February 8, 2016, by Michael Jennings

Open Access opens doors

From 1 April, researchers will need to have their articles available through Open Access within three months of acceptance to be eligible for the next REF. To make it quicker and easier for researchers to store publications in our ePrints repository, LRLR have launched a mediated deposit service.

Read about the benefits of Open Access, according to University of Nottingham researchers.

“Open Access opens doors. In my experience peer-reviewed work which is made Open Access receives a far greater readership and gets far greater recognition than work which is behind publishers’ paywalls. Navigating copyright policies can be difficult, but the University’s ROMEO website is a fantastic resource which quickly tells you what you can and cannot publish. Nottingham e-prints also provides a simple and fuss-free way of making your work feely available. When research is paid for publically it makes sense that it be freely publically available – and thankfully this is now easy to do.”

Dr Neil Sinclair, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy

Dr Sinclair’s research investigates the nature of morality: it’s meanings, methods and function in human society. He is also interested in environmental ethics and the nature of sustainability, and has taught on the University’s MOOC ‘Sustainability, Society and You’

“Open Access has many benefits. My own sociological research involves the analysis of everyday working lives. I draw upon research material that has been collected from many thousands of ordinary people, often over decades of their lives. With open access, those people who were interviewed, and everyone else with access to the internet in Britain and globally, are able to see just how the material that those people provided so generously to the research community has shaped my own thinking and writing. In addition, my open access publications will, I hope, continue to stimulate interest in my work from a range of audiences. I receive many requests e.g. for more information and invitations to present at workshops and conferences. I hear from PhD students and other researchers and teachers around the world who have limited access to research and teaching materials. Open access makes that possible.”

Professor Tracey Warren, Professor of Sociology, School of Sociology and Social Policy

Professor Warren’s research interests lie in the sociologies of work and employment and of social inequalities. These include work time; income, wealth and financial security; work-life balance/reconciliation; and cross-national comparisons. The bulk of her research is based on the quantitative analysis of large data-sets.

“Science benefits immensely from openness and transparency and we have found over the last few years that post-publication peer review (via sites such as PubPeer), coupled with publication in open access journals, has played a key role in establishing new collaborations and making our work visible to a wider audience. For example, publication of a preprint on the arXiv (an open access platform), with subsequent discussion of that work at PubPeer, led directly to a new collaboration with a researcher we had not previously met. Moreover, that discussion at PubPeer (complemented by a number of blog posts on similar themes) was responsible for driving a significant number of downloads of our paper in its preprint form.”

Professor Philip Moriarty, Professor of Physics, School of Physics and Astronomy

Professor Philip Moraity’s research group focuses on the imaging, spectroscopy and manipulation of single atoms and molecules. A long term goal is to attempt to do 3D printing with atoms – can we build an object an atom at a time? (These Sixty Symbols videos describe the work at a non-technical level)

For more information, visit www.nottingham.ac.uk/openaccess

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