Open Access and Research Data Management Roadshow
Alistair Fitt,
Pro Vice-Chancellor,
Research and Knowledge Exchange
Set of slides presented at REF Roadshows, October – December 2014
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Plan
We aim to cover the following today:
1) HEFCE Open Access requirements for “REF 2020”:
what were the surprises of the final guidance?
what you have to do and how you can do it
demo of what you have to do
any more points – questions/discussion?
what we are trying to achieve
why this is a really tough (but exciting) problem
what help we hope to offer (e.g. people/resources/guidance)
any more points – questions/discussion?
Please complete the sign-in sheet !
HEFCE REF 2020 OA Guidance
THERE WERE STILL SOME SURPRISES THOUGH – 10 OF THEM AS FAR AS I WAS CONCERNED!
Surprise #1: acceptance not publication
Most people thought that the guidance would essentially require the POSTPRINT to be deposited in the Institutional Repository (IR)
They were right – but the postprint has to be deposited WHEN THE OUTPUT IS ACCEPTED and not when it is published. This has some good and bad consequences:
Surprise #2: three months’ grace allowed
Most people thought that the “grace” period allowed would be very small –
Some suggesting as little as a week. However HEFCE have gone for 3
months.
(Note though that the grace period for embargoes is only 1 month – the IR
and the CRIS should sort that out automatically though one hopes)
“18. The output must have been deposited as soon after the point of
acceptance as possible, and no later than three months after this date (as
given in the acceptance letter or e-mail from the publication to the author)”
(In some ways 3 months may be worse as it may make researchers “put it
off as they still have lots of time”)
Surprise #3: ISBN = BOOK
Most people thought that the guidance would only apply to “journal papers and conference proceedings” and they were right – but how would these be defined? HEFCE found a simple and imaginative solution:
“11. The requirement to comply with the open access policy applies only to
particular outputs, as defined below.
proceeding with an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN).
(b) The output is accepted for publication after 1 April 2016.
Any output that fits both aspects of this definition will need to meet the
open access criteria outlined in paragraphs 16 to 34, unless an exception
applies.
12. Conference proceedings published with an International Standard Book Number
(ISBN) or as part of a book series with an ISSN do not meet this definition.”
Surprise #4: CC-BY-ND-NC allowed !
The CC (Creative Commons) licence arrangements were one of the most hotly-debated parts of the guidance. I thought that a CC-BY licence would be mandated: this allows valuable searches to be carried out and is completely in the spirit of OA, but it also denies the author most of their rights and allows unlimited “hashing and mashing”.
Wrong again!......
“25. The output must be presented in a form that allows anyone with
internet access to search electronically within the text, read it and
download it without charge, while respecting any constraints on timing (as
detailed in paragraphs 27 to 33) 6. While we do not request that outputs
are made available under any particular licence, we advise that outputs
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Non-
Derivative (CC BY-NC-ND) licence would meet this requirement. “
Surprise #5: non-compliant embargoes allowed !
We always thought that the embargoes would be “like RCUK” i.e.
And so it proved. Your CRIS should deal with all of this automatically
However, we did not anticipate:
“37. The following exceptions deal with cases where deposit of the output is possible, but there are issues to do with meeting the access requirements. In the following cases, the output will still be required to meet the deposit and discovery requirements, but not the access requirements. A closed-access deposit will be required, and the open access requirements should be met as soon as possible.
b. The publication concerned requires an embargo period that exceeds the
stated maxima*, and was the most appropriate publication for the output.”
* by an infinite amount?
Surprise #6: crafty credit for OA books and monographs !
It always seemed to be too complicated to require OA for books and monographs.
No solution seems to be in sight for this difficult problem – the basic reason being that the whole publishing industry needs to change if we are to be able to cope with OA for books and monographs
So it was cunning of HEFCE to allow us to “have a go at solving the problem ourselves”.............
“15. Where a higher education institution (HEI) can demonstrate that it has taken steps towards enabling open access for outputs outside the scope of this definition, credit will be given in the research environment component of the post-2014 REF. “
Surprise #7: it needn’t cost anything !
There was a general worry that the HEFCE OA guidance might in some way require gold OA (and all the APC ££££ associated with this). However the arrangements that will be required seem to have been created with a clear eye on not costing us money. The “non-compliant embargo rule” (surprise #5) has helped a great deal with this
“5. Higher education institutions are now advised to implement processes
and procedures to comply with this policy, which may include using a
combination of the ‘green’ and ‘gold’ routes to open access. Institutions
can achieve full compliance without incurring any additional publication
costs through article processing charges. We will be working closely with
Jisc to support repositories in implementing this policy, and will issue
further information on this work in due course.”
Surprise #8: it’s not just IR’s that meet the criteria
Most people thought that OA for a post-2014 REF would be done entirely via IRs. This was because doing it this way would make it much easier for HEFCE to check (only ~135 IRs to look at). But they have allowed shared IRs AND subject repositories as well.
“17. The output must have been deposited in an institutional repository, a
repository service shared between multiple institutions, or a subject
repository such as arXiv*.
*Individuals depositing their outputs in a subject repository are advised to ensure that their chosen repository meets the requirements set out in this policy. HEFCE will be working to support institutional repositories who may wish to populate their systems with records of externally held deposits.”
Surprise #9: text-mining is not mandatory
One of the main ideas of OA is that “companies from UK PLC should be able to send data-mining robots out on the web to harvest data. So text-mining is right at the heart of the OA mission. However, it is not required (but note – extra credit again will be given in the environment statement if text-mining is allowed).
“34. Outputs do not need to allow automated tools to perform in-text search and download (those activities commonly known as text-mining) to meet the access requirement. However, where an HEI can demonstrate that outputs are presented in a form that allows re-use of the work, including via text-mining, credit will be given in the research environment component of the post-2014 REF. We further recommend that institutions fully consider the extent to which they currently retain or transfer the copyright of works published by their researchers, as part of creating a healthy research environment. For further information on text-mining, see Annex A.”
Surprise #10: a light-touch approach to compliance
How would all of this be enforced? This was a big question.
The answers are below – essentially it’s a “light-touch” process
“40. Evidence for outputs meeting the criteria, the definition, or any of the allowed exceptions will not be required to be submitted to the post-2014 REF.
41. We will establish the detailed verification and audit process as part of the implementation of the post-2014 REF, but we initially intend that any audit will require institutions to provide assurance about their processes and systems for recording open-access information, as well as taking a light-touch approach to verifying supporting information. Some parts of the audit, including of the deposit requirements, are expected to take place at the repository level, not the output level. We will be working with Jisc on establishing a metadata profile that institutions will be advised to adopt; as a minimum this is likely to include a record of the dates of acceptance, initial deposit, and the start and end dates of any embargo period.”
Surprise #11: closed access deposit allowed where access rights are an issue
How would we have to deal with outputs where the rights of parts of the output had not been completely nailed? (For example, some History of Art paper contain low-res, un-copyrighted images at acceptance – the image rights are paid for later) This was a difficult question.
The answer: if you have to you can deposit, but not OA:
37. The following exceptions deal with cases where deposit of the output is possible, but there are issues to do with meeting the access requirements. In the following cases, the output will still be required to meet the deposit and discovery requirements, but not the access requirements. A closed-access deposit will be required, and the open access requirements should be met as soon as possible.
a. The output depends on the reproduction of third party content for which open access rights could not be granted (either within the specified timescales, or at all)
(So we deposit the postprint with images, but nobody can see that version)
OK – but what do *I* have to do?
ANSWER – basically just one thing:
When your paper or conference proceeding
output is accepted, post the postprint on the
CRIS
In a minute, I’ll show you how to do this, but first...
Pre-demo FAQs
HARD CORE
You have 3 months after the day of acceptance to post the
postprint on the CRIS. But DON’T PUT IT OFF – DO IT NOW!
If after all this you don’t do what’s required correctly:
OK – but what do *I* have to do?
ANSWER – basically just one thing:
When your paper or conference proceeding
output is accepted, post the postprint on the
CRIS
In a minute, I’ll show you how to do this, but first...
DOING IT
Here’s a postprint of a great paper
“just accepted” by IMA TEAMAT (bet
you’ve never had a paper that cites
“The Mature Man’s Guide to Style”…..)
Note: it’s camera-ready, produced in dreamy LaTeX – looks exactly like the final printed version will look but minus the page numbering, journal livery and branding
This was the FAVSTJ
Doing it
Rowena’s bit
Time for Rowena to do some work......
What the Scholarly Communications
Team does:
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Sherpa record for ‘Teaching Mathematics and its Applications’
Post-print in Institutional repositories or Central repositories
Embargo: Authors may upload their accepted manuscript PDF to an institutional repository, provided that public availability is delayed until 12 months after first online publication in the journal.
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/
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In Summary
Output made publicly available via the CRIS, on open access on RADAR – the institutional repository of Oxford Brookes
Compliance with funder mandates
Record with a link to RADAR record on the CRIS
CRIS will feed information to staff web profiles (expected sometime in Summer 2015)
JISC OA Pathfinder – Making Sense: a researcher centred approach to funder mandates
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Making Sense – a researcher centred
approach to funder mandates
www.brookes.ac.uk/library
Stuart Hunt, Rowena Rouse
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Need help
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One last time:
When your journal paper or conference
proceeding output is accepted, post the
postprint on the CRIS !!!!
Data bit starts now………….
Part 2: Research data management and curation
Data is deluging us
Given that we are drowning in data how can we:
Research data – BIG challenges
How can we:
What is research data?
Data, metadata or information?
Why are we bothered about this?
BTW – the UK is a world leader in this
We want to keep it this way!
What have we done about this?
OBU Research Data Management Policy
Here’s where you can find it:
The Policy
Here’s what it looks like: (6pp)
What’s the next step?
It’s fine having a policy, but now we must IMPLEMENT IT
This will involve a number of things. We need to tell you:
What can we offer?
We are working on this at the moment, but our offer will include:
Let’s be clear now…….
Phrases like “open data mandate” and “data sharing” can cause alarm, so let me stress:
Final RDM thoughts
We KNOW this is a really hard problem. There are no easy solutions
- but we will HAVE to do it – there is not a choice
National resources exist e.g. DCC (Digital Curation Centre), ESRC data repository (U. Essex)
We need to work together on this exciting problem
The End
QUESTIONS?