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Do you ever consider sharing your research data with others? That is, sharing the actual data, not only reporting on it through articles, books and conference papers.
Right now, a range of stakeholders is working on increasing public access to research data. For example, some research funders have started to demand that beneficiaries make their data available to others, and publishers ask authors to provide links to research data when publishing a journal article.
There are many reasons for this surge: One of them is that the quality of research can improve with increased access to data, since this openness allows for more critical examination of published studies, and makes it easier to replicate and build on previous research. Another argument is that tax-payers should be able to access the findings that stems from publicly funded research.
However, there are several challenges to open research data. Some are legal issues; e.g. who owns and who is responsible for the data? Some are ethical; e.g. how can informants' integrity and privacy be preserved when data is made public? Other challenges are technical, and concern system design and infrastructure; e.g. how should a system be designed in order to withstand the rapid technological evolution?
To be able to meet these challenges Karlstad University has launched a project run as a pilot during 2018 (Rb 9/18). The aim of the pilot is to develop a support function called DAU - Data Access Unit - at Karlstad University. The DAU will be part of the Swedish National Data Service (SND) infrastructure for managing research data produced at Swedish higher education institutions. The purpose of the DAU support function is to educate and give advice to researchers on the management of research data. This support will include legal, technical, ethical, economical, and communication aspects and can be used at any time during the research process, from planning to post-project management.
The pilot is led by Sofia Andersson at Grants and Innovation Office, and the project group consists of staff from the University Administration and Central Services. The library is represented by Nadja Neumann and Magnus Åberg. Case studies with researchers will be conducted as the project progresses. More information on the development of the DAU will follow in upcoming newsletter issues.
Magnus Åberg, newsletter editor
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- ... that you don't have to register your published article in DiVA if the journal is indexed in Scopus or Web of Science (easiest to check journals via Journal Citation Reports). We import records from these databases directly to DiVA, for your convenience! :-)
- ... that undergraduate students arrange a language café in the Library during this spring? If you are good at Swedish and want to help KaU employees, international students, refugees and immigrants to improve their Swedish, or if you would like to improve your own Swedish skills, you are welcome to join the café in the Library's Learning Lab, floor 3, on Tuesdays between 4 and 6 pm. The library provides coffee and tea, no registration needed. Click here for more information. Contact Amani Taleb.
- ... that if you are planning, working on, or want to read a systematic literature review, PROSPERO might be something for you. PROSPERO is an international database of prospectively registered systematic reviews in health and social care, welfare, public health, education, crime, justice, and international development, where there is a health related outcome. PROSPERO is produced by the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination at York University, and funded by the National Institute for Health Research.
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Many researchers who wish to publish their work open access are surprised by the often expensive article processing charges (APC). University libraries have worked to facilitate open access publishing, e.g. by offering funds such as Karlstad University's APC-fund, but also by pushing publishers to include open access components in license contracts.
First out was Springer Compact, where the open access APC is pre-paid by the library, and therefore free of charge for you, when publishing in any of Springer's approx. 1,700 hybrid journals.
As of 2018, also Taylor and Francis APC's are pre-paid by the library, and you are able to publish open access free of charge in any of their approx. 2,300 hybrid journals. As with Springer, the process is straightforward on your behalf. When your manuscript has been accepted to an eligible journal you will be asked by Taylor and Francis to accept the open access offer, and we at the library's publishing support will confirm your KaU affiliation. After that, your paper will be made open access. Easy-peasy and at no charge for you! :-)
In addition, a new deal has been struck with the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). Once again, the APC's are pre-paid by the library. When your manuscript has been accepted for publishing in any of RSC's 40 journals, you will be offered a choice to make your paper open access free of charge. This deal took effect on 1 January 2018 so if your paper has been accepted after this you can benefit from the deal. Click here to view RSC title list (Excel).
Queries? Please contact publiceringsstod@kau.se. You can also read more about the different choices at:
https://www.kau.se/en/library/researchers/publish/open-access
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'Meet a Researcher' ("Möt en forskare") is an open lunch seminar series where staff, students, and the general public can listen to KaU scholars presenting interesting research findings. We meet in the Library's Learning Lab, floor 3. For short introductions to the presentations visit the seminar series' web page. Welcome!
Presenting researchers:
6 March: Associate professor Jorge Solis - "Robotar som ett hjälpmedel för äldre"
18 April: PhD student Agnes Kitkowska - "Measuring privacy attitudes and behaviours"
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For a long time open access has revolved around journal articles. But since 2015 the universities of Gothenburg, Lund, and Uppsala run a project - Kriterium - which aims to properly peer review and disseminate open access books. The basic idea is to provide a quality stamp, which will increase and assure the scientific quality of academic books. Kriterium is intended for researchers affiliated with any Swedish higher education institution. So far seven books have been published.
Kriterium was run as a pilot between 2015 - 2017 and now two evaluations of the project have been published:
Isak Hammar (2017). Kriterium: Experiences from the Pilot Phase.
Helena Francke (2017). Kriterium Evaluation: Pilot Project.
Do you have thought on this? E-mail us at publiceringsstod@kau.se
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We would like to extend warm congratulations to Dennis Åsberg, formerly Ph.D. student at the Department of Engineering and Chemical Sciences, for receiving the 2017 Phabian award for best doctoral thesis in pharmaceutical and biomedical analysis.
The prize is awarded by the Swedish Pharmaceutical Society, a non-profit organisation aiming to further developments in pharmaceutical research. Except the honour of winning Dennis receives a scholarship of 25,000 SEK.
You can listen to our podcast with Dennis and read his thesis Fundamental and Regulatory Aspects of UHPLC in Pharmaceutical Analysis in DiVA.
Please let us know if you or any of your colleagues are nominated for or have won a publishing award. We would be glad to let everyone know! Please contact us: publiceringsstod@kau.se
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Higher education institutions have two tasks, research and education. And, well, then there is that bit which in Swedish sometimes is called "tredje uppgiften", i.e. communicating and interacting with the world outside academia. Many researchers gladly engage in "tredje uppgiften"-matters, talk to journalists, have open presentations, and write popular scientific texts or opinion pieces. Others are for different reasons hesitant towards this outward focus and some may think of such work as interfering too much with the actual research.
However, as Susanne Pelger at Lund University writes in this piece, studies show that research actually can be improved if the scholar engages in popular scientific writing and talking. Research and research communication can be seen as mutually reinforcing one another. For this reason, we at publishing support would like to encourage you, if you are a doctoral student, to partake in our popular scientific podcast Forskningspodden when you are finalizing your thesis.
A long withstanding "truth" in the world of academic publishing is that most science papers get few or no citations to them. According to this Nature news feature the geneticist and Nobel prizewinner Oliver Smithies once told his students about one of his papers:
"Nobody ever quoted it, and nobody ever used the method".
However, Smithies was wrong. The paper had gotten citations, albeit he didn't know about them. The Nature feature goes on to show that the idea that most papers will not be cited is false, or at least exaggerated. A closer look at papers that got no citations proved that they actually are used, although not always by other researchers referencing them in publications. This is perhaps obvious, but may still be an important reminder, that the value of an article doesn't rest solely on how much citations it gets. For Raju Kucherlapati, co-author to Oliver Smithies only de-facto un-cited paper, the importance of it lay in something completely different:
"For me, the significance of that paper was that I got to know Oliver."
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