Open access issues and how these are being addressed at the University of Glasgow

Abstract

Scholarly Communication The term Scholarly Communication refers to the process by which researchers including academics, researchers and independent scholars publish their work and access the work of others. This process is traditionally carried out via recognised publishing outlets such as peer reviewed journals where the published works are evaluated, made accessible and archived. The traditional system of scholarly communication is no longer working as academic institutions and research centres can no longer keep up with the ever rising price increases in scholarly journals. To continue to meet the needs of scholarly communication, involvement by those working in the academic field is critical, thus ensuring a system that will meet the needs of future scholars and researchers. Glasgow University – Daedalus Project One of the ways of addressing this problem is the creation of institutional repositories to hold and make freely available scholarly research. At Glasgow University an “e” prints service has been set up and is managed by a project team. There are now over 600 records (including publications by members of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine) in the Glasgow ePrints service (http://eprints.gla.ac.uk). The Faculty of Veterinary Medicine was one of the first faculties to participate in this service. The service is an online repository developed specifically to provide access to published and peer reviewed scholarly publications produced by Glasgow academics. The articles are freely available to all. Research has shown that articles freely available online are cited more often than those articles only available via subscription journals. The benefits both to researchers and to society as a whole are considerable. For researchers publications in repositories can be accessed by the scholarly community on a scale impossible in paper, research is stored centrally and access is readily available to similar repositories worldwide. For members of the public institutional repositories allow access to important research findings, e.g. in areas such as medicine and science.

At Glasgow academics can add publications to the ePrints repository in a variety of ways. Options include self deposit, mediated deposit (project staff do the work on behalf of academics) or records can be downloaded from databases held in such software as Reference Manager and Endnote. Project staff check the copyright agreements relating to individual articles before full text is added to the ePrints service. Further information on the DAEDALUS Project is available at http://www.gla.ac.uk/daedalus.