Open Access (OA) is all about letting the wider world use the research produced within universities. By breaking down paywalls and control, it allows other researchers, organisations, and even the general public, to access research.
This international shift towards Open Science opens up enormous opportunities for collaboration, transparency and innovation, and ultimately increases the positive impact of research on society.
For example, the national ‘Data Saves Lives’ initiative shows how (anonymously) sharing patient data and research is advancing medical research and saving people’s lives. Or, for example, at Portsmouth 97% of journal and conference articles published since 2016 are (or will be very shortly) available to the public to download from the Portsmouth Research Portal free of charge.
International OA week (22nd – 28th October) is a worldwide campaign aimed at raising awareness. The University is running a series of events aimed at providing academic staff and post-grad students with practical help and advice.
Get involved with OA week
Drop in-sessions
The Research Outputs Team (see below) are venturing out of our usual home in the Library and running drop-in sessions throughout the week. All academic staff and post-grad students are more than welcome to pop in and ask us questions. There’s no need to book, so please just come along at whatever time is best for you. We’ll be set up with laptops so we can demo software / websites, etc. Tea, coffee and biscuits will be provided.
Monday 22nd October
10:00am -12:00pm – Eldon Building, Room 1.01
14:00am – 16:00pm – Milldam, Room LE0.02
Tuesday 23rd October
10:00am – 12:00pm – Richmond, Room 1.03
14:00am – 16:00pm – St Michael’s, Room 0.10
Wednesday 24th October
14:00am – 16:00pm – Portland, Room 1.44
We can help you with –
Open access publishing: REF compliance, using Pure, OA publishing, finding OA research, practice-based research portfolios, APC funding (gold OA) including discounts available, identifying (and avoiding!) predatory journals.
Research data: writing data management plans (a key part of grant applications these days), data storage, archiving and sharing, publishing and promoting data, licencing and copyright, re-using other people’s data, GDPR and ethical considerations.
And many other things, including: getting your ORCID, choosing which journal to publish in, finding full-text PhD theses, software tools for keeping up to date with research, Altmetrics (how research has been shared on social media, mainstream news, etc), creating ISBNs and DOIs, using SciVal and Scopus metrics, promoting your research to the wider world.
If there’s anything else you would like to discuss, then please come along.
Interact online
Throughout the week, we’ll be posting OA related blog posts and tweets. So please keep an eye on the Research and Innovation Blog and the Research Outputs Twitter feed.
Also, if you have any examples from your own work of where making research OA has been particularly advantageous or useful, then please drop us an email (openaccess@port.ac.uk) to let us know. It would be great to collect examples, which we can then share with all academic colleagues.
Contact the Research Outputs team
We’re a small team based in the Library. We work closely with the Faculty Librarians, Research and Innovation Services (RIS), IS and other departments. We cover all of the above mentioned areas. We are Dr Emily Davey (Research Outputs Manager), Dr Gary Pike (Research Data Officer), Dr Andrew Clark (Research Outputs Officer) and Ms Soozi Mead (Research Outputs Assistant).
If you can’t make any of the drop-in sessions, then please feel free to drop us an email.
openaccess@port.ac.uk – All matters relating to open access publishing, Pure and REF compliance. Usually Andrew and Soozi answer manage this inbox.
researchdata@port.ac.uk– Everything research data related. Usually Gary answers these emails.
libraryresearch@port.ac.uk – Everything else related to research which the Library may be able to help you with.
Further help
Website: Research support website
I hope this info about OA week is useful. We’re looking forward to meeting you in a week or so.
Research and Innovation Services 