Join the UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship and the UCL eResearch Domain to explore opening data and code.

Date: Thursday 28th October
Time: 4-5pm
Register: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/opening-data-code-who-is-your-audience-tickets-172935283087?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=escb

To achieve the potential impact of a particular research project in academia or in the wider world, research outputs need to be managed, shared and used effectively.

Open Research enables replicable tools to be accessible to a wide audience of users. The session will showcase three projects and discuss the potentials of reuse of data and software and how to adapt to different types of user.

Join our speakers and panel discussion to:

• understand the potential of sharing your data and software
• learn about how projects share their software and data with different audiences and how they tailored their open data & code to different audiences appreciate the needs of different types of user (e.g. industry based, policy maker, citizen scientists)

Please register online.

Join the UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship, UCL Press and UCL library Services in a policy briefing about the new UKRI open access policy.

Date: 26th October 2021
Time: 2-3pm
Register: https://ucl.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_TG1jEr6DSfOKIQQFE3emFw

The new UKRI open access policy announced in August 2020 affects academics publishing work that acknowledges UK Research Council funding. The policy requires open access on publication under the CC BY licence (or, exceptionally, CC BY-ND) for articles and conference papers submitted on or after 1 April 2022. It also requires open access no later than 12 months after publication for monographs, book chapters and edited collections resulting from a grant from one of the UK Research Councils, published on or after 1 January 2024. The UKRI policy will inform the open access policy for the next REF.

In this first UCL briefing session on the UKRI policy, Catherine Sharp (Head of Open Access Services) will set out the key policy points and compliant routes to publishing in journal articles and conference papers. Lara Speicher (Head of Publishing, UCL Press) will explore the details of the new UKRI monograph requirements, and their implications for authors. Professor Margot Finn (UCL History and immediate past President of the Royal Historical Society) will also join the session to discuss these changes and the implications for authors of monographs in the humanities and social sciences in particular.

Given the importance of the UKRI policy in shaping UK open access requirements, all researchers who publish are encouraged to attend a briefing on the UKRI policy, and to bring questions from their own disciplines.

Please register online.

Join UCL Press during open access week to find out more about their new open access textbook programme and how UCL academics can get involved.

Date: Wednesday October 27th
Time: 2pm
Sign up: https://ucl.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_SvPKEH_JTv2ziahZTCMmEA

The debate over access and affordability of eTextbooks is high on the agenda for many institutional libraries and publishers and many are calling for an open access solution.
In response, UCL Press is currently developing a new programme of open access textbooks, for undergraduate and postgraduate courses and modules, across disciplines. The new textbook programme will be the first OA textbook list in the UK and builds on the success of the Press’s publishing output and the significant increase in requirements for digital resources, in a changing teaching and learning environment. The programme offers the Press an opportunity to showcase and promote teaching excellence across a broad range of fields and contribute to the open culture UCL is continuing to build.
In this webinar we will discuss in more depth, why and how UCL Press are creating their open access programme and the opportunities, practicalities, and benefits of committing to, publishing and disseminating home-grown textbooks.

We will also focus on other initiatives and projects from UCL and from around the world to provide a forum for lively discussion about open access textbooks and education resources more broadly.

We encourage you to join us to hearing more about this programme and other OA initiatives.

Sign up: https://ucl.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_SvPKEH_JTv2ziahZTCMmEA

We are delighted to announce that UCL Press books have now been downloaded more than 5 million times. You can see the full details here.

Since launching in 2015, we’ve published more than 200 academic books – including monographs, edited collections and textbooks. Downloads have taken place in 245 countries and territories across the world, reaching readers in countries as far afield as Afghanistan and North Korea!

To celebrate, we’ve produced a video- enjoy!

We are delighted that The Global Smartphone: Beyond a youth technology (published on May 6th 2021) has hit the headlines across the world, with coverage in newspapers including The Sunday Times, The Guardian and Daily Mail.

Coverage in the UK and Ireland has included stories by The Scottish Herald, Reuters, The Irish Times, RTE, Newstalk, and an interview with lead author Prof Daniel Miller (UCL Anthropology) on Sky News this morning. Publications in Portugal (here, here, here and here), Germany, Brazil. Greece  (and here), Slovakia, Romania, Russia, Malaysia, Australia, Albania, Egypt, Russia, Italy, Israel, Czechia and France have also reported on the book’s findings.

The book documents the work of a team of 11 anthropologists who spent 16 months documenting smartphone use in nine countries across Africa, Asia, Europe and South America, with a particular focus on older adults. The team was led by Professor Daniel Miller, whose previous UCL Press series on global social media usage, Why We Post, saw more than a million downloads of the open access books that detailed the findings.

The Global Smartphone: Beyond a youth technology is written by Professor Daniel Miller (UCL Anthropology), Laila Abed Rabho, Patrick Awondo, Maya de Vries, Marília Duque, Pauline Garvey, Laura Haapio-Kirk, Charlotte Hawkins, Alfonso Otaegui, Shireen Walton, and Xinyuan Wang. It is part of the Ageing with Smartphones series, which also includes Ageing with Smartphones in Ireland and Ageing with Smartphones in Urban Italy.

Images from the archives of Moorfields Eye Hospital, held in the Joint Library of Ophthalmology and an interview with the librarian, Debbie Heatlie, feature in a Nature article Ophthalmology in 2020 gaining sight for sore eyes.  It is a fascinating read spanning 170 years of eye imaging to improve treatment, from artists’ detailed drawings, over a century ago, to 3D imaging and modelling, used by surgeons to plan operations today, looking forwards to the future of tele-ophthalmology and artificial intelligence.

The article came about because the NIHR Ophthalmology, based at Moorfields, does a great deal of outreach and publicity work to promote research funded by them to improve patient care and they know of our amazing archives.

The Sorbonne Declaration on Data Rights

27 January 2020 saw a number of global university networks assemble in Paris under the chairmanship of LERU (League of European Research Universities). The international Research Data Rights Summit was dedicated to a discussion of Open Data and national/regional legislative frameworks to support research data management, research data being the building blocks on which publications (such as journal articles) can be based. The meeting was called under the aegis of the Sorbonne University, the University of Amsterdam and UCL (University College London).

The Sorbonne Declaration is signed

Following intensive discussion, 8 global university networks signed the Sorbonne Declaration on research data management and research data rights. These networks are: the Association of American Universities (AAU), the Coordination of French Research-Intensive Universities (CURIF), the German U15, the Group of Eight (Go8) Australia, the League of European Research Universities (LERU), RU11 Japan, the Russell Group (UK), and the U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities. This Data Summit was unprecedented in its scale, with networks representing more than 160 of the main research-intensive universities in the world actively involved.

Research data is the new currency in the age of Open Science/Scholarship. This is an essential issue for the quality and transparency of research. It is also a crucial economic issue: funded largely by public money, research data represents tens of billions of euros worldwide. The objective is therefore to make these data accessible in order to accelerate scientific discoveries and economic development. For example, in Europe, according to a recent report produced by the European Commission, sharing and better managing research data would save 10.2 billion euros per year in Europe, with an additional potential of 16 billion euros of added value by the innovation generated. With the current global concern over the coronavirus, the sharing of research data can only help lead us faster to finding effective treatments. The Sorbonne Declaration is therefore set against the background of the growing importance of research data as a key scholarly output which can benefit society and address the global challenges which face humankind.

Zamansky Tower, Sorbonne University

The Sorbonne Declaration acknowledges a number of principles which underpin research activity in the age of Open Science/Scholarship, such as: research data should be openly shared and re-used as much as possible and it is the academic community which can identify the complex conditions for such re-use.

The university networks commit to a number of actions, such as: research data should be FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Re-usable); and changing reward schema to acknowledge FAIRness and Openness.

The Declaration calls on the global research community to build the necessary environment to encourage data sharing and makes a number of requests of funding agencies, such as to consider the full costs of research data management as eligible costs for funding; and of national jurisdictions, to ensure proper legislative frameworks to support openness and sharing, avoiding ‘lock in’ to commercial services.

Open Science/Scholarship is a force for good in the world, leading to better research methodologies and the global sharing of research publications. With the possibility to share research data, Open Science/Scholarship offers the potential to provide new routes for discovery and the creation of knowledge and understanding. This is what the Sorbonne Declaration aims to do – to create a scholarly landscape from which the whole of society can benefit.

Paul Ayris

Pro-Vice-Provost (UCL Library Services)

Open Science and the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi

On 15-17 January, UCL Library Services is hosting a distinguished visitor, Dr Nabi Hasan, Librarian and Head, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.

IIT Delhi is one of UCL’s key emerging partners in India – just as the visitors from Witwatersrand in South Africa, who joined us in November 2019, are for that region of the world.  As London’s Global University, UCL is developing a number of key partnerships and the Library is honoured to be asked to support UCL’s work in these endeavours.

The theme of Dr Hasan’s visit is Open Science. Although the visit is only one day old, a number of Open Science themes have emerged where possibilities for sharing and development have been identified. The first is in the UCL Press OA publishing model, which is of great interest to the IIT Delhi. The second is the response which UCL has made to delivering services which support research data management in an Open Science environment. The third is in the role of the Library as an institutional Leader to deliver Open Science practice and policies across the University.

Nabi also gave a presentation on the world of librarianship in India and on the work of his own library service in the IIT Delhi. Like UCL, IIT Delhi is a family of libraries – 20 in total. At a glance, the Central Library offers the following facilities and services which are available to 10,275 students and 685 Faculty members:

• Reader Services Division
• Collection Development Division
• Technical Processing Division
• Electronic Resources Division
• Research Support Services and Outreach Program
• Library App
• Faculty Profiling System
• Exploring International Library Collaborations
• Exploring Semantic/AI/Query based services for Ask the Librarian, eNewsClippings, Faculty Publications, etc.
• Exploring Robotic-based Closed Access Services
• Interactive Website
• Marketing of Library Resources, Services and Products
• Text Book, Book Bank and Theses
• Humanities and Social Science (HUSS), etc.

All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable day. Many thanks to all colleagues in UCL Library Services, to UCL ISD and to RLUK (Research Libraries UK) who are contributing to the programme over the three days.

Paul Ayris

Pro-Vice-Provost (UCL Library Services)

Three Librarians from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (Wits) gave a talk to UCL Library Services staff on the Higher Education sector in South Africa.

Salome Potgieter, Kedibone Ivory Moagi and Devind Donald Peter came to UCL in November 2019 following a visit of a delegation led by the Vice-Provost (Global Engagement) in 2018. The talk was an opportunity for them to share their experiences and learn from UCL Library staff about practical projects that could take the Library and the Wits user community forward.

Higher Education in South Africa

There are 26 universities in South Africa, split into Traditional Universities, Comprehensive Universities (vocational) and Universities of Technology. It is a massive sector with a student population of around million (compared to 2.3 million in the UK). Since the end of Apartheid in 1994, the student population has doubled. The number of black students has grown to more than 80% of the student body and women represent approximately 55% of enrolments.

The sector faces challenges including escalating costs, a Fees Must Fall campaign and calls to decolonise education and remove symbols of the apartheid past.

Wits University

The University of the Witwatersrand is called Wits for short (pronounced Vits) and students are called Witsies. It is one of the oldest universities in South Africa, founded in 1896 and given university status in 1922. There are five faculties spread over three campuses. It is one of the best universities in Africa, ranked first in Africa (Academic Rankings of  World Universities 2018) and in the top 400 universities in the world. There are around 38,000 students in total with 17% postgraduate level.

Wits is focused on research impact. It competes globally and acts locally. One area they explore this is in the Tshimologong (“New Beginnings”) Techknowledgy Factory which is often described as South Africa’s Silicon Valley. Wits supports #4IRSA – the Fourth Industrial Revolution in South Africa – an initiative developing the country’s digital technology sector through collaboration between academics, industry and government. A notable project was the “Brainternet” project, which streamed brainwaves onto the internet. Researchers from the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre also developed the first successful liver transplant from a mother living with HIV to her critically ill HIV negative child. Both mother and child survived and thrived. Open Access research is held on Wired Space online repository.

Witsies have the Wits Edge. There are many notable alumni, including several Nobel laureates one of whom was Nelson Mandela. It also home to Bidvest Wits Football Club – the Clever Boys- one of South Africa’s finest football teams.

Wits Libraries

Like UCL, Wits operates on a decentralised model. There are 11 libraries over three main campuses. The Wartenweiler Main Library and William Cullen Library are housed on East Campus along with the Architecture Library, Biophy Library and GeoMaths Library; Commerce, Engineering, Law Libraries are housed on West Campus; and the Management Library, Wits Health Science Library and Education Library are housed on the Parktown Campus.

There are many similarities between us and Wits. They receive over 2,500,000 visits per year (compared to an estimated 5 million at UCL in 2019-2020). Like most universities they find that users are using more online resources and they have noticed a decrease in the use of physical book stock.

The service is currently undertaking a Library Skills audit and are exploring systems to support this such as LibGuides. Currently some courses like Health Sciences and Commerce, Law & Management have Information Literacy embedded in the curriculum. Info-lit is also part of the “Road to Success Program” for first year Engineering & the Built Environment undergrads.

Alongside this, the Library team are involved in a Reimagining of Library Spaces project which aims to improve the user experience with digital technologies. As part of this process, Wits Library have created a new Learning and Innovation Centre, which is open 24 hours. The space will enable face-to-face engagement with groups of academics, researchers and students with flexibility to turn into a space for independent individual or group work. They have also created a Focus Room which includes Kapp boards (digital flipcharts), Video recording equipment and Nintendo switch, Xbox and PS4 consoles and on top of the usual laptops and large screens.

The library receive feedback from their users through the normal channels including liaison committees. They also use Facebook and Twitter to engage with their users.

Salome Potgieter, Kedibone Ivory Moagi and Devind Donald Peter

For more information, please read the slideshow from the talk.