Open Access and the ESRC New directions in scholarly communications in the social sciences

Research Councils UK Strategic partnership of 7 Research Councils Arts & Humanities (AHRC) Biotechnology & Biological Sciences (BBSRC) Engineering & Physical Sciences (EPSRC) Economic & Social Research (ESRC) Medical (MRC) Natural Environment (NERC)

Open Access Principles  Ideas and knowledge derived from publicly-funded research must be made available and accessible for public use, interrogation, and scrutiny, as widely, rapidly and effectively as practicable.  Effective mechanisms are in place to ensure that published research outputs must be subject to rigorous quality assurance, through peer review.  The models and mechanisms for publication and access to research results must be both efficient and cost-effective in the use of public funds.  The outputs from current and future research must be preserved and remain accessible not only for the next few years but for future generations.

Open Access Policy  Mandatory for grant holders to deposit a copy of their research articles in an open access repository "at the earliest opportunity, wherever possible at or around the time of publication".  Only apply where publishers give their permission for this to happen.

ESRC Research Catalogue  Database of ESRC research records since 1975  Contains 10,000+ grants and 120,000+ outputs – 15,000 full text  Allows the deposition of over 40 different types of research outputs  800 Datasets held at the UK Data Archive Top outputs  Journal articles  Conference and workshop papers  Unpublished reports and working papers  Books, chapters and sections

ORA – Oxford University Research Archive  78,000 accesses to ORA records during the last academic year and over 10,300 downloads of full text files. Social Science Citation Index with University of Oxford as author address gives:  1,465 articles in 2009  1,347 in 2008,  1,209 in 2007.

Why....?  Funder Mandates  Citations Discipline% increase in citations Physics170 Mathematics35 Biology36 Electrical Engineering51 Computer Science157 Political Science86 Philosophy45

Simplicity….  Things are changing rapidly  It’s not just an local issue  New technologies are presenting opportunities