Last month the University Libraries conducted an institution-wide OA survey. We are very pleased with the number of responses received. At this time we would like to share our preliminary results set with you. We will offer analysis of some of our findings shortly.
We’d also like to announce the winners of our drawing for several Starbucks gift card/insulated cup packages: Erin Crawford, Dr. David Nemeth, and Dr. Stephanie Hughes.
And we thank everyone again for their participation!
Although the annual Open Access Week is several months behind us, the University Libraries is interested in keeping the conversation on open access going.
Just over two years ago the University Libraries conducted a survey to gauge UT’s institutional perception of and experience with the open access (OA) publishing environment. If you are a faculty member or researcher, GA or TA, we would like to invite you to participate in our NEW follow-up survey.
The IRB-approved survey (which takes about 10 minutes to complete) asks first some basic questions about your understanding, views and experiences with open access research and publishing. The second part of the survey asks your opinions on the best use of an institutional repository. The “institutional repository” (or IR) has become the preferred scholarly publishing and digital curation tool for researchers at universities worldwide. It serves both as a storehouse and a showcase of the intellectual and creative output of an institution: from faculty research articles and data sets, to student theses, dissertations and projects, to media and grey literature, conference presentation files, and more. The IR can even serve as a publishing platform. The University Libraries will soon be launching a brand new IR and so we would like to have as much feedback as possible on the best way to maximize its value and impact. If you would like, you can read more about repositories here.
So if you are a faculty member, GA or TA, please consider taking the survey! Upon completion of the survey you may opt in for a random prize drawing. Thanks.
UPDATE [3/2/14]: Survey is now closed. Thanks to all who participated!
artist: Kilom691 / used under CC license
… and faculty … and others interested in art books and resources at the UT Libraries!
The Toledo Museum of Art Reference Library in collaboration with Carlson Library would like to hear from library users on your use of art books, databases and other resources and services. We primarily want to hear from art majors, students taking studio art or art history courses, and faculty and staff who use the libraries for art purposes. But all are welcome to take the survey who are interested in helping us improve our services and collections in the visual arts.
Please take a few moments now to fill out our survey. Or if you’d like to take it later, the link will remain up for most of the semester.
NOTE: You may also opt in for a prize drawing – an art book, of course!
This week (October 24-30) marks the fifth annual Open Access Week, sponsored by The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC). It will be celebrated in a number of ways worldwide.
The UT Libraries and Open Access Steering Committee would like to take this opportunity to poll UT faculty, research professors, clinical professors, lecturers, postdocs and others about their experiences, perceptions and views of open access. You can help us by participating in Open Access – A Survey for UT Faculty.
Open Access. OA. You may have heard this term popping up more and more in your academic surroundings lately. But do you know exactly what it is?
OA is sometimes confused with open source which is a practice of sharing software code. Open Access, on the other hand, is a philosophy growing in acceptance and practice — that of communicating and sharing scholarly information, research and knowledge with few or no limitations or restrictions. A concise definition of OA can be found in the Budapest Open Access Initiative which emerged out of a meeting of the Open Society Institute in December 2001.
“By open access to … literature, we mean its immediate, free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link to the full text of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software or use them for any other lawful purpose…”
For a more detailed explanation, see “What is Open Access?” by Charles W. Bailey, Jr.
A small group of interested UT faculty have gathered together this fall to begin to investigate how the university might move in the direction of OA. Many faculty who have National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants are already familiar with the open access experience through the NIH Public Access Policy which “requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication.” PubMed Central is just one example of a subject-specific open access repository.
Many faculty, however, are not familiar with the process or philosophy of open access. We hope that Open Access Week can begin to help those who are unfamilar catch up. A recent Chronicle of Higher Education blog post mentions the headway made by at least one early adopting institution, The University of Kansas, and the obstacles it still faces. However, The University of Kansas is now joined by nearly two dozen institutions who have taken up the call to address the crisis in journal publishing costs by implementing open access policies.
Watch for more updates on open access during Open Access Week and beyond!
11/1/11 UPDATE: THE SURVEY IS NOW CLOSED. SURVEY DRAWING WINNER TO BE CONTACTED THIS WEEK AND RESULTS EXPECTED TO BE POSTED TO OUR OPEN ACCESS LIBGUIDE IN THE NEAR FUTURE.
The University of Toledo Libraries are conducting a short survey to find if we are meeting the information needs of UT faculty, staff and students. We would greatly appreciate you taking the time to complete our 5 minute survey. We welcome your feedback!