Recent developments in open access | RESEARCH NEWS from Swansea University Library

"A report from an Open Access Event  Bournemouth  7th May 2014 ... #BUOA2014 ... Benefits of open Access / Alma Swan – Director of Advocacy for SPARC Europe and director of DOAJ Alma felt that in the last 6 months to a year, the 'indifferent majority' is beginning to wake up to open access, partly due to the HEFCE policy announcement of open access requirements for the next REF. It is important that it is peer reviewed literature which is made open access to avoid losing quality control and becoming vanity publishing. Open access should be immediate, free to use and free of restrictions to be ideal. She was pleased to see that scholarly communication is starting to change as she felt that the internet should have made more difference in this area before. Individual authors gain visibility, usage, impact and a better personal profile from using open access. She gave examples – a philosophy lecturer 'Self-archiving in the PhilSci Archive has given instant world-wide visibility to my work. As a result, I was invited to submit papers to refereed international conferences / journals and got them accepted'. Prof. Martin Skitmore from the School of Urban Design, QUT, Australia 'There is no doubt in my mind that ePrints wil have improved things – especially in developing countries such as Malaysia — many more access my papers who wouldn’t have thought of contacting me personally in the 'old' days.  While this may … increase…citations, the most important thing…is that at least these people can find out more about what others have done'. Alma stressed that article use from repositories is usually from people who do not have access to the journal and is therefore a new audience. Alma looked at an example of the University of Liege, one of the most successful repositories and showed the increase in use of their papers ..."