If you work in a university, you are almost certain to have heard the term 'open access' in the past couple of years. You may also have heard either that it is the utopian answer to all the problems of research dissemination or perhaps that it marks the beginning of an apocalyptic new era of 'pay-to-say' publishing. In this book, Martin Paul Eve sets out the histories, contexts and controversies for open access, specifically in the humanities. Broaching practical elements alongside economic histories, open licensing, monographs and funder policies, this book is a must-read for both those new to ideas about open-access scholarly communications and those with an already keen interest in the latest developments for the humanities.

Four-volume curriculum about open access for library schools, from UNESCO:

Module 1: Introduction to Open Access
Contents: Scholarly Communication Process; Open Access: History and Developments; Rights and Licenses; Advocacy for Open Access; Open Access Research Impacts
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000231920.locale=en

Module 2: Open Access Infrastructure
Contents: Open Access Repositories; Open Journals; More about Open Approaches
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000232204.locale=en

Module 3: Resource Optimization
Contents: Open Access Mandates and Policies; Content Management in Open Access Context; Harvesting and Integration
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000232201.locale=en

Module 4: Interoperability and Retrieval
Contents: Resource Description for OA Resources; Interoperability Issues for Open Access; Retrieval of Information for OA Resources
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000232199.locale=en

Five-volume curriculum about open access for researchers, from UNESCO:

Module 1: Scholarly Communication
Contents: Introduction to Scholarly Communication; Communicating with Peer Review Journals; Electronic Journals and Databases; Serials Crisis
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000231938.locale=en

Module 2: Concepts of Openness and Open Access
Contents: Introduction to Open Access; Routes to Open Access; Networks and Organizations Promotion Open Access; Open Access Mandates and Policies; Open Access Issues and Challenges
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000232207.locale=en

Module 3: Intellectual Property Rights
Contents: Understanding Intellectual Property Rights; Copyright; Alternative to a Strict Copyright Regime
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000232208.locale=en

Module 4: Research Evaluation Metrics
Contents: Introduction to Research Evaluation Metrics and Related Indicators; Innovations in Measuring Science and Scholarship; Article and Author Level Measurements; Online Citation and Reference Management Tools
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000232210.locale=en

Module 5: Sharing Your Work in Open Access
Contents: The Publishing Process; Share Research Results in Open Access
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000232211.locale=en

The open-access.net platform provides comprehensive information on the subject of Open Access (OA) and offers practical advice on its implementation. Developed collaboratively by the Freie Universität Berlin and the Universities of Goettingen, Konstanz, and Bielefeld, open-access.net first went online at the beginning of May 2007. The platform's target groups include all relevant stakeholders in the science sector, especially the scientists and scholars themselves, university and research institution managers, infrastructure service providers such as libraries and data centres, and funding agencies and policy makers. open-access.net provides easy, one-stop access to comprehensive information on OA.

Aspects covered include OA concepts, legal, organisational and technical frameworks, concrete implementation experiences, initiatives, services, service providers, and position papers. The target-group-oriented and discipline-specific presentation of the content enables users to access relevant themes quickly and efficiently. Moreover, the platform offers practical implementation advice and answers to fundamental questions regarding OA.
In collaboration with cooperation partners in Austria (the University of Vienna) and Switzerland (the University of Zurich), country-specific web pages for these two countries have been integrated into the platform - especially in the Legal Issues section.

Each year since 2007, the information platform has organised the "Open Access Days" at alternating venues in collaboration with local partners. This event is the key conference on OA and Open Science in the German-speaking area.

With funding from the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts (MWK) of the State of Baden-Württemberg, the platform underwent a complete technical and substantive overhaul in 2015.

Knowledge of open access stakes and initiatives is critical for understanding and promoting the fundamental role of faculty and librarians in the scholarly information cycle as academia aims to become diverse, equitable, and inclusive and make scholarship more accessible. Despite the open movement being decades old, there is still a gap in research on Black, Indigenous, and faculty of color (BIPOC) in the context of open access. Understanding the motivations for and barriers against Open Access (OA) publishing (and the relationships between them) among BIPOC faculty helps LIS practitioners and Open advocates design incentives to increase participation and decrease lack of knowledge and stigma around OA.

In 2020, Principle Investigator, Tatiana Bryant and her research team designed an original qualitative study that uncovers ways in which pre-tenure and tenured BIPOC perceive attitudes towards the legitimacy of open access publishing, especially as it relates to their own tenure and promotion processes. To advance this research, select study instruments are available in the Scholarly Communication Notebook for reuse and adaptation as part of a lesson plan designed to teach LIS students and professionals to consider how qualitative research methods can support their praxis.

The Internet lets us share perfect copies of our work with a worldwide audience at virtually no cost. We take advantage of this revolutionary opportunity when we make our work “open access”: digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. Open access is made possible by the Internet and copyright-holder consent, and many authors, musicians, filmmakers, and other creators who depend on royalties are understandably unwilling to give their consent. But for 350 years, scholars have written peer-reviewed journal articles for impact, not for money, and are free to consent to open access without losing revenue.

In this concise introduction, Peter Suber tells us what open access is and isn’t, how it benefits authors and readers of research, how we pay for it, how it avoids copyright problems, how it has moved from the periphery to the mainstream, and what its future may hold. Distilling a decade of Suber’s influential writing and thinking about open access, this is the indispensable book on the subject for researchers, librarians, administrators, funders, publishers, and policy makers.

The Internet lets us share perfect copies of our work with a worldwide audience at virtually no cost. We take advantage of this revolutionary opportunity when we make our work “open access”: digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. Open access is made possible by the Internet and copyright-holder consent, and many authors, musicians, filmmakers, and other creators who depend on royalties are understandably unwilling to give their consent. But for 350 years, scholars have written peer-reviewed journal articles for impact, not for money, and are free to consent to open access without losing revenue.

In this concise introduction, Peter Suber tells us what open access is and isn’t, how it benefits authors and readers of research, how we pay for it, how it avoids copyright problems, how it has moved from the periphery to the mainstream, and what its future may hold. Distilling a decade of Suber’s influential writing and thinking about open access, this is the indispensable book on the subject for researchers, librarians, administrators, funders, publishers, and policy makers.

This handout provides a brief overview of open access to scholarly literature. It looks at the problems with traditional journal publishing, the promise of open access as a solution, and the different paths to open access.

This poster helps to explain the development process of the OER-DEIA Guide developed by K-12 Voices for Open, which can also be found on OER Commons.

The Open Research Toolkit was created by Christopher Eaker during Faculty Development Leave, Fall 2021. While this toolkit was designed for librarians for learning open research concepts and skills and teaching them at their institutions, it would be useful for anyone interested in learning more about open research. Any questions related to this content can be directed to the author.

The ORT YouTube Channel is found here: http://doi.org/10.7290/ORT_Videos

The Open Research Toolkit is an Open Educational Resource, and is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). You may re-use and copy information from this toolkit with attribution. In addition, some of the materials referenced in this toolkit (e.g. some materials linked to and created by others) might be copyright protected; that will be indicated as best as possible, but no guarantees are made as to accuracy of that information. The user should check restrictions of any material prior to reusing it.

You can become a more visible, effective and impactful researcher by sharing your research data and publications openly. In this course, you will learn the objectives, main concepts, and benefits of Open Science principles along with practices for open data management and open data sharing.

Since research increasingly relies on software which is used to model and simulate, and to deal with the ever growing volume of research data, the course will also introduce FAIR software practices.

You'll learn to establish links between publications, data, software and methods, how to attach a persistent identifier and metadata to your results, and methods for clarifying usage rights. You will also discover ways to apply these principles to your daily research and adapt existing routines. Finally, you'll uncover potential barriers to sharing research and discuss possible solutions.

This course will help you grasp the key principles of Open Science, with answers to questions like:

How can researchers effectively store, manage, and share research data?
What kinds of open access publishing are most effective?
How can researchers increase the visibility and impact of their research?
How can the use of social media contribute to the visibility and impact of research?
How can researchers be acknowledged for the research software they write?
You will apply the topics of the course to a variety of case studies on Open Science adoption, which you will then discuss among fellow students. You will also be presented with a hands-on guide to publishing your research with open access. This will help you to apply Open Science principles in your daily work. It will enable you to implement and benefit from the Open Science policies that are currently being developed by governments and research institutions.

This course is aimed at professionals. Those who will see the most benefit include academic researchers at different levels: PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and professors; researchers working for governments; researchers working for commercial enterprises; MSc and BSc students interested to learn about the principles of Open Science.

The development of this course is supported by the VRE4EIC project with funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme.

You can become a more visible, effective and impactful researcher by sharing your research data and publications openly. In this course, you will learn the objectives, main concepts, and benefits of Open Source principles along with practices for open data management and open data sharing.

You’ll learn to establish links between publications data and methods, how to attach a persistent identifier and metadata to your results, and methods for clarifying usage rights. You will also discover ways to apply these principles to your daily research and adapt existing routines. Finally, you’ll uncover potential barriers to sharing research and discuss possible solutions.

This course will help you grasp the key principles of Open Science, with answers to questions like:

How can researchers effectively store, manage, and share research data?
What kinds of open access publishing are most effective?
How can researchers increase the visibility and impact of their research?
How can the use of social media contribute to the visibility and impact of research?
You will apply the topics of the course to a variety of case studies on Open Science adoption, which you will then discuss among fellow students. You will also be presented with a hands-on guide to publishing your research with open access. This will help you to apply Open Science principles in your daily work. It will enable you to implement and benefit from the Open Science policies that are currently being developed by governments and research institutions.

This course is aimed at professionals. Those who will see the most benefit include academic researchers at different levels: PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and professors; researchers working for governments; researchers working for commercial enterprises; MSc and BSc students interested to learn about the principles of Open Science.

This tool was designed by the Oregon Open Learning team as a resource to find open-source images when curating OER. Below are two tables that are categorized by image type. If you have questions about this resource, please contact OregonOpenLearning@ode.state.or.us.

This resource is intended as a module for graduate students in health sciences fields such as medicine, nursing, and public health, and librarians who work in these and related fields. The assignment will briefly review the literature on the three main themes (open access, social justice, and health equity) to provide background on the topic. Following this overview, students will break into groups, and each group will be given a topic with questions to spark discussion on the subject. Questions such as "Historically, how has access to health information created benefits or barriers to users?" or "When thinking about medical research, what stakeholders are concerned about open access and why?" Each group will select a notetaker to keep track of the responses, and time will be given in class to report out and have a wider discussion with each other. The materials provided include an optional pre-reading assignment, slide deck, lesson plan, and a sample comprehension check.

These resources are also available at https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/handle/1805/26714

Project:

This project involves the experimental use of open pedagogy to teach the Scholarly Communication course in a graduate-level library and information science (LIS) program. Open pedagogy is variously defined, but generally understood as a framework that requires students to be active creators of course content rather than passive consumers of it. Proponents view this as a form of experiential learning in which students demonstrate greater understanding of content by virtue of creating it.

Students in this course learn by doing; that is, they learn about scholarly communication by participating in the process. Each student is required to develop a chapter—on a scholarly communication topic of their choosing—to be included in an open access monograph. Following the semester, the text is published under a Creative Commons license on the University at Buffalo’s institutional repository as an open educational resource (OER), allowing for reuse or repurposing in future sections of the course or in similar courses in LIS programs at other institutions. To date, students have created the following open monographs: Perspectives on Scholarly Communication, Volume 1 (2019), Perspectives on Scholarly Communication, Volume 2 (2020); and Perspectives on Scholarly Communication, Volume 3 (2021). Support for the development and production of the third volume was provided by way of the following grant:

Scholarly Communication Notebook (https://lisoer.wordpress.ncsu.edu/notebook/); Institute of Museum and Library Services (https://www.imls.gov/grants/awarded/lg-36-19-0021-19. Investigators: Will Cross (wmcross@ncsu.edu); Josh Bolick (jbolick@ku.edu); and Maria Bonn (mbonn@illinois.edu).

Outcomes:

Immediate outcomes of the “learn by doing” aspect are clear. The experience of publishing engages students in the applied side of concepts they are introduced to by way of lectures, readings, and other class activities. This experience is invaluable for those entering the field academic librarianship, and particularly for those who will have scholarly communication responsibilities.

Immediate outcomes of the open pedagogy aspect are compelling. Research shows that students ascribe a positive learning experience to the implementation of this framework, and they hold for its continued use in future sections of the course. Students are enthusiastic in their embrace of creating renewable versus disposable coursework. They express great satisfaction with contributing to the professional literature, building the discipline’s nascent OER record, and having a publication to feature in their curricular and professional dossiers. The experience also resonates with students on a philosophical level; LIS students are particularly inclined to support activities that align with the field’s abiding ethic of “free to all”.

Long-term outcomes for the course are emerging. Select chapters from these volumes are used as required readings. In this way, students are contributing to professional discourse and to the ongoing development of LIS curricula. A roadmap for this ongoing experiment is given by way of the syllabus, assignments, lectures, rubrics, and other related materials in this Open Science Framework project.

This open course introduces students to the scholarly communications system — with particular emphasis on the scholarly journal publishing mechanism — wherein new information is created, evaluated, disseminated, and preserved.

The course content is organized into three parts. First, The Fundamentals aims to acquaint students with the basic framework of contemporary scholarly publishing: how it operates, who is involved, what roles they play, etc., as well as asking students to consider how they themselves might engage with the system as consumers and producers of scholarly knowledge. Chapters include sample exercises to reinforce content, as well as recommended resources for further study. Next, (Some) Problems raises questions and issues that complicate contemporary scholarly publishing. While scholarship and research have the noble goal of building and sharing new knowledge for the public good, they are also inextricably bound to real-world economic structures and inequalities. This section examines how the scholarly publishing system intersects with money, power, and privilege. It asks students to grapple with the system’s structural, systemic failings, as well as contemplate ways in which it might be improved. Finally, the course culminates in two final Assignments that instructors can use as part of the curriculum, or that independent learners can work through on their own. These are open-ended in that there are no discrete right or wrong answers, but rather opportunities for students to grapple with and reflect on the content of the course.

Material in this course can be used in classroom settings or as self-paced tutorial. Appropriate audiences include upper-level undergraduate or graduate students who are interested in publishing their work; library & information science (LIS) students or early-career librarians interested in scholarly communications; and anyone else who wants a better understanding of the scholarly publishing system and the academic culture in which it is rooted.

Joint webinar with ASAPbio, Sumeet Pal Singh and Europe PMC

Preprints enable researchers to rapidly share their work publicly before the formal peer review process. In this webinar you will learn more about preprints and their benefits for the research community from ASAPbio (Accelerating Science and Publication in biology); will hear an author’s perspective on posting preprints from Sumeet Pal Singh, a group leader at IRIBHM, ULB; and will find out how to incorporate preprints in your literature search routine by using the preprint discovery tools developed by Europe PMC.

ASAPbio is a scientist-driven nonprofit that promotes the productive use of preprints in the life sciences. ASAPbio coordinates a global community of researchers and stakeholders interested in preprints and develops resources to advance best practices and help researchers make informed decisions about communicating their work via preprints. Iratxe Puebla, Associate Director at ASAPbio, will provide an overview of preprints and their growth in the life sciences, and cover things researchers should consider before posting a preprint.

Sumeet Pal Singh is a group leader at IRIBHM, ULB and an ASAPbio fellow. Sumeet will describe the journey of publishing his first senior author paper from a preprint to a peer-reviewed article, as well as the details related to the timing of posting a preprint and its relationship to the peer-review process. He will outline a new path provided by Review Commons that allows the authors to receive peer reviews for their manuscript prior to a journal submission, as well as post the reviewer’s comments and the authors’ response on preprint server (bioRxiv).

Europe PMC indexes over 300,000 preprints abstracts and full text COVID-19 preprints from 20 life sciences preprint servers alongside published journal articles. Preprints in Europe PMC are linked to citations, data, community peer reviews and more. In this part of the talk we will demonstrate how to find relevant preprints, cite and track preprint citations, claim preprints to ORCID, or discover relevant resources.

Who is this course for?
This webinar is suitable to any biological researchers who wish to learn more about incorporating preprints into their research. No prior knowledge is required.

Outcomes
By the end of the webinar you will be able to:

Define what a preprint is
Choose a suitable preprint server for your work
Maximise the options for publication of the preprint at a journal
Decide when to post your manuscript as a preprint
Deal with community reviews and comments
Identify how to search for relevant preprints
Find data behind the preprint
Find comments or reviews associated with a preprint
Add a preprint publication to your publication list
Cite a preprint

Preprints enable researchers to rapidly share their work publicly before the formal peer review process. This webinar will demonstrate how to incorporate preprints in your literature search routine by using the discovery tools developed by Europe PMC.

Europe PMC indexes preprints abstracts and full text COVID-19 preprints from many life sciences preprint servers alongside published articles. Preprints in Europe PMC are linked to data and platforms that comment on or peer review preprints. We will demonstrate how to find the data behind preprints as well as comments and reviews associated with a given preprint. We will also share useful tips for posting your pre-prints, claiming a pre-print to your ORCID and tracking your pre-prints’ citations, revisions or recommendations by readers.

To learn more about using Europe PMC in your research try our Europe PMC: Quick tour or our webinar Using Europe PMC for effective literature research.

Who is this course for?
This webinar is suitable to any biological researchers who wish to learn more about incorporating pre-prints into their research. No prior knowledge is required.

Outcomes
By the end of the webinar you will be able to:

Define what a preprint is
Identify how to search for relevant preprints
Find data behind the preprint
Find comments or reviews associated with a preprint
Demonstrate how to add a preprint publication to your publication list
Describe how to cite a preprint

Psychological sciences preprints from PsyArXiv are now searchable in Europe PMC, an open database of life sciences literature. Join us for this live demo to learn how to find PsyArXiv preprints in Europe PMC, how to explore links to data, citations, comments or open peer reviews, how to claim preprints to your ORCID record, and more.

Who is this course for?
This webinar is aimed at psychology researchers.

Outcomes
By the end of the webinar you will be able to:

find PsyArXiv preprints in Europe PMC
explore links to data, citations, comments or open peer reviews
claim preprints to your ORCID record