ORCiDs in RPS: have you added yours?

By Kirsty, on 23 July 2021

There are a number of ways that having an ORCiD can be useful:

• you can use it to distinguish yourself from other researchers, especially if you have a common name,
• you can use your ORCiD to easily find and connect to your outputs, activities, contributions and affiliations
• your ORCiD iD can also be used in place of a publications list or CV in applications to present your full list of contributions in one place
• and finally, you can connect your ORCiD to a growing number of institutions, funders, and publishers, including RPS here at UCL.

Linking your ORCiD to your account in RPS can have a number of additional benefits, key among which is to improve the accuracy of the auto-claiming of your publications. In addition to this, you can also allow RPS to send publications that you claim over to ORCID on your behalf, called ‘Read and Write’ in the table below.

Back in January 22% of research staff had linked their ORCiD to RPS and were using it to send content from RPS to their ORCID record. Now, 6 months later that total has increased to 29% with IOE leading the way with an impressive 42% of research staff using this feature.

Overall, over 70% of research staff at UCL have linked their ORCID to RPS in some way, but that means that there are still some people that aren’t taking advantage of this and using their ORCiD to its best effect.

To get more information about how to add your ORCiD to RPS, take a look at the guide provided by the Open Access team, or one of our previous blog posts that outlines more information about the ways to best use your ORCiD.

Open Access Week 2021 – your ideas wanted!

By Kirsty, on 12 July 2021

Last year for Open Access Week 2020 we ran a number of sessions and launched the Office for Open Science and Scholarship in style!

This year we want to try and celebrate all of the ways that the principles of Open can be applied across the board so we are currently working on planning sessions for Open Access Week 2021 with the theme Open in Practice. We want to take a broad look at the principles of Open and look at how they apply beyond articles and books, to other types of output like data, software, code or practice research and even the principles of FAIR, and other pillars of Open Science – everything is up for grabs!

We would like to invite ideas from across the UCL community for sessions we could run, guest blog posts, case studies or proposals for events that could be a part of our week.

Please send any comments or ideas to us by emailing the Office for Open Science & Scholarship by 30 July.

Copyright and Text & Data mining – what do I need to know?

By Kirsty, on 6 July 2021

Text and Data Mining (TDM) is a broad term used to cover any advanced techniques for computer-based analysis of large quantities of data of all kinds (numbers, text, images etc). It is a crucial tool in many areas of research, including notably Artificial Intelligence (AI). TDM can be used to reveal significant new facts, relationships and insights from the detailed analysis of vast amounts of data in ways which were not previously possible. An example would be mining medical research literature to investigate the underlying causes of health issues and the efficacy of treatments.

The importance of having copyright exceptions in place to facilitate TDM arises from the fact that the swathes of material which need to be mined are often protected by copyright. That would be true for example of “literary works” of all kinds and of images in many cases. It is frequently the case that researchers will have lawful access to the material but will be prevented from applying TDM techniques because copying the material onto the required computer platform risks legal action for infringement on the part of the copyright owners. “Copying” is of course one of the acts restricted by copyright law and in general the greater the amount and variety of material, the greater the copyright risk.

It is worth remembering that when the Government created an exception for Text and Data Mining in 2014, it meant that the UK was ahead of the game. Other countries did not generally have an exception in their legislation at that time. Since then, other jurisdictions have caught up and, in some cases overtaken the UK. Cutting edge research is a highly competitive area and researchers working in a country which benefits from a generous TDM exception will have a distinct advantage.

The existing exception is still significant from the Open Science perspective in enabling research projects where computer analysis of large quantities of copyright-protected material is required, particularly in the context of AI.

Let’s take a closer look at the UK TDM exception and what it allows us to do, before comparing it briefly with the more recent EU exceptions. The UK exception is to be found in Section 29A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

What does the exception allow us to do?

Copying copyright-protected works in order to carry out “text and data analysis” (“computational analysis” in the wording of the exception). The need to copy arises because researchers must have have the material to be analysed on a specific platform, to carry out the analysis. The need for the exception then arises because without it, the researcher would require permission from the owner of copyright in each item. Without permission (or an exception), the researchers would be infringing copyright by copying a vast swathe of protected material. That in turn would often make the research impractical to carry out.

Who may do this?

Absolutely anyone, the exception says “a person.” This is wonderfully broad and one of the more favourable aspects of the UK exception. For example you don’t need to be working for/ studying at a particular type of institution to benefit from the exception.

Are there conditions?

You must have lawful access to the material. A prime example would be the text of academic journals. We have lawful access to large numbers of e-journals because UCL Library subscribes to them. The exception would allow a UCL researcher to download large amounts of content from e-journals to carry out detailed analysis using specialised tools. It is important to note that the exception cannot be overridden by contract terms. It follows that a term in an e-journal contract seeking to prevent TDM would have no force, in circumstances where the exception applies. This makes the exception a much more useful tool than it would otherwise be.

As you might expect the copies made for TDM purposes may not be used for other purposes, shared etc under the exception.

Significantly, the analysis must be “…for the sole purpose of research for a non commercial purpose.” This is a major restriction, which would rule out many situations where TDM might be used, for example research by a pharmaceutical company developing new drugs which will be marketed commercially. A major issue with the exception is that it can be unclear at what point “non-commercial” shades into “commercial.” A project which starts out as academic research may take on commercial significance down the line and a piece of research with no commercial aspects may be funded by commercial sponsors. It is an important constraint in the legislation which can also be difficult to be sure about in real life situations. It can stand in the way of joint projects by HEIs and commercial organisations.

Still, in situations where we can claim there is no commercial aspect to the research, the exception is potentially very useful. In addition to material which is already digital it can cover projects where digitisation of copyright- protected print material is required to be analysed. It can be very useful in situations where the copyright status of the source material is unclear, since provided the exception applies, there is no need to investigate further the complexities of copyright in the material.

The new EU TDM exception or rather exceptions

The EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM Directive) offers two new exceptions, which EM member states are obliged to transpose. They can be found in Articles 3 and 4 of the Directive.

There are important differences of approach to the UK in the answer to the question:  who may carry out the TDM? Article 3 provides an exception which benefits two defined categories of organisations: “Research organisations” and “Cultural heritage organisations.” Included within those groups are for example universities, museums, publicly funded libraries. Commercial organisations are excluded. It seems that independent researchers, not associated with an organisation would also be excluded, even though their research might be “non-commercial.” In common with the UK legislation, this exception cannot be overridden by contract terms and is therefore a powerful tool. The Directive addresses the question of public-private research collaborations in the recitals to the directive, e.g. recital 11. They are not excluded from benefitting from the Article 3 exception.

Article 4 offers a separate TDM exception which is available to anyone (including commercial organisations) but which is limited in a specific way: If the rights owners explicitly reserve the rights to carry out TDM within their works, then it cannot be mined under the exception. In other words, the EU DSM Directive goes one step further than the UK by offering an exception which can be used to mine lawfully accessible works by commercial organisations (or by anyone else), but it does not apply if the rights owner has explicitly ruled out TDM.  By contrast, commercial organisations would not be able to use the UK exception, unless they can claim the specific research is for a non-commercial purpose.

Guest post by Chris Holland, UCL Copyright Support Officer. For more information or advice contact: copyright@ucl.ac.uk

Introduction to the CRediT taxonomy

By Kirsty, on 21 June 2021

The Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) describes 14 roles that represent the parts typically played by contributors to a scholarly output. The CRediT taxonomy has been adopted across a growing range of publishers to improve the visibility of the range of contributors to published research outputs. The established list of publishers and individual journals that use the roles is available online and also includes a few submission, peer review and research workflow tools.

The taxonomy also brings a number of additional practical benefits to the research environment, including:

• Reduce the potential for author disputes.
• Enable visibility and recognition of the different contributions of researchers, particularly in multi-authored works – across all aspects of the research being reported (including data curation, statistical analysis, etc.)
• Support identification of peer reviewers and specific expertise.
• ​Enable funders to more easily identify those responsible for specific research products, developments or breakthroughs.
• Improve the ability to track the outputs and contributions of individual research specialists and grant recipients.
• Easy identification of potential collaborators and opportunities for research networking.
• Enable new indicators of research value, use and re-use, credit and attribution​.

We have recently added information about the CRediT taxonomy to the Open Access website, to make sure that you can get all information related to publishing your research in the same place, and as always, the Office for Open Science & Scholarship, and the Open Access team are available to answer any questions you may have on this or any other related topic.

CRediT updates

In April 2020 the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announced the formal launch of its work to develop the Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT) as a full ANSI/NISO standard.

Later in 2020, CRediT was awarded grant funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Wellcome Trust. The funds will be used to support implementations of the taxonomy across scholarly publishers, and within the scholarly research ecosystem more broadly once the standard is established.

During the early part of 2021, ORCID officially started supporting CRediT. As part of the upgraded API, journals can share CRediT contributions with ORCID and include them in your ORCID record. For more information about ways to automate updates to your ORCID record, check out our blog post on the subject.

Open Science & Scholarship Newsletter – June 2021

By Kirsty, on 2 June 2021

Welcome to the third issue of the Open Science and Scholarship Newsletter!

This termly newsletter has updates across the 8 Pillars of Open Science, and contributions from colleagues across the university. If you would like to get involved, give feedback or write something for a future issue, please get in touch using the details at the end of the newsletter or by leaving a comment below.

In this issue:

• Editorial
• Update from the Head of the Office for Open Science & Scholarship
• Community voice – Reliability and Reproducibility in Computational Science
• Special Feature – Open Science in Horizon Europe
• Deep Dive – Top posts from our blog
• News and Events

Go to the newsletter on Sway, or view it below. If you use the version below, we recommend clicking the ‘full screen’ button to get the full experience!

When viewing a Sway, you can turn on Accessibility view. This view displays a high-contrast style for easier reading, disables any animations, and supports keyboard navigation for use with screen readers.

To turn on Accessibility view:

• If you’re using a mouse or touchscreen, on the More options menu (shown as three dots on the Sway toolbar), choose Accessibility view.
• If you’re using a screen reader, on the More options menu, when Accessibility view is selected, you hear “Displays this Sway in a high contrast design with full keyboard functionality and screen reader access to all content.”

Upcoming webinar: Focus on Open Science

By Kirsty, on 1 June 2021

The UCL Office for Open Science & Scholarship is collaborating with the University of Stockholm and Scientific Knowledge Services on organising an Open Science Webinar on 18 June.

Open Science started as a vision, aiming to address matters like research reproducibility and access to the results of publicly-funded research. The vision was generally welcomed by academic and research institutions and has benefited from a great advocacy movement. It’s high time now to build on practice and effective management.

It is generally accepted in Europe that research should be as open as possible and as closed as necessary. Finding the borderline between the two is one of the most important tasks for practitioners, whether they belong to funders, research organisations, their partners or researchers themselves. This borderline is not sufficiently explored. Guidelines based on feedback and learning from practice should be created, sooner rather than later. This innovative approach to research has further potential: to address existing inequalities and matters like inclusivity, ethics, better assessment or the missing links between science and society or to re-shape public-private partnerships.

Emphasizing research practices, we will discuss the role of research organisations to support this transition, both acting local and internationally.

The webinar is a part of the #FocusOpenScience series. The language of the presentations will be English.

Visit https://www.focusopenscience.org/book/21stockholm/ for further details, and to register.

Upcoming event: UCL Festival of Code

By Kirsty, on 24 May 2021

The UCL Festival of Code (14-18 June 2021) celebrates the contribution software and coding communities make to research and innovation.  Register for the opportunity to learn new skills, tools and insights, as well as to build your network across UCL. The nine events include interactive workshops, a hackathon, panel discussions, speakers and competitions. The Festival brings together academics, researchers, technical professionals and students to Celebrate Communities, Explore Open Science, Create Impact, discover R Projects and participate in a collaborative Hackday! Its going to be a great week –  Book your spot online.

We would like to especially highlight Tuesday 15th June 2021, where the festival will be Exploring Open Science, and the day will be opened by Dr Paul Ayris (Head of the UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship).

10:00 – 11:00  An Introduction to Open Science Practices: From Code to Data and Beyond

Find out about the benefits of open science and explore practices of code and data sharing, replications, as well as open access publishing. Learn about tools/platforms which can help you to embed open science in your work flow.

Organised by Dr Sandy Schumann (UCL Department of Security and Crime Science) | UCL JDI Open | @JDI_Open

11:15 – 12:15  Code sharing as an Early Career Researcher: the good, the bad and the ugly

Join us to discuss the benefits and barriers to code sharing for Early Career Researchers, get practical advice about how to do it (e.g. via GitHub), and explore ways it can be encouraged at UCL.

Organised by Louise McGrath-Lone (Institute of Health Informatics), Ania Zylbersztejn, Rachel Pearson ( bothGOS Institute of Child Health) | UCL Code Club | @UCL_CodeClub

14:00 – 16:00   Use of Docker for Efficient Software Development & Reproducible Research

A valid piece of code can produce different results based on its computational environment, libraries and other dependences. Join this interactive workshop to learn how to use Docker to overcome these issues and improve the reproducibility of your research.

Organised by Mian Ahmad | UCL Computer Science Technical Support Group | Wellcome / EPSRC Centre for Interventional and Surgical Sciences

The Festival is coordinated by the UCL eResearch Domain and we would like to thank our colleagues from across UCL who have organised these events.

Brexit and Beyond – what does copyright look like post-Brexit?

By Kirsty, on 20 May 2021

On Monday 17th May, we brought together three experts for an in depth look at the impact that Brexit has already had on copyright in the UK and what could be coming next.

Catherine Stihler (CEO Creative Commons), Ben White (Researcher, Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management, Bournemouth University) and Dr Emily Hudson (Reader in Law, King’s College London) all brought their own distinct backgrounds and experiences to bear on this topic for a truly interesting discussion.

Open in Media Central or view below

Brexit and beyond webinar in conjunction with Copyright4Knowledge

By Kirsty, on 4 May 2021

On the back of our successful #EbookSOS webinar we are doing it again – join us for another collaboration with Copyright4Knowledge, this time on the subject of the post-Brexit copyright world.

What will the copyright environment be like post-Brexit? How can we best advocate for more library- and research-friendly copyright legislation? The European Union and the European Court of Justice have long exercised a major influence on UK copyright law and the decisions of UK courts in copyright matters. What will happen post-Brexit, given that EU copyright law no longer applies directly in the UK?

Brexit poses many questions for the Library and Research communities and we will endeavour to explore some of them in our Brexit and beyond webinar on 17^th May 2021, from 11.00 to 12.30. You are invited to join our three expert speakers to discuss the copyright environment for HE and Research post Brexit.  What are the challenges post-Brexit and does Brexit also present opportunities?

There will be an opportunity to put your questions to the panel in a final Q and A session.

The webinar is free to attend but if you would like to join us please register via Eventbrite

Draft programme

• 00-11.10  Welcome and introduction
• 10-11.30 European digital policy and why it still matters to the UK, Catherine Stihler (CEO Creative Commons)
• 11.30-11.50 Will the UK fall behind the EU in important areas of digital research and online access to 20th century cultural heritage? Benjamin White (Researcher, Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management, Bournemouth University)
• 11.50-12.10 Some suggestions for copyright advocacy in the post-Brexit world, Dr Emily Hudson (Reader in Law, King’s College London)
• 12.10-12.30 Q&A

UCL Open Science Conference Day 2: Tuesday 27th April

By Kirsty, on 30 April 2021

We have now collated all of the recordings and uploaded them to UCL Media Central, a full write-up of the event and some remaining questions will follow next week.

Day 1 content is also available

13:10 – 13:30 Count-erproductive? The role of metrics in the advancement of Open Science: Lizzie Gadd

Open in Media Central or view below

13:40 – 14:00 Toolkit for Transparency, Reproducibility & Quality in Energy Research: Gesche Huebner & Mike Fell

Full paper link https://journal-buildingscities.org/articles/10.5334/bc.67/

Open in Media Central or view below

14:20 – 15:00 Reproducibility, Transparency & Metrics panel

Open in Media Central or view below

15:25 – 16:05 Citizen science panel

Open in Media Central or view below

Links to Monica’s projects:

• https://www.pahus.org/early-years-exhibition-
• https://www.acesoghc.com/neon
• https://www.acesoghc.com/chip