Next time you publish: claim your rights

Your article has been accepted for publication in a journal and, like your colleagues, you want it to have the widest possible distribution and impact in the scholarly community. In the past, this required print publication. Today you have other options, like online archiving, but the publication agreement you’ll likely encounter will actually prevent broad distribution of your work.

You would never knowingly keep your research from a readership that could benefit from it, but signing a restrictive publication agreement limits your scholarly universe and lessens your impact as an author.

Why? According to the traditional publication agreement, all rights —including copyright — go to the journal. You probably want to include sections of your article in later works. You might want to give copies to your class or distribute it among colleagues. And you likely want to place it on your Web page or in an online repository if you had the choice. These are all ways to give your research wide exposure and fulfill your goals as a scholar, but they are inhibited by the traditional agreement. If you sign on the publisher’s dotted line, is there any way to retain these critical rights?

Yes. The SPARC Author Addendum is a legal instrument that modifies the publisher’s agreement and allows you to keep key rights to your articles. Learn more.

This open access message has been brought to you by SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition. 

Promoting Open Access Research @ MU

Open Access week is an important week. A week dedicated to highlighting the importance of Open Access and advocating for free, and immediate online access to scholarly research. This year’s theme, “Open in Action,” is all about taking concrete steps to open up research and scholarship and encouraging others to do the same. This was the purpose in creating an open access blog; a way to share research MU faculty choose to publish open access.

Every few weeks, I post about an open access article, right here on our library news page. When typing up the post, I focus on the research itself, the academic accomplishments of the faculty, and the most important, the reasons why they chose to publish in open access. I’ve received several insightul thoughts on why they think open access is important, and to my great delight, all look fantastic as graphics. 😉 Marketing material aside, they are profound thoughts that I hope will strike a chord with other MU faculty, and scholars outside the university, further engaging others and promoting the open access initiative.

 

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October 22nd-October 24th, I presented a poster at Merge&Converge’16, the 2016 Mid-Continent Medical Library Association conference. I wanted to show others that promoting open access, and engaging faculty is easier than we think. Faculty can be open access champions.

 

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home Workshops Fridays @ the Library: Public Access Policies (or…Zen and the Art of Compliance), Oct. 28

Fridays @ the Library: Public Access Policies (or…Zen and the Art of Compliance), Oct. 28

Need to make your research publically available? This session will provide an overview on complying with Public Access Policies from funding agencies such as NIH and NSF. Topics will also include a brief overview of Open Access journals and how they relate to agency policies

Register here: https://libraryguides.missouri.edu/fridaysworkshops

  • Friday, Oct 28
  • 1-2pm
  • in-person in Ellis 213 or online

This Fridays @ the Library workshop kicks off our Open Access Week activities! Click here for more information on Open Access Week 2016.

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home Workshops Fridays @ the Library: Creative Commons, Oct. 21

Fridays @ the Library: Creative Commons, Oct. 21

If you’re looking for content (images, videos, music, etc.) that you can freely and legally use for your coursework, search through Creative Commons. Or, if you want to give people the right to share, use, and even build upon a work you’ve created, you can publish it under a CC-license. Whether you’re a user or creator, this workshop will answer all of your questions about Creative Commons materials and licenses.

Register here: https://libraryguides.missouri.edu/fridaysworkshops

  • Friday, Oct 21
  • 1-2pm
  • in-person in Ellis 213 or online

This Fridays @ the Library workshop kicks off our Open Access Week activities! Click here for more information on Open Access Week 2016.

oa-week-2016-gateway

 

home Events and Exhibits, Resources and Services, Workshops Open Access Week Oct. 21-28, 2016

Open Access Week Oct. 21-28, 2016

MU Libraries are celebrating Open Access Week 2016 from October 21-28.

How can you participate in Open Access Week 2016?

  1. Learn more about Open Access: What is Open Access (OA) and why does it matter?
    Check out our OA guide for more information: https://libraryguides.missouri.edu/openaccess
     
  2. Attend an Open Access workshop: We have 2 workshops for OA week.

     

    • Share Alike: Creative Commons – October 21 @ 1-2pm in Ellis 213 or online
      If you’re looking for content (images, videos, music, etc.) that you can freely and legally use for your coursework, search through Creative Commons. Or, if you want to give people the right to share, use, and even build upon a work you’ve created, you can publish it under a CC-license. Whether you’re a user or creator, this workshop will answer all of your questions about Creative Commons materials and licenses.
      Register to attend in-person or online
    • Public Access Policies (or…Zen and the Art of Compliance) – October 28 @ 1-2pm in Ellis 213 or online
      Need to make your research publically available? This session will provide an overview on complying with Public Access Policies from funding agencies such as NIH and NSF. Topics will also include a brief overview of Open Access journals and how they relate to agency policies.
      Register to attend in-person or online
       
  3. Read and share the latest news on Open Access:
    To raise awareness about OA, we'll be posting and retweeting information about Open Access all week long. Check out our

     

To spread the word about Open Access Week, feel free to share this OA Week blogpost, OA Week flyer, or OA Week poster!

Special thank you to our sponsors for supporting our Open Access Week events and helping to raise awareness about the importance of Open Access:

home Resources and Services Open Access in Action: University OA Policies

Open Access in Action: University OA Policies

Celebrating Open Access Week: University Open Access Policies

Did you know that several of our peers have Open Access policies (even KU!)? These policies help ensure that faculty make the products of their research freely available to all.

For example, the KU’s Faculty Open Access Policy grants the University the right to deposit scholarly works to KU ScholarWorks, KU’s institutional repository.

In its OA Policy, the University of Arizona notes its land-grant mission and its “dedicat[ion] to making its scholarship available to the people of Arizona and the world to maximize its impact.”

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign states that “Open Access, by providing the widest possible dissemination of research, enhances benefits to the state, region, and world while also raising the visibility and profile of the researcher at the University.”

The University of California’s OA Policy applies not only to faculty but to all “authors who write scholarly article while employed at UC.”

Under these university OA policies, authors retain copyright and can receive waivers in order to opt out of the policy for specific articles. Find out more about faculty-led Open Access policies from the Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions.

While MU does not currently have an Open Access policy, the University Libraries encourage you to retain your rights; make your work Open Access; and deposit your work to MOspace, MU’s institutional repository. Find out how.

Read more about the benefits of Open Access

home Resources and Services Open Access in Action: Retain Your Rights

Open Access in Action: Retain Your Rights

Celebrating Open Access Week: Don’t Sign Away Your Rights!

Traditional publishers’ agreements often transfer copyright from the author to the publisher, giving them the right to reproduce and redistribute your work.

The most important thing you can do is read your copyright transfer agreement. Don’t like what it says? You can amend the agreements to retain the rights you need to make copies of your work and to share it with others.

Examine your publishers’ agreements
What is the publisher requiring of you? Those agreements that require you to transfer all your rights limit what you can do with your own work—that is, you are no longer the copyright holder.

If your publisher agreement reads something like: “the undersigned authors transfer ownership of copyright, including the right to publish and distribute the work by any means, method, or process whether now known or to be development in the future, to the Publisher,” consider amending the agreement.

Agreements that let you retain control of your work often have phrases like: “I grant the journal a non-exclusive license to publish my work”; “I understand that no rights are transferred to the Journal”; or “I understand that a Creative Commons license will be applied to my work.”

Modify your agreements when needed
Publishing agreements are negotiable. Know your rights and consider using the SPARC author addendum to modify your agreement.

Deposit your work in MOspace
If you’ve retained the right to post to an online archive, submit your work to the MOspace Institutional Repository. An institutional repository, like MOspace, is one of the best ways to disseminate and preserve your work.  As an Open Access tool, MOspace ensures that current and future generations of scholars benefit by finding your work.

More information on retaining your rights.

home J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library, Resources and Services Facile and Efficient Preparation of Tri-component Fluorescent Glycopolymers (Open Access)

Facile and Efficient Preparation of Tri-component Fluorescent Glycopolymers (Open Access)

This week's Open Access article features two University of Missouri Faculty. 

  • Dr. Deborah Chance PhD., is an Assistant Research Professor in the Molecular Microbiology and Immunology Department at the School of Medicine. Dr. Chance's primary research interest is mucins and pathogens in Cystic Fibrosis. If you would like to learn more about Dr. Chance, click here
  • Dr. Thomas Mawhinney, PhD., is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Missouri. He is also the State Chemist of Missouri, and the Director of the Agricultural Experiment Station Chemical Laboratories. Click here to learn more about Dr. Mawhinney

Dr. Chance, Dr. Mawhinney, and their research team pubished in JoVE, the Journal of Visualized Experiments. JoVE publishes peer-reviewed scientific video protocols to accelerate biological, medical, chemical and physical research.

This research team chose to pay an additional fee to make Facile and Efficient Preparation of Tri-component Fluorescent Glycopolymers via RAFT-controlled Polymerization open access. Their article/video features "an efficient, three-step synthesis of RAFT-based fluorescent glycopolymers, consisting of glycomonomer preparation, copolymerization, and post-modification, is demonstrated. This protocol can be used to prepare RAFT-based statistical glycopolymers with desired structures." Synthetic glycopolymers are instrumental in various biochemical and biomedical research fields. 

home J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library, Resources and Services Drs. Lin, McElroy, and Nagel: Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals and Oil and Natural Gas Operations (Open Access)

Drs. Lin, McElroy, and Nagel: Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals and Oil and Natural Gas Operations (Open Access)

This week’s Open Access blog post features, not one, not two, but three University of Missouri Faculty:

  • Dr. Chung-Ho Lin, PhD., is an Assistant Research Professor in the School of Natural Resources. Dr. Lin’s primary research involves the use of plants and genetics modified microbes for applications in the area of phytoremediation and bioremediation in agroforestry. Click here to learn more.
  • Dr. Jane McElroy, PhD., in an Associate Professor of Family and Community Medicine in the School of Medicine. Dr. McElroy’s research interests include cancer and chronic disease, environmental exposures with metals, and geographical information systems. Click here to learn more about Dr. McElroy.
  • Dr. Suan Nagel, PhD., is an Associate Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Women’s Health in the School of Medicine. Dr. Nagel’s clincal and research interests include endocrine disruption, fetal origins of adult disease, and epigenetics, to name a few. To learn more about Dr. Nagel, click here.

This research team published in the open access journal Environmental Health Perspectives back in March. Environmental Health Perspectives is “a monthly peer-reviewed journal of research and news published with support from the National Insititure of Environmental Health, National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.”

Their article, Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals and Oil and Natural Gas Operations: Potential Environmental Contamination and Recommendations to Assess Complex Environmental Mixtures, is a commentary on hydraulic fracking technologies and the potiential for environmental release of oil and gas chemicals and potential endocine-related health effects from exposure to the hazardous chemcials. They describe a need for an endocrine componement to health asssessments conducted in regards to hydraulic fracking.

home J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library, Resources and Services, Zalk Veterinary Medical Library Dr. Franz: Infection pattern and transmission potential of chikungunya virus (Open Access)

Dr. Franz: Infection pattern and transmission potential of chikungunya virus (Open Access)

Dr. Alexander Franz, Ph.D. is an assistant professor in the department of Veterinary Pathology at the College of Veterinary Medicine. His research focuses on mosquito-borne arboviruses and their interaction with the mosquito. Recently, his team became involved in studying Zika virus, i.e. developing an animal model, in collaboration with Dr. Jeff Adamovicz (Dept. of Veterinary Pathobiology, MU), and Dr. Carl Gelhaus, (MRI-Global, Kansas City); in collaboration with Dr. R. Michael Roberts (Life Sciences Center, MU), [they] are taking part in the investigation of the mechanism allowing Zika virus to infect human placenta-derived cells. If you would like to learn more about Dr. Franz, click here,

Dr. Franz, along with Dr. Shengzhand Dong and their research team, published in Scientific Reports, an online open access scientific mega journal published by the Nature Publishing Group.. In August, a blog post on the Scholarly Kitchen, mentioned that the journal is likely to become the biggest one in the world, overtaking the open access journal, PLOS ONE. Their article, Infection pattern and transmission potential of chikungunya virus in two New World laboratory-adapted Aedes aegyptistrains, discusses the mosquite-borne Chikungunya virus and its infection pattern.

 

Why did you choose to publish in an Open Access journal?

“We were interested in reaching a broad audience also in countries/institutions that may not be able to afford high-price journal subscriptions and therefore rely on open access articles to get informed about scientific developments/discoveries. This is especially useful when working on things like tropical disease agents, which often are a problem in countries that do not have a rich science infrastructure.”

Would you publish in an Open Access journal again?  If so, why?

“Yes, I would. I like the concept of open access even though it means that we (as authors) have to pay for the publication. But ususally, it also means that we (as authors) retain the copy rights of our work.”