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UQ Open Access Initiatives

Published: Fri, 2013-10-04 09:59 by Lisa Kruesi
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We are very pleased to announce that the draft UQ Open Access Policy for Research Outputs, which has been authored and championed by the Library, has passed another procedural milestone by getting Academic Board approval. Assuming approval by the Senate, it will go into effect on 1 January 2014. The policy, which applies to all UQ research publications, is based on the ARC and NHMRC policies already in effect. The Library will coordinate and provide support for compliance (deposit of OA versions of research publications in UQ eSpace, or creation of links to OA version on publisher site.)

The Library is also working with the Graduate School RHD committee on an OA policy for theses: we would like OA would become the default for theses deposited in eSpace, with options for delayed access or embargo upon request (subject to approval of Graduate School).

Inaugural UQ Open Access Eminent Speaker Forum

Published: Mon, 2013-09-23 11:28 by Lisa Kruesi
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Wednesday 30 October 2013
Open Access Eminent Speaker Forum - Professor Alma Swan, Director of European Advocacy, SPARC*
10.00 - 11.00 am lecture
"Is Open Access just another fad?"
Venue: The Sir Llew Edwards Building (no. 14), Auditorium - ground floor University of Queensland, St Lucia
FREE morning tea to follow lecture

OAWeek-ASwansmall.jpg

*The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) is an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to create a more open system of scholarly communication.

Alma has BSc and PhD degrees from the University of Southhampton and a MBA from Warick Business School. She is a Fellow of the Society of Biology (UK), and as a Chartered Biologist is an elected member of the Governing Board of Euroscience.

Data Descriptons now available in UQ eSpace!

Published: Mon, 2013-09-16 10:30 by Susan Wilson
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It's Research Week, and UQ Library is launching a new Research Data Collections form in eSpace. The new form will allow researchers and research groups to describe their data according to good practice.

UQ eSpace can now support either open access or mediated access to your research data collections, and aid the discovery, dissemination and preservation of research data as a first class research output at UQ.

Having your research data described in eSpace will:

  • make it visibile via search engines such as Google, as well as through national data repositories such as Research Data Australia
  • create a record for that data under your My UQ eSpace profile (there is a new 'My Research Data' tab just for this purpose).
  • enable you to build an index of your research data, and count the number of times it has been viewed and downloaded, therefore contributing to your research profile.


How can I use this new service?

There a few simple steps to adding your research data into UQ eSpace.

  • Researchers need to provide a description of their data using the new eSpace data collections form. RIS librarians can also provide assistance with data descriptions - email data@library.uq.edu.au
  • Ensure your data will be offered as either mediated access (by providing a contact for the data) or open access (by uploading the data or providing a link to the data).
  • Make your data re-usable without any limiting software requirements
  • If your school or department already stores your data in an existing repository, you can still fill in the data collections form and provide a link to the location of the data in the form.

Further information can be found in the FAQs tab in eSpace, and in a guidance document located on the main UQ eSpace page.

Open Access in the fast lane

Published: Thu, 2013-09-12 17:33 by Lisa Kruesi
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At UQ after approval from the UQ Research Committee the draft Open Access for UQ Research Outputs Policy and Procedures, championed by the UQ Library with the UQ office of the DVC (Research) as the custodian, will be tabled at the September UQ Academic Board. We will keep you posted on the progress of the drafts.

In the UK, Heather Joseph cleverly sums up that both the Finch Report and RCUK revisions placed a significant priority on using paid publication in Open Access journals (termed "Gold OA") as the primary compliance mechanism, while giving the so-called "Green OA route" - the deposition of articles in Open Digital Repositories - short shrift. The new BIS Committee report is the culmination of an inquiry started in January, when the Committee undertook a significant public consultation across broad groups of stakeholders to ensure that the Open Access Policies adopted in the UK effectively serve their intended purpose.

The press release issued with the report states: "Government mistaken in focusing on Gold as the route to full open access, says Committee…..While Gold Open Access is a desirable ultimate goal, focusing on it during the transition to a fully Open Access world is a mistake," and calls on the Government and the RCUK to give "due regard to the evidence of the vital role that Green Open Access and repositories have to play as the UK moves forward."

Elsewhere…In case you missed the announcement, The Australian Open Access Support Group has added a summary of "Developments in OA monograph publishing" - the page is an excellent summary of initiatives that are underway in Australian and internationally.

Australian National Data Services Newsletter

Published: Mon, 2013-09-02 13:32 by Jane Smeathers
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The latest Australian National Data Service (ANDS) newsletter is now available. This issue examines ANDs, the RDA and the next two years from the perspective of researchers.

Including:

  • Data citation and licensing
  • Getting data a seat at international tables
  • Using data to fight malaria
  • Seal data used in Oceanography research
  • Connecting data and NHMRC grants

Staff Development - Research Data Management: What's Involved?

Published: Mon, 2013-08-19 10:22 by Susan Wilson
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Good stewardship of research data is a key requirement for the responsible conduct of research. Adequate management of research data is also a legislative and funding body requirement, including an obligation under the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research.

This timely staff development course will:

  • raise your awareness of what is required for good stewardship of data
  • identify the benefits of adequately managing research data
  • develop strategies for managing research data
  • raise awareness of tools and services available to help manage the stewardship process

Course Details

Publishing Your Research Data

Published: Mon, 2013-07-15 09:57 by Susan Wilson
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Data publishing has been gaining momentum, due to an increasing awareness of the benefits in publishing and re-using data, alongside the growing requirements of funding bodies that data be made publicly available. By publishing your research data you can:

• ensure the replication and verification of work;
• enable formal and measureable recognition of data as a research output;
• reduce the duplication of data collection;
• allow the re-use of data in multi- and interdisciplinary research;
• ensure greater transparency in the research process.
• Achieve maximum returns on investment in research

In Australia the publishing of research data is encouraged by the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research. It states that research data should be made available for use by other researchers unless it is prevented by ethical, privacy or confidentiality matters. Increasingly, funding agencies are placing the onus on researchers to publish research data that has been collected using public funds.

Data Publishing

  • There are a number of ways to publish your research data. Researchers can deposit their data into an institutional repository. The UQ Library is soon launching a new service, with UQ eSpace accepting data. Alternatively, there are many discipline specific data repositories that will accept research data, and make it available or discoverable to other researchers.

Data Licensing

  • One of the common barriers to publishing research data is concerns about attribution and recognition of data and researchers. These concerns can be addressed through the implementation of DOI's (or persistent identifiers) for datasets at the time they are published or deposited into a repository, allowing the data to be correctly cited. Researchers can also apply Creative Commons licensing to their data to ensure that any future use or reuse of that data is appropriate and correctly cited.


The most recent newsletter from TERN discusses some of the initiatives that are in place to remove the barriers to data publishing.

Many researchers at UQ are already publishing their data. If you would like to publish your research data, the UQ Library's Research Data Management team can assist you.

Open access - procedures to be piloted before wider roll out at UQ

Published: Thu, 2013-07-04 10:35 by Lisa Kruesi
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UQ Open Access Service - Pilot

Roll out of the UQ Open Access service, managed by the UQ Library and the Office of the DVC(R), will be piloted during July-September 2013. The pilot will start work on capturing the scholarly publications of researchers from the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), the School of Business and the School of Languages & Comparative Cultural Studies.

The pilot will seek to:
1. Ensure UQ compliance with NHMRC and ARC mandates (already in effect); 2. Encourage self-archiving of researcher publications in eSpace; 3. Establish efficient workflows and centralised support that minimises compliance overhead for researchers; 4. Negotiate UQ-specific agreements with key publishers (e.g., Elsevier), to facilitate bulk deposits to eSpace;

Based on the scholarly output at the pilot sites we will report on the number of peer reviewed articles published since the period July 2012 based on NHMRC funding, the number of other peer reviewed articles and the number of other scholarly outputs that are available for OA. The pilot will be based on UQ eSpace metadata entries for each of the pilot sites. The report will include the OA status/options for each publication and report upon the trends that are identified.

For help regarding open access publishing at UQ queries can be sent to openaccess@library.uq.edu.au

blog written by Lisa Kruesi

Inaugural UQ Open Access Eminent Speaker Forum - SAVE THE DATE notice

Published: Wed, 2013-07-03 12:19 by Rosemary Newsham
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Alma Swan.png Professor Alma Swan

  • Wednesday 30 October 2013
  • Open Access Eminent Speaker Forum - Professor Alma Swan
  • 10.00 - 11.00 am lecture
  • "Is Open Access just another fad?"
  • Venue: The Sir Llew Edwards Building (no. 14), Auditorium - ground floor University of Queensland, St Lucia
  • FREE morning tea to follow

Data Repository of the Week - PANGAEA : Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science

Published: Mon, 2013-06-17 14:40 by Susan Wilson
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PANGAEA is a repository for georeferenced data from earth system research. It is an open access library aimed at archiving, publishing and distributing research data.

The World Data Centre for Marine Environmental Sciences (WDC-MARE) uses PANGAEA as its central archive, and it is a designated archive for the journal Earth System Science Data (ESSD).

The benefits of this repository include:

  • Most of the data deposited in PANGAEA is freely available
  • Data can be used under the terms of the creative commons license and mentioned in the data set description
  • The description of each data set is always visible, and includes an abstract of the data and associated publications, details of the research project, citation information, as well as the datasets available for download.
  • Each dataset can be identified, shared, published and cited using a Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
  • Researchers can submit their own data

Some example datasets that can be found in PANGAEA include:

For further information search the PANGEA repository for datasets. You can search under the topic headings Water, Ice, Atmosphere, and Sediment, or search for UQ researchers who have taken advantage of using this repository.

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