1,729,659 research outputs found
A candid conversation on Open Access
No full textA candid conversation about Open Access: Dr. Adriane MacDonald from the Dhillon
School of Business and Nicole Eva from the Library discuss the importance of Open
Access.A transcript of this interview can be found at https://digitallibrary.uleth.ca/digital/collection/publications/id/29415/rec/
A candid conversation on Open Access - Transcript
No full textA candid conversation about Open Access: Dr. Adriane MacDonald from the Dhillon
School of Business and Nicole Eva from the Library discuss the importance of Open
Access.A conversation about Open Access: Dr. Adriane MacDonald from the Dhillon School of Business and Nicole Eva from the Library discuss the importance of Open Access.
NE: Hi, I'm Nicole Eva, one of the librarians at the University of Lethbridge. I'm here with Dr. Adriane MacDonald, Professor of Policy & Strategy with the Dhillon School of Business. We got together to discuss open access, a topic which we both feel quite strongly about. Welcome, Adriane!
AM: Hi Nicole!
NE: Hi, thank you for joining us. So first of all, can you tell me why you're so passionate about open access?
AM: So why do I care about open access? I mean, one thing that really gets me going about open access is – one thing that really irks me I guess is, I don't really like the idea of public funds subsidizing large corporations, to benefit greatly from our research and our skill sets as reviewers as well. And then, to sort of come back; one thing that we talked about when we first started talking about this consideration that I didn't actually think about was how much it was costing the libraries to then get those subscriptions and those bundles that they do to push our libraries into buying packages that are much larger than we might need or including things that we might not want. And the financial strain that puts on our institutions. And it just really seemed to me as, really illogical, as to why this is something that's occurring. Of course, there's also the equity issue and making sure that people have access to the information that, in particular, that public institutions fund, at least in the Canadian context. And that whole other piece. But really what gets me is, why are we letting this happen with these large publishers? It just doesn't make any sense, especially in the climate right now where we have so much austerity. Where the idea of austerity and lack of resources is imposed on our universities. Why are we putting resources into this? It doesn't make sense to me.
NE: So how do you put that in action in your own research? How do you support open access?
AM: Yeah, I mean, I could do better. But the things that I – some of the stuff that I do for my research is I do look for open access journals, if possible. I, you know, really I also don't want to pay.
NE: Yeah, I always counsel people not to pay!
AM: Yeah, yeah. Like I don't want to do that either. So I should have said that I try to look for opportunities like that, but then I do the pre-prints. I haven't done it for OPUS, which I will, we just discussed. We do post those pre-prints onto one of our research websites. And I'll always make sure to do that even when I'm not doing research with that group and doing other research, I do try and make sure that those pre-prints are available. And then in my classroom, which is a little bit different than the research context, I try my best to assign readings and use resources that are already available to the students through the library. So using journal articles, asking them to look up journal articles, they also get that skill set as well. But just trying my best to use resources that are freely available to them or already paid through their tuition through the library. So those are two things that I do and then it's just an issue that generally I talk about with other academics. And then also we had written that article piece to raise additional awareness around this issue because I know before talking to you, it was definitely something that bothered me. But in learning more about the impact that it has on libraries… and then that really got me going. I definitely support the open access policy that we have at the University of Lethbridge and have contributed in a very light way.
NE: Well, that's sort of a segue to my next question I have written down, which was if your understanding of open access had changed at all from being involved in that?
AM: It certainly changed from working with you on the article that we worked on. I definitely learned a lot more. I guess one thing that really came to the forefront for me when talking to the group about the policy is there are these barriers in terms of workload. So a lot of my colleagues and I, myself, already feel like I'm overextended. So even though sending that… preparing the pre-print, or sending that one email off, doesn't seem like a lot – but when you're already doing all of these other things at seven o'clock at night when you just want to close your computer, and you just cannot do one more thing. Like it's just not, you know, even though it's something that I value deeply, and I know a lot of my colleagues do, having that One More Thing… it's hard. It's just hard and it doesn't sound like a big thing, but that was like… so thinking about how we can… and I think like what you talked about, you know, it's actually really easy. So one thing that I learned is just even from talking to you, and also I think I knew from when we were working on the policy, the librarians make it much easier for us to, you know, they do the work of looking into, like you said, the copyright and seeing what it exactly is that they need, and posting. And so a lot of that work is taken away. But, you know, at the end of the day though one thing as researchers – and I think that this is something that I need to remember – is that actually we benefit a lot from having it on there. So any article that I make sure to have publicly available gets cited more and that benefits me; but it, you know, and it also gets the research out there. And also it gives practitioners access to the articles as well. So not even just about citations, it’s also about making the information accessible to practitioners. And in the work that I do that is really important. It's important for probably all academics.
NE: Yeah, but especially when some of your people that you're trying to reach are non-academics; I mean, how else are they supposed to read this stuff? AM: Exactly. Yeah, I mean, so my most recent article, we put it out on Twitter and we were getting all these direct messages from local government practitioners wanting access to this article, right? So which is why we got it out on that pre-print article publicly available on the website, which we do always, but sometimes it's faster than than other times.
NE: That's great! Thanks so much. Dr. MacDonald, I think you've really hit most of the high points about the discussion of open access and its importance to us in academia. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me today.
AM: You are most welcome. It was my pleasure, Nicole. Thanks so much.
NE: Thank you. Goodbye.
AM: Bye
Open Access Policy Series (April 14, 2020)
No full textA publication about Open Access (OA) from the University of Lethbridge Library.Open Access Policy Benefits Authors
In this month’s article on the University’s recently approved Open Access Policy, we look at research highlighting a strong citation advantage enjoyed by U of L authors who publish their articles in open access (OA) venues. We also take a brief look at other benefits of making your article available OA.
Do we have reliable evidence of a general OA citation advantage?
It is reasonable to think an article that is (lawfully) accessible by anyone with Internet access will likely be cited more frequently than a paywalled article. Evidence showing this to be true is plentiful. One key source is SPARC Europe’s 2015 update of the OpCit Project list of research on whether there is a citation advantage for OA articles. Just a year later, SPARC Europe halted further updating of the list of studies “since the citation advantage evidence has now become far more common knowledge to our authors.â€
What about U of L-specific evidence of an OA citation advantage?
Through a U of L colleague, we obtained findings within a large study by the Curtin University Open Knowledge Initiative (COKI) illustrating exactly that. The COKI dataset comprised all articles published from 2000 to 2018 having an assigned DOI (digital object identifier). The subset that was shared with us is limited to articles having at least one U of L-affiliated author.
Chart 1 presents the annual number of published U of L-authored articles with DOIs over the past 12 years, with a breakdown between OA and non-OA articles. The proportion of each year’s total articles that are OA doubled from 22% in 2007 to 44% in 2016, then fell back slightly to 39% by 2018. Are all OA articles created equal?
No, as there are many flavours of OA. Within the COKI dataset, our understanding is that OA includes:• “Gold†OA (publisher’s version of record [VOR] immediately and permanently publicly available upon publication in an OA journal or other OA venue under an open license),
• “Green†OA (author’s accepted manuscript [AAM] archived in research repositories [e.g., OPUS, PubMed Central], often becoming publicly available only after the expiry of a publisher-imposed embargo period, with the VOR remaining paywalled),
• “Bronze†OA (VOR publicly available for an unspecified period of time on the publisher’s website, published without an open license), and
• “Hybrid†OA (VOR immediately and permanently publicly available upon publication under an open license, but published in a paywalled venue [e.g., a traditional subscription journal] where typically most of the other items are paywalled).Other OA benefits for authors?
Even if an OA article is not cited in subsequent research, it’s more likely than a paywalled article to be viewed or read. For example, Piwowar, Priem, and Orr (2019) found that “Green, Gold, and Hybrid papers receive more views than their Closed or Bronze counterparts, particularly Green papers made available within a year of publication.” For other author benefits of OA, see the FAQ and Policy Brief on the University of Lethbridge Open Access Policy webpage.
This is the second article in a series launched last month on the University’s OA Policy which applies to faculty, undergraduate and graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows.
_____________________
UWeekly April 14, 202
Endeavour (November 4, 1968)
No full textEndeavour, Vol. XII, no. 4 (November 4, 1968) -- A publication of the Communication Arts Program, Lethbridge College
Endeavour (February 13, 1970)
No full textEndeavour, Vol. XIII, no. 9 (February 13, 1970) -- A publication of the Communication Arts Program, Lethbridge College
Endeavour (October 8, 1969)
No full textEndeavour, Vol. XIII, no. 2 (October 8, 1969) -- A publication of the Communication Arts Program, Lethbridge College
Endeavour (February 4, 2004)
No full textEndeavour, Vol. 39, no. 12 (February 4, 2004) -- A publication of the Communication Art
Endeavour (January 21, 1969)
No full textEndeavour, Vol. XII, no. 8 (January 21, 1969) -- A publication of the Communication Arts Program, Lethbridge College
Endeavour (February 1, 2006)
No full textEndeavour, Vol. 41, no. 11 (February 1, 2006) -- A publication of the Communication Arts Program, Lethbridg
Endeavour (March 8, 2006)
No full textEndeavour, Vol. 41, no. 14 (March 8, 2006) -- A publication of the Communication Arts Program, Lethbridg
- …
