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Flipping academic journals to diamond open access: Notes on community governance
In this blog post, Dr Caroline Edwards, Executive Director, Open Library of Humanities and Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Literature & Culture, Birkbeck, University of London asks: How do we ensure that a flipped diamond open access journal can remain independent? How do we prepare for the long-term financial security of flipped journals and protect against their potential vulnerability to commercial acquisition in the decades to come? Flipping academic journals to diamond open access (OA) presents a series of challenges to an academic publisher. You need certain niche competencies. Firstly, nothing happens without the complete trust of an editorial team that shares your appetite for risk. Then, you need the backing…
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Formatting the Future: Why Researchers Should Consider File Formats
Dr Kim Clugston, Research Data Coordinator, OSC Dr Leontien Talboom, Technical Analyst, Digital Initiatives Many funders and publishers now require data to be made openly available for reuse, supporting the open data movement and value for publicly funded research. But are all researchers aware of why they are being asked to share their data and how to do this appropriately? When researchers deposit their research data into Apollo (the University of Cambridge open access repository) they generally understand the benefits of sharing data and want to be a part of this. These researchers provide their data in open file formats accompanied by rich metadata so the data has the best…
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Methods getting their chance to shine – Apollo wants your methods!
By Dr. Kim Clugston, Research Data Co-ordinator, Office of Scholarly Communication Underlying all research data is always an effective and working method and this applies across all disciplines from STEMM to the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Methods are a detailed description of the tools that are used in research and can come in many forms depending on the type of research. Methods are often overlooked rather than being seen as an integral research output in their own right. Traditionally, published journals include a materials and methods section, which is often a summary due to restrictions on word limits making it difficult for other researchers to reproduce the results or…
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Should the UK make a deal with Springer Nature?
This is a guest post by Prof. Stephen J. Eglen on the concurrent negotiations between the UK academic sector and the publisher Springer Nature. Prof. Eglen is a Fellow of Magdalene College and Professor of Computational Neuroscience in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge. This post does not necessarily reflect the view of Cambridge University Libraries. The UK academic sector is currently in discussion with Springer Nature around a renewed ‘read and publish’ deal for journal content. I understand that most institutions are likely to reject the current deal, but wish to continue negotiations. My position is that further discussions with Springer Nature…
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Springer negotiations: what’s our plan B?
The negotiations The UK universities sector is negotiating a read & publish deal with publisher Springer Nature. Reaching a transitional agreement is particularly important to make it easier for our authors to publish their work open access, as well as continuing to read all of Springer Nature’s content. The deal needs to be affordable for our sector, which is already under financial strain. The Jisc negotiating team and the University of Cambridge are committed to finding a deal that works well for us, that is our plan A. But we are aware that some previous negotiations between universities and publishers could not find enough mutual ground (for example UCLA and…
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Is a Rights Retention Clause needed for OA books?
Dr. Rupert Gatti is a Fellow and Director of Studies in Economics at Trinity College, Cambridge, and co-founder of the non-profit Open Book Publishers. In recent discussion about funder-imposed Rights Retention Strategies (RRS) I realised that there is an important consideration for funders of Open Access (OA) books and book chapters that differs significantly to the standard arguments for RRS with journal articles, and that I haven’t seen articulated elsewhere. The standard motivation for applying RRS to article submissions is that it ensures that the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) can be shared and reused under a CC BY licence even if there are greater restrictions over reuse of the final…
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Open Research in the Humanities: Research Evaluation
Authors: Emma Gilby, Matthias Ammon, Rachel Leow and Sam Moore This is the sixth and final of a series of blog posts, presenting the reflections of the Working Group on Open Research in the Humanities. Read the opening post here. The working group aimed to reframe open research in a way that was more meaningful to humanities disciplines, and their work will inform the University of Cambridge approach to open research. This post discusses opportunities and challenges for research evaluation in the arts and humanities. The direction of travel in the Open Research discussion is away from any straightforward use of metrics in research evaluation. This is hugely in favour of…
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Open Research in the Humanities: public engagement
Authors: Emma Gilby, Matthias Ammon, Rachel Leow and Sam Moore This is the fifth of a series of blog posts, presenting the reflections of the Working Group on Open Research in the Humanities. Read the opening post here. The working group aimed to reframe open research in a way that was more meaningful to humanities disciplines, and their work will inform the University of Cambridge approach to open research. This post public engagement in a humanities perspective. The open access movement is fundamentally about public engagement in its broadest sense. It also allows for reflection on a differentiated notion of ‘public’, where publics can be specific as well as general (‘the…
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Open Research in the Humanities: Research Integrity and Care
Authors: Emma Gilby, Matthias Ammon, Rachel Leow and Sam Moore This is the fourth in a series of blog posts presenting the reflections of the Working Group on Open Research in the Humanities. Read the opening post here. The working group aimed to reframe open research in a way that was more meaningful to humanities disciplines, and their work will inform the University of Cambridge approach to open research. This post considers research integrity in the context of arts & humanities research. Research integrity applies to A&H disciplines in gathering CORE data, conveying interpretations, maintaining disciplinary standards, and privileging diversity, transparency, respect, and accountability. This is ‘careful’ scholarship in its truest…
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Open Research in the Humanities: CORE Data
Authors: Emma Gilby, Matthias Ammon, Rachel Leow and Sam Moore This is the third of a series of blog posts, presenting the reflections of the Working Group on Open Research in the Humanities. Read the opening post at this link. The working group aimed to reframe open research in a way that was more meaningful to humanities disciplines, and their work will inform the University of Cambridge approach to open research. This post reflects on the concept of FAIR data and proposes an alternative way of thinking about data in the humanities. As a rule, data in the arts and humanities is collected, organised, recontextualised and explained. We are therefore…
