all things open access - resources, books, journals
Open access Publishing
Thanks to national agreements between the VSNU, the association of Universities in the Netherlands, and publishers, corresponding authors can now publish Open Access for free or at a discount in many journals. Most of these agreements concern subscription journals with an Open Access option.
Plan-s part of a large Open access discussion
On 4 September 2018, a group national research funding organisation, with the support of the European Commission and the European Research Council (ERC), announced the launch of cOAlition S, an initiative to make full and immediate Open Access to research publications a reality. It is built around Plan S, which consists of one target and 10 principles. By January 1st 2020, “By 2020 scientific publications that result from research funded by public grants provided by participating national and European research councils and funding bodies, must be published in compliant Open Access Journals or on compliant Open Access Platforms.”
For more information, pro's an con's we refer you to:
cOAlition-S website
R.J. Smits in Nature, Radical open-access plan could spell end to journal subscriptions
VSNU Open Access Roadmap
The Guardian Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science?
Open access explained on YouTube
Open Science Fund University of Twente
The University of Twente provides a fund to stimulate Open Access publishing peer-reviewed Open Access Journals and to make their research data sustainably accessible in a trusted repository. The Open Science fund for 2018 has been completely used. But for 2019 there will be another budget of 60.000,- Euro for Open access publishing. New requirements for reimbursement will be published as soon as possible.
Are you the corresponding author of an article that is published in a peer-reviewed Open Access (OA) journal? If you meet the criteria listed below, the University of Twente will reimburse half or all of the publication costs, depending on the impact factor of the journal, with a maximum reimbursement of €2,500.00.
You are eligible for an OA Publishing Grant when you meet all of these conditions:
1. You are the corresponding author of the article.
2. The article states University of Twente as your affiliation.
3. The article is published in an OA journal that is registered in the Directory of Open Access Journals.
4. The article is published in an OA journal that has, or is nominated for, an impact factor.
If the impact factor of the OA journal is in the top quartile (Q1) in its field, the grant reimburses 100% of the publication costs. In all other cases, the grant reimburses 50% of the publication costs.
5. You can only apply for an OA Publishing Grant in the year that your article is published.
6. You have not received another grant for covering the cost of publishing this article open access.
7. You have not received another OA Publishing Grant from the Open Science Fund in the same calendar year.
This grant will be awarded on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. The grant is a reimbursement to an OFI number of a UT group, so your research group will have to pay the publisher first.
Applications can be done by filling the enclosed form.
For questions and support on Open Access publishing, please contact Marga Koelen, head library ITC.
The Open Access Research data grant
The Open Science Fund subsidizes (part of) the cost of archiving static research data and making these sustainably accessible in a Trusted Repository. University of Twente researchers are advised to use 4TU.ResearchData for technical and natural sciences data storage, and DANS for social sciences and humanities data. Both individual researchers and research groups striving for sustainable access to research data are invited to apply.
You are eligible for an OA Research data grant when all of these conditions are met:
- For individual researchers: You were a UTwente employee when the research data were collected.
- For research groups: Your research group is part of the UTwente.
- You/your group strives for sustainable access to your (group’s) research data
- Your static research data are archived and made sustainably accessible via a Trusted Repository, preferably 4TU.researchData or DANS
- The data either belong to one or more publications, or the raw or edited data do not belong to one or more publications but are important for verification, replication, or reuse.
- You/your research group selected the data based on clearly described criteria, such as quality of the data, the importance of verification/replication, and value for reuse. Besides data, descriptions, and documentation of datasets and, if necessary, the data-collection, data-generation or data-processing instruments are included in the selection.
- Data, datasets, descriptions, documentation, and instruments are of good quality and meet legal and contractual requirements
- Other funding possibilities are not available
This grant subsidizes up to €2,500.00 of the cost of making research data sustainably accessible and will be awarded on a ‘first come, first served’ basis
To apply for an OA research data grant from the Open Science Fund, please contact Marga Koelen, head library ITC.
Open access: Who's afraid of Peer Review? - October 2013
A spoof paper concocted by Science reveals little or no scrutiny at many open-access journals.
Read the full text of the article here Also the "Building Blogs of Science" has an opinion on the matter
titled: Predatoromics of science communication.
Introduction to Open Access
Open Access (in line with the Budapest Open Access Initiative) can be defined as the free availability of research and scholarly outputs on the public internet permitting users to make any lawful and non-commercial use of the research material(s) without any legal, technical or financial barriers other than the acknowledgement of the right of the author(s).
We define open access journals as journals that use a funding/business model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access.
More and more funding bodies require that the results of the funded research have to be made publicly available through digital repositories e.g. NWO, KNAW, EU etc.
One misunderstanding about Open Access is that citing Open Access resources is not necessary and that everybody can copy and paste everything without giving credits to the original author. Common practices in academic life have to be followed in the Open Access world as well.
Another misunderstanding is that there are no Open Access journals with an ISI status. On the ITC library website, you will find a list of Open Access Journals. Unfortunately, the amount of OA journals with Impact Factor is still not the same in every academic discipline but it is growing. One of the reasons is that the big publishers are still hesitant towards Open Access.
Most important to realize is that the intellectual freedom and freedom of science remains important. Research publications should be published based on quality and not because one institute has more money than another institute. It should not affect publication behaviour of scientists in developing countries.
Predatory publishers are corrupting open access
Journals that exploit the author-pays model damage scholarly publishing and promote unethical behaviour by scientists, argues Jeffrey Beall. Jeffrey Beall is Scholarly Initiatives Librarian at the University of Colorado Denver. His website "Bealslist" started out as a place to find predatory publishers but also caused discussion. It is still online in a 'saved' last version
With the start of open-access publishing also the predatory publishers came into existence.
An article in NATURE with the title “Predatory publishers are corrupting open access” is explaining what these predatory publishers are, what they do and why we have to be careful when we publish with these predatory publishers.
Open Educational Resources OER
From the Delft Technical University, this list of Open Educational Resources is a great starting point for finding Open Access Educational Resources. After opening the pdf you can go to the individual websites via the icons with each item.
Open Access Textbooks and E-Books
a number of Open Textbook initiatives
OpenStax
Open Textbook Library
Open Textbook initiative American Institute of Mathematics
College Open Textbooks
a number of Open E-Book initiatives
The National Academies Press (USA) : Sciences, Engineering and Medicine
InTech Open : multidisciplinary scientific literature
The World Bank Open Knowledge Repository: research and knowledge products on development.
UN-Habitat: water and sanitation, the environment, urban management, land and housing, slums, women’s rights.
Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN: all FAO publications full text online
Directory of Open Access Books
Open Access Resources
ScienceOpen.com (Research and Publishing network) is a platform for scientific communication.
African Journals Online: Open Access section African Open Access journals
Bioline International: Open access to quality research journals published in developing countries.
Directory of Open Access journals: open access scientific journals that use a quality control system.
The Directory of Open Access Repositories – OpenDOAR: authoritative directory of academic open access repositories that gives a quality controlled list of repositories.
Medknow: Medknow Publications is a publisher of peer-reviewed, online/print+online journals in the area of STM.
CBS Open Data CBS Open Data is a Dutch database where (governmental) data can be downloaded and used.
Open Access Search Engines
OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) is a collaborative initiative to develop and implement a sustainable Open Access publication model for academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The OAPEN Library aims to improve the visibility and usability of high-quality academic research by aggregating peer-reviewed Open Access publications from across Europe.
Oalib (Open Acces Library) is working on a new scholar search engine for all scholars worldwide. Without any registration, Open Access Library allows you free access to a database of over 263,385 openly accessible academic-articles, The ultimate goal of Open Access Library is to prompt academic exchange and advancement.
Video
The Lecture by John Mackenzie Owen titled: Open Access Promises and Pitfalls, at the occasion of the ITC 2010 symposium on Open Acces is still worth watching. (35 min) He is Emeritus Professor of Information Science at the University of Amsterdam.
Introduction: Open Access is a way to eliminate the cost of scientific publications for end-users and their institutions. Open Access could, therefore, lead to free access to information for all. However, there are many obstacles to achieving this goal, and the road to full open access is not free from pitfalls. In this presentation, I shall briefly introduce the concept and background of Open Access, provide an overview of current developments, and discuss some of the major issues, both positive and negative. I shall put special emphasis on aspects that are relevant to developing countries as the possibly chief beneficiaries of Open Access in the long run.
