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home Resources and Services Celebrate Open Access Week: How to Increase Your Research Impact

Celebrate Open Access Week: How to Increase Your Research Impact

By Shannon Cary   Posted in Resources and Services
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Every year we celebrate a week of open access. It’s an opportunity for the academic community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of open access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make open access a new norm in scholarship and research. This year’s theme is Community Over Commercialization. For more information about Open Access, visit our website.

Celebrate Open Access Week with us by reviewing the Open Access Library Guide and attending a virtual workshop:

And if you have some additional time, be sure to check out some of our other blog posts about the different facets to consider when making your research open:

Want to lean more? Talk with your Subject Specialist about open access in your area or request a Zoom workshop for your department, team or lab. 

home Ellis Library, Resources and Services Peer Navigator Corner: Live Chat Assistance

Peer Navigator Corner: Live Chat Assistance

By Kimberly Moeller   Posted in Ellis Library Resources and Services
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Written By: Lexi Tucker

Do you need fast answers from a librarian without stepping foot in the library? The live chat feature on the University Libraries website has you covered! Throughout your academic journey, there will be times when you need to research a topic, and this process can be daunting. Some students may even feel they don’t know where to start. The live chat function can get you in contact with a librarian (not a chatbot!) who can guide you to databases and other resources that can help you jumpstart this process.

The first thing to know is WHERE the live chat function is. From your device, visit the University Libraries homepage at library.missouri.edu. You should see an Ask Us! tab on the right-hand side, and when you click it, an additional pop-up labeled Ellis Reference will ask you if you need help. Click Chat Now to begin the process. It will ask you for your name and contact information, which is optional, and Your Question* which is the only mandatory field.

Once you ask your initial question, the live chat will partner you with an available librarian. During regularly scheduled hours, the librarians on chat are Mizzou staff rotated throughout the day and week to help you. Live chat assistance is a 24/7 feature, and during late hours for Mizzou staff, the chat is operated by a third-party vendor. The chat is NEVER artificial intelligence, so for questions that the third-party vendor cannot answer, they typically will turn your chat into an email for the librarians to assist you and email you back as soon as possible. For a specific question, let’s say something about Psychology, the staff member may help you connect with the subject librarian.

Another way to use the chat is while you’re sitting in Ellis Library and wanting hands-on assistance. When you ask your question, you can let the librarian know you’re on campus and they may step out of their office or send a colleague to help you in person. So, when in doubt, don’t panic! Utilize all your resources, especially the amazing faculty at the various libraries on campus. They’re just a click away.

home Resources and Services Publish For Free (Or for a Discounted Price) in These Journals and Keep Your Author Rights

Publish For Free (Or for a Discounted Price) in These Journals and Keep Your Author Rights

By Taira Meadowcroft   Posted in Resources and Services
Posted on

Publishing open access is a great way to keep research open and retain your copyright. We do understand that publisishing open access comes with a financial commitment that you wouldn’t necessarily have with traditional publishing.

To help offset costs, Mizzou Libraries has agreements with several publishers to offer discounts and author processing charge support for the following journals.

Want to lean more? Talk with your Subject Specialist about open access in your area.

American Chemical Society (ACS) Journals
The American Chemical Society offers a discounted open access fee to MU affiliates since MU is a Subscribing Institution. Members of ACS receive an additional discount. ACS Open Access Fee Chart

Astronomy & Astrophysics: A European Journal
Starting in 2022,  the EDP Sciences journal Astronomy & Astrophysics will be published under the Subscribe to Open (S20) model.  MU affiliated corresponding authors can publish their articles Open Access without paying APC’s (article processing charges) as long as the University of Missouri Libraries continue to subscribe to this title.

BMJ Case Reports
The Health Sciences Library subscription to BMJ Case Reports includes a waiver of the individual membership fee of £273 normally required to publish cases. Submission instructions.

Cambridge University Press Journals
MU Libraries has entered into a transformational “Read and Publish” agreement with Cambridge University Press. This agreement greatly expands electronic access to Cambridge University Press journals and provides 10 APC waivers for MU corresponding authors to publish their work OA.

Because of the limited number of waivers available with this agreement, MU Libraries has decided to support authors on a first come, first served basis. If there are remaining waivers at the end of the year, MU Libraries can retroactively make other articles OA with the approval of the author. Read more about the agreement and see a list of eligible journals

Company of Biologists
From 2023 through 2025 MU is participating in the Company of Biologist’s Read & Publish Open Access Initiative. MU authors can publish OA at no charge. Some of the journals Company of Biologists publishes include Development, Journal of Cell Science, and Journal of Experimental Biology.

Electrochemical Society (ECS) Journals
MU is a subscriber to ECS Plus, an agreement that allows MU faculty to publish their articles in Electrochemical Society (ECS) journals (Journal of the Electrochemical Society and ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology) as Open Access with no charge to the author. There are no limits on the number of papers that can be published in any given subscription year. Find out more.

Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development
The University of Missouri has joined the shareholder consortium of the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development. This open-access journal features interdisciplinary academic research and practice articles on all things food systems. The shareholder membership, good through April 2024, covers the University of Missouri-Columbia, including MU Extension. This membership waives the typical Article Processing Charge for publishing in this journal.

Proceedings of the National Academies of Science of the United States of America (PNAS)
MU researchers publishing articles in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) receive a discounted open access fee of $2,000, compared to the regular fee of $2,500, to make their papers immediately free online. Find out more.

home Resources and Services Reach the World with MOspace

Reach the World with MOspace

By Taira Meadowcroft   Posted in Resources and Services
Posted on

Open Access (OA) refers to the free access of online resources and is of particular importance when those resources are research articles, papers and publications. Open access makes these resources available to more people in more places. The University of Missouri Libraries support the goals of open access for MU research materials though the provision of MOspace, the MU institutional repository. MOspace is an online repository for creative and scholarly works created by MU faculty, students, staff, and departments.

What difference does open access make? Materials freely available on the web often reach a wider audience than those available in high-cost journals. For example, a preprint of the following article was added to MOspace in 2021.

The preprint in MOspace was downloaded 777 times and the item page was viewed 946 times by users in the United States, China, Philippines, Australia, Malaysia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Egypt and more.

The top ten countries for all MU material downloaded from MOspace in the past six months are:

  • United States;
  • Philippines;
  • Germany;
  • India;
  • United Kingdom;
  • China;
  • Canada;
  • Russia
  • Indonesia;
  • Australia.

Additional countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East are reflected in the top 40 countries with MOspace users. Most of these users were referred from internet browsers or search engines including Google, Google Scholar, DuckDuckGo, Bing and Yahoo.

Open access supports the efforts of MU researchers by making their research more widely available and supports scholars around the world by ensuring free and open access to important research. To find out more, check these library guides:

home J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library, Resources and Services Overview of Recent University of Missouri Publications in Medicine and Related Fields: September 2024

Overview of Recent University of Missouri Publications in Medicine and Related Fields: September 2024

By Taira Meadowcroft   Posted in J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library Resources and Services
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Monthly Publications SOM Newshub Image

Each month we provide an overview of University of Missouri School of Medicine faculty-authored articles in medicine and related fields as well as a featured article with the highest journal impact factor.

This month’s featured article, “Mexiletine versus lamotrigine in non-dystrophic myotonias: a randomised, double-blind, head-to-head, crossover, non-inferiority, phase 3 trial” was co-authored by Dr. Richard Barohn, Executive Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs and Dean. The article was published in Lancet Neurology (impact factor of 46.5 in 2023).

See the list of publications in medicine and related fields we retrieved for this month: https://library.muhealth.org/facpubmonthlyresult/?Month=September&Year=2024

TAGS:

Taira Meadowcroft

Taira Meadowcroft is the Public Health and Community Engagement Librarian at the Health Sciences Library at the University of Missouri.

home Resources and Services Check Out Your Books 24/7 With Our Pickup Lockers

Check Out Your Books 24/7 With Our Pickup Lockers

By Shannon Cary   Posted in Resources and Services
Posted on

Did you know we have two locations on campus where you can pickup your library books 24/7?

Users can choose Ellis Locker or Lottes Locker as their pickup location when requesting MU Libraries materials. Once the item is ready, users will receive an access code to pick up their items.

Patrons who select the pickup locker location will receive an email saying they have three days to pick up their library materials. At this time, only regular library items will be included in the pickup lockers; no equipment, reserve materials or ILL materials.

The Ellis Library lockers are located inside the vestibule of the west entrance, which is near Speaker’s Circle. The Health Sciences Library Pickup lockers are located in the Medical Science Building, just across the courtyard from the Medical Annex.

Questions? Contact mulibrarycircdesk@missouri.edu.

home J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library, Resources and Services Increase Your Scholarly Impact: Use the SPARC Author Addendum

Increase Your Scholarly Impact: Use the SPARC Author Addendum

By Taira Meadowcroft   Posted in J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library Resources and Services
Posted on

Your article was recently accepted for publication and you want to make sure your research has the widest reach and impact. One way to make sure this happens is retaining your author rights.

Traditional publishing agreements sign your copyright away to the publisher, lessening your impact as an author. When you don’t hold your copyright, you might not be allowed to give copies to your class or distribute it among colleagues. And depending on what you sign, you aren’t allowed to put your article on your webpage or in an online depository, further limiting your exposure.

So how do you make sure you retain your copyright? Publishing agreements are negotiable. Know your rights and consider using the SPARC author addendum* to modify your agreement. The SPARC author addendum is a free and legal resource that helps you easily modify your publishing agreement.

Need help or have questions? Visit our know your rights guide or contact your subject librarian.

*The Author Addendum is a free resource developed by SPARC in partnership with Creative Commons and Science Commons, established non-profit organizations that offer a range of copyright options for many different creative endeavors.

home Resources and Services Retaining Your Author Rights

Retaining Your Author Rights

By Taira Meadowcroft   Posted in Resources and Services
Posted on

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 Ellis Library, Resources and Services Peer Navigator Corner: Who are the Peer Navigators?

Peer Navigator Corner: Who are the Peer Navigators?

By Kimberly Moeller   Posted in Ellis Library Resources and Services
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Written by: Sophie Lanzone

At Ellis Library, there is a group of Mizzou students who are available to help with navigating the building itself, or any other technological or reference question you may have. The peer navigator system is designed so that students have an accessible environment to ask questions, and feel comfortable asking another student. We can be found at the reference desk on the first floor, near the stairs to the café.

To go into more detail on what the program offers, your peer navigators strive to have open communication with everyone as well as a friendly, welcoming attitude. Our prime responsibilities for services are to provide excellent customer service to any users of the library, to do as much as we can to help assist with your questions, to be sensitive to each user’s knowledge and skill level, and to direct you to the resources and library staff that will be most beneficial. We can help with a variety of different types of questions ranging from how to print and get set up with each printer, how to reserve a study room and where to find that study room, how to look up books and articles information on the digital media lab and writing tutors, where you can rent chargers, markers cameras, etc., where bathrooms are throughout the library, where different quiet spaces or classrooms are and more! We have weekly training courses that keep us up to date with new information and refresh the ways we can help answer your questions. We can also connect you with the best person or resource to answer your question. For example, we can tell you all about Special Collections with their collection of rare materials, the University Archives with private papers and manuscripts related to the history of the University, subject specific librarians to help with your research, and even the public library with great resources like free tutoring, audiobooks, and resume or interview help.

If you have any questions at all, don’t be afraid to come ask a peer navigator. You can find us in Ellis Library Sunday-Thursday starting at 10:00 am through 10:00 pm. There are no right or wrong questions, so please feel comfortable enough to come talk to us. Our goal is to get everyone more familiar with what the Libraries have to offer and how to utilize them throughout your time here at Mizzou!

home Resources and Services Make Your Research Open

Make Your Research Open

By Taira Meadowcroft   Posted in Resources and Services
Posted on

At MU Libraries, we’re committed to making access to research more sustainable, affordable and open. And we need your help!

In traditional publishing models, scholars surrender their copyright to commercial publishers in order to disseminate their research findings in scholarly journals. Publishers then sell or rent that same content back to the institution through journal subscriptions—at ever increasing prices. This unsustainable practice costs institutions millions of dollars every year and creates barriers to access for many. Open access publishing encourages scholars to retain their rights and make their work freely available online, increasing the availability and impact of research.  

What You Can Do:  

Retain Your Rights: No matter where you publish, the single most important thing you can do to make scholarly publishing more sustainable and equitable is Retain Your Rights. It’s your copyright – don’t just sign it away! Contracts are often negotiable. And read those agreements: you may have more rights to share your research than you realize.  

Know Your Options: Choose the right venue for your research and know your open access options. If you’re an editor or manuscript reviewer, ask about the journal’s OA options. 

Share Your Work: Deposit your research in MOspace, MU’s Digital Institutional Repository. Submitting your work to MOspace is easy. Just log in with your SSO and complete the Creative Commons license.

Learn More: Talk with your Subject Specialist about open access in your area or request a Zoom workshop for your department, team or lab.