home Resources and Services MOspace: Increasing Open Access Availability for All

MOspace: Increasing Open Access Availability for All

International Open Access Week is October 19 – 25! This year’s theme is Taking Action to Build Structural Equity and Inclusion.

There are many options for MU researchers to make their work available open access, but one option available for all University of Missouri faculty is to make a copy available in the MOspace institutional repository.

We are working on several ways to help maximize the reach and persistence of your scholarship and increase awareness of MOspace as an option for Open Access scholarship. As we collect and analyze data about what our researchers are publishing, we are finding that many articles are already available via paid, “gold” Open Access (represented in gold in the images below). When we can, we are collecting these articles and preserving them in MOspace as an additional safeguard to ensuring their long-term availability and accessibility. We are currently processing 371 articles from 2019 and 2020 that meet various criteria for this stage of the project, 76 have already been included in MOspace, and more are on the way. Paid, full Open Access is great but still represents only a fraction MU’s total research output. We are working on ways to reach out individually to authors whose publications qualify for inclusion in MOspace (such as by publisher or funder policy) to encourage authors to upload their manuscripts/postprints whenever possible.

Even articles that are published with a traditional (non-Open Access) license can often be included in an institutional repository in the form of the final manuscript or postprint (your final, post-peer-review “draft”). The image below shows at least 1,095 articles published by MU authors (according to Scopus) in 2019 that currently have no known freely-available full text online, but could be made available in a repository such as MOspace on the basis of the publisher’s standard “green open access” policy. This would make the clear majority of MU research output openly available in some form (gold, hybrid, bronze, and green are all forms of Open Access availability under different terms).

Nearly 80% of MU-authored articles could be openly available

The following image shows the publication activity by publisher, and also helps show how much of our output that is currently “paywalled” could potentially be made available. Each bar represents the number of MU articles published by that publisher in 2019 (according to Scopus), and the red portion represents the number of those articles for which there is currently no available open access copy. Nearly all of these top publishers (each of the top 6 and many others) will allow authors to deposit most article manuscripts in institutional repositories such as MOspace via a green open access policy. The green segments represent where an author, co-author, or other delegate has already done so.

home Resources and Services Be An Informed Voter

Be An Informed Voter

Election Day is right around the corner: Tuesday, November 3rd!

How are you supposed to know who and what you can vote for? Where can you get the information you need to make your voting choices?

  1. Find out who or what can you vote for by getting a sample ballot
  2. Research candidates and issues. There are many resources available to help with your research:
    1. Candidate websites
    2. Local news outlets. In Columbia we suggest the Columbia Daily Tribune: Politics and Election Coverage and Columbia Missourian’s Election Coverage
    3. Voting records of the candidates
    4. Judge reviews
    5. Local groups- these might be local organizations, civic groups that organize around a cause, non-profit organizations, or community clubs.
    6. Public libraries. The Daniel Boone Regional Library in Columbia has a great election guide.
  3. Research ballot measures. Read the text of the ballot measure before election day to make sure you understand what it says, and what a YES or NO vote means. As you research the proposal, pay attention to the types of information you are reading.
  4. Ask questions about your research. When you are conducting research keep in mind where the information is coming from. Who is speaking and what are their sources? What’s the bias in the information you are reading? Who paid for this? Whose perspective is this and whose perspective is missing? Can you fact check this?
  5. Make notes and bring them with you to vote. Make sure to double check the rules at your polling place.

Visit the Mizzou Election Hub for resources available to you on campus.

This year, all registered voters in Boone County can vote at Mizzou Arena. Remember that you will need to bring an ID to vote.

Thanks to UMKC Libraries for the inspiration behind this be an informed voter post.

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Taira Meadowcroft

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

home Events and Exhibits Collective Voices: Persistent Narratives within Campus Collections

Collective Voices: Persistent Narratives within Campus Collections

Bingham Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Collective Voices: Persistent Narratives within Campus Collections.

Please mask up and come by to see this exciting new exhibition!

  • Runs October 26-November 19
  • Gallery open M-F 8am-5pm

Movements and stories appear and disappear throughout the human timeline, often transformed by subsequent generations. Many of these stories are shared through the lens and voices of underrepresented populations or their allies, in a multitude of forms preserved by archives and collections such as those at the University of Missouri.

Collective Voices includes art, archival, and textile objects from three campus collections—Missouri Historic Costume and Textile Collection, University Archives, and Special Collections—that reveal historically repeating narratives relevant to today: marginalized voices, Mizzou student activism, civil rights, political tensions, colonialism, LGBTQ+ issues, and climate & environmental concerns. These accounts, while simultaneously local, national and global, emerged as common themes shared across time.

This exhibition is a gathering of these persistent narratives and a reminder that so many voices still need representation and amplification within our campus collections and across cultural institutions. Highlighted are new acquisitions and previously underutilized materials from our collections, reflecting changes in the acquisition processes and guidelines. It is evidence of both progress made and the monumental work to be done.

The Collective Voices curators—Catherine Armbrust (Bingham Gallery), John Fifield-Perez (Special Collections), and Nicole Johnston (Missouri Historic Costume and Textile Collection) would like to thank Anselm Huelsbergen & Gary Cox at the University Archives for all their assistance gathering images to add depth to this project. And thanks to the gallery assistants for their help in manifesting the show.

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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 Reach the World with MOspace

Reach the World with MOspace

Open access 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 postprint of the following article was added to MOspace in 2018.

Fisher, P. J., & Yao, R. (2017). Gender differences in financial risk tolerance. Journal of Economic Psychology, 61, 191-202. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2017.03.006

Postprint in MOspace: https://hdl.handle.net/10355/62875

In the past six months, the postprint in MOspace was downloaded 350 times by users in the United States, Romania, the United Kingdom, Portugal and Germany. The top ten countries for all MU material downloaded from MOspace in the past six months are:

  • United States;
  • Germany;
  • Philippines;
  • United Kingdom;
  • China;
  • India;
  • Canada;
  • Indonesia;
  • France; and
  • 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:

 

Ask me about open access?

 

home J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library, Resources and Services Enhance the Visibility of Your Work by Publishing Open Access

Enhance the Visibility of Your Work by Publishing Open Access

This week is Open Access Week! Open Access Week, a global event now entering its tenth year, is an opportunity for the academic and research 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.

Recently we asked Dr.Julie Kapp, MPH, PhD, FACE, Associate Professor at the School of Medicine why she considers open access when publishing her research.

In July 2019, Dr. Kapp published Kombucha: a systematic review of the empirical evidence of human health benefit as an open access article in Annals of Epidemiology. According to PlumX metrics, the article has been picked up by several news outlets and blogs, mentioned over 500 times on social media, and continues to be the top MU-authored paper on the ScienceDirect website, with over 5565 downloads worldwide.

 

Julie M. Kapp, MPH, PhD.

Why did you choose to publish open access?

I published open access because anyone can access the paper, regardless of institutional affiliation or journal subscriptions. There is a demonstrated citation advantage. Open access also facilitates broader diffusion and dissemination of your ideas inside and outside the academic community. That means it is more accessible to journalists and bloggers who may write about your work. And isn’t the purpose of science to have a broader societal benefit? Open access allows anyone with an interest to learn about your work.

Why was it important despite the fee to move your article out from behind the paywall? Do you see a benefit to having taken the open access route?

For this particular paper, a lot of the interest comes from the topic and the timing of my paper. Still, it being open access no doubt facilitated its accessibility and circulation. This paper was highlighted in Discover Magazine, The New York Times, Yahoo Lifestyle, Psychology Today, an Australian blog, and the official news broadcast of Israel, among other outlets.

Advice to others?

If you have the funding, I would highly recommend open access. If you do not have the funding, our Departments and Schools/Colleges should consider creating resources tagged for open access requests, if we are to be competitive with top schools.

 

Learn how you can take action with Open Access

home Resources and Services Journal Budget Update and Call for Feedback

Journal Budget Update and Call for Feedback

Due to increasing costs, the University of Missouri Libraries must reduce collections expenditures significantly this year. We need your cooperation in identifying the resources you rely on most, so we can explore ways to adjust our purchasing over the next few years to better support you. We would like to hear from you, so we are inviting all faculty and graduate students to attend one of these sessions:

Open Meeting on Collections (recorded 10/23/2020)

We have posted additional information on the Libraries’ Collection Development & Management web page, where you can learn more about the issues and leave feedback for us.

We have appreciated the supplemental support from the Provost and the Chancellor in previous years to maintain subscriptions based on research needs and usage. Unfortunately, this year’s funding situation is full of uncertainty. Not only are campus funds falling short, the funding for the subscriptions purchased as a four-campus system has also diminished, and we can no longer commit to the increasing costs of our large journal publisher package subscriptions, i.e. “Big Deals” with the leading publishers: Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, Sage, and Oxford.

Our bundled subscriptions, those that work much like the cable TV bundles, will end December 31st. For 2021, we will shift to a title-by-title selection model. This action will severely reduce our total number of journal subscriptions. Our subject librarians are doing their best to identify the most essential titles to keep, and will consult with interested departments and faculty about these difficult decisions.

Information about the issues and the list of serials to be maintained will be posted on the Libraries’ Collection Development & Management web page. Please be aware that this year’s cut will include highly used journal titles across all disciplines, since we have already made substantial cuts over the preceding several years. We are reducing collection expenditures by $1.2 million, which is approximately 20% of our total collections budget. This action will likely not affect book purchasing because it is a small percentage of the collections budget.

Interlibrary Loan (ILL) and document delivery will remain an effective, efficient means of acquiring materials not held by the Libraries. Most articles requested via ILL are received within one to two business days, but please note that we can experience instances of slower service due to COVID-19 disruptions. We remain committed to obtaining articles for you from all sources, even though this also incurs costs.

The Libraries support collections that are used for teaching, scholarship, research, and professional practice.  The intent is to offer the most comprehensive array of resources that is feasible with our available financial resources. The Libraries Collections Steering Committee and the Subject Selectors meet regularly to deal with the complex issues surrounding the collections that are vital to the success of our students, faculty, researchers, and other professionals in the academic community. Many institutions are experiencing these difficulties, and we continue to monitor national and worldwide trends in open access publishing and library-publisher negotiations to identify opportunities for change.

We share your concerns for ready access to the content you need in order to excel. As in the past, we encourage you to talk with your subject librarian. To ensure that you have the opportunity to learn more about the issues and participate in the conversation, we are scheduling open meetings for you to attend with Matt Martens, Associate Provost for Academic Affairs; Deb Ward, Interim University Librarian; and members of the Libraries Collections Steering Committee.

Lean times can sometimes lead to surprising solutions when people work together.  We look forward to the day when we will have the ability to sustain access to needed collections through new partnerships and new, lower-cost models of published scholarship. Let’s keep the conversation going.

Deb Ward, Interim University Librarian

home Resources and Services Take Action on Open Access!

Take Action on Open Access!

International Open Access Week is October 19 – 25! This year’s theme is Taking Action to Build Structural Equity and Inclusion.

Heard about Open Access? Now, go a step further and explore your Open Access options:

  • Identify OA journals in your subject area.
  • Explore subject-oriented open repositories.
  • Read the OA policies of journals or publishers for which you edit or review.
  • Check out the attention received by your department in MOSpace, thanks to Open Access. Click on your school/department, scroll to the bottom, and click on “show statistical information.”
  • Install the Open Access or unpaywall buttons for easy access to OA articles.
  • Read how to optimize student publishing.
  • Connect with the OpenCon community.

What is your next step?

Questions about Open Access? Check out our guide or contact your Subject Specialist.

home Databases & Electronic Resources New Database: BCC Research

New Database: BCC Research

Mizzou Libraries now provides online access to BCC Research. This database is replacing Frost and Sullivan (access set to expire December 31st).

BCC Research provides access to market research reports and market forecasting in mostly STEM centered areas – advanced materials, plastics, biotech, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, sensors, chemicals, nanotechnology, and other emerging technologies. Over 250 research reports are published annually.

If you have questions about the database or how to use it, you can contact our business librarian Gwen Gray 

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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 Need One-on-One Research Help?

Need One-on-One Research Help?

Having a hard time finding resources for a tough paper or big project? Struggling with a literature review? Use Canvas to schedule an appointment via MU Connect and meet with the librarian assigned to your class.

What is MU Connect, and how do you use it? Watch this short video to find out and make an appointment today.

home Ellis Library Symptom Checks at Entrance to Ellis Library to Start on Oct. 19

Symptom Checks at Entrance to Ellis Library to Start on Oct. 19

Campus Community:

Thank you for your diligence in helping Mizzou curb the number of active COVID-19 cases in our community. In an effort to further encourage this downward trend, we are reminding you to download the #CampusClear app on your smartphone if you haven’t already. Students, staff and faculty are required to monitor their health on a daily basis. The #CampusClear app helps support this healthy habit.

To encourage app usage, the university will begin checking your #CampusClear app with monitoring stations at Ellis Library and MizzouRec beginning Monday, October 19. You will need to show your “Good to Go!” screen at these locations to indicate you are cleared for campus. The university plans to phase in additional screening locations in the coming weeks.

In addition, faculty have been encouraged to take a moment at the beginning of class and remind students to complete symptom monitoring with the #CampusClear app. This practice, along with our monitoring stations, will further reinforce valuable habits that help protect the health and safety of our campus community.

If you are unable to access or use the app, you can complete a manual screening at these locations. The screening will include having your temperature taken and verbally confirming you do not have any symptoms associated with COVID-19. Remember, downloading the app or completing the screening process can take a few extra minutes, so please plan accordingly.

As always, you should maintain social distancing, wear your face covering and follow other Show Me Renewal precautions in addition to monitoring yourself for symptoms. Thank you for doing your part to keep yourself and other members of our campus community safe.

Tigers support Tigers!

 

Mark Diedrich

Incident Commander, MU Incident Command Team

Director of Emergency Management, UM System