March 3rd through March 7th is International Open Education Week!
Every year in March, institutions across the globe celebrate Open Education Week (OE Week). Open Education is a movement to widen access to information “by removing barriers and making learning accessible, abundant, and customizable for all” (The European Commission, 2016). OE Week is a time to celebrate the institutional and individual work being done globally to share knowledge, and to encourage others to participate.
According to a 2024 Education Data Initiative study, “65% of students polled did not buy textbooks because of high prices, and 25% chose to skip essential expenses, like food, or take up extra shifts at work to cover textbook costs.” These are significant barriers to learning and thriving in an educational environment. UMass Boston’s directed mission is to advance “knowledge in partnership with the communities we serve, especially the historically marginalized.” These shocking statistics and UMass Boston’s imperative to address equitable access to higher education highlight the importance of addressing textbook affordability as a matter of social justice and educational necessity.
Celebrate with us at UMass Boston and learn about how we are working to address these issues.
Beacon Bits
Join Christine Moynihan, Scholarly Communications, Data, and Affordable Learning Librarian, and Lydia Burrage-Goodwin, Special Projects Librarian for short, digestible webinars about all-things Open.
Monday (March 3rd, 2025):Is it Open? What are Open Educational Resources (OER)?
Join Healey Librarians for this quick, 30-minute session on Open Educational Resources (OER). In this foundational session, we will provide a brief history of open and outline what makes an educational resource truly “open”. We will discover how these freely accessible resources can enhance teaching and learning while reducing costs for all involved.
Tuesday (March 4th, 2025):How to Search for OER and OER Databases
Join Healey Librarians for this quick, 30-minute session on how to search for high-quality Open Educational Resources (OER) across major repositories and databases. This hands-on session will introduce you to trusted OER platforms, teach you effective search strategies, and help you locate the perfect materials for your teaching and learning needs.
Wednesday (March 5th, 2025):Can I Use It? Understanding Creative Commons Licenses and Copyright
Join Healey Librarians for this quick, 30-minute session to help you navigate using, creating and adapting OER while complying with copyright laws. Learn about Creative Commons Licenses, ensure compliance when resharing, reusing, or adapting materials, and make informed decisions about licensing your own works.
Expert Gallery Suite (EGS, also known as “SelectedWorks”) will be retired by Elsevier on December 31st, 2024, after which data profiles and content will not be accessible. This includes the modules SelectedWorks, the Impact Dashboard, and the Expert Galleries. All pages and metrics will be permanently removed. If you would like a copy, it is very important that you save your content and any data in advance.
What does this mean for Expert Gallery Suite users?
ALL Expert Gallery Suite (EGS) profiles will be completely removed from the web effective December 31st, 2024. Additionally, we will be unable to provide any assistance regarding SelectedWorks profiles or the Expert Gallery Suite after the sunset occurs.
What do I need to do before December 31st, 2024?
In order to retain a copy of your works, statistics or records, we recommend that you:
Save a copy of all of your content. You can do this by directly downloading onto your device, manually uploading to cloud storage, or using a reference manager like Zotero.
Save any metrics you would like to retain from your author dashboard (click on the hamburger menu in the top right horizontal navigation to navigate to “Author Dashboard”).
Further Action-Items for Authors:
Upload your content directly into ScholarWorks. Any information that was pulled into ScholarWorks from Expert Gallery Suite will need to be uploaded directly into ScholarWorks, or it will be lost. For more information, please visit our ScholarWorks LibGuide.
Note: ScholarWorks is NOT the same thing as SelectedWorks. ScholarWorks is UMass Boston’s Institutional Repository, and it is here to stay. Ensure that your content has been uploaded by visiting scholarworks.umb.edu and clicking “Submit Your Work” on the left side navigation menu.
Update your email signature and any other locations that link to your SelectedWorks/Expert Gallery Suite profile.
Move your Expert Gallery Suite content into ScholarWorks
Put your profile information on the UMass Boston Directory. Please note that the UMB Directory is separate from the Expert Gallery Suite and ScholarWorks platforms.
The Office of Research and Sponsored Programs in collaboration with Healey Library will be rolling out a new faculty profile platform for tenured and tenure track faculty, as well as select institute and research center staff. This platform should be ready in Spring of 2025. The Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP) and the Vice Provost for Research (VPR) will be sending out more information to the faculty, colleges, research centers and institutes in the coming weeks about the roll out.
Join Us!
Join Healey Library for our Introduction to ScholarWorks Zoom Workshop on February 11th. We will be addressing topics like browsing the repository, submitting your work, copyright and fair use considerations, and finding your author statistics.
If you do not remember your password, you can use the “Forgot your password?” link to reset it. Please contact egs-support@elsevier.com if you need assistance.
If you have questions about the Expert Gallery Suite sunset, please contact scholarworks@umb.edu.
For information about further resources and tools to host your research and scholarship, please contact Christine Moynihan, Scholarly Communications, Data and Affordable Learning Librarian at christine.moynihan@umb.edu.
By Lydia Burrage-Goodwin, Special Projects Librarian & Christine Moynihan, Scholarly Communications, Data, and Affordable Learning Librarian
Happy Open Access Week!
Healey Library is excited to provide UMass Boston with Open Access resources and events to celebrate the open dissemination of information and scholarship.
What is Open Access and Why is it Important?
As defined by SPARC, a nonprofit open research and education advocacy organization, “Open Access (OA) is the free, immediate, online availability of research articles coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment”. OA allows research to be discoverable and shareable to a wide-reaching audience, increasing visibility, potential for collaboration, and ensuring the long-term preservation of research.
Without Open Access scholarship, students, researchers and scholars are forced to either access paywalled material using their own resources or count on Healey Library to provide access through database subscriptions.
Many publishers require article processing charges from authors who want to make their articles Open Access, which places a burden on the authors and has the potential to limit the reach of scholarship. Healey Library supports authors with transformative (read-and-publish) agreements and support of subscribe-to-open (S2O) initiatives. These agreements allow UMB corresponding authors to publish their articles open access at no cost (or, in select cases, at a reduced cost). A list of the transformative agreements can be found on Healey Library’s Article Processing Charge Guide.
These practices are prohibitive for many researchers and authors, and hinders advancement of research, information equity and growth. UMass Boston is committed to supporting equitable outcomes for students through our Open Access work. Read more about UMB’s strategic plan here.
New Open Access Guidelines for Research Funding
In 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released updated policy guidelines called The Nelson Memo outlining new requirements for providing access to federally funded research. These new guidelines will require free, immediate, and equitable access to federally funded research at UMass Boston and other federal institutions by December 31st, 2025. To remain compliant with these requirements, authors and researchers are encouraged to explore any of UMass Boston’s numerous databases and platforms when publishing or hosting their work. For more information about the requirements, contact the UMB Office of Research and Sponsored Programs.
Why Publish Open Access?
Choosing to publish Open Access advances information equity by making research more visible, useful, and transparent to a wider-reaching audience. Below, we highlight two examples of Open Access articles written by UMass Boston scholars:
In 2019, Jan Mutchler, UMB Professor and Director of the Gerontology Institute, co-authored an article with graduate students Nidya Velasco Roldán and Yang Li entitled “Living Below the Line: Economic Insecurity and Older Americans, Insecurity in the States 2019”. Hosted on UMB’s institutional repository, ScholarWorks, this article has had almost 19,000 downloads since its publication. This download number is impressive coupled with 101 social media shares and 54 news media mentions, it further solidifies why publishing Open Access is beneficial to both author and reader.
Image of PlumX Metrics for the article “Living Below the Line: Economic Insecurity and Older Americans, Insecurity in the States, 2019 by Jan Mutchler, Yang Li, and Nidya Velasco Roldán. Image highlights over 21,000 downloads since 2019.
Image of the article “Healthcare self-management support of stroke patients after discharge: A conceptual analysis using Rodger’s evolutionary approach”, by Rockson Ansong and Priscilla Gazarian. Image shows over 1000 downloads since 2024.
Finding Reputable Open Access Publishers
It is important for authors to read and understand Open Access publishing policies before choosing to submit work to an OA publisher. Authors should learn about the journal’s peer review process, its visibility and reputation, associated fees for publishing, and especially author rights and copyright.
To find information about publishers and their policies, authors can search Sherpa/Romeo, a database that summarizes Open Access journals and their publishing policies. Authors can also use the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), a searchable database which indexes over 10.5 million articles and 33,000 journals, many of which do not require authors to pay article processing charges. Their counterpart, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) provides access to almost 90,000 peer-reviewed Open Access books, all of which are completely free.
If an author is concerned about the integrity of a journal or publisher, they should take advantage of Healey Library’s subscription to Cabell’s Journalytics and Predatory Reports (users will need a UMB credential to login to this resource). This resource evaluates the legitimacy of journals’ business practices, flagging violations like conflict of interest, falsification of information, unrelated content, or harmful copyright practices. Users can apply a filter to search for Open Access journals that fall into the Gold, Diamond, Bronze, or Hybrid categories.
To learn more about publishing Open Access with reputable publishers and for further resources, visit our Open Access Library Guide.
Open Access Week Events:
Keep an eye out for your Healey Librarians across campus, spreading the word about Open Access!
Welcome to “Healey Library Hacks: Unlocking Hidden Treasures – Research Guides Edition “! If you’ve ever wondered whether or not Healey Library offers curated subject-matter content and wondered where those are stored, you’ve come to the right place. Healey Library offers what are known as “Research Guides”, created by the Reference, Outreach, and Instruction (ROI) librarians. They are a collection of recommended resources and information designed to assist students, faculty, and staff in navigating and conducting research on specific subjects or topics. These guides can also be created and tailored to specific courses based on faculty requests. The research guides can also be searched by types: Course Guide, General Purpose, Subject Guide, and Help Guide. In this blog post, we’ll look at some sample research guides recommended by our library staff, using the potential needs of School for the Environment as examples.
The Environmental Sciences LibGuide is a comprehensive overview of articles, books, databases, and other resources available through Healey Library and open access related to Environmental Sciences.
The Sustainability LibGuide is a collection of sustainability-related faculty publications, campus and community resources, and national/international resources.
The Raw Data LibGuide is a curated list of recommended databases that provide raw data sets, organized into user-friendly sections based on data type for easy browsing.
The Open Access LibGuide is a valuable resource for students, faculty, and staff, providing free and unrestricted access to a wide range of scholarly materials.
Located in the “Guide to Credo Information Literacy Models” LibGuide on the left-hand side under “Library Vocabulary”:
The Language Table includes a multilingual glossary of research terms in seven different languages.
The Library Glossary offers a comprehensive collection of research terms and definitions to aid researchers in understanding key concepts and terminology essential for their studies.
Summary
Healey Library offers a comprehensive collection of research guides for students, faculty, and staff. Using the School for the Environment as an example of a broad research focus, this blog highlighted several useful guides to fit those needs:
Sustainability LibGuide provides additional resources not covered in the general Environmental Sciences guide.
Raw Data LibGuide is especially recommended to students in Geographical Information Systems (ENVSCI 281) or Statistics for the Environment (ENVSCI 261) courses or for those in need of statistical data.
Open Access LibGuide offers unrestricted access to a wide range of scholarly materials and is especially recommended to faculty looking to enhance course material accessibility while maintaining credible sources.
While these guides used examples from the School for the Environment, Healey Library offers over 200 research guides covering a wide range of topics. Exploring these resources can enhance teaching, deepen studies, and advance research. We hope this guide has provided valuable insights and inspired you to make the most of Healey Library’s resources. Happy exploring!
Welcome to “Healey Library Hacks: Unlocking Hidden Treasures – Databases Edition “! If you’ve been curious about what databases Healey Library offers students, faculty and staff, you’ve come to the right place. In this blog post, we’ll highlight 9 out of the 351 library databases recommended by our library staff for research foci that align with School for the Environment. These resources are designed to enhance your teaching, studies, and research endeavors. While we’ll be using examples of how these databases could benefit those in the School for the Environment, these databases are multidisciplinary tools that can be used to fit the research needs of any college or major.
As seen above, get access to popular newspapers like The Economist on ProQuest.
ProQuest is a comprehensive research database that provides access to thousands of full-text scholarly journals as well as newspapers, magazines, dissertations, and more.
As seen above, type in keywords such as “Asian Shore Crabs” and get access to up to date research, even as recent as this year (2024).
The Science Direct database provides credible and up-to-date research that covers a broad range of disciplines with an emphasis on scientific, technical, and medical research.
As seen above, type in keywords related to your research interests to get access to older materials like the journal article seen above from 1994.
JSTOR provides access to current and older journal articles and e-books across various disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and some natural sciences.
As seen above, browse academic papers, theses, dissertations, and other scholarly publications published by faculty and students by departments, majors, etc.
ScholarWorks offers access to a wide range of scholarly works produced by the university’s faculty, researchers, and students.
As seen above, access thousands of journals collections like Nature.
BrowZine contains an extensive collection of current scholarly journals from multiple publishers in one place. Create an account and stay up-to date by getting notifications from your virtual bookshelf.
As seen above, PolicyMap can visualize data depending on your needs.
PolicyMap provides access to a wide range of demographic, economic, and social data, which can be easily visualized and analyzed using tools provided by the platform itself.
As seen above, BRILL provides access legal aspects and policies related to climate change.
The Climate Change and Law Collection database concentrates solely on legal aspects and policies related to climate change, providing specific and detailed information in this area.
Summary
Healey Library offers a multitude of databases that can greatly benefit students, faculty and staff. Here’s a brief overview of the databases covered:
ProQuest is user-friendly and frequently recommended by Healey librarians to freshmen and sophomores who are beginning their research process. It includes thousands of full-text scholarly journals, newspapers, magazines, dissertations, and more.
Science Direct provides credible, up-to-date research on a broad range of disciplines. For example, this database can be helpful for researchers interested in ecology or animal populations and looking to find the most up-to-date research.
JSTOR focuses on providing access to current and older journal articles and e-books across various disciplines. This database, for example, can be beneficial for students researching long-term ecological trends.
ScholarWorks provides free and open access to academic papers, theses, dissertations, and other scholarly publications published by faculty and students all across campus. This resource can be especially helpful for grad students as a reference for their own dissertations or thesis as it organizes its contents by colleges, departments, etc.
Browzine allows students and faculty to easily browse, read, and organize journals by subject. For example, making it simple to find top-tier environmental science publications for those interested in environmental sciences.
Kanopy is recommended as an additional tool for faculty and students looking for video content. For example, Kanopy has a wide collection of environmentally oriented films such as the Green Planet collection, that faculty in the School for the Environment will find interesting.
PolicyMap provides access to a wide range of demographic, economic, and social data. For example, this database can be useful for those in Geographical Information System (ENVSCI 281) or Statistics for the Environment (ENVSCI 261) courses.
Social Explorer serves as an alternative to the U.S. Census database that makes it easier for students to navigate and understand statistical information.
By exploring these resources recommended by our library staff, you can enhance your teaching, deepen your studies, and advance your research. We hope this guide has provided valuable insights and inspired you to make the most of the resources available to you at Healey Library. Happy exploring!
