OA in the USA

Research funded by US taxpayers must be made available to the American public for free within a year of publication, as outlined in a recent article published on Inside Higher Ed.  In addition to posting the research itself, this new legislation requires publishing bodies to post metadata -  including relevant information related to the research -  so it will be discoverable through search engines. In Canada, depending on the funding body, the rules can be similar. For example,  starting January 2013, publications receiving funding through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research are required to make their peer-reviewed research publicly available within 12 months of publication (see here).  One more step down the road toward Open Access.  And, thinking practically about all of this, in a time of fiscal uncertainty, should taxpayers really be paying twice for access to important (government-funded) research?

New Ideas in the World of Peer Review

Peer review has long been a standard measure of credibility for academic articles.  However, the system has also long been criticized for a variety of reasons, including the length of time it takes for research to be published.

An article in Inside Higher Ed last week highlighted a couple of new ventures in the world of peer review aimed at speeding up the process and opening it up to more people.

Open Access Week

October 24-30 is Open Access Week!

Visit our Open Guide to learn about Open Access, Open Culture, Open Education, and Open Source.

This international event recognizes and promotes publishing initiatives that make scholarly research accessible online to anyone, anytime, anywhere in the world.

This is accomplished through Open Access (OA) journals, institutional repositories, self-archiving and a lot of hard work by academics, librarians and a variety of others who argue that free, universal access to research is a right, not a pricey privilege.

The following animated video (3:16) explains open access to research and why it’s important:

April’s Resource of the Month

Graduating soon? Still need access to research?

Try the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) at www.doaj.org

The DOAJ provides open access to thousands of scholarly research articles.

What is Open Access?

“Open Access is free, unrestricted access on the Internet to the same type of high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship that is available by subscription.” – Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook by Alma Swan & Leslie Chan

Why does Open Access matter?

• Students’ research does not end when they graduate.
• Students deserve access to scholarly materials regardless of what their educational institution may be able to subscribe to.
• Scholarly research is often paid for with public funds and should therefore be available to everyone.

Open Access 101, from SPARC from Karen Rustad on Vimeo.

To learn more about Open Access, visit the RDC Library Open Resources guide at http://rdc.libguides.com/open

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For more information on the Directory of Open Access Journals, or any other Resource of the Month, call us at 403.342.3152, email us at rdclibrary@gmail.com, visit the Library Information Desk, or Instant Message us.

Happy Open Access Week!

October 18-24 is Open Access Week!

This international event recognizes and promotes publishing initiatives that make scholarly research accessible online to anyone, anytime, anywhere in the world.

This is accomplished through Open Access (OA) journals, institutional repositories, self-archiving and a lot of hard work by academics, librarians and a variety of others who argue that free, universal access to research is a right, not a pricey privilege.

To learn more about OA and how you can help promote OA initiatives to students, colleagues and the general public, check out the following resources:

• Open Access 101, a great video by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)
• Open Access Information & Resource guide prepared by RDC librarian Robyn Hall
• The Directory of Open Access Journals
• The Right to Research

Open access debate continues

There is a debate occurring in post-secondary education circles around open access. Open access (OA) publishing provides free online access to articles that have traditionally been published in scholarly journals. With library collections budgets being stretched, and with the high cost of subscribing to scholarly publications, OA journals are well-liked by librarians and others in the academic world.

As reported by Inside Higher Ed, the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) has recently come out against OA, due to fears about its financial impact. This opinion, however, does not reflect the view of all university publishers; ten directors of university presses (including the directors of the presses at the University of Calgary and Athabasca University) have issued a statement in favour of OA.

OA is something you’re going to be hearing more and more about.  It is starting to come up not just in conversations between libraries and publishers, but also in conversations between faculty members and tenure committees (is publishing in a peer-reviewed OA journal equivalent to publishing in a peer-reviewed print journal?) and faculty and students (are articles from OA journals valid sources for papers?).  Also, some granting agencies are starting to make OA publishing of results a condition of funding.

Where do you stand in the debate?