Five Open Access Tips for 21st century researchers: Tip #5 Access Open Research

Posted by Sandra on 29 October, 2019

This #OAWeek we are introducing five tips on how to make your research open and find open research. Yesterday we looked at growing your impact with QUT ePrints. Today we’re looking at accessing open research.

What would you do if your library subscription access was suddenly cut off? How would you continue your research?

Hopefully you’ll always have somewhere to work that has access to subscription databases, but the prospect is frightening, and a stark reminder that much of the world’s publicly funded research is locked behind oppressive publisher paywalls.

Don’t panic, help is at hand, and this Open Access week, if you haven’t already, have a look at some of the world’s biggest Open Access content curators unpaywall.org, openaccessbutton.org and CORE.

Unpaywall is an open database of almost 25 million scholarly articles harvested from more than 50,000 publishers and repositories. You can install it onto your browser and it will find open versions of articles, wherever they are.

CORE is the world’s biggest collection of open access research with more than 135 million papers from around the world. Its mission is to facilitate free unrestricted access to research by aggregating all open access research from repositories and journals.

Open Access Button is a research finder providing instant delivery of open access articles from open sources or direct from authors. It also has a browser extension.

So take note of these tools and access open research – if you no longer have access to our extensive databases!

Five Open Access Tips for 21st century researchers: Tip #4 Grow your impact with QUT ePrints

Posted by Sandra on 29 October, 2019

This #OAWeek we are introducing five tips on how to make your research open and find open research. Yesterday we looked at publishing wisely, and today’s tip is Grow you impact with QUT ePrints.

QUT ePrints is our institutional repository of research outputs, showcasing the research of QUT staff and postgraduate students. It was established in 2003, when QUT endorsed the world’s first institutional open access policy. Last year QUT ePrints celebrated a truly momentous occasion, surpassing 25 million downloads. The 25th millionth download, a law article by Professor Rosalind Mason, exemplifies this year’s OA Week theme, Open for whom: Equity in Open Knowledge, with the download coming from Namibia.

QUT ePrints now hosts close to 100,000 works which have been downloaded nearly 28 million times! Depositing records and full text is the most important way that QUT researchers can comply with QUT’s open access policy and that of the two big Australian funders — all for free. But more than that, QUT’s repository allows anyone anywhere to access your research. And if your research is more likely to be discovered and read, your research is more likely to be cited

QUT ePrints allows anyone anywhere to access your research.

Five Open Access Tips for 21st century researchers: Tip #3 Publish wisely

Posted by Sandra on 29 October, 2019

During #OAWeek we have been introducing five Open Access tips for 21^st Century Researchers. Today we are taking a look at Tip #3: Publish wisely.

Tools and repositories such as Think Check Submit, the Directory of Open Access Journals and OpenDOAR can help you identify trusted journals for your research.

Think Check Submit takes the guess work out of where to publish. Through a range of tools and practical resources, Think Check Submit helps researchers identify trusted journals for their research. It aims to educate researchers, promote integrity, and build trust in credible research and publications.

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a community-curated online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. It contains just under 14,000 journals, containing over 4,372,000 articles. DOAJ allows you to search by subject, publisher, or licence type. The Directory aims to increase the visibility and ease of use of open access academic journals—regardless of size and country of origin—thereby promoting their visibility, usage and impact.

OpenDOAR, the Directory of Open Access Repositories, is a global directory of Open Access repositories and their policies. Launched in 2005, it enables the identification, browsing and search for repositories, based on a range of features, such as location, software or type of material held. OpenDOAR provides access to more than 4,300 different repositories from all over the world.

If you have any questions about strategic publishing, feel free to contact your Liaison Librarian or the Library Research Support Team at library.research@qut.edu.au

Five Open Access Tips for 21st century researchers: Tip #2

Posted by Sandra on 22 October, 2019

Open your work with a Creative Commons Licence

This #OAWeek we are introducing five tips on how to make your research open and find open research. Yesterday we looked at ORCiD; today’s tip is Open your work with a Creative Commons licence.

Open Access is the free, online availability of research outputs with reuse rights. This is where Creative Commons (CC) licences come in. An open licence is the difference between research outputs being available for free on the internet and being free to reuse. A CC licence shows how a work can be reused, how it can be distributed, adapted, remixed, built upon, or commercialised.

If you are publishing your research in an Open Access journal, you will retain the rights to reuse your own work. If you are handing over your copyright to the publisher of a subscription journal however, consider first publishing your images, figures, tables, or other supplementary material with a CC licence. This will allow you to reuse these research outputs in other publications, without the need to seek permission from the publisher. Researchers Sara Hanzi and Hans Straka have written about how they went about publishing their images of tadpoles and froglets with a CC licence on figshare.

Remember, open access accelerates the pace of discovery by exposing research findings to a wider audience. By harnessing the power of networks to share research findings with practitioners who can apply the new knowledge, open access also accelerates the translation of research into benefits for the public.

You can read more about Open access and CC licences on the Creative Commons Australia website here: https://creativecommons.org.au/open-access/.

Five Open Access tips for 21st century researchers: Tip #1

Posted by Sandra on 21 October, 2019

It’s #OAWeek and we’ll be introducing a set of key tools for researchers throughout the week. To kick it off we’re talking about researcher identifiers, specifically ORCiD. These Identifiers – basically the essential descriptive metadata of a researcher – will be become increasingly important as open access evolves into a longer-term vision of open scholarship – a future that could be summed up as an interconnected, equitable, global scholarly ecosystem of well-curated, interoperable, trusted research articles, data and software supported by a diversity of open publishing models.

ORCiD, and other identifiers are now the key connectors of research to researchers. More than 7 million researchers globally have an ORCiD. Here, more than 2000 researchers have an ORCiD associated with QUT. We use it to link QUT researchers to their work in online systems.

ORCiD can do much more than just link traditional research to researchers. It can link researchers to other scholarly activities, such as reviews. When kept up to date, it’s a living record of all a researcher’s academic activities. And there is a link to equity – this year’s theme of OAweek. By providing a unique, global identifier, it ensures that everyone, everywhere, no matter how common or rare their name, can be equally visible.

And because it’s such a powerful connector, it has been integrated into a number of tools, including this one by Adrian Barnett, which can format publication lists and even show which ones are open access. Give your ORCiD a little love this #OAweek.

Winners of the SAGE Higher Degree Research Student Publication Prize Announced

Posted by Sandra on 13 September, 2019

A paper on the challenges of visual place recognition for autonomous vehicles has taken out first place in the SAGE Higher Degree Research Student Publication Prize. Sourav Garg was awarded first prize and $1500 for his article, Semantic-geometric visual place recognition: a new perspective for reconciling opposing views, published in The International Journal of Robotics Research.

QUT Library has partnered with SAGE Publishing since 2014 to offer the SAGE Higher Degree Research Student Publication Prize. The prize is awarded to a Higher Degree Research (HDR) student, who is the lead author on a paper published in a peer reviewed journal with a Q1 or Q2 ranking. Aik Kai Tok, Library Sales Marketing Executive at SAGE Publishing said of their support for the award, “SAGE is globally committed to fostering healthy minds and cultures and to supporting both access to and output of the research community. In addition, SAGE invests time and funds in supporting the research community through sponsored awards and research outputs.”

QUT Library received a record number of entries to the prize this year. A panel of five judges, two academics and three librarians, evaluated the submissions on originality of the research, readability, and contribution of the applicant to the publication. Research Support Manager (Acting), Jennifer Hall, said that the calibre of entrants to the competition was extremely impressive, and that selecting the top three papers was no easy task for the judging panel.

Second place and $900 was awarded to Zhongtian Li for his paper, Corporate social responsibility employment narratives: a linguistic analysis, published in Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal. B.M.C. Randika Wimalasiri-Yapa was awarded third place and received $500 for her paper, Chikungunya virus in Asia-Pacific: a systematic review, published in the Open Access journal Emerging Microbes & Infections.

The awards were presented to the winners on 10 September. Sourav Garg, stuck at the airport in Tokyo due to monsoonal weather, attended via Skype. Sourav’s supervisor, Professor Michael Milford, accepted the award on his behalf.

QUT Library would like to thank SAGE for its ongoing sponsorship of the Higher Degree Research Student Publication Prize.

Authorship, Publication and Peer Review training

Posted by Sandra on 7 May, 2019

QUT Library and the Office of Research Ethics and Integrity (OREI) are once again offering training sessions for HDR students and Early Career Researchers on Authorship and Publication and Journal Peer Review.

Session 1: Monday 13 May 2019 – 9.30am – 11.30am

Authorship and Publication will cover the fundamentals of publishing in a series of tight 3 minute talks and videos. Topics to be covered include:

Developing a Data Management Plan
Open Scholarship Practices: Open Access
Originality and plagiarism
Promoting your work

Session 2: Tuesday 14 May 2019 – 1.00pm – 2.30pm

Journal Peer Review will cover different aspects of journal peer review. We will have speakers covering various topics along with videos. Topics to be covered include:

Forms of peer review
Conducting peer review
Responding to peer review
Emerging trends in peer review

Follow the links to register for one or both sessions.

Sign up for Session 1: Authorship & Publication (watch short video) – Monday 13 May 2019 – 9.30am – 11.30am

Sign up for Session 2: Journal Peer Review (watch short video) – Tuesday 14 May 2019 – 1.00pm – 2.30pm

Feedback from previous participants:

This was a great session. I learnt more about the publishing process this morning than I have in [my] whole time at [university]. I will be recommending [this] session to all early career academics.
A well organised, succinct morning. The format was great – moved along well and didn’t get bogged down …. All speakers were well prepared and their slides were clear and concise.
I would like to thank and congratulate the team for the organisation of both seminars! They were great! Excellent topics and speakers!!! The videos were great too! Thank you so much for the opportunity of learning such important topics and for having many doubts clarified. You are the best!
The format was great, and I found the structuring of the whole session around the map very helpful.
Both workshops were excellent, I got so much out of them and all the information was just perfect…. Short presentations from a variety of speakers who were all so engaging. These were some of the best run and most informative workshops I have done with QUT, thank you.

SAGE Higher Degree Research Student Publication Prize

Posted by Sandra on 3 April, 2019

SAGE Publishing is offering cash prizes ($1500 First Prize, $900 Second Prize and $500 Third Prize) for the top three papers accepted for publication, by a Higher Degree Research (HDR) student.

You have until 19^th July 2019 to enter, so sharpen those pencils! The awards will go to HDR students who are the lead author on a manuscript judged to be among the top three papers, and accepted by a peer reviewed journal, with a Q1 or Q2 ranking in Scimago or Journal Citation Reports. The paper must have been accepted for publication between the 1^st December 2018 and 30^th June 2019.

Papers will be judged according to the following criteria:

The originality of the research
Readability: The paper is well written and easy to understand
Contribution of the applicant to the publication.

To be eligible to enter, you must:

Be a current QUT Higher Degree Research (HDR) Student (QUT MOPP).
Be the lead author and have played a significant role in data collection, data analysis, and preparation of a manuscript accepted for publication in a refereed (peer-reviewed) journal, allocated a Quartile 1 (Q1) or Quartile 2 (Q2) (ranking in Scimago or Journal Citation Reports in any subject area, between 1^st December 2018 and 30^th June 2019.
Email library.research@qut.edu.au to advise of manuscript acceptance and publication details by 19^th July 2019.

You’ve already done the hard work of writing the paper; enter now with the chance to further highlight your research!

For the full terms and conditions and to apply, click here. If you’d like more information contact library.research@qut.edu.au.

It’s Christmas time, and there’s no need to be afraid…

Posted by Sandra on 18 December, 2018

Around the world and across Australia the Christian celebration of Christmas is in the air (and on our screens, in our ears and along our streets).

For many it’s a time to catch up with friends and family, to have some time off work or study, to go to the beach, and to relax with a good book.

With such a vibrant international staff and student community at QUT we thought we’d provide a quick guide to Aussie Christmas protocols to help those who aren’t so familiar with the Aussie yule time traditions.

Do the Brisbane City Council Christmas lights tour – wandering through the suburbs and strangers’ backyards to see the houses and streets decorated for Christmas
Eat a hot roast lunch with heavy puddings served in scorching temperatures (you can replace with seafood and salads, but many don’t)
Play a backyard cricket match after lunch (over the fence is six and out, and you can’t get out on the first ball). Alternatively, collapse into a chair and vow never to eat again.
Head to the beach– possibly the best way to spend the day.
Watch on as uncles and father’s make their way to the hospital emergency department on Christmas afternoon after “demonstrating” how to ride a child’s new skateboard.

We know for many, having Christmas in Summer is just plain weird, but whatever you get up to over the break you can still access all of our QUT Library resources online, including a range of Christmas-themed books, eBooks and videos from children’s literature to Christmas cooking, to streaming Christmas movies.

All campus libraries will be closed from Saturday 21st December until Tuesday 2nd January. Have a safe and relaxing break – we’ll see you in the new year.

Brisbane City Council Christmas parade

International Human Rights Day

Posted by Sandra on 9 December, 2018

On Monday 10 December we celebrate International Human Rights Day. While it will be celebrated in different ways by different people, the message around the world is the same.

This year the Universal Declaration of Human Rights turns 70. The document, which proclaimed the inalienable right to which all human beings are entitled — regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status, is the most translated in the world.

A really lovely representation of these principals, and a great way to share them with a younger audience is the illustrated edition of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It’s published by the United Nations in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish.

QUT is heavily involved in research into the area of human rights. Here’s some of our most recently published works about the current challenges and issues in the area — available in QUT’s ePrints repository.