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My presentation given at City University London's Researcher Development Day, for early career researchers at City. The presentation is on scholarly communications, open access generally and at City, and how social media can be used to disseminate research.
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Neil Stewart, Digital Repository Manager
[email protected]://openaccess.city.ac.uk/
Open Access & City Research Online
Session overview•Scholarly communication in the internet age•Why open access?•Open access at City: City Research Online•Social networking: a new form of scholarly communications, or a frivolous waste of time?
•Twitter, blogs & other social media•Open access & social media: power dissemination!
•Conclusions
Scholarly communication in the web age• The web as a classic disruptive technology - and these
effects are still playing out.• Knowledge can now be freely disseminated via the web.• Goodbye to the library as the gatekeeper for scholarly
knowledge (?)• Traditional models of publishing (subscription journals,
hard copy monographs) under threat as a result.• New methods of scholarly communications gaining
currency e.g. e-books, open educational resources, open access journals.
• Problems of authority and authenticity of information.• Social media as a dissemination tool or a medium in its
own right?
Why open access (OA)?• General (reductive) argument: (nearly) all research is
taxpayer funded, so taxpayers should have access to that research
• Growing recognition in last 10+ years that the internet & web services can cause this to happen.
• Open access benefits include:• Move away from research hidden behind subscription pay-
walls.• Widest possible audience for research.• Open access citation advantage.• Social justice- lowering the “digital divide”.• Open access = better science, developed more quickly
• Open access movement focussed on peer-reviewed journals.
• New areas of focus include open data, open monographs.
Green vs. Gold Open Access• Green open access:• Author self-archives “author final” version in an institutional
repository (IR) or subject repository.• An embargo period is often applied.• Copyright, versioning of papers both issues for academics.• Getting academics to do it- to mandate?
• Gold open access:• “Author pays” model- though rarely out of academics’ own
pockets!• Articles from a fully Gold or “hybrid” journal are made open.• Problem of funding for Gold, publishers “double dipping”,
creation of a market for Gold journals.
Open access: a hot topic!• A lot of publicity around OA recently:• The Elsevier boycott (early 2012).• Finch Report on access to research outputs (June 2012)
• New RCUK policy on open access (post-Finch) • The Guardian and other prominent media outlets have been examining OA issues.
• What does all this mean for researchers?• Open access mandatory for all funded research!• Funders likely to be much more rigorous in monitoring compliance.
• Early career researchers should get in the habit early!
Open access at City: City Research Online• Institutional repository service launched in Autumn 2011.
• Allows City authors to make their research (articles, chapters, conference papers, theses) available to anyone who wishes to access it via Green OA– author self-archiving.
• To do this, all we need is the “author final” version of papers- the final, post-refereeing draft.
• We do the copyright checking on your behalf.• Papers added to CRO get found and downloaded- we regularly see 200+ downloads a day.
• See for example http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/1101/
Social media- blogging•A new form of academic communication? •Quick & easy to set up a blog!•Allows for peer interaction, can find an audience outside the academy.
•Can contextualise research for new and wider audiences.
•Problems: finding the time, creating an audience.
Social media- Twitter•Short, timely updates on relevant topics.•Conversational model.•Know your audience! Possibility of mixed messages.
•Hashtagging your Tweets.•Some examples of good practice here at City: @giCentre, @cityuni_hcid, @CityLCS
•Also possible to build personal networks, e.g. @WebsterFrank
Case study: it really works!• Melissa Terras, UCL Department of Information Studies.• Made a concerted effort to blog & Tweet about her
papers which had been added to UCL’s institutional repository service.
• Most papers had received one or two downloads; after publicising, this rose to an average of 70 downloads per paper.
• As a result, she achieved 27 of the top 50 most downloaded papers in her department that month.
“If you tell people about your research, they look at it. Your research will get looked at more than papers which
are not promoted via social media.”
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2012/04/19/blog-tweeting-papers-worth-it/
Further readingThat LSE blog from my last slide:
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/
Impact of Social Sciences Handbook: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/the-handbook/
A guide to using Twitter in university research, teaching, and impact activities: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2011/09/29/twitter-guide/
Social media: A guide for researchers: http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/communicating-and-disseminating-research/social-media-guide-researchers
Thanks!Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @neilstewart
CRO’s email address: [email protected]’s OA repository: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/
CRO’s on City’s website: http://www.city.ac.uk/research/research-publications
CRO on Twitter: @City_ResearchCRO’s blog: http://cityopenaccess.wordpress.com/
