scholarly journals Better than Average – The Positive Effects of a Department actively supporting Open Access

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars Kullman ◽  
Jonas Gilbert

Chalmers University of Technology adopted an Open Access policy in 2010, mandating its researchers to deposit copies of their work in the university repository (Chalmers Publication Library). The Library was given the assignment to implement the policy but also to monitor the progress. In the beginning of 2013 we compiled the first comprehensive report to the university management and the departments.The share of Open Access publications varies to a large degree between different departments and subject fields. The reaction from the departments when presented to the numbers also varies, from referring to ‘the usual suspects’ – workflow issues, copyright issues, didn’t remember etc – to the reaction: how can we improve us?The Department of Signals and Systems publishes approx. 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and 200 peer-reviewed conference papers yearly.  The Department started an active discussion how to improve the rate of Open Access. This discussion resulted in a project together with the library, in order to increase the number of Open Access publications and the visibility of the researchers and their publications on the web. The aim was to bring the share of Open Access publications from about 30 % to 100 %. An agreement with the Library was signed, where the library would assist the researchers to submit their papers to the repository.  The proposed poster will discuss:a)     How we provide feedback to management and departments.b)    The differences between departments when it comes to Open Access publications.c)     The importance of a department management actively promoting Open Access.d)    How library and department collaborates in order to increase the amount of Open Access publications.e)     Outcome and lessons learned from such collaboration.We hope to contribute to and participate in the discussion on what best practice the library should adopt to evaluate the progress of the transition to an open access culture among researchers.

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 76-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Somaly Kim Wu ◽  
Heather McCullough

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to presents the very recent development of e-journal publishing services at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Charlotte. In 2011, the J. Murrey Atkins Library at UNC Charlotte created a new unit in the library, the Digital Scholarship Lab (DSL), which partners with faculty and graduate students in the use of digital and networked research tools to create, disseminate and store new knowledge. E-journal publishing and hosting are among the suite of services offered by the DSL, and we currently publish three journals (https://journals.uncc.edu/). Design/methodology/approach – This report provides an overview of the context of our library’s decision to begin publishing journals, including a discussion of our university’s becoming more research-intensive, our university system mandating increased efficiencies and sharing research with the state citizens, and the library’s own goals of raising awareness of and supporting open access. Also outlined are the technical and procedural choices made, important activities undertaken to develop, define and publicize the new services, campus response to the service and next steps. Findings – This report provides detailed accounting of how a large academic library implemented an electronic publishing service to support open access scholarship. Important activities such as marketing communication, policies development and technical/procedural activities are defined and results described. The report provides observation and lessons learned for academic libraries in development and support of electronic journals. Originality/value – Library as the publisher is a new concept. This report will be of interest to many libraries who are considering offering publishing services and to libraries that currently offer publishing services.


2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Dwi Novita Ernaningsih

This article discusses about access policy to institutional repository in State University of Malang Library. This study aims to analize access policy and accessibility to institutional repository, barriers to adoption of open access, as well as the views of stakeholders to open access institutional repository. The method used is the case study method with qualitative approach. Data was collected by observation, interviews, and document analysis. The result shows that the resistance and disagreement among the stakeholders toward open access institutional repository affect the access policy and accessibility to institutional repository. In protecting academic work, access restrictions which is explicitly does not have legality is applied. The access restriction affects users and visibility of institution. It generates complaints from library users most of whom are digital generation. The restriction also declines the university rank in Webometrics.


2018 ◽  
pp. 03-06
Author(s):  
N. E. Ovchinnikova

The article presents an analysis of the technologies for assessing the effectiveness of university management in the United States. Dedicated positive effects from the implementation of these manager’s performance assessment forms. Based on the conducted research, in the article were formulated recommendations on drawing up KPI forms for Russian universities administrators.


Author(s):  
Antonia Schrader ◽  
Alexander Grossmann ◽  
Michael Reiche

Across the world, there is a growing interest in Open Access (OA) publishing. Therefore, OA publishing has become a trend and is of key importance to the scientific community. However, observing the publication landscape in Germany leads to a striking finding of very different approaches. In particular, OA book publishing is still in relatively early stages, leading to OA books being much less frequently published than OA journal articles. However, although well-established publishers offer the publication of OA books, only certain researchers can actually publish, because of high Book Processing Charges (BPCs). In contrast to such publishers, university presses publish books as OA without any or at significantly lower charges; however, university presses are often inadequately staffed and do not have the technical know-how of the state-of-the-art publishing of OA books possessed by well-established publishers. For these reasons, our research project aims to develop an ideal and transferable publication workflow for OA books that is both cost-effective and personnel-efficient as well as media-neutral to enable universities to publish their publications as OA. To this end, a one-day meeting with stakeholders of the publication landscape was held in June 2018 at the University of Applied Science in Leipzig, Germany. During the meeting, the stakeholders were asked to present their views on the current situation and also the lessons learned and the shortcomings of the existing approaches. As a result, the observation was confirmed that the publication landscape is very heterogeneous and that there are no standardised interfaces and no harmonised practices for publishing OA books. Furthermore, in a discussion with the stakeholders during the second part of the meeting, further various issues of OA book publishing were revealed that have to be considered. Additionally, the various challenges and wishes of the stakeholders could be classified into five topic areas. These findings illustrate that the primary task of the research project has to be the analysis of the existing publishing workflows and abstracting generally valid processes that are needed to publish OA books. Additionally, the further issues of OA book publishing, mentioned by the stakeholders, have to be addressed during the development. The five topic areas will help reduce the complexity of this project.


Author(s):  
Maria Manuel Borges ◽  
António Tavares Lopes

Changes brought about by the Internet to Scholarly Communication and the spread of Open Access movement, have made it possible to increase the number of potential readers of published research dramatically. This two-phase study aims, at first, to assert the satisfaction of the potential for increased open access to articles published by authors at the University of Coimbra, in a context when there was no stimulus for the openness of published science other than an institutional mandate set by the University policy on Open Access (“Acesso Livre”). The satisfaction of the access openness was measured by observing the actual archiving behavior of researchers (either directly or through their agents). We started by selecting the top journal titles used to publish the STEM research of the University of Coimbra (2004-2013) by using Thomson Reuters’ Science Citation Index (SCI). These titles were available at the University libraries or through online subscriptions, some of them in open access (21%). By checking the journals' policy at the time regarding self-archiving at the SHERPA/RoMEO service, we found that the percentage of articles in Open Access (OA) could rise to 80% if deposited at Estudo Geral, the Institutional Repository of the University of Coimbra, as prescribed by the Open Access Policy of the University. As we concluded by verifying the deposit status of every single paper of researchers of the University that published in those journals, this potential was far from being fulfilled, despite the existence of the institutional mandate and favorable editorial conditions. We concluded, therefore, that an institutional mandate was not sufficient by itself to fully implement an open access policy and to close the gap between publication and access. The second phase of the study, to follow, will rescan the status of published papers in a context where the Portuguese public funding agency, the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, introduced in 2014 a new significant stimulus for open access in science. The FCT Open Access Policy stipulates that publicly funded published research must be available as soon as possible in a repository of the Portuguese network of scientific repositories, RCAAP, which integrates the Estudo Geral.


2022 ◽  
Vol 30 (12) ◽  
pp. 9-31
Author(s):  
I. S. Kuznetsov

The article addresses the factors that influence students’ trust in the teachers, faculty administration and university administration. Establishing trusting relationships at the university leads to a number of positive effects: for example, it facilitates cooperation between members of educational organization, making them more united, open to communication and motivated; it is a prerequisite for academic excellence, high-quality higher education and loyalty. This is the reason of the researchers’ interest to this topic. However, the factors influencing students’ trust in teachers and university management have yet to be defined. This paper examines the individual, socio-economic and institutional characteristics of student trust. The emphasis is placed on subjective factors – the perception and assessment by young people of what happens with them in the learning process. It is shown that students’ trust in the teachers and university management is positively correlated with their justified expectations (satisfaction), regarding higher education, and negatively correlated with the course of study. The influence of gender is significant when students trust in the administration of the faculty, while the influence of family income is significant when they trust in the administration of the university. Moreover, the last two factors are regionally specific: their effects are significant only for the trust of students studying at Moscow and St. Petersburg universities.


ACC Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 74-86
Author(s):  
Květoslava Šimková ◽  
Jitka Ramadanová

This paper focuses on some aspects of remote education that can be implemented in face-to-face classes in order to improve and enhance the teaching/learning process. The authors present the results of the questionnaire survey conducted among the teachers of the Institute of Applied Language Studies of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen (hereinafter referred to as ‘UWB’) and also among the students of the Faculty of Economics at the same university in the spring term of 2021, evaluating two semesters of remote education. Having analyzed the results of the questionnaires, the authors of the paper aim to share their experience and introduce the best practice that the Business English (hereinafter referred to as ‘BE’) teachers at the UWB have decided to apply to their future BE courses.


2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 226-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Niemelä ◽  
Taija Okkola ◽  
Annikka Nurkka ◽  
Mikko Kuisma ◽  
Ritva Tuunila

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present observations of a EUR-ACE accreditation process in a Finnish university. The study demonstrates the effects (benefits, effort and resources required) of accreditation as seen by the university management and teaching staff. Design/methodology/approach – The material of the study was gathered by conducting an interview and questionnaire survey after the accreditation processes of six degree programmes at Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland, in 2011. Findings – Besides certain shared views, the survey reveals some differences in opinions between the university management and the teaching staff: The management at all levels of the university valued the significance of accreditations somewhat higher than the teaching staff. Most of the interviewees found that accreditations have had an important effect on the curriculum work and thereby on the development of teaching and education. However, the effects on single courses were considered less significant. Research limitations/implications – The study focuses on one university with a limited number of responses and one accreditation agency only (ASIIN, Germany). Originality/value – The engineering degree programmes were the first ones to obtain a EUR-ACE accreditation both in Finland and in the Nordic countries. Thus, the results have a novelty value for Nordic universities and stakeholders in the education sector.


2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 155-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Rentier

Purpose This paper aims to describe the evolution of scientific communication, largely represented by the publication process. It notes the disappearance of the traditional publication on paper and its progressive replacement by electronic publishing, a new paradigm implying radical changes in the whole mechanism. It aims also at warning the scientific community about the dangers of some new avenues and why, rather than subcontracting an essential part of its work, it must take back full control of its production. Design/methodology/approach The paper reviews the emerging concepts in scholarly publication and aims to answer frequently asked questions concerning free access to scientific literature as well as to data, science and knowledge in general. Findings The paper provides new observations concerning the level of compliance to institutional open access mandates and the poor relevance of journal prestige for quality evaluation of research and researchers. The results of introducing an open access policy at the University of Liège are noted. Social implications Open access is, for the first time in human history, an opportunity to provide free access to knowledge universally, regardless of either the wealth or the social status of the potentially interested readers. It is an essential breakthrough for developing countries. Originality/value Open access and Open Science in general must be considered as common values that should be shared freely. Free access to publicly generated knowledge should be explicitly included in universal human rights. There are still a number of obstacles hampering this goal, mostly the greed of intermediaries who persuade researchers to give their work for free, in exchange for prestige. The worldwide cause of Open Knowledge is thus a major universal issue for the twenty-first century.


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