that they will be included in future. This article by Martin Paul Eve et al. considers the implications of an open access mandate for monographs, modeling the approximate costs and suggesting ways these costs could be met. For a recent analysis of the  benefits of OA for scholarly books, see this report from Springer Nature.

Launch of Gates Open Research

Articles are now officially being published on Gates Open Research, an open access publishing portal for the outputs of research funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The platform joins others such as Wellcome Open Research in providing a way to quickly and openly share the results of research, with open peer review taking place after initial publication.

New OA Journal Hosting Service from ScienceOpen

Discovery and research network ScienceOpen have launched a customised hosting service for OA journals, starting with a partnership with UCL Press. As well as the existing benefits of their regular platform in connecting articles through their metadata, by using OA journals there are additional advantages in being able to embed the full texts and encourage interaction. Find more information here.

Making Scholarship More Relevant

This article from Inside Higher Ed raises some interesting questions about how researchers should be communicating their work, and creating multiple points of access. The authors argue that the traditional academic article needs ‘…to begin to share the scholarly stage with other forms of communication that are geared toward different audiences, who may have varying degrees of expertise, amounts of time to engage with research, and familiarity or interest in different information platforms.’

ResearchGate Restricts Access to Nearly 2 Million Articles

Following recent pressure from publishers, ResearchGate have taken further action to avoid accusations of copyright infringement on their site as reported by The Scientist. At least 1.7 million formally available articles have now been restricted, with users now needing to request them directly from authors, but the Coalition for Responsible Sharing still argue that ResearchGate have still done not enough to answer their complaints.

Sci-Hub Domains Blocked

In the ongoing legal battle between major publishers and Sci-Hub, several of the domains used by the site have been blocked following an order by the judge overseeing the case, as reported here. Although this has made access to the site more difficult, ways around this remain, and Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan shows no intention of stopping. Martin Eve, professor of Literature, Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck, argues that ‘Academic publishers would do better to reroute their efforts into developing business models for scholarly communications that allow open dissemination of educational research content and that are, therefore, immune to initiatives such as SciHub.’

OpenCon 2017

The main OpenCon 2017 conference took place from 11-13 November 2017 in Berlin, with satellite events around the world. OpenCon is described as ‘…a platform for the next generation to learn about Open Access, Open Education, and Open Data, develop critical skills, and catalyze action toward a more open system for sharing the world’s information—from scholarly and scientific research, to educational materials, to digital research data.’ Highlights will be available here.

Open Repositories 2018

The 13th International Conference on Open Repositories is now calling for proposals for papers around the theme of ‘Sustaining Open’. The conference is taking place from June 4th-7th 2018 in Bozeman, Montana, USA, and the deadline for submissions is January 5th 2018. Find more information here.

Repository Summary November 2017

Below you will find a summary of UWL Repository activity for November 2017. We will provide this data each month, showing the most talked about outputs (highest Altmetric scores) and the most downloaded outputs. Links to these papers are included below so you access these via our open access repository.

The top 5 most downloaded outputs for November 2017:

1. Berridge, Graham (2015) Event experiences: design, management and impact. Doctoral thesis, University of West London.

2. Pappas, Nikolaos (2015) Marketing strategies, perceived risks, and consumer trust in online buying behaviour. Journal of Retailing & Consumer Services, 29. pp. 92-103.

3. Lorimer, Ray (2014) The attitudes and behaviour of hotel chefs and chef lecturers regarding the use of convenience ingredients. Masters thesis, University of West London.

4. Hunter, Louise (2014) Supporting teenage mothers to initiate breastfeeding and developing a support intervention to increase breastfeeding rates in a vulnerable group – the importance of place. Doctoral thesis, University of West London.

5. Demeke, Wegene (2014) Small and Micro Business Enterprises (SMBEs) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: development and poverty reduction through Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), with particular reference to the hotel industry and associated businesses. Doctoral thesis, University of West London.

The top 3 most talked about outputs

1. Bacon, AlisonCorr, Philip and Satchell, Liam (2018) A reinforcement sensitivity theory explanation of antisocial behaviour. Personality and Individual Differences, 123. pp. 87-93. ISSN 0191-8869

2. Görzig, AnkeMilosevic, Tijana and Staksrud, Elisabeth (2017) Cyberbullying victimisation in context: the role of social inequalities in countries and regions. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 48 (8). pp. 1198-1215. ISSN 0022-0221

3. Bridges, JackieMay, CarlFuller, AlisonGriffiths, PeterWigley, WendyGould, LisaBarker, Hannah and Libberton, Paula (2017) Optimising impact and sustainability: a qualitative process evaluation of a complex intervention targeted at compassionate care. BMJ Quality & Safety. ISSN 2044-5415

Our data is provided by EPrints (via the UWL Repository), IRUS-UK, and Altmetric.