If you have a ResearchGate profile, you should be aware that 5 publishers, including Elsevier, Wiley, and the American Chemical Society, have sent take-down notices to ResearchGate. The publishers argue that 40% of the papers uploaded to ResearchGate are copyrighted. In 2013, Elsevier made a similar demand to Academia.edu.

In a further move, Elsevier and the American Chemical Society are taking legal action to prevent ResearchGate from uploading copyrighted content from the web. The website will prompt you to add these full-text articles to your profile. In most cases, authors who do so will have breached their copyright transfer agreement.

Researchers who are required to comply with the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications must be aware that uploading articles to ResearchGate, Academia.edu, or similar sites does not satisfy the policy requirements. Researchers at Ryerson should be using RULA’s Digital Repository. For assistance with the repository and open access publishing, contact Brian Cameron at bcameron@torontomu.ca.

Please see Times Higher Education for a brief article about this issue.

Faculty members looking for a new venue for sharing research will want to know about FACETS, a new multidisciplinary, peer reviewed open access journal published by Canadian Science Publishing. The journal publishes articles in the biological sciences, biomedicine and health, environmental science, engineering, physical sciences, and integrative sciences (such as ethics, public health, science policy, sustainability, etc.).

The creation of this journal is part of a larger shift in academic publishing away from traditional for-profit commercial publishers to an open access landscape that permits faculty members to retain copyright over their intellectual property and facilitate wider sharing of the results of their research. These and other open access benefits prompted the drafting of the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications, which now requires that research funded by NSERC, SSHRC, and CIHR be made open access.

Dr. Imogen Coe, Dean of the Faculty of Science at Ryerson and one of the editors for the new journal, notes that “The classic routes of publication are extraordinarily expensive for new researchers, for small labs with limited funds and for individuals all over the world who want access but get stuck with expensive paywalls.“

As a new journal, FACETS does not yet have an impact factor, a metric that reflects the average number of citations to articles recently published in a specific journal. Dr. Coe advises emerging researchers to “find a balance between impact factor and other measures of impact and contribution.” She also points out that some researchers mistakenly rely on impact factors as a measure of article quality. “Publication in the highest impact journal in the world – with no subsequent citations suggest that there was really no impact of the contribution. Publication in a low impact journal combined with huge numbers of citations suggests a truly impactful contribution.”

A major challenge for libraries supporting open access publishing is finding sustainable funding to support article processing fees (APCs). FACETS will charge an APC of $1350, which is less than most other APCs. The Ryerson Library provides some support for open access author fees via memberships with Biomed Central, the Public Library of Science, and Hindawi. For more information about open access publishing, the library’s open access author fund, and our Digital Repository, please see: http://learn.library.ryerson.ca/scholcomm.

International Open Access Week takes place October 19th to 25th, 2015! Open Access material is work that is made legally available on the public Internet with no restrictions so the anyone can access the full text. To celebrate this important cause, the Library is proud to host the following events.

1) The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz

This documentary film will be streaming on Tuesday, October 20th between 10:00 AM and 5:00 PM in the SLC amphitheatre.  The film depicts the life of American computer programmer, writer, political organizer, Internet activist, and lifetime open access advocate, Aaron Swartz.

2) Free Webinar: Faculty Perspectives on Publishing Open Access

Anyone can register for this free webinar to watch it online, or you can drop by LIB489B on Tuesday, October 20th at 2:00 PM and join library staff for a group viewing.

Reports find that perceptions of open access publishing are changing for the better and that more and more faculty members are seeking out OA publications for maximum access and impact. However, other researchers continue to avoid it, and those who are early in their careers still aren’t sure how to fit it in their publishing priorities. In honor of Open Access Week, this one-hour webinar will feature three faculty members who will discuss why researchers do – or do not – publish in open access outlets and how they look to librarians for support in this process.

Alan Daly, Chair and Professor of the Department of Education Studies at the University of California, San Diego, will discuss how open access publishing is the best option for the individual researcher and the research community as a whole. Bruce Herbert, Professor of Geology and Director of the Office of Scholarly Communications at Texas A&M University, will discuss why researchers at his institution avoid open access outlets for publishing research and why subscription-based journals remain the best option for many. Shannon Audley-Piotrowski, Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology at Smith College, will discuss publishing priorities for early-career researchers.

3) Free Up Your Teaching: An Introduction to Open Access Material (LTO workshop)

Wednesday, October 21st 2015, 12:00pm – 2:00pm, POD 372

When combined with creative commons materials, public domain historical materials, and open access journals and books, the Fair Dealings Exception to the Copyright Act implies a greater amount of available content. Learn where to locate free textbooks and images to augment your PowerPoint slides.

Michelle Schwartz, LTO Research Associate, and Ann Ludbrook, Copyright Librarian, will offer tips, resources and information on library services available to reduce the work required to compile course readings. Dr. Nancy Walton, Director of e-Learning, will discuss practical application of open access materials to enhance your teaching.

Register for this workshop now.

After some delay, the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications has been released. The policy requires that any peer-reviewed publication(s) arising from grants received from any of the three agencies (CIHR, NSERC, SSHRC) be made freely accessible within 12 months of publication. The new policy comes into force for any grants awarded after May 1st, 2015. It’s worth noting that CIHR has had an open access policy since 2008.

Researchers funded by any of these three agencies are required to either:

1) Publish in a journal that allows immediate open access or one that permits open access within 12 months of initial publication; and/or

2) Deposit the final, peer-reviewed author version of your article in an online open access repository, such as RULA’s Digital Repository.

It is important to note that option 2 does not require any payments to publishers, but option 1 might incur an open access article processing fee.

The Ryerson Library maintains deposit accounts, to cover open access charges, with PLoS, Biomed Central, and Hindawi. In addition, we accept applications for funding from other journals, subject to criteria outlined in our Open Access Author Fund policy page.

Have you recently published in a journal? Do you know your rights as an
author? Join us for a presentation and discussion focusing on how you can
protect your author rights and reuse, republish and redistribute your work.
Learn about how to protect your intellectual property through addenda to
copyright transfer agreements and avoid the pitfalls associated with impact
factors. We will also discuss the value of open access publishing and
Digital Commons @ Ryerson, our institutional repository.

Presenter: Brian Cameron, Digital Initiatives Librarian, Toronto Metropolitan University
Library and Archives

This presentation will take place on Friday, October 26 from 12-2 in the
OVPRI board room (1 Dundas Street, YDI-1134). Lunch will be served at 12
p.m., with the talk starting at 12:45.

Please RSVP to bcameron@ryerson.ca by October 24th, as space is limited.