Tag Archives: open access

Research Tips, What's Cool

Celebrate Open Access Week 2024!

Open Access Week 2024 

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.

In 2024, Manning College of Nursing & Health Sciences Nursing Department doctoral candidate Rockson Ansong and Graduate Program Director of Nursing Dr. Priscilla Gazarian co-authored the article “Healthcare self-management support of stroke patients after discharge: A conceptual analysis using Rodger’s evolutionary approach”, published in Wiley’s Journal of Advancing Nursing. They took advantage of Healey Library’s new transformative agreement with Wiley that includes a set number of UMB author APC payment waivers for the year. Since the article’s publication in January 2024, it has received over 1000 full-text views. This number of full-text views is an example of the value of Open Access publishing using one of Healey Library’s transformative read and publish agreements. 

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! 

Event Day and TimeAbout
Zoom Workshop: Intro to ScholarWorks  Tuesday, October 22nd at 10am Register here to attend the workshop
Tabling at the Campus Center Terrace (second floor) Wednesday, October 23rd, 2pm – 3:30pm We’ll be offering information for students about Open Access resources available to them, we’ll provide snacks and a raffle for prizes. 
Tabling at the Campus Center Terrace (second floor) Thursday, October 24th, 2pm – 3:30pm Come to the Campus Center Terrace to enter a raffle for prizes, grab some free snacks and learn about Open Access at Healey Library!

Further Open Access Resources: 

  • See what events and activities our sister school UMass Dartmouth has planned for Open Access Week!
  • Visit our Open Access LibGuide for a comprehensive list of open access resources and databases  

For further information, contact Christine Moynihan, Scholarly Communications, Data, and Affordable Learning Librarian at Christine.Moynihan@umb.edu.  

Announcements, What's Cool

Healey Library Announces Transformative Agreement with Wiley

Healey Library is pleased to announce a three-year transformative agreement with Wiley, a well-established global publisher of journals with a focus on the sciences. While the new agreement continues to provide traditional read access to all 1,500+ Wiley journals, as of January 1, 2024, it also allows open access publication in Wiley journals for University of Massachusetts Boston authors at no cost to the authors.

UMB faculty who are interested in learning about the Wiley OA process are invited to register for a Wiley UMB author workshop on April 2, 2024. After registering, you will receive an email with information about the session and a join link for that day. Those who register and attend will receive a certificate of attendance and a link to a recording of the session after the training. Those who register but are unable to join will receive a link to the recording as well.

Register for the workshop using the link below: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8393409420347195994

How does this publishing agreement work?

Authors whose articles are accepted in Wiley’s Gold Open Access or Hybrid Open Access journals will be given an option to make their article open access during their submission process. This option is available for current faculty and graduate students who are the corresponding authors on an article. A current University of Massachusetts Boston email address must be used for the submission. This agreement also covers some Hindawi journals; please check before submitting your article.

How many articles are covered in the agreement?

We have an allotment of 24 open access articles per year for 2024. The allotment will go up to 25 per year for 2025 and 2026. This number is based on our average annual Wiley article output for the campus. The number of open access articles, however, has been a much smaller subset of this total—over the last two years, we have averaged 7 open access articles. There is a possibility that the number of articles submitted for the open access option could surpass our allotment near the end of the calendar year. Corresponding authors would be notified that we have reached our limit for the year; in that case, please reach out to the library to discuss the next allotment cycle start date.

Which journals are included in the agreement?

The complete list of Wiley gold and hybrid journal titles can be found on their website: https://authorservices.wiley.com/open-research/open-access/browse-journals.html.

Hindawi titles can be found on the Hindawi website: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/.

Why should you choose to publish Open Access?

The open access model makes research available to a larger audience, since open articles do not require a subscription and are not hidden behind paywalls. A recent study in the journal Scientometrics argues that open access articles receive more citations and also reach a wider range of researchers from less homogenous locations https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-023-04894-0.

One example of an an open access article that has positively impacted download rates can be seen below. This letter titled “Thermodynamic speed limits for mechanical work” by UMB authors Erez Aghion and Jason R. Green in the Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical has 809 downloads since February 2023.

We can also see that the article has been cited 3 times, which is considered an above average amount for the length of time since publication.

screenshot of citation details for IOP articles

The authors took advantage of a two-year transformative agreement that Healey Library has with the Institute of Physics that allows UMB corresponding authors to publish open access with no fee. The article can be found in the Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical online : https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1751-8121/acb5d6.

Another example comes from UMB author Mine Ertugrul. Dr. Etrugrul was the corresponding author for the article “Corporate Patenting, Customer Capital, and Financial Market Outcomes”, published in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. Any UMB faculty, staff or student who is the corresponding author can publish open access in Cambridge University Press journals without paying an APC. The article has 614 downloads and 2 citations since publication.

Dr. Ertugrul said “(O)pen access has been a great opportunity to increase access to our research and the publication process with Cambridge University Press was very smooth. Thank you to everyone involved in creating this opportunity for UMass Boston researchers”.

The article can be found on the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis web page: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-financial-and-quantitative-analysis/article/corporate-patenting-customer-capital-and-financial-market-outcomes/8114349E2CC295C3163A5E97A52A7D64?

What other publishers does Healey Library have agreements with?

For a full list of Healey Library’s publisher agreements, visit our guide: https://umb.libguides.com/apc/publish/apc.

Have questions? Contact Christine Moynihan, Scholarly Communications, Data, and Affordable Learning Librarian at Christine.Moynihan@umb.edu

Resources

World Bank eLibrary’s new platform and features

The World Bank eLibrary is an online, fully searchable portal of over 5,000 World Bank documents. The collection consists of over 2,000 World Bank publications and over 3,200 Policy Research Working Papers.
World Bank eLibrary has introduced a new easy to navigate platform that includes multiple ways to search for information by Regions, Topic pages, Collections and Data.

  • The Regions tab allows for browsing the content by region, country or economies.
  • The Topics tab covers topics such as agriculture, gender and water resources. The pages include links to data, World Bank website, blog, e-books and relevant chapters.
  • The Collections tab includes: e-books, journals, working papers, technical and discussion papers.

The new features include increased options in accessing e-books and an easy search for data sets. Data can be searched by region, economies and indicators.

The new platform includes over 2,900 e-book titles, with new titles being added as they become available. A new feature for users includes the ability to access the e-book without having to download the title. This new feature includes the ability to enlarge tables and figures for easier viewing, and to scroll through all figures and tables within the chapter.
Additionally, now users of the platform can search Data Sets from the World Bank Open Data: World Development Indicators Catalog without having to leave eLibrary. The data sets are available for download as CSV files. Approximately 50 of the most popular indicators for each country and region from World Development Indicators have also been added.

 
World Bank eLibrary Highlights and Features:

Also available through Healey Library are World Bank’s open access data and economic indicators:

  • World Bank Open Data: World Development Indicators: The Data Catalog provides download access to over 2,000 indicators from World Bank data sources.
  • World Bank: Global Economic Monitor: The Global Economic Monitor (GEM) is produced by the World Bank’s Prospects Group (DECPG) of the Development Economics Vice-Presidency. GEM provides daily updates of global economic developments, with coverage of high income- as well as developing countries.

Additional information:

eLibrary Help

World Bank eLibrary user guide

Tools for Users

Announcements, Library Services, Resources

Open Access at UMass Boston

sw-screen

 

Did you know that in October 2012, Faculty Council at UMass Boston approved a campus-wide open access policy? The policy, the full text of which is available here, demonstrates the faculty’s and university’s commitment to expanding the reach of scholarship and research out of UMass Boston.

The open access policy requires faculty members to provide an electronic copy of the author’s final version of an article (the pre-published, non-branded version), unless an exemption is requested, to a ScholarWorks administrator in the Healey Library by the date of publication. Copies of articles should be submitted to library.uasc@umb.edu.

2012.10.01-Open-Access-Policy-20ac963To assist faculty members with informing publishers about UMass Boston’s open access policy, we’ve put together a range of materials outlining these policies and have drafted templates for amending contracts with publishers. These materials are available on the For Authors page on ScholarWorks at UMass Boston. To view the policy and to learn more about negotiating agreements with publishers, visit scholarworks.umb.edu/for_authors.html.

ScholarWorks at UMass Boston is a hosted, open access, institutional repository that makes faculty publications openly searchable and accessible, raising your college’s visibility and reach throughout the world. ScholarWorks can include preprints, author’s accepted manuscripts (post-prints), and final copies of journal articles, as well as working papers, dissertations and theses, conference proceedings, posters, presentations, video and audio, data sets (with some limitations), and a variety of formats and content types. A service of the Joseph P. Healey Library, content on ScholarWorks is indexed and accessible via search engines like Google. Learn more and explore the existing collection of materials at scholarworks.umb.edu.

To arrange an appointment with me to discuss ScholarWorks and open access, email andrew.elder@umb.edu or call 617-287-5944. I’m happy to meet one-on-one or with small groups, or even to attend department meetings.