The prestigious US university, Princeton, have taken a huge step towards supporting open access to research by banning their academics from signing away copyright of their journal articles to the publishers. As you may have realised already, handing over copyright to your own work to the publisher strips you of any re-use and distribution rights to intellectual content that you have – yourself – created.

Read more about what RCUK say about open access to research and the Princeton article.

Returning students and staff – and why not our new recruits, too – will find the information and advice page on our Athens usernames and password updated.

The page aims to provide a first point of call for Athens account holders at our University if and when problems occur with Athens login details.

Our our Athens help page provides information and links on the following:

• How to reset the Athens password from the system generated one to something more memorable.
• What to do when you can’t log in.
• What to do if you’ve forgotten your password.
• What to do if you’ve never received your Athens account details.

All newcomers will be sent an automated message including their Athens username and password on joining the University of Bradford. We do urge people to visit their Bradford email accounts for this information as without an Athens account, you won’t have access to many of the online library resources. Look out for messages about Athens and access to Library resources in the email headers.

BRADfinder, WebCAT, AirPAC…what next?

Let’s start from the back. AirPAC is the University of Bradford Library’s mobile catalogue. With AirPAC you can look up materials in the Library collections using your mobile device, like smart phones . A good way of hooking up with the mobile catalogue is to sign up for the About UoB mobile phone app. You can read all about this app and download it from the About UoB web page. Once you have the app on your device, you can search for library materials, make reservations and even check your borrower record on the go!

Of course, you can download AirPAC to your smart phone without the About UoB app. A new version of AirPAC, specifically designed for the iPhone™, BlackBerry® Storm™, Palm® Pre™, and Google’s Android™ OS phones is now available.

What’s BRADfinder then, and when should you choose WebCAT? Both of these catalogues can locate materials in the library for you and link you to our eResources. However, look at the list below to see what differences there are:

I want to	WebCAT	BRADfinder
Search for books	✓	✓
Search for journals	✓	✓
Search for other materials	✓	✓
Access my borrower  information	✓	✓
Use Advanced Search	✓	✓
Limit my Search Results	✓	✓
Use Facets to narrow search	X	✓
Search for full-text articles	X	X
Search for items in Bradford Scholars	X	✓
Book a Group Study Room	✓	X
Request an Inter-Library Loan	✓	X
Use tags	X	✓
See Related Search suggestions	X	✓

The Library has had a busy summer updating services and software ready for the new academic year 2011/12.

Two of the software updates include the upgrading of our Library catalogues: BRADfinder and WebCAT. Returning students and existing staff will see some changes to the look and feel of BRADfinder but there are also a number of exciting functional changes available. You can read more about this at our Library news site. WebCAT has also been updated, making it run smoother and more efficiently.

The UK Open Access Implementation Group (OAIG) say:  “Recently, some publishers have sought to negotiate directly with universities and research institutes on the terms and conditions under which the authors can deposit manuscripts of their own papers into repositories.”

JISC are a member of the OAIG and therefore wish to state their concern with publishers who seek to limit access by decreeing  unacceptable embargo periods on the deposit of academics” manuscripts in local, institutional or subject-based repositories.

Read more on this at JISC:

Do you know your publishing rights? : JISC.

The American Chemical Society’s (ACS) Publications Division will begin rolling out a new publishing agreement in mid-October 2010 to expand and clarify author rights and responsibilities.

There are several key differences between the new journal publishing agreement and the old ACS Copyright Status Form:

The new agreement addresses what authors can do with the different versions of their manuscript – for instance, use in theses and collections,  teaching and training, conference presentations, sharing with colleagues, and posting on websites and institutional repositories. The terms under which these uses can occur are clearly identified to prevent misunderstandings that could jeopardize final publication of a manuscript.

The new agreement also extends the key terms of use to an author’s previously
published works with ACS – as long as the same conditions of use are met.

The new author agreement also highlights two current ACS programs. The first is ACS   AuthorChoice, which provides authors or their funding agencies the opportunity to sponsor immediate, unrestricted online access to their final published articles. The other is ACS Articles on Request, which permits free distribution of journal article reprints online via author-directed links provided to the author when their article is published online.

The UoB Library is introducing a new way of locating and linking to online resources and databases for subject areas. Starting on Monday 9th August 2010,  students and staff will be able to search or browse for online resources, including eJournal and eBook collections, databases, organisational web sites, news services and anything else of quality and relevance to Bradford via the Library’s new eResource webpages. Links to the new eResource pages will also be made available from the University intranet and Library homepages and require no username or password to access.

Those  familiar with logging into Metalib to find relevant eResources may still do so via the Library homepage. Metalib will remain available until the end of January 2011 to allow all our members to migrate from the old service to the new. Some students/staff may also wish to save their search results and note down their favourite searches and/or databases prior to Metalib switch-off in early 2011. Subject librarians will be providing training on how the new eResource web service operates throughout autumn 2010. Subject librarians may also be  contacted with any questions regarding the change in eResource discovery at the University and how it may effect research.

“JORUM is a free online repository service for teaching and support staff in UK Further and Higher Education Institutions. Helping to build a community for the sharing, reuse and repurposing of learning and teaching materials, created by the community for the community.” – JORUM Team.

The January edition of the Jorum Update newsletter is now available at the JORUM website.

The first edition of 2010 focuses on the release of JorumOpen, which is now available for search and deposit.  This growing collection has received some very positive feedback, and we are encouraging further deposit by utilising the new JORUM deposit chooser.

Read more at:

http://www.jorum.ac.uk/news/newsletter.html

Don’t forget you can also keep up to date with the JORUM team through Twitter, and the JORUM Community Bay

Twitter:  http://twitter.com/JorumTeam.

Web: http://www.jorum.ac.uk

JORUM Community Bay: http://community.jorum.ac.uk

NEW CONTENT – Just before Christmas the repository team completed the task of adding the 2008 RAE data to Bradford Scholars. The University’s research repository now hosts nearly 1,800 entries with associated digital objects ranging from journal articles and book chapters to conference and working papers. The bibliographic records from the 2008 RAE return add another 1,300 fully searchable entries to our growing repository.

OPEN ACCESS TO BRADFORD RESEARCH – All content in Bradford Scholars is openly accessible to web users via any search engine or directly on the repository site. Staff wishing to view their own entries may do so without registering as contributors. However, we welcome all staff to register in order to add their papers to the online repository. Registration is quick and simple via the repository homepage (http://bradscholars.brad.ac.uk/) and the depositing process only takes a few minutes.

GET REGISTERED AND INCREASE YOUR RESEARCH IMPACT – Many of the 2008 RAE entries in Bradford Scholars do not yet include the full text articles or book chapters etc. Although each repository entry carries a link to the original published versions where available we invite researchers to send us these papers to lib-webadmin@bradford.ac.uk for inclusion in the repository. An openly accessibly research paper in Bradford Scholars enhances access to and removes barriers from research by providing toll-free routes to peer-reviewed scholarship.

NB! – Although many publishers permit the use of full text articles and other published research in open access repositories, we may still only be able to use your final author drafts and NOT  the published PDFs. This is not a problem. The final author draft is the version that has been peer-reviewed, alterations made and accepted for publishing. The intellectual content is the same as in the final published PDF but the author version will not carry the formatting of the published PDF. These are the papers we would like authors to forward to the repository team. To view the copyright conditions of your publisher visit http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/ or http://bradscholars.brad.ac.uk/.

For more information on Bradford Scholars visit http://bradscholars.brad.ac.uk/ or email the repository team at lib-webadmin@bradford.ac.uk.

The most downloaded three papers in Bradford Scholars at present:

1) Boot, J.C. “Design of cylindrical plastic pipe linings to resist buckling due to collapse pressures”

http://hdl.handle.net/10454/

2) Pinder, D. “Coin: the missing currency in peace support operations and beyond”

http://hdl.handle.net/10454/2320

3) Sheriff, R., Chan, P.M.L. et al. “Ubiquitous Internet in an integrated satellite-terrestrial environment: The SUITED solution”

http://hdl.handle.net/10454/463

Staff at JORUM have released their November newsletter.

The November edition of Jorum Update is now available at the Jorum website.

The last Jorum Update of 2009 brings together highlights of the past few months in relation to the release of JorumOpen, which includes future directions for the service. We take a sneak preview at plans for 2010, incorporating further enhancements to the service alongside JorumOpen and JorumUK. Other key topics include the new interactive map on the Jorum website, and the positive feedback received from the training events.

http://www.jorum.ac.uk/news/newsletter.html

Don’t forget you can also keep up to date with the Jorum team through Twitter:  http://twitter.com/JorumTeam.

Web: http://www.jorum.ac.uk
Jorum Community Bay: http://community.jorum.ac.uk

Jorum is a free online repository service for teaching and support staff in UK Further and Higher Education Institutions. Helping to build a community for the sharing, reuse and repurposing of learning and teaching materials, created by the community for the community.

You can also have your say and find out more about all aspects of sharing at the Jorum Community Bay: http://community.jorum.ac.uk