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Please enjoy this guest post from our Judy Rabinowitz, our Scholarly Communication Librarian

October 24th-30th, we celebrate Open Access Week, a time to focus on what we can do to improve how scholarly research is shared, utilized, and discovered.  Open Access (OA), at its core, makes research literature freely available on the Internet with few copyright or license restriction.  This year’s theme, “Open for Climate Justice,” highlights the power open access can have on boosting innovation, discovery, and improvements in our world.

Image of a polluting factory with the Open Access lock logo

As SPARC, a non-profit open access advocacy group, notes, “Openness can create pathways to more equitable knowledge sharing and serve as a means to address the inequities that shape the impacts of climate change and our response to them.”  As a globally pervasive issue, the climate crisis demands the unbarred and swift exchange of information and data across geographic, economic, and disciplinary boundaries in order to tackle it comprehensively, which open access can facilitate.

And, we can choose to ensure open access is the norm in scholarly publishing.  We can publish our research in open access journals, become peer reviewers in open access publications, and advocate and promote with our colleagues and networks effective and equitable OA business models, such as those that utilize low or no article processing charges and have no embargoes on contents.

Ask Us how you can do more for open access.  Happy Open Access Week!

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I know. The term “equity” is trending. But there is something to the hype. The theme for this year’s Open Access (OA) Week, which we celebrate from October 21st-27th, is “Open for Whom? Equity in Open Knowledge”

We’ve made some real strides with OA over the years, that is, making research literature freely available on the Internet with few copyright or license restriction. The list of reputable OA publishers is growing, we’re developing more comprehensive appraisals of a journal’s quality, and we’re making impactful strides to rebalance the economics involved in communicating research. But when I say “we,” I unfortunately do not mean that all scholars, authors, researchers, and practitioners, geographically or economically speaking, are equally represented.

As Nick Shockey, founding Director of the Right to Research Coalition, among other things, poses these timely questions in his blog post about this year’s OA Week theme:

  • Whose interests are being prioritized in the actions we take and in the platforms that we support?
  • Whose voices are excluded? Are underrepresented groups included as full partners from the beginning?
  • Are we supporting not only open access but also equitable participation in research communication?

The answers to these questions are not all obvious or easily acted upon. But these questions are our challenge. They provide focus and guidance for how to continue to grow, repair, and refine how we create and communicate research. Read more about OA at https://sites.tufts.edu/scholarlycommunication/open-access/

Post contributed by Judy Rabinowitz

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You’ve probably heard the term open access – maybe it’s the reason you were able to get the full text of that article you needed?  Maybe it’s the reason so many people read your latest article?

Open access (OA) is about making research literature freely available on the Internet with few copyright or license restrictions.  In honor of Open Access Week (happening right now!), here are the top 10 reasons to publish OA…

10ImproveDiscoverability

10. Improve discoverability

Open articles commonly show up more places than just the publisher’s website, for example, in subject repositories or ResearchGate or the Tufts Digital Library, and therefore can more readily be found by search engines and through web surfing, not just through traditional articles databases, like PubMed or Web of Science. In addition, search engines can more readily crawl the entire full text of open articles, beyond just the citation information and abstract.

9EnlargeReadership

9. Enlarge readership

Since open access materials can be easier to find and the full text is available to all, more people are likely to read them.  You didn’t spend all that time on research and writing to lock away your findings, did you?

8DiversifyReadership

8. Diversify readership 

Those who have access to paid journal subscriptions represent a limited demographic that does not necessarily correlate to those who will most benefit from and contribute to the research. Removing paywalls removes these misguided filters on readership.

7IncreaseCitations

7. Increase citation numbers

 Many times, open articles have the opportunity to be cited more by others due to their increased visibility. In addition, since they are often available ahead-of-print, citations can start accumulating earlier in the process.

6EnhanceCollaboration

6. Enhance collaboration

 More readers and diversity of readers can lead to more and richer collaboration. Open access can help identify critical colleagues otherwise not reached through traditional publishing communication channels.

5DriveInnovation

5. Drive innovation

What does Google Scholar always say? Stand on the shoulders of giants!  Our greatest world achievements are rarely standalone accomplishments.  Scholars feed off one another, learn from one another, and grow from one another through sharing and collaboration, which is enhanced by open access.

4IncreaseUsefulness

4. Increase usefulness

Broadening the reach and impact of research makes all those tireless hours of effort that went into creating it all the more worthwhile. I’ll reiterate my early question: You didn’t spend all that time on research and writing to lock away your findings, did you?

3ShifttheEconomics

3. Shift the economics

Publishers provide added value to a manuscript, through editing, formatting, promotion, and some discoverability services, which incur some cost. For many though, the business model has fallen out of balance.  Much research is supported by taxpayers and authors and peer-reviewers are not paid for their publications.  Open access realigns the business model so that the research conducted as a public good is available to the public.

2Jointhe21stCentury

2. Join the 21st century

 We take advantage of several cutting-edge technologies just to tell our friends how good our lunch was, why would we rely on an antiquated print-based model for communicating important research findings? While many journals are available electronically today, the present system artificially treats them as if they were just as encumbered to obtain and create as their print counterparts when they are clearly not.

1SavetheWorld

1. Save the world!

Yes, this is a bold statement to make, but who knows what accelerated and enhanced collaboration and innovation can lead to? Better addressing climate change?  Ending world food insecurity?  Curbing pandemic diseases?  The only way to know is by opening the communication channels and sharing more.

Have questions? Want to learn more? Read up on Open Access on the Scholarly Communication at Tufts site.

Post contributed by Judy Rabinowitz

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This year’s theme for Open Access Week, which we are celebrating from October 22nd – 28th, 2018, is “Designing Equitable Foundations for Open Knowledge.”  It’s a mouthful, so let’s work through what this means and more importantly, what it means for us here in the Tufts community.

As Nick Shockey, founding Director of the Right to Research Coalition, among other things, noted in his blog post about it, “This year’s theme reflects a scholarly system in transition.”  There is great opportunity and already great evidence of this transition incorporating open access as the default, not the outlier, in publishing.  Nevertheless, we can further leverage the opportunities of transition to intentionally design new systems that are more equitable, more inclusive, and with less bias.

So perhaps you’re thinking that you are not in a position to be designing new scholarly systems.  What’s your role?  If you are someone who creates scholarly literature, be critical of where you publish your manuscripts.  Consider whether you are supporting systems that promote access beyond just to the privileged, affiliated with well-endowed institutions, but also scholars and practitioners, many of whom live internationally, that could benefit from your work, provide diverse perspectives, and innovate in ways beyond your initial scope.  You, as the creator of content, can take control of how well that content is disseminated and utilized, and ultimately how impactful it can be.

There are traditional measures that are often used to evaluate journals and guide someone in deciding where to publish.  Some are quantitative like Journal Impact Factors, or other research impact metrics.  Some are more qualitative, such as recommendations from peers or venerated colleagues.  I challenge you to also assess a journal’s value, prestige, and appropriateness based on its equity as a system.  Whose voices are prioritized?  Who is excluded?  How are some scholarship decisions the journal makes perpetuating bias?

Do these questions spark some questions for yourself?  Ask Us!  And, Happy Open Access Week!

 

Post contributed by Judy Rabinowitz

Open Access publications have been around for decades yet there are still many misconceptions and doubts about their reliability, quality and value. One of the top misconceptions is that Open Access journals are of lower quality, not peer-reviewed, and the equivalent of self-publication.

The Journal of Clinical Investigation, a highly respected publication founded in 1924 and published by the American Society for Clinical Investigation, is a peer-reviewed biomedical research journal covering a range of medical disciplines incuding Immunology, Neuroscience, Oncology, and Gastroenterology. In 1996 it was one of the first to make its research articles freely available. Why would they do such a thing? According to the editor at the time, the non-profit nature of their work informed their decision. Today, according to SCOPUS, the journal has a CiteScore* of 10.98, a SCImago Journal Rank (SJR)** of 8.074, and a Source Normalized Impact Per Paper (SNIP)Ɨ of 2.787.

The National Academy of Medicine, established in 1970 and now part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine is another example of a well-respected research institution that along with its partners provides thousands of open access publications for the benefit of people around the world.

The PLoS journals offer other examples of high-quality, non-profit, open access publishing. On their website PLoS, which was founded in 2001, states their belief that “open is no longer just about free and unrestricted access to research, it’s also about open data, transparency in peer review and an open approach to science assessment.” Of the PLoS journals, PLoS Medicine has the highest CiteScore (8.73), SJR (5.951), and SNIP (3.612).

Here are some other Open Access misconceptions. Can you tell fact from fiction? To find the answers check out Busting OA Myths.

Fact or Fiction?

  • Faculty can freely use their own published content in courses they teach.
  • Open Access is a cost shifting device.
  • Public Access and Open Access accomplish the same thing.

Post contributed by Jane Natches

 

*CiteScore measures average citations received per document published in the serial.

**SJR measures weighted citations received by the serial. Citation weighting depends on subject field and prestige of the citing serial.

ƗSNIP measures actual citations received relative to citations expected for the serial’s subject field.

What is open data?

Open access is not just for publications.  Indeed, access to the data that supports an article may be as important as access to the article itself.  Open data is research data that is freely available online for anyone to download, copy, and reuse, with no financial, legal or technical barriers.

Open data enhances the reproducibility and transparency of research by allowing other investigators to verify authors’ findings.  Freely available data also enhances the rate of scientific discovery by allowing anyone to analyze data in ways that its creators did not anticipate.

Adapted from the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC).

Where can I find open data?

You may be familiar with freely available data from state and national government organizations and surveys, such as the National Cancer Institute Genomic Data Commons, a data sharing and analysis platform that provides genomic datasets and the tools to analyze them, or the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a series of studies that assess health and nutritional status of Americans.

Increasingly, research institutes, projects, labs and individuals are making their data freely available, either because a journal or funder requires them to do so, or simply because they want others to reuse their work (and get credit when they do!).  Freely available data can be found in many data repositories, which provide long-term access to, and preservation and storage of, data.

For a local twist on open data, check out Analyze Boston, where you can find freely available datasets from the city of Boston, or Personal Genome Project, a project started at the Harvard Medical School that invites participants to publicly share their personal genetic, health and trait data.

If you need help finding open data, or want to learn more about making your data freely available, then please email us at hhsl@tufts.edu.

Post contributed by Laura Pavlech

Next week is Open Access Week, when we take a moment to celebrate the free, immediate, online availability of research articles that open access publishing enables.  We recognize the direct benefits open access provides us, namely, an expanded ability to find new collaborators, increased visibility of our research, increased access to global research participation, improved public health…and the list goes on.

Prompted by a memo from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, this much needed reboot to how scholarship and research is communicated has become a priority of several research funding agencies.  Here on the Boston Health Sciences campus, many receive funding for their research through National Institutes of Health (NIH) awards, which has long established a mandate requiring the public access of research products supported by these funds.  Public access is similar to open access, but does not dictate if and how the work can be reused.

Some researchers on the Boston campus are funded by a variety of other sources as well, such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Defense (DoD), the Agency for International Development (USAID), the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and the Department of Agriculture (USDA).  PubMed Central, the home for NIH-funded research manuscripts, has expanded its reach and is now also the repository for several other entities, including AHRQ and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  Other repositories exist.  Check out the SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) Research Sharing Tracker to find information about U.S. federal funder requirements for sharing both articles and data.

Have questions about open access publishing or public access funder mandates?  Email us at hhsl@tufts.edu.

 

Post contributed by Judy Rabinowitz

 OAweek16

 

You’ve probably heard the term open access – maybe it’s the reason you were able to get the full text of that article you needed?  Maybe it’s the reason so many people read your latest article?

Open access (OA) is about making research literature freely available on the Internet with few copyright or license restrictions.  In honor of Open Access Week (happening right now!), here are the top 10 reasons to publish OA…

10ImproveDiscoverability

10. Improve discoverability

Open articles commonly show up more places than just the publisher’s website, for example, in subject repositories or ResearchGate or the Tufts Digital Library, and therefore can more readily be found by search engines and through web surfing, not just through traditional articles databases, like PubMed or Web of Science. In addition, search engines can more readily crawl the entire full text of open articles, beyond just the citation information and abstract.

9EnlargeReadership

9. Enlarge readership

Since open access materials can be easier to find and the full text is available to all, more people are likely to read them.  You didn’t spend all that time on research and writing to lock away your findings, did you?

8DiversifyReadership

8. Diversify readership 

Those who have access to paid journal subscriptions represent a limited demographic that does not necessarily correlate to those who will most benefit from and contribute to the research. Removing paywalls removes these misguided filters on readership.

7IncreaseCitations

7. Increase citation numbers

 Many times, open articles have the opportunity to be cited more by others due to their increased visibility. In addition, since they are often available ahead-of-print, citations can start accumulating earlier in the process.

6EnhanceCollaboration

6. Enhance collaboration

 More readers and diversity of readers can lead to more and richer collaboration. Open access can help identify critical colleagues otherwise not reached through traditional publishing communication channels.

5DriveInnovation

5. Drive innovation

What does Google Scholar always say? Stand on the shoulders of giants!  Our greatest world achievements are rarely standalone accomplishments.  Scholars feed off one another, learn from one another, and grow from one another through sharing and collaboration, which is enhanced by open access.

4IncreaseUsefulness

4. Increase usefulness

Broadening the reach and impact of research makes all those tireless hours of effort that went into creating it all the more worthwhile. I’ll reiterate my early question: You didn’t spend all that time on research and writing to lock away your findings, did you?

3ShifttheEconomics

3. Shift the economics

Publishers provide added value to a manuscript, through editing, formatting, promotion, and some discoverability services, which incur some cost. For many though, the business model has fallen out of balance.  Much research is supported by taxpayers and authors and peer-reviewers are not paid for their publications.  Open access realigns the business model so that the research conducted as a public good is available to the public.

2Jointhe21stCentury

2. Join the 21st century

 We take advantage of several cutting-edge technologies just to tell our friends how good our lunch was, why would we rely on an antiquated print-based model for communicating important research findings? While many journals are available electronically today, the present system artificially treats them as if they were just as encumbered to obtain and create as their print counterparts when they are clearly not.

1SavetheWorld

1. Save the world!

Yes, this is a bold statement to make, but who knows what accelerated and enhanced collaboration and innovation can lead to? Better addressing climate change?  Ending world food insecurity?  Curbing pandemic diseases?  The only way to know is by opening the communication channels and sharing more.

 

Find out more at https://sites.tufts.edu/scholarlycommunication/open-access/

 

Post contributed by Judy Rabinowitz

Open Access Week is October 19-25th this year, which is a great opportunity to focus on how you can broaden your reach.  Open access (OA) is about making research literature freely available on the Internet, with few copyright or license restrictions.  Publishing in conventional journals is one step to disseminating your work – open access takes it to the next level.  An important advantage of OA is that it helps scholars and practitioners who may not be affiliated with resource-rich institutions utilize and benefit from your research.

Two ways to make your literature open:

  1. Publish in an OA journal, e.g. PLOS. These journals may charge authors article processing fees.
  2. Ensure that the conventional journal you publish in allows you to deposit a copy of your manuscript in an OA repository, such as the Tufts Digital Library. This option is free of charge for both author and reader.  The process would look something like this:

Tufts Digital Library

 

Have questions about how this works and/or what else you can do?  Join us for an open workshop, Disseminating your Research: Getting your work out to the widest audience, on Thursday, October 22, 2015, noon-1pm in Sackler 510.  Come find out more!

 

Post contributed by Judy Rabinowitz 

Our final Open Access post for the week is a guest post from Judy Rabinowitz, one of our Research & Instruction librarians and a member of Tufts Scholarly Communications Team: 

Open vs. Public Access:  What’s the Difference?

The NIH Public Access Policy, the now well established mandate requiring scientists to submit manuscripts that arise from NIH funds into PMC, made “public access” a familiar phrase to many in the biomedical field.  The White House memo drafted in February 2013, directing a similar charge to research supported by several other government agencies, including NSF, DOE, and the CDC, is poised to make “public access” even more of a household term.  But why are these not just called open access policies?  Where’s the distinction?

OhYesItsFree

By SpiderWeb-MarketingSystems (Own work) [3.0CC-BY-SA-3.0 or GFDL] via Wikimedia Commons

Many times, “public access” and open access” are used interchangeably, but in fact there are important distinctions between them.  It all boils down to the multiple definitions of the word “free.”

Free as in “gratis” – refers to free of charge

Free as in “libre”
– refers to freedom of use

To put it simply, open access encompasses both definitions of free, being free of costs and also free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.  Public access materials, on the other hand, while free of cost to read, do not necessarily have the same freedoms to use and reuse and therefore the “libre” definition may not apply.

Have more questions about open or public access?  Just ask the Tufts Scholarly Communication Team

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