Category Archives: oa.u.manchester

The University of Manchester becomes the new home of CrimRxiv – The global open access hub for Criminology · CrimRxiv

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“The University of Manchester is the new home of CrimRxiv, a repository and hub for open access (free) criminology and criminal justice publications. This strengthens UoM’s reputation as a global leader in criminology and in open research. Since its launch in July 2020, CrimRxiv has freely shared over 2,000 publications, with nearly 230,000 views by more than 112,000 readers from 209 countries….”

The OBC Welcomes University of Manchester Library | 6 March 2023 | Open Book Collective

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“As a member of the UK’s prestigious Russell Group, Manchester University is recognised as a world-leading research institution. You can read more about the University’s commitment to Open Access (OA) at their website here. Thanks to Manchester University’s support, the flourishing of a more bibliodiverse landscape for scholarly books is better assured. By becoming a member of the Open Book Collective, libraries have the opportunity to evaluate, compare, and support a bespoke range of small-to-medium Open Access book publishers and groups that are building important technical infrastructure for the creation and curation of OA books, and are also able to combine initiatives in any way they see fit, as well as support the OBC as a whole, thereby enabling libraries to support OA books in ways that allow them to demonstrate that their investments in OA books have broad impact in multiple sectors of the landscape of scholarly communications. The OBC, and the librarians who support it, are committed to a more equitable landscape for OA books and moving away from author-facing Book Processing Charges, our members are committed to collaborative, horizontal modes of working together on opening access to scholarly books for readers globally, without monetary, technical, or other barriers….”

Self-publishing, Open Textbooks and Open Practices at The University of Manchester – UK Open Textbook Project

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“I spoke to Lucy May, Scholarly Communications Librarian (@UoMLib_Lucy), and Helen Dobson, Scholarly Communications Manager (@h_j_dobson), based at The University of Manchester, about open access publishing at the University and the interest they’d received from students in self-publishing journals. 

The University of Manchester Library has explored its relation to publishing over the past few years through a number of university projects, which have resulted in collaborative outputs involving both Manchester University Press (MuP) and other university departments.  In Spring 2018 MuP launched Manchester HIVE, a one-stop-shop to e-resources available via the University and host of Manchester Open Library (MoL) content.

Previously both the library and MuP had supported MoL which provided a platform for open access journals produced at the University, including the James Baldwin Review….”

University of Manchester’s RCUK Open Access 2016-17 report | Library Research Plus

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“The beginning of April marked the end of the fourth year of RCUK’s Open Access (OA) policy.  We submitted our finance and compliance report in May and have made our 2016-17 APC data available via the University’s institutional repository, Pure.

The headlines for us from this period are:

  • We have estimated 75% compliance for 2016-17 (54% Gold OA and 21% Green OA).
  • This is a significant increase in Green OA. In part this is due to the launch of HEFCE’s OA policy but it is also a consequence of the constraints of the block grant, ie, we have been unable to meet demand for Gold OA during the reporting period.
  • Despite the increase in Green OA, expenditure on Gold OA has not decreased. This is partly due to publishers that do not provide a compliant Green OA option but increased APC unit level costs are also a factor.
  • We have reported an 18% increase in the average APC cost in 2016/17 (£1869) against the 2015/16 average (£1578). To some extent this increase can be accounted for by foreign exchange rate differences.
  • Although we operate a ‘first come, first served’ model for allocating the block grant, it was necessary to impose restrictions for 3 months of this period. We limited expenditure to Pure Gold OA journals, non-OA publication fees and hybrid journals that do not provide a compliant Green OA option.
  • The level of Gold OA achieved has only been possible due to continued investment from the University (£0.2m) and credits/discounts received from publishers relating to subscription packages and offsetting deals (£0.1m).
  • We arranged Gold OA with 60 different publishers. Of these, we managed offsetting schemes and memberships with 11 and arranged Gold OA for only one paper with 20.
  • We continued to assess publisher deals to obtain best value from the block grant but are committed to engaging only with publishers that offer a reasonable discount and overall fair OA offer.
  • As in previous years, most APCs were paid to Elsevier (139), almost double the number paid to the next publisher, Wiley (75).
  • As in previous years, our highest cost APC (£4679) was paid to Elsevier.  The lowest cost APC (£196) was paid to the Electrochemical Society.
  • We reported expenditure of £72,297 on ‘other costs’.  This amount includes colour and page charges as well as publication fees associated with Green OA papers.
  • Despite reminders to authors that papers must be published as CC-BY, 8 papers were published under non-compliant licences and we were unable to identify licences for a further 16 papers.  We contact publishers to correct licences when we are aware of a non-compliant licence.
  • We continued to see engagement with Gold OA from Humanities researchers who produce outputs other than journal articles. We have supported Gold OA for one monograph and one book chapter during the reporting period, at a cost of £11,340 from the block grant.  A further monograph has been paid for from an institutional OA fund.
  • Despite a concerted effort on our part we continued to see inconsistency in the inclusion of grant acknowledgements on papers.  We act in good faith when approving payment from the block grant but believe a joined up approach from RCUK, institutions and publishers is needed to ensure all researchers are aware and fulfil this requirement consistently.”

Going Green: a year of supporting the HEFCE OA Policy | Library Research Plus

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“In total there’s a 55% Green OA/45% Gold OA split, and given that Green OA represents more inconvenience than most of our academic colleagues unfamiliar with arXiv have ever been willing to tolerate, it is very unlikely indeed that the University would have achieved such high compliance had the Library not provided a mediated Green OA deposit service. The data confirms our approach helped make Green Open Access an organisational habit practically overnight. 

The approach has come at a cost however; over the past year, supporting the HEFCE OA policy has taken up the majority of the team’s bandwidth with most of our 9am-5pm conversations being in some way related to a paper’s compliance with one or more funder OA policy.

Now that our current processes have bedded in, and in anticipation of the launch of the new UK Scholarly Communications License (UK-SCL) – for more on this read Chris Banks’s article or watch her UKSG presentation – and further developments from Jisc, we hope that over the next 12 months we can tilt the balance away from this reductionist approach to our scholarly output and focus on other elements of the scholarly communication ecosystem. For example, we are already in discussions with Altmetric about incorporating their tools into our OA workflows to help our academics build connections with audiences and are keen to roll this out soon – from early conversations with academics we think this is something they’re really going to like.”