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Open Research: Why Open is Important

The Benefits of Open Research

Open research has many benefits for authors, the University and the community.

For authors:

  • Unlock opportunities for collaboration
  • Increase citation rates - research has shown that open access publications are viewed and cited more often than articles behind a paywall
  • Increase your visibility and the impact of your work
  • Allow your work to influence policy
  • Ensure compliance with grant and funding rules

For universities:

  • Increased exposure of research activity
  • Shared knowledge and innovation increases community and industry engagement with research

For the community:

  • Research is available to those who cannot access subscription content, including researchers at other institutions and the community
  • Ensures taxpayers get value for (research) money and can access findings

Dispelling Myths about Open Research

Just like traditional subscription based journals, most open access journal articles utilise the same peer-review standards and procedures that articles in subscription journals do. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) includes over 17,000 journals, all of which are peer-reviewed open access titles.

This is not correct. Whilst the rise of open access has also witnessed an increase in the number of questionable publishers and journal titles, many open access journals are considered leaders in their disciplines. For example the latest edition of Journal Citation Reports (JCR) includes over 4,600 journals that are fully open access. Journals included in JCR must pass a strict evaluation process and selection criteria, including the presence of "a readily accessible, clear statement of its commitment to peer review and/or editorial oversight of all published content. Primary research articles must be subject to external peer review."

Whilst article processing charges (APCs) are the most well-known business model for open access journals, this is not the case for all open access journals. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) includes over 17,000 journals, of which just over 12,000 journals do not charge article processing fees.

Most journals will allow you to deposit a version of your article in a subject or institutional repository, such as NOVA. The Sherpa RoMEO database provides details of publisher copyright and open access archiving policies.

You can also negotiate with a publisher to retain some of your rights by adding an addendum to your publication agreement either before or after publication.

Contact Scholarly Publishing for further assistance with depositing articles in NOVA or adding an addendum.

This is not true. You have a couple of options available:

  • Try asking the publisher for a waiver on the article processing charge. Its worth a shot!
  • Most journals will allow you to deposit a version of your article in a subject or institutional repository, such as NOVA.

Most journals will allow you to deposit a version of your article in a subject or institutional repository, such as NOVA. Sherpa RoMEO provides details of publisher copyright and open access archiving policies.

If you need to cite the version of an article included in a repository such as NOVA, the practice is to follow the general style for formatting in the reference style being used, adding details of the repository as the last element in the reference.

For example, to reference the author final version of this article included in NOVA using the APA style, the reference would appear:

Paterson, MA, Smart, CEM, Lopez, PE, Howley, P, McElduff, P, Attia, J … King, BR. (2017). Increasing the protein quantity in a meal results in dose-dependent effects on postprandial glucose levels in individuals with Type 1 diabetes mellitus. Diabetic Medicine, 34(6): 851-854. doi: 10.1111/dme.13347. Retrieved from NOVA Institutional Repository.

This formatting ensures that the key elements required to identify the article, especially for citation tracking in scholarly databases such as Scopus and Web of Science are included, as well as identifying the version of the article used.

If you are using EndNote to format references, include the name of the repository (eg. NOVA Institutional Repository) in the URL field within the EndNote record.