home Resources and Services Get Involved with Open Access

Get Involved with Open Access

International Open Access Week is October 25 – 31! This year’s theme is It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity.

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 Ellis Library, J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library, Resources and Services Protect Yourself and Your Research from Predatory Journal Publishers

Protect Yourself and Your Research from Predatory Journal Publishers

Predatory publishing doesn’t just take advantage of authors by misrepresenting review, editorial, and fee structures. It also hinders access to the work itself, hurting the overall enterprise of research. The epidemic of predatory journals reached serious enough heights in 2016 that the Federal Trade Commission charged OMICS, one such publisher of hundreds of predatory journals, for its deceptive practices.

“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” says Janice Dysart, Science Librarian and creator of the Where to Publish Your Research guide. “Be wary of these email solicitations from publishers trying to get you to submit articles to their journals.” She recommends using the Think Check Submit checklist to determine whether a publisher is legitimate.

Anyone can fall victim to predatory journal publishers. Jung Ha-Brookshire, Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies, College of Human Environmental Sciences, and Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Textile and Apparel Management, relates her experience after a graduate student recommended a journal a few years ago. She says, “I didn’t think twice about it. We submitted our paper and got accepted without any revisions. Then they were asking us to send money somewhere in Pakistan.” She still didn’t realize what was happening because she hadn’t even heard of “predatory journals.”

That all changed about a year later when she learned of a list of predatory journals from her colleagues. “We found out that our journal was on that list,” she says. They tried to withdraw their work from the publication but couldn’t. Because the journal wasn’t legitimate, the article could only be found via the specific URL and not by searching, so they pulled the publication information from their CVs. Jung says, “We had to take that manuscript as a loss because we couldn’t even take that paper to other publishers since, technically, it is already published.”

After that experience, Jung now checks with her subject librarian, Noël Kopriva, every time she encounters a journal she hasn’t heard of, “no matter how good the website looks.” Jung advises, “Be careful with choosing the right journals. Do not get fooled by address, location, a beautiful website, and a wonderful set of editorial board names. Check with your librarian first when in doubt!”

For more information on how to spot predatory journal publishers, see our Where to Publish Your Research guide or contact your subject librarian

Originally published in 2018 by Jen Gravley, Research and Instruction Librarian

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 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.

As libraries and researchers in the United States and around the world continue to respond to budgetary and inflationary price pressures by increasingly relying on interlibrary loan and other delivery services instead of instant full-text search and availability via subscription, making your work available this way helps ensure that it is searchable, discoverable, and reviewable by all and can lead to higher usage and citation of the final published version. MOspace can also be home to books and other forms of research and scholarship, too! Please contact your subject specialist, email us at MOspace, see the guide, or submit works online if you are interested in maximizing the reach of your scholarship via MOspace.

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 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 Workshops U Publish: Open Access Publishing – What Authors Need to Know

U Publish: Open Access Publishing – What Authors Need to Know

Wednesday, October 23, 3:00 – 4:00 pm
114A Ellis Library and Online

Register for in-person workshop
Register for online workshop

Celebrate International Open Access Week with the University Libraries! Learn how to make your research and scholarship more widely available via Open Access. Members of the Libraries’ Scholarly Communication Committee will share information and advice on the “hows” and “whys” of Open Access publishing. Topics will include assessing the quality of Open Access journals, navigating publisher agreements, and posting articles to MOspace, MU’s digital institutional repository.

Presenters:

  • Kate Anderson, Head, Zalk Veterinary Medical Library
  • Kimberly Moeller, Social Sciences Librarian
  • Steven Pryor, Digital Scholarship Librarian

U Publish
Are you new to publishing your work? Do you have questions you need answered about the publishing process? This series provides University of Missouri authors with opportunities to hear from major academic publishers about their processes as well as learn from librarians and campus colleagues about important trends and issues related to academic publishing.

Sponsored by the University of Missouri Libraries

home Cycle of Success, Ellis Library, J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library An Open Education Pioneer Continues Helping Students

An Open Education Pioneer Continues Helping Students

To Dr. William Krause, education needs to be open and without borders. “We should share information. Not hold it for a select few to access.”

Since the beginning of his Mizzou career in 1971, Dr. Krause has been a proponent of helping students learn and giving them the resources they need. “I’ve always felt very strongly that any student, under my tutelage, should have all their materials provided for them.” He even went as far as writing a couple of textbooks, streamlining them to fit the educational needs of the medical students and taking the extra step to find a publisher to make the textbooks as cheap as possible.

For several years, Dr. Krause taught 96 medical students anatomy and histology. “It was very difficult for me to rotate to all the groups in the labs and answer their questions about the slides. [They] would get frustrated waiting to get my help,” says Dr. Krause. Wanting to make sure his students received the help they needed, he applied for and was awarded a grant to work with a multi-headed microscope for help sessions. With this new equipment, he could easily show this large group the slides. “After three or four years of doing this, even those sessions became too crowded. Everyone wanted the extra help.” Dr. Krause knew he had to find a better way to help his students. When a new chair of the department came on board, Dr. Krause took the opportunity to pitch the chair his new idea.

Screenshot of Dr. Krause’s Blood and Bone Marrow Video

“I wanted to place a camera in the eye piece of the microscope and record me narrating and using the electronic pointer in real time.” The new chair was sold on the idea and gave him the go ahead to buy and use any equipment he needed to create these videos. Dr. Krause developed a set of 24 video tutorials and provided DVD copies for each medical student. That’s a total of 2,304 DVDs per year, mostly out of his own pocket. Eventually, it became too expensive to continue making copies, not to mention the DVDs would damage over time. Dr. Krause turned to the library and asked how could he still provide access to these videos while finding cheaper means of doing so.

Diane Johnson at the Health Sciences Library suggested adding them to Google as it was new and could handle 96 students watching 24 videos. Once placed on Google, Dr. Krause started receiving notes of gratitude not only from his students, but from students all over the world thanking him for sharing his knowledge. After a few years, Google wanted Dr. Krause to shorten the videos. Dr. Krause felt that shortening them would make the videos less helpful. Once again, he turned to the library.

Wanting to keep the integrity of the videos, while still keeping freely available, Dr. Krause consulted with Diane Johnson about how best to proceed. She suggested the new repository the library was managing: MOSpace. Following her advice, Dr. Krause added the videos, along with accompanying educational pdfs, to MOSpace. “I was happy to add to MOSpace. It gives the opportunity for people to tap into information from anywhere and makes it more universal,” explains Dr. Krause.

Top Countries by Downloads from April 2018-October 2018

Dr. Krause, while retired now, still continues to help students here at Mizzou and all over the world. With a total of 4,053 views for the videos and close to 19,000 views for the educational pdfs, users are still finding Dr. Krause’s collection. During the month of September 2018, his videos were downloaded over 800 times.

Dr. Krause cannot be more excited about the open education movement at Mizzou. He may have missed the initiative by three years, but he is happy to know that things are changing on campus. “I am delighted I’ve been able to help so many people from so many areas. This is such a tremendous avenue to make material available in the easiest format possible for our students at [little to] no cost.”

Dr. Krause’s videos, blogs and textbooks are found in MOSpace, where they are free to view and download.

Cycle of Success is the idea that libraries, faculty, and students are linked; for one to truly succeed, we must all succeed. The path to success is formed by the connections between University of Missouri Libraries and faculty members, between faculty members and students, and between students and the libraries that serve them. More than just success, this is also a connection of mutual respect, support, and commitment to forward-thinking research.

If you would like to submit your own success story about how the libraries have helped your research and/or work, please use the Cycle of Success form.

home J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library, Resources and Services Review of stem cells as promising therapy for perianal disease in inflammatory bowel disease: Open Access Blog

Review of stem cells as promising therapy for perianal disease in inflammatory bowel disease: Open Access Blog

In August, the physician research team of Dr. Francis Dailey, Dr. Erica Turse, Dr. Maliha Naseer, Dr. Jack Bragg, and Dr. Veysel Tahran published “Review of stem cells as promising therapy for perianal disease in inflammatory bowel disease,” in the open access journal World Journal of Transplantation (WJT).

Launched in 2011, WJT is devoted to reporting the latest research progress and findings in the field of transplantation. The fact the the journal was an open access journal indexed in Pubmed was a big draw to the team. Dr. Tahran says, “if the journal is open access, your papers and ideas can [reach] more people.” For Dr. Dailey, the instant access was the key factor for an open access journal as well. “As a reader of the medical literature I prefer the articles I search for to be open access for ease of obtaining access, and I want others to have this ease as well.”

This review presents current literature of stem cell therapy for patients with perianal inflammatory bowel diseases since the therapy’s emergence in the early 2000s. The team looked at several adipose and bone marrow stem cell studies to analyze the efficacy, outcomes, and safety within those studies. Seeing this as much needed information for their field, the open access journal avenue allowed the team to see their research published sooner rather than later.  “Getting published in this journal was quicker and easier than traditional, subscription-only journals,” mentions Dr. Bragg. Not being a completely print journal gives open access journals the unique ability to review, provide feedback, and publish faster. Open Access journals are able to do this all while still providing quality research.

“There is no difference to me in the manuscript requirements for open access versus other journals. The quality of open access journals is also comparable to that of non-open access journals,” says Dr. Dailey.

If you are interested in publishing in an open access journal, the Health Sciences Library can assist in steering you toward the journals that best fit your research.


Dr. Francis Dailey is a Gastroenterology Fellow at MU Healthcare. He has publishes research related to gastroenterology, inflammatory bowel diseases, clinical gastroenterology, and others. His passion is clinical medicine and gastroenterology, but lovesalso being able to produce clinical research in these fields that can affect everyday clinical practice.

Dr. Jack Bragg is an Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at MU Healthcare.

Dr. Vesyel Tahran is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine whose research focuses on inflammatory bowel disease, hepatitis, and liver cancer, to name a few. in 2017, he was recognized as a Quality Improvement Champion by the MU Healthcare Department of Medicine’s Quality Improvement Committee  for outstanding work in quality improvement. More recently, Dr. Tahran co-edited the book Viral Hepatitis: Chronic Hepatitis B.