Opening access to quality research materials Tracy Kent ubira@lists.bham.ac.uk 0121 414 3918 www.library.bham.ac.uk/support/ openaccess/index.shtml

Open Access The open-access (OA) movement aims to increase the impact of scholarly research by supporting web access to research findings Publications are free of charge to users, worldwide, including those without traditional access to academic journals (eg practitioners, those in developing countries)

Open access benefits freely available material becomes more accessible and discoverable worldwide leads to greater visibility and impact of research including increased citations ensures publicly funded work is available to all For users open access is barrier-free and payment-free providing access to information they need

A new publishing model However Open access is NOT cost-free publication - costs still have to be met but in a new way as part of the research process Open access is NOT low-quality publication – 5000 peer-reviewed open access journals available (according to DOAJ*) *Directory of Open Access journals

What Open Access is not It is NOT self-publishing, nor a way to bypass peer-review and publication, is it NOT a kind of second-class, cut-price publishing route. It is simply a means to make research results freely available online to the whole research community.

How do you find Open Access materials?

Resources for locating OA materials Google/Google Scholar open access content is linked directly Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) Not just a directory. Search contents of the journals and locate suitable journals Subject databases on eLibrary Web of Knowledge; Sociological abstracts; Biological sciences, etc Scirus Science, psychology and language search engine

Links to full text articles and repository content from Google Scholar

Searchable database and browsable list

Resources for locating OA materials PubMed/UKPubMed Contains individual journal articles and other materials Directory of Open Access repositories (OpenDOAR) Not just a directory. Search for repositories by content, geography, etc including Cogprints, Arxiv and RePeC University of Birmingham repositories Eprints, epapers, etheses All Listed on eLibrary Google scholar : exclusion, substance misuse and schools (note green triangles)

Some other examples of repositories Education Line : interviewing as browse (article on evalution search strategies)

ETheses Online Service (EThOS) The EThOS Service allows you to search for electronic Doctoral theses produced in other UK HEIs The theses from most institutions will be free to download and print If a thesis is unavailable it will be possible to request that it is digitised Can access EThOS from any computer worldwide: www.ethos.ac.uk Replaces the British Library (microfilm) Theses Service

Selecting Open Access sources The evaluation process is the same for you: Credibility of the Author Validity of the Methodology Rigour of the Peer-Review Reputation of the Venue 13

How do you publish on Open Access?

Two Primary Paths to OA Self-Archiving (Green OA) The author takes initiative to place the document into a publicly accessible forum Could be Institutional or subject based cross searchable on the web via Google and Google Scholar Open-Access Publication (Gold OA) The author chooses a publication venue that accommodates publication cost somewhere other than at the point of access Green route often seen as more useful because : preserves author freedom to submit work to a journal of their choice AND maximises choice of reading Open Access. About 15% of peer reviewed journals are Open Access so not really enough to support GOLD at the moment. Green Open Access compatible with either Open Access or Subscription journals. 63% of subscription journals give blanket permission for their authors to self archive in OA repositories and essentially all Open Access journals do. .

Open Access Journals conduct peer review typically let authors retain copyright. Have wide ranging publishers Not-for-profit (e.g. Society / Funding Agencies / Public Library of Science or PLoS) For-profit (e.g. BioMed Central).

Summary Wide range of resources to locate open access materials Depositing in UBIRA is strongly encouraged by the university and is to the benefit all Benefits for authors and researchers www.library.bham.ac.uk/support/ openaccess/index.shtml