Category Archives: oa.ref

Industry not harvest: Principles to minimise collateral damage in impact assessment at scale | Impact of Social Sciences

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“As the UK closes the curtains on the Research Excellence Framework 2021 (REF2021) and embarks on another round of consultation, there is little doubt that, whatever the outcome, the expectation remains that research should be shown to be delivering impact. If anything, this expectation is only intensifying. Fuelled by the stated success of REF 2014, the appetite for impact assessment also appears – at least superficially – to be increasing internationally, albeit largely stopping short of mirroring a fully formalised REF-type model. Within this context, the UK’s Future Research Assessment Programme was recently announced, with a remit to explore revised or alternative approaches. Everything is on the table, so we are told, and the programme sensibly includes the convening of an external body of international advisors to cast their, hopefully less jaded eyes upon proceedings….”

 

Tool to Support with REF2021 Open Access Compliance has been released in the New Version of the CORE Repository Dashboard – CORE

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“CORE is happy to announce the release of a new version of the CORE Repository Dashboard. The update will be of particular interest to UK repositories as we are releasing with it a new tool to support REF2021 open access compliance assessment. The tool was developed for repository managers and research administrators to improve the harvesting of their repository outputs and ensure their content is visible to the world. Full details here.”

The never-ending story | Research Information

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“At the same time, the REF open access mandate had just been announced, stating journal articles and some conference proceedings had to be publicly accessible within three months of acceptance for publication in order to be eligible for submission for the post-2014 research excellence framework. Given the double-whammy of easier depositing and REF urgency, WestminsterResearch saw self-deposits rocket from less than one per cent to more than 99 per cent while practice-based/non text-based entries mushroomed by 246 per cent.

‘The Haplo repository and REF open access mandate came at a similar time and the combined power of both led to this massive increase in self-deposits,’ highlights Watts. 

‘The mandates really helped people to comply to open access,’ she adds. ‘And we believe that factors contributing to more practice-based research included vastly improved templates and fields for these outputs… in the past, the repository just couldn’t take this content.’

Following these results and the looming REF2021, WestminsterResearch switched to a full Haplo open source-set up in 2018, and entries have continued to rise. As Watts put it: ‘I don’t think we’d have been able to support the increase in open access deposits without this rise in self-depositing.’…”

The never-ending story | Research Information

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“At the same time, the REF open access mandate had just been announced, stating journal articles and some conference proceedings had to be publicly accessible within three months of acceptance for publication in order to be eligible for submission for the post-2014 research excellence framework. Given the double-whammy of easier depositing and REF urgency, WestminsterResearch saw self-deposits rocket from less than one per cent to more than 99 per cent while practice-based/non text-based entries mushroomed by 246 per cent.

‘The Haplo repository and REF open access mandate came at a similar time and the combined power of both led to this massive increase in self-deposits,’ highlights Watts. 

‘The mandates really helped people to comply to open access,’ she adds. ‘And we believe that factors contributing to more practice-based research included vastly improved templates and fields for these outputs… in the past, the repository just couldn’t take this content.’

Following these results and the looming REF2021, WestminsterResearch switched to a full Haplo open source-set up in 2018, and entries have continued to rise. As Watts put it: ‘I don’t think we’d have been able to support the increase in open access deposits without this rise in self-depositing.’…”

December 2019 open access update now available | Jisc scholarly communications

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“A range of enhancement reports in this issue. To pick a couple: we are delighted to report that Publications Router is now receiving feeds from 11 publishers and feedback from users suggests that the service is increasing in importance to institutional workflows. We are also very pleased to have added nearly 900 new repositories to OpenDOAR after working with CORE colleagues and carrying out some extensive QA work to resolve previously unlisted repositories. As the dust from the general election settles and policies are announced, we are looking forward to using the capabilities we have built into our new Romeo infrastructure to respond to national policy compliance. We talked a little about this at our recent event on “Planning for Plan-S”, which was well received by attendees with some good conversations and thinking about the challenge, and all this in the midst of REF preparations.  The event has given us some very useful feedback for future institutional needs. As we go forward into REF and Plan S next year, we will all face challenges and changes, but we are here to support you throughout. As ever, get in touch with us and tell us about the way you use our services: what you like, what you don’t like and anything you would like to see improved….”

A look at prediction markets | Research Information

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“Assessing the quality of research is difficult. Jisc and the University of Bristol are partnering to develop a tool that may help institutions improve this process.  

To attract government funding for their crucial research, UK universities are largely reliant on good ratings from the Research Excellent Framework (REF) – a process of expert review designed to assess the quality of research outputs. REF scores determine how much government funding will be allocated to their research projects. For instance, research that is world-leading in terms of originality, significance and rigour, will be scored higher than research that is only recognised nationally. 
 
Considerable time is spent by universities trying to figure out which research outputs will be rated highest (4*) on quality and impact. The recognised ‘gold standard’ for this process is close reading by a few internal academics, but this is time-consuming, onerous, and subject to the relatively limited perspective of just a few people.  …

Prediction markets capture the ‘wisdom of crowds’ by asking large numbers of people to bet on outcomes of future events – in this case how impactful a research project will be in the next REF assessment. It works a bit like the stock market, except that, instead of buying and selling shares in companies, participants buy and sell virtual shares online that will pay out if a particular event occurs – for instance, if a paper receives a 3* or above REF rating.  …”

REF Assistant, Goldsmiths, University of London

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“We are seeking a REF Assistant to join the Online Research Collections team at Goldsmiths, University of London to provide valuable support to Goldsmiths’ REF 2021 submission. The successful candidate will work closely with REF Project Officers and Open Access Advisor to organise research outputs for REF 2021. You will be responsible for adding, editing and reviewing metadata of items on Goldsmiths Research Online (GRO), our institutional Open Access repository. You will help gather information on Open Access compliance for REF 2021. As a highly organised individual, you will help produce practice research outputs and collate material for the final REF submission. The post will require you to communicate effectively, confidently and clearly with academics and professional services staff on REF 2021, Open Access and Goldsmiths Research Online….”

Promoting openness – Research Professional News

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“Of the potential solutions, open research practices are among the most promising. The argument is that transparency acts as an implicit quality control process. If others are able to scrutinise our work—not just the final published output, but the underlying data, code, and so on—researchers will be incentivised to ensure these are high quality.

So, if we think that research could benefit from improved quality control, and if we think that open research might have a role to play in this, why aren’t we all doing it? In a word: incentives….”

Open Access Monographs in the UK: A data analysis

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“One of the key challenges of open access book publishing is determining who pays. As pointed out in section 9, and also by Eve et al. (2017), library funding alone would not be sufficient to support a shift to OA books under an immediate OA model; this would bring about undue pressures on library budgets, resulting in sector inequalities (particularly regarding for institutions that do not receive a large amount of QR funding). As could be seen from the sample in section 8, a significant proportion of publisher revenue for UK REF books also comes from non-UK HEIs. In addition, researchers clearly indicated in the survey that they do not want to be limited in their choice of publisher from any country in the world, and publishers are eager to continue to enjoy their entrepreneurial freedom….”

Open access and monographs evidence review

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This report presents new evidence on academic book publishing in the UK, and puts forward a set of stakeholder recommendations to be considered as part of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and Research Excellence Framework (REF) Open Access reviews.

 

The report has been published by the Universities UK (UUK) Open Access Monographs Group. A data analysis of Open Access books in the UK, carried out by fullstopp GmbH and supported by Research England and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (both part of UK Research and Innovation), Jisc and the British Academy, has also been published alongside the UUK report.  

The UUK report draws on a quantitative analysis of the current landscape of long-form publications in the higher education sector, and its engagement with more than 90 organisations at two events,  including publishers, learned societies, subject associations and research libraries….”

REF should accommodate more diverse outputs, says study | Times Higher Education (THE)

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“The UK’s research excellence framework should evolve to support the growing diversity of scholarly outputs, a major report says.

The study by consultants Rand Europe, who were commissioned by Research England to consider how research assessment might need to evolve over the next decade, draws on a survey of 3,768 academics in England.

 

It says that, while scholars currently produce an average of 4.7 different types of research output, this is likely to increase to 6.5 over the next decade, with 65 per cent of respondents saying that they expected to produce a greater diversity of output.

Respondents said that the three most dominant forms of output were likely to remain journal articles, conference contributions and book chapters. But many mentioned other types of content that they expected to produce more of in future: for example, website content, openly published peer reviews and research reports for external bodies….”

REF should accommodate more diverse outputs, says study | Times Higher Education (THE)

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“The UK’s research excellence framework should evolve to support the growing diversity of scholarly outputs, a major report says.

The study by consultants Rand Europe, who were commissioned by Research England to consider how research assessment might need to evolve over the next decade, draws on a survey of 3,768 academics in England.

 

It says that, while scholars currently produce an average of 4.7 different types of research output, this is likely to increase to 6.5 over the next decade, with 65 per cent of respondents saying that they expected to produce a greater diversity of output.

Respondents said that the three most dominant forms of output were likely to remain journal articles, conference contributions and book chapters. But many mentioned other types of content that they expected to produce more of in future: for example, website content, openly published peer reviews and research reports for external bodies….”

REF Project Officer, Goldsmiths, University of London

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“This post is based in the Library within the Online Research Collections team who manage and organise Goldsmiths research outputs via Goldsmiths Research Online and Goldsmiths Journals Online. This post will work alongside another REF Project Officer and REF Project Assistant to prepare Goldsmiths research outputs for submission to REF2021 and report to the Online Research Collections Manager.

The successful candidate will have excellent organisational skills and will be required to review, edit and enter metadata for research outputs, gather information on Open Access compliance, advise and assist academics who produce Practice Research, produce reports and communicate effectively to a variety of stakeholders.”