A range of Open Access journals are now available in most subject areas. These titles number in their thousands and are usually peer-reviewed. Some of the more well-known titles include those of BioMed Central (199 peer-reviewed titles) and the Public Library of Science (seven peer-reviewed science and medicine titles). A number of directories exist to list Open Access journals. One of more extensive lists is the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) which also facilitates searches across the journals. The multi-disciplinary and multi-lingual DOAJ covers over 4250 free, full-text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals.

In addition to Open Access journals the commercial publishers may offer paid open access options. this would allow authors to deposit their articles immediately in their institutional open access repositories upon payment of a fee. The same publishers may also permit authors to deposit after an embargo period without the payment of a fee. Where a publisher’s standard policy does not allow an author to comply with their funding agency’s open access mandate, paid open access options may enable an author to comply. Information about publishers’ paid options for open access are available at http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/PaidOA.html. Guidance is also available from the Research Information Network (RIN) who have produced a briefing document called “Paying for open access publication charges”. This PDF is available from RIN web pages.

Authors are urged to consider the requirements set by their funding bodies (information about funder mandates are available directly from the funding organisation or e.g.  the JULIET database)  regarding open access to reseach outputs. In many cases researchers are expected to make research results available open on the web. This could be an Open Access journal or paid open access article in a commercial journal. Institutional repositories are a third option for releasing research materials to the free web.

Authors concerned about their rights to publish in traditional commercial journals need not worry. Making research available openly on the World Wide Web does not exclude the publication of articles in the author’s choice of journal. However, it worth noting that on occasion the publisher’s policy on self-archiving and placing published articles on the free web may clash with the funder’s mandate on open access. Bearing this in mind it is worth checking the prospective publisher’s copyright policy and the funder mandate prior to getting published.

More information on publisher policies are available via the RoMEO database or the Bradford Scholars web page at the University of Bradford. Alternatively,  you may choose to contact the repository team at Bradford for advise and assistance. Contact details are available at the Bradford Scholars homepage.

EDINA tell us that another 32 titles have been added in May and June to the Wellcome Film collection, as part of a continuous process that should result in some 450 titles being included in the collection by the end of 2009.

If you are interested in this new content, simply visit: http://www.filmandsound.ac.uk/updates/2009-05.html or http://www.filmandsound.ac.uk/updates/2009-06.html.

A new case study has also been added to the service, “The Documentary Form in Historical Context”, created by Drs Charles Anderson and Kate Day at he University of Edinburgh and Dr Jo Fox at the University of Durham.

We are also being told that the look of the home page has been modified slightly. The Film Trails and Forum buttons are no longer badged as “New” features.

Visit the EDINA web site for information about their services.

Access more than 13,000 Springer eBooks on campus!

The University of Bradford Library has set up a 90-day Springer eBook trial for its members. For the next 3 months you have unlimited online access to more than 13.000 Springer eBooks with copyright years 2005-2008 via the Springer website. Springer eBooks are grouped in 13 fully indexed and searchable subject collections:

• Architecture and Design
• Behavioural Science
• Biomedical and Life Sciences
• Business and Economics
• Chemistry and Materials Science
• Computer Science (including the highly regarded Lecture Notes in Computer Science)
• Earth and Environmental Science
• Engineering
• Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
• Mathematics and Statistics
• Medicine
• Physics and Astronomy
• Professional Computing and Web Design

Our trial access plan also includes the Springer eReference collection which has more than 125 eReference Works online and all are included in the yearly eBook collections. The eReference collection covers a wide range of topics.

Contact your Subject Librarian for further information and assistance.

Bradford Scholars is the University of Bradford online research archive. Access is free to anyone interested in research being conducted at Bradford. In the repository you will find a range of materials from journal articles and conference papers to research reports, book chapters and theses.

Are you staff at the University of Bradford? Start boosting your research impact by becoming a contributor. REGISTER today via the left hand menu “Register” link at http://bradscholars.brad.ac.uk. All registered contributors can login via “My Bradford Scholars”  on the repository page to add their research papers. Information sheet on how to contribute is available for depositors. Other guides and information sheets are available on the repository web pages.

Further information is also available by contacting the repository team at the JB Priestley Library via email at bradscholars@bradford.ac.uk.

The latest issue of the University of Bradford News & Views magazine reports on the Bradford Scholars launch event:

“The Bradford University Repository Project (BURP!) team have been celebrating the institution-wide launch of the live Bradford Scholars online research archive in March. The launch was attended by academic and research staff who were keen to find out the benefits of the new online research archive, demonstrated by Satu Nieminen, the University’s eResources Librarian.

The Repository Project, jointly funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the University of Bradford, spent a year implementing Bradford Scholars, an online service designed to host the full text of research materials produced by staff and MPhil/PhD students. The service allows members of the institutions to deposit their research materials in multiple forms and formats, and enhance its visibility, which has been proven to increase citation rates and impact as material in this online repository is freely available to anyone over the Internet.

Institutional repositories around the world have for years benefited scholars by helping to free research outputs from access barriers and subscription charges which speeds up and broadens research sharing. Bradford Scholars offers the members of the University a tool to showcase their research and join the growing number of researchers in other UK higher education institutions in making valuable research openly available to colleagues as well as the general public.

University Librarian, Peter Ketley, said: “Bradford Scholars affords the University an excellent opportunity to strengthen the visibility of its research profile and provides a mechanism that will enable the re-use of existing research, thus promoting communication and collaboration.”

The University now has a centrally managed research archive which provides long-term storage and digital preservation solutions for research. The service is linked with both inhouse and external systems to enhance integration and resource discovery on the web.

To learn more about Bradford Scholars or to become a contributor, visit the repository website at http://bradscholars.brad.ac.uk or email repository staff at bradscholars@bradford.ac.uk”

Visit News  & Views on the web.

To all staff and students

Thank you for participating in the worlds largest survey on e-books!

The library recently promoted a survey on e-books that many of you took part in. This survey was run at universities across the UK and over 23,000 staff and students participated. This was the second survey run as part of the JISC national e-books observatory project, the first was in January 2008. The surveys were exploring current awareness, perceptions and attitudes towards e-books and looking to see if these changed between 2008 and 2009.

Together, these surveys received over 48,000 responses – the world’s biggest e-book survey ever undertaken! We would like to thank you for participating in the surveys. A lucky student, Mahesh Kumar studying an Msc in Democracy, Politics & Governance at Royal Holloway University of London won the £200 Amazon voucher prize.

Some headline findings from the surveys:

Use of e-books for study increased for students from 61.4% in 2008 to 64.4% in 2009 but the highest increase was use by staff, which increased from 58.9% to 64.9%. Surprisingly, over 63% of respondents said that they read the content of e-books from a screen with only around 6% printing pages out, however, the average time spent reading was only between 11 and 20 minutes. Over 54% of respondents said that they dip in and out of e-book chapters with only around 8% reading a whole chapter. Encouragingly, the percentage of teaching staff recommending e-books to students and placing direct links to them via the virtual learning environment or online reading lists increased between 2008 and 2009. There was no discernable difference between the use of e-books by age groups, although it does appear that men prefer e-books to women. Most staff and students get access to their e-books via the university library and dependency on this access had increased by 2009. Satisfaction with the availability of print textbooks through the library increased from 2008 to 2009 and this may be due to the availability of more e-books taking the pressure of the print copies. The results of the surveys will be used to develop the e-books market to help make sure that staff and students can get access to the books they need either in print or electronic format.

For further information on e-books in your library please see your Subject Librarian.

For further information on the JISC national e-books observatory project please see www.jiscebooksproject.org.

Digital curation, preservation and data:

The April 2009 RIN eNews reports the publication of a new page on curation policies of UK funders

The Digital Curation Centre has published a new page on its website to provide core details of the main UK research funders’ policies and to pull together links to useful references and tools to help researchers and institutions comply with these requirements.

Remember that the JULIET service by SHERPA also provides information on funders’ mandates regarding research outputs. The JULIET service includes international funding bodies in addition to the seven UK research councils and other funding bodies.

The development team at Sweet & Maxwell are working towards the delivery of a new Lawtel interface this coming summer. The new interface will reflect the feedback received from us, the users, and take the service closer to what we are used to seeing with Lawtel’s sister service Westlaw.
View the news release to read more on this topic and see some screenshots of the proposed new interface.

Access to SciFinder Scholar is changing for members of the University of Bradford.

A new Web-based method of accessing SciFinder will be introduced on Friday May 8. You will no longer be able to use the client software that you have downloaded.

Although the Web version looks different from the client software, the underlying structure is very similar.

We are still restricted to one user at a time.

Register here. You must use your Bradford e-mail address to register.

After registration, logon to SciFinder.

If you have any queries, please contact Anne Costigan at a.t.costigan(at)bradford.ac.uk

Training sessions on the new version of SciFinder will be held

* Fri 8 May at 1 pm in Room 2.7, JB Priestley Library
* Wed 13 May at 1 pm in Room 2.7, JB Priestley Library

NB Your username and password are for your own personal use and must not be passed to anyone else.

Research Information reports in Issue 41 (April/May 09) that the final UK research council has made the decision to mandate open access to research they fund. The Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) “has decided to mandate open-access publication of the research that it funds.” Authors are, however, given the option between using an institutional open access repository – like the University of Bradford online archive Bradford Scholars – or paying to publish in an open access journal. The EPSRC decision was made in their December meeting following consultation by Research Councils UK, in collaboration with the Research Information Network and the Department of Trade and Industry. The EPSRC is the final UK funding council to adopt an open-access mandate. The other six announced their policy on open access to research in 2006.