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UCL Discovery reaches 50 million downloads!
By Rafael, on 27 June 2024
Guest Post by Dominic Allington-Smith (Open Access Publications Manager)
Photo by Erwan Hesry on Unsplash
UCL Publications Board and the Open Access Team are delighted to announce that on Monday 24 June, UCL’s institutional repository, UCL Discovery, reached the milestone of 50 million downloads! UCL Discovery is UCL’s open access repository, showcasing and providing access to UCL research outputs from all UCL disciplines. UCL authors currently deposit around 1,675 outputs in the repository every month (average figure for the current academic year).
The 50 millionth download was of the paper ‘Replenishing IRAK-M expression in retinal pigment epithelium attenuates outer retinal degeneration’ originally published in Science Translational Medicine by a team of researchers including UCL co-lead author Professor Andrew Dick. This paper found that increasing the levels of a key protein in the cells at the back of the eye could help protect against the age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of vision loss among older adults.
UCL Discovery hosts over 178,500 open access publications at the time of writing, comprising mostly self-archived copies of research outputs published elsewhere to bypass publisher paywalls, but also including doctoral and research master’s theses (contemporary submissions and historic digitisations), and books published by UCL Press. This variety of resources is displayed when viewing the highest-downloaded publication within the UCL hierarchy:
- Faculty of Arts and Humanities: A Connected Curriculum for Higher Education (UCL Press book, 2017)
- Faculty of Laws: Confessions, illegally/improperly obtained evidence and entrapment under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984: changing judicial and public attitudes to the police and criminal investigations (thesis, 1999)
- School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies: The Gesta Hungarorum of Anonymus, the Anonymous Notary of King Béla: A Translation (journal article, 2009)
- Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences: How the World Changed Social Media (UCL Press book, 2016)
- Faculty of the Built Environment (Bartlett): Why are most buildings rectangular? (journal article, 2006)
- Faculty of Engineering Sciences: Semi-structured qualitative studies (book chapter, 2013)
- Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences: The Traditional Four Steps Transportation Modeling Using a Simplified Transport Network: A Case Study of Dhaka City, Bangladesh (journal article, 2012)
- Faculty of Brain Sciences: What is mentalization? The concept and its foundations in developmental research (book chapter, 2012)
- Faculty of Life Sciences: Evaluation of the scale, causes and costs of waste medicines. Report of DH funded national project (report, 2010)
- Faculty of Medical Sciences: Textbook of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (UCL Press book, 2016)
- Faculty of Population Health Sciences: Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and the Prevention of Cancer: a Global Perspective (report, 2006)
- Institute of Education: Teaching at a distance in a digital age: perspectives from the Philippines (thesis, 2013)
This amazing milestone shows the scope and reach that sharing research through UCL Discovery has. There are a number of ways you can share your research at UCL, and we encourage you to continue sharing your research publications via UCL RPS and Profiles. Additionally, consider sharing other types of outputs such as data, code and software to further enhance the visibility and reproducibility of your work. The Research Data Management team maintain a guide on best practice for software sustainability, preservation and sharing, and can give further support to UCL researchers as required.
Congratulations to everyone involved in reaching this incredible milestone, and let’s continue to push the boundaries of open access and research sharing at UCL!
Get involved!
The UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship invites you to contribute to the open science and scholarship movement. Stay connected for updates, events, and opportunities. Follow us on X, formerly Twitter, LinkedIn, and join our mailing list to be part of the conversation!
Copyright and AI, Part 1: How Does Copyright Apply to AI-Generated Works?
By Rafael, on 21 June 2024
Guest post by Christine Daoutis, UCL Copyright Support Officer.
This the third blog post of the collaborative series between the UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship and the UCL Copyright team. Here, we continue our exploration of important aspects of copyright and its implications for open research and scholarship.
Photo by Google DeepMind.
In a previous post we introduced questions that arise when using and creating materials protected by copyright. What options are available to you if you want to reuse others’ work (e.g. articles, theses, images, film, code) in your research? And what do you need to consider before you share your own research with others? Issues around copyright protection, permissions, exceptions, licences, and ownership need to be examined when creating new works and including others’ materials. These questions are also relevant when we think about works that are created with the use of GenAI tools, such as ChatGPT. However, with the use of these technologies still being relatively new and the legal aspects being shaped as we speak, answers are not always straightforward.
GenAI Training Data: GenAI models are trained on a large number of materials, usually protected by copyright (unless copyright has expired or been waived). Does this mean AI companies are infringing copyright by using these materials? How would copyright exceptions and fair dealing/fair use apply in different countries? How would licence terms – including the terms of open licences – be respected? Answers will come both from legislation and codes of practice introduced by governments and regulatory bodies (such as the EU AI Act) and from the outcomes of court cases (see, for example, Getty Images vs Stability AI, the Authors’ Guild against OpenAI and Microsoft.
User Prompts: The prompts a user provides to the model (instructions, text, images) may also be protected. You should also consider whether the prompts you enter include any confidential/commercially sensitive information that should not be shared. Please see UCL’s IP policy for guidance on this.
Image Credit: Kris Kashtanova using Midjourney AI, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
AI-Generated Work: Is the AI-generated work an original work protected by copyright? Is it a derivative of other original works, and therefore, possibly infringing? If it is protected, who owns the copyright? The answer to this will vary by case and jurisdiction. In the US, a court ruled that AI-generated images in a comic book were not protected, although the whole comic book and story were. In China, it was ruled that images generated with the use of GenAI tools would be protected, with the owner being the person who provided the prompts. The UK’s CDPA (9.3) states that ‘in the case of a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work which is computer-generated, the author shall be taken to be the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken’.
In short, GenAI raises questions about what constitutes an original work, what constitutes infringement, how copyright exceptions and fair dealing/fair use are applied, and how authorship is established. While these questions are still being shaped, here are three things you can do:
- Consider any limitations in using GenAI besides copyright (e.g., confidentiality, biases, publishers’ policies). See UCL’s Generative AI hub for guidance.
- Be transparent about how you use GenAI. See UCL Library guidance on acknowledging the use of AI and referencing AI.
- If you have any copyright-related questions on the use of GenAI, contact the copyright support service.
While GenAI has opened up more questions than answers around copyright, it also offers an opportunity to think about copyright critically. Stay connected with us for Part 2 of this blog post, which will discuss how new technologies, including GenAI, are changing our understanding of copyright. We look forward to continuing this important conversation with you.
Get involved!
The UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship invites you to contribute to the open science and scholarship movement. Stay connected for updates, events, and opportunities. Follow us on X, formerly Twitter, LinkedIn, and join our mailing list to be part of the conversation!
UCL Open Science & Scholarship Conference 2024: Programme Now Available!
By Rafael, on 13 June 2024
With less than a week until this year’s UCL Open Science Conference, anticipation is building! We are thrilled to announce that the programme for the UCL Open Science & Scholarship Conference 2024 is now ready. Scheduled for Thursday, June 20, 2024, from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm BST, both onsite at UCL and online, this year’s conference promises to be an exciting opportunity to explore how the UCL community is leading Open Science and Scholarship initiatives across the university and beyond.
Programme Outline:
1:00-1:05 pm
Welcome and Introductions
Join us as we kick off the conference with a warm welcome and set the stage for the afternoon.
1:05-1:45 pm
Session 1: Celebrating our Open Researchers
Learn about the outstanding contributions of our Open Science champions and their work recognised at the UCL Open Science & Scholarship Awards last year.
1:45-2:45 pm
Session 2: Policies and Practice
Explore discussions on policy development and ethical considerations in Open Science, including talks on collaborative policy-making and the role of Open Source Programme Offices (OSPOs).
2:45-3:15 pm
Coffee Break
Network and engage with our fellow attendees over coffee, tea, and biscuits.
3:15-4:00 pm
Session 3: Enabling Open Science and Scholarship at UCL
Check out services and initiatives that empower UCL researchers to embrace Open Science, including updates on UCL Profiles, UCL Citizen Science Academy, and Open Science Case Studies.
4:00-4:45 pm
Session 4: Research Projects and Collaborations
Discover cutting-edge research projects and collaborations across UCL, including case studies involving the transition to Open Access publishing, reproducible research using medicinal plants, and social and cultural barriers to data sharing.
4:45-5:00 pm
Summary and Close of Main Conference
Reflect on key insights from the day’s discussions and wrap up the main conference.
5:00-6:30 pm
Evening Session: Poster Viewing and Networking Event
Engage with our presenters and attendees over drinks and nibbles, while exploring posters showcasing research and discussions in Open Science and Scholarship through diverse perspectives.
For the complete programme details, please access the full document uploaded on the UCL Research Data Repository, or access the QR code.
Join us – Tickets are still available!
Whether you’re attending in person or joining us virtually, we invite you to participate in discussions that shape the future of Open Science and Scholarship at UCL. Sales will close on Monday. Secure your spot now! Register here.
Thank you!
Thank you once more to everyone who submitted their ideas to the Call for Papers and Posters. We received brilliant contributions and are grateful for our packed programme of insightful discussions and projects from our community.
We look forward to welcoming you to the UCL Open Science & Scholarship Conference 2024!
Get involved!
The UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship invites you to contribute to the open science and scholarship movement. Stay connected for updates, events, and opportunities. Follow us on X, formerly Twitter, LinkedIn, and join our mailing list to be part of the conversation!
Understanding Research Metrics: UCL’s New LibGuide
By Rafael, on 29 May 2024
Guest post by Andrew Gray, UCL Bibliometrics Support Officer
The UCL Research Support team has recently launched a comprehensive new LibGuide on Research Metrics. This resource covers a range of topics, from how to use and understand bibliometrics (citation metrics and altmetrics) to guidance on specific tools and advice on handling publications data. Learn more about this guide to enhance your research impact and better understand the world of research metrics!
Image by Calvinius (own work), CC BY-SA 3.0
Bibliometrics
The core of the new guide is focusing on guidance for using and understanding research metrics, such as bibliometrics, citation metrics, and altmetrics. It explains how to access citation counts through Scopus and Web of Science, and more complex normalised metrics through InCites. It also gives guidance on how to best interpret and understand those metrics, and advice on metrics to avoid using. The guide also covers the UCL Bibliometrics Policy, which governs the use of bibliometric data for internal assessments at UCL, and sets some limits on what should be used.
Guidance for Tools
Within the LibGuide, you will also find guidance pages for how to use specialised services like InCites, Altmetric, and Overton to measure research impact. Additionally, the guide offers advice on using other tools that UCL does not subscribe to but may be beneficial for research support. This includes three freely available large bibliographic databases—Lens, Dimensions, and OpenAlex—which provide broader coverage than Web of Science and Scopus. It also outlines how to use a range of tools for citation-network based searching like Research Rabbit, Connected Papers, and Litmaps, as well as modern AI-supported search and summarising tools such as Scite, Keenious, and Consensus.
These are of course not the only tools available – especially with AI-supported tools, there are frequently tools being released – but these are ones we have been asked to investigate by students and researchers. If you would like feedback on another tool you are considering using, please get in touch.
Publications data
The LibGuide also addresses broader questions about using publications data. It outlines how to download publication and metrics datasets from Web of Science, Scopus, InCites, and Altmetric, and gives some guidance on how to link datasets from different sources together. Learn more about using publications data.
Additionally, the guide also explains how best to interpret data drawn from UCL-specific sources such as RPS, data ensuring you can make the most of the data available to you.
This new LibGuide is an important resource for anyone looking to expand their understanding of research metrics and manage their publications data. Visit the guide today to explore these tools and resources in detail.
Further support
We offer regular online or in-person training sessions as part of the Library Skills program. Please see the Library Skills calendar for dates and bookings. There are also three self-paced online sessions available through the Library Skills Moodle.
For any enquiries about bibliometrics, please contact us on bibliometrics@ucl.ac.uk
Get involved!
The UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship invites you to contribute to the open science and scholarship movement. Stay connected for updates, events, and opportunities. Follow us on X, formerly Twitter, LinkedIn, and join our mailing list to be part of the conversation!
Text and Data Mining (TDM) and Your Research: Copyright Implications and New Website Guidance
By Rafael, on 13 May 2024
This the second blog post of our collaborative series between the UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship and the UCL Copyright team. Here, we continue our exploration of important aspects of copyright and its implications for open research and scholarship. In this instalment, we examine Text and Data Mining (TDM) and its impact on research along with the associated copyright considerations.
Image by storyset on Freepik.
The development of advanced computational tools and techniques for analysing large amounts of data has opened up new possibilities for researchers. Text and Data Mining (TDM) is a broad term referring to a range of ‘automated analytical techniques to analyse text and data for patterns, trends, and useful information’ (Intellectual Property Office definition). TDM has many applications in academic research across disciplines (Intellectual Property Office definition). TDM has many applications in academic research across disciplines.
In an academic context, the most common sources of data for TDM include journal articles, books, datasets, images, and websites. TDM involves accessing, analysing, and often reusing (parts of) these materials. As these materials are, by default, protected by copyright, there are limitations around what you can do as part of TDM. In the UK, you may rely on section 29A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, a copyright exception for making copies for text and data analysis for non-commercial research. You must have lawful access to the materials (for example via a UCL subscription or via an open license). However, there are often technological barriers imposed by publishers preventing you from copying large amounts of materials for TDM purposes – measures that you must not try to circumvent. Understanding what you can do with copyright materials, what may be more problematic and where to get support if in doubt, should help you manage these barriers when you use TDM in your research.
The copyright support team works with e-resources, the Library Skills librarians, and the Office for Open Science and Scholarship to support the TDM activities of UCL staff and students. New guidance is available on the copyright website. TDM libguide and addresses questions that often arise during TDM, including:
- Can you copy journal articles, books, images, and other materials? What conditions apply?
- What do you need to consider when sharing the outcomes of a TDM analysis?
- What do publishers and other suppliers of the TDM sources expect you to do?
To learn more about copyright (including how it applies to TDM):
- Visit the new TDM guidance.
- Register for one of our copyright sessions.
- Contact the copyright team if you have specific questions or would like to organise a session for your department.
- The new UCL Copyright Literacy Community aims to bring together staff and students from across UCL to identify and collaborate on areas where an understanding of copyright should be strengthened. If you are interested in joining, please contact the copyright team.
Get involved!
The UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship invites you to contribute to the open science and scholarship movement. Stay connected for updates, events, and opportunities. Follow us on X, formerly Twitter, LinkedIn, and join our mailing list to be part of the conversation!
Join us for the UCL Open Science Conference 2024 – Register Now!
By Rafael, on 3 May 2024
Date and Time: Thursday, June 20, 2024, 1:00 PM – 6:30 PM GMT+1.
Location: IAS Common Ground, G11, South Wing, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT
We invite you to participate in an afternoon of discussions and presentations centred around Open Science and Scholarship at the UCL Open Science Conference 2024! Join us on Thursday, June 20, 2024, at the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, IAS Common Ground (Room G11), South Wing, UCL Wilkins building.
Attendees of UCL Open Science Conference 2023 during workshop
Discover pioneering practices and innovative research and initiatives at UCL that embody the principles of Open Science and Scholarship. This internally focused event aims to showcase the dynamic landscape of Open Science at UCL and explore its practical applications across scholarship and research domains, including Open Access Publishing, Open Data and Software, Transparency, Reproducibility, Open Educational Resources, Citizen Science, Co-Production, Public Engagement, and other open practices and methodologies.
Open to all UCL staff and students, our annual conference will feature various thematic sessions, followed by a poster session and networking opportunities in the evening for all attendees. Whether you’re an academic, researcher, student, or member of staff – or simply interested in Open Science/Open Research – this conference is the perfect place to learn, connect, and exchange ideas with colleagues. Early career researchers and PhD students from all disciplines are particularly encouraged to participate.
Our conference will adopt a hybrid format, offering both in-person and online participation options, with a preference for in-person attendance. Session recordings will be available for viewing after the conference.
Please book your free tickets using the Eventbrite link.
We look forward to welcoming you to the UCL Open Science Conference 2024!
Get involved!
The UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship invites you to contribute to the open science and scholarship movement. Stay connected for updates, events, and opportunities. Follow us on X, formerly Twitter, LinkedIn, and join our mailing list to be part of the conversation!
Launching today: Open Science Case Studies
By Kirsty, on 29 April 2024
Announcement from Paul Ayris, Pro-Vice Provost, UCL Library, Culture, Collections and Open Science
How can Open Science/Open Research support career progression and development? How does the adoption of Open Science/Open Research approaches benefit individuals in the course of their career?
The UCL Open Science Office, in conjunction with colleagues across UCL, has produced a series of Case Studies showing how UCL academics can use Open Science/Open Research approaches in their plans for career development, in applications for promotion and in appraisal documents.
In this way, Open Science/Open Research practice can become part of the Research Culture that UCL is developing.
The series of Case Studies covers each of the 8 pillars of Open Science/Open Research. They can be found on a new webpage: Open Science Case Studies 4 UCL.
It is only fair that academics should be rewarded for developing their skills and adopting best practice in research and in its equitable dissemination. The Case Studies show how this can be done, and each Case Study identifies a Key Message which UCL academics can use to shape their activities.
Examples of good practice are:
- Publishing outputs as Open Access outputs
- Sharing research data which is used as the building block of academic books and papers
- Creating open source software which is then available for others to re-use and develop
- Adopting practices allied to Reproducibility and Research Integrity
- The responsible use of Bibliometrics
- Public Engagement: Citizen Science and Co-Production as mechanisms to deliver results
Contact the UCL Open Science Office for further information at openscience@ucl.ac.uk.
UCL open access output: 2023 state-of-play
By Kirsty, on 15 April 2024
Post by Andrew Gray (Bibliometrics Support Officer) and Dominic Allington Smith (Open Access Publications Manager)
Summary
UCL is a longstanding and steadfast supporter of open access publishing, organising funding and payment for gold open access, maintaining the UCL Discovery repository for green open access, and monitoring compliance with REF and research funder open access requirements. Research data can be made open access in the Research Data Repository, and UCL Press also publish open access books and journals.
The UCL Bibliometrics Team have recently conducted research to analyse UCL’s overall open access output, covering both total number of papers in different OA categories, and citation impact. This blog post presents the key findings:
- UCL’s overall open access output has risen sharply since 2011, flattened around 80% in the last few years, and is showing signs of slowly growing again – perhaps connected with the growth of transformative agreements.
- The relative citation impact of UCL papers has had a corresponding increase, though with some year-to-year variation.
- UCL’s open access papers are cited around twice as much, on average, as non-open-access papers.
- UCL is consistently the second-largest producer of open access papers in the world, behind Harvard University.
- UCL has the highest level of open access papers among a reference group of approximately 80 large universities, at around 83% over the last five years.
Overview and definitions
Publications data is taken from the InCites database. As such, the data is primarily drawn from InCites papers attributed to UCL, filtered down to only articles, reviews, conference proceedings, and letters. It is based on published affiliations to avoid retroactive overcounting in past years: existing papers authored by new starters at UCL are excluded.
The definition of “open access” provided by InCites is all open access material – gold, green, and “bronze”, a catch-all category for material that is free-to-read but does not meet the formal definition of green or gold. This will thus tend to be a few percentage points higher than the numbers used for, for example, UCL’s REF open access compliance statistics.
Data is shown up to 2021; this avoids any complications with green open access papers which are still under an embargo period – a common restriction imposed by publishers when pursuing this route – in the most recent year.
1. UCL’s change in percentage of open access publications over time
(InCites all-OA count)
The first metric is the share of total papers recorded as open access. This has grown steadily over time over the last decade, from under 50% in 2011 to almost 90% in 2021, with only a slight plateau around 2017-19 interrupting progress.
2. Citation impact of UCL papers over time
(InCites all-OA count, Category Normalised Citation Impact)
The second metric is the citation impact for UCL papers. These are significantly higher than average: the most recent figure is above 2 (which means that UCL papers receive over twice as many citations as the world average; the UK university average is ~1.45) and continue a general trend of growing over time, with some occasional variation. Higher variation in recent years is to some degree expected, as it takes time for citations to accrue and stabilise.
3. Relative citation impact of UCL’s closed and Open Access papers over time
(InCites all-OA count, Category Normalised Citation Impact)
The third metric is the relative citation rates compared between open access and non-open access (“closed”) papers. Open access papers have a higher overall citation rate than closed papers: the average open access paper from 2017-21 has received around twice as many citations as the average closed paper.
4. World leading universities by number of Open Access publications
(InCites all-OA metric)
Compared to other universities, UCL produces the second-highest absolute number of open access papers in the world, climbing above 15,000 in 2021, and has consistently been the second largest publisher of open access papers since circa 2015.
The only university to publish more OA papers is Harvard. Harvard typically publishes about twice as many papers as UCL annually, but for OA papers this gap is reduced to about 1.5 times more papers than UCL.
5. World leading universities by percentage of Open Access publications
(5-year rolling average; minimum 8000 publications in 2021; InCites %all-OA metric)
UCL’s percentage of open access papers is consistently among the world’s highest. The most recent data from InCites shows UCL as having the world’s highest level of OA papers (82.9%) among institutions with more than 8,000 papers published in 2021, having steadily risen through the global ranks in previous years.
Conclusion
The key findings of this research are very good news for UCL, indicating a strong commitment by authors and by the university to making work available openly. Furthermore, whilst high levels of open access necessarily lead to benefits relating to REF and funder compliance, the analysis also indicates that making research outputs open access leads, on average, to a greater number citations, providing further justification for this support, as being crucial to communicating and sharing research outcomes as part of the UCL 2034 strategy.
Get involved!
The UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship invites you to contribute to the open science and scholarship movement. Stay connected for updates, events, and opportunities. Follow us on X, formerly Twitter, LinkedIn, and join our mailing list to be part of the conversation!
How understanding copyright can help you as a researcher
By Rafael, on 4 April 2024
Guest post by Christine Daoutis, Copyright Support Officer
Welcome to the inaugural blog post of a collaborative series between the UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship and the UCL Copyright team. In this series, we will explore important aspects of copyright and its implications for open research and scholarship.
Research ideas, projects, and their outcomes often involve using and producing materials that may be protected by copyright. Copyright protects a range of creative works, whether we are talking about a couple of notes in a notebook, a draft thesis chapter, the rough write-up of a data, a full monograph and the content of this very blog. While a basic knowledge of copyright is essential, particularly to stay within the law, there is much more to copyright than compliance. Understanding certain aspects of copyright can help you use copyright materials with more confidence, make use of your own rights and overall, enhance the openness of your research.
Image attribution: Patrick Hochstenbach, 2014. Available under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
This first post in our series is dedicated to exploring common questions that arise during research projects. In future posts, we will explore some of these questions further, providing guidance, linking to new resources, and signposting relevant workshops. Copyright-related enquiries often arise in the following areas:
Reusing other people’s materials: How do you GET permission to reuse someone else’s images, figures, software, questionnaires, or research data? Do you always need permission? Is use for ‘non-commercial, research’ purposes always permitted, or are there other factors to consider? How do licenses work, and what can you do when a license does not cover your use? It’s easy to be overconfident when using others’ materials, for example, by assuming that images found on the internet can be reused without permission. It’s equally easy to be too cautious, ending up not making use of valuable resources for fear of infringing someone’s rights. Understanding permissions, licenses, and copyright exceptions – what may be within your rights to do as a user – can help you.
Disseminating your research throughout the research cycle: There are open access options for your publications and theses, supporting access to and often, reuse of your work. How do you license your work for reuse? What do the different licenses mean, and which one is most suitable? What about materials produced early on in your research: study preregistrations, research data, preprints? How can you make data FAIR through licensing? What do you need to consider when making software and other materials open source?
Is your work protected in the first place? Documents, images, video and other materials are usually protected by copyright. Facts are not. For a work to be protected it needs to be ‘original’. What does ‘original’ mean in this context? Are data protected by copyright? What other rights may apply to a work?
Who owns your research? We are raising questions about licensing and disseminating your research, but is it yours to license? What does the law say, and what is the default position for staff and students at UCL? How do contracts, including publisher copyright transfer agreements and data sharing agreements, affect how you can share your research?
‘Text and data mining’. Many research projects involve computational analysis of large amounts of data. This involves copying and processing materials protected by copyright, and often publishing the outcomes of this analysis. In which cases is this lawful? How do licences permit you to do, exactly, and what can you do under exceptions to copyright? How are your text and data mining activities limited if you are collaborating with others, across institutions and countries?
The use of AI. Speaking of accessing large amounts of data, what is the current situation on intellectual property and generative AI? What do you need to know about legal implications where use of AI is involved?
These questions are not here to overwhelm you but to highlight areas where we can offer you support, training, and opportunities for discussion. To know more:
- Follow future posts on this blog.
- Register for an upcoming copyright session. If you cannot make those dates, please contact copyright@ucl.ac.uk to arrange a bespoke session.
- Visit our training and resources page for more ideas and links to online tutorials.
- Have a head start: visit our guidance on copyright and publications, copyright and research data and look out for upcoming guidance on text and data mining.
Get involved!
The UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship invites you to contribute to the open science and scholarship movement. Stay connected for updates, events, and opportunities. Follow us on X, formerly Twitter, LinkedIn, and join our mailing list to be part of the conversation!
(Update: Deadline Extended!) Call for Papers & Posters – UCL Open Science Conference 2024
By Rafael, on 21 March 2024
Theme: Open Science & Scholarship in Practice
Date: Thursday, June 20th, 2024 1-5pm, followed by Poster display and networking
Location: UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, IAS Common Ground room (G11), South Wing, Wilkins Building
We are delighted to announce the forthcoming UCL Open Science Conference 2024, scheduled for June 20, 2024. We are inviting submissions for papers and posters showcasing innovative practices, research, and initiatives at UCL that exemplify the application of Open Science and Scholarship principles. This internally focused event aims to showcase the dynamic landscape of Open Science at UCL and explore its practical applications in scholarship and research, including Open Access Publishing, Open Data and Software, Transparency, Reproducibility, Open Educational Resources, Citizen Science, Co-Production, Public Engagement, and other open practices and methodologies. Early career researchers and PhD students from all disciplines are particularly encouraged to participate.
Attendees of the UCL Open Science Conference 2023 participating in a workshop
Conference Format:
Our conference will adopt a hybrid format, offering both in-person and online participation options, with a preference for in-person attendance. The afternoon will feature approximately four thematic sessions, followed by a poster session and networking opportunities. Session recordings will be available for viewing after the conference.
Call for papers
Submission Guidelines:
We invite all colleagues at UCL to submit paper proposals related to Open Science and Scholarship in Practice, some example themes are below. Papers could include original research, case studies, practical implementations, and reflections on Open Science initiatives. Submissions should adhere to the following guidelines:
- Abstracts: Maximum 300 words
- Presentation Length: 15 minutes (including time for questions)
- Deadline for Abstract Submission: F̶r̶i̶d̶a̶y̶, A̶p̶r̶i̶l̶ 2̶6̶ Friday, May 3. (Deadline Extended!)
Please submit your abstract proposals using this form.
Potential Subthemes:
- Case Studies and Best Practices in Open Science and Scholarship
- Open Methodologies, Transparency, and Reproducibility in Research Practices
- Open Science Supporting Career Development and Progression
- Innovative Open Data and Software Initiatives
- Promoting and Advancing Open Access Publishing within UCL
- Citizen Science, Co-Production, and Public Engagement Case Studies
- Open Educational Resources to Support Teaching and Learning Experiences
Call for Posters
Session Format:
The poster session will take place in person during the evening following the afternoon conference. Posters will be displayed for networking and engagement opportunities. Additionally, posters will be published online after the conference, potentially through the Research Data Repository. All attendees are encouraged to participate in the poster session, offering a platform to present their work and engage in interdisciplinary discussions.
Submission Guidelines:
All attendees are invited to propose posters showcasing their work related to Open Science and Scholarship in Practice. Posters may include research findings, project summaries, methodological approaches, and initiatives pertaining to Open Science and Scholarship.
Deadline: Friday, May 24
Please submit your poster proposals using this form.
Next Steps
Photo by Samuel Regan-Asante on Unplash
Notifications of acceptance will be sent in the week ending May 10th for Papers and June 7th for Posters.
Recordings of the UCL Open Science Conference 2023, are available on this blog post from May 2023.
For additional information about the conference or the calls, feel free to reach out to us at openscience@ucl.ac.uk.
Watch this space for more news and information about the upcoming UCL Open Science Conference 2024!
