As we conclude International Open Access Week, we have been inspired by a wealth of discussions and events across UCL! This week, we have explored balancing collaboration and commercialisation, highlighted the work of Citizen Science initiatives, discussed the role of open access textbooks in education, and addressed key copyright challenges in the age of AI to ensure free and open access to knowledge.

Today, we are excited to introduce the UCL Statement of Principles of Authorship. This new document, shaped through a co-creation workshop and community consultation, provides guidance on equitable authorship practices and aims to foster more inclusive and transparent research collaboration across UCL.

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The team at the UCL Office for Open Science & Scholarship is pleased to launch the UCL Statement of Principles of Authorship. These principles have been built up from a co-creation workshop and developed in consultation with our academic community and are now available for wider use, linked from our website.

In August 2023, the OOSS Team posted a discussion about the challenges of equity in authorship and the co-production workshop held during that year’s Open Science & Scholarship Conference. We outlined some preliminary considerations that led to the workshop, summarised the discussion and emerging themes, including the need to more widely acknowledge contributions to research outputs, the power dynamics involved in authorship decisions, and ways to make academic language and terminology accessible for contributors outside the academic ‘bubble’.

The outcomes of the workshop were then used as the basis for developing the new Statement of Principles of Authorship. This document provides general advice, recommendations and requirements for authors, designed to complement the UCL Code of Conduct for Research and align with existing published frameworks, such as the Technicians Commitment or CRediT. The document outlines four core principles and a variety of applications for their use across the broad range of subject areas and output types that are produced across the institution. It also proposes standards for affiliations and equitable representation of contributors.

While it is true that academic publishing is a complex and changing environment, these principles are intended as a touchstone for discussions around authorship rather than explicit expectations or policy. They can guide decision making, help understand how affiliations should be presented for best consistency and traceability in the long term, and empower people to request inclusion or make plans to include citizen scientists or other types of collaborators to their work.

We look forward to hearing the many ways that these principles can be used by the community!

For a full overview of our #OAWeek 2024 posts, visit our blog series page. To learn more about the Principles of Authorship and stay updated on open science initiatives across UCL, sign up for our mailing list.

 

We are approaching the end of International Open Access Week, and we have been enjoying a series of interesting insights and discussions across UCL!  Earlier this week, we explored the balance between collaboration and commercialisation, highlighted the important work of Citizen Science initiatives and the growing significance of open access textbooks.

Today, Christine Daoutis, UCL Copyright Support Officer, will build on our ongoing series about copyright and open science, focusing on how we can ensure free and open access to knowledge in the age of AI, by addressing copyright challenges, advocating for rights retention policies, and discussing secondary publication rights that benefit both researchers and the public.

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Open Access Week 2024 builds on last year’s theme, Community over Commercialisation, aiming not only to continue discussions but to take meaningful action that prioritises the interests of the scholarly community and the public. This post focuses on copyright-related issues that, when addressed by both individual researchers and through institutional, funder, and legal reforms, can help create more sustainable and equitable access to knowledge.

Retaining author rights

Broadly speaking, rights retention means that authors of scholarly publications avoid the traditional practice of signing away their rights to publishers, typically done through a copyright transfer agreement or exclusive licence. Instead, as an author, you retain at least some rights that allow you to share and reuse your own research as openly as possible. For example, you could post your work in an open access repository, share it on academic networks, reuse it in your teaching, and incorporate it into other works like your thesis.

Many funders and institutions have specific rights retention policies that address related legal issues. If such a policy applies, and publishers are informed in advance, authors typically need to retain rights and apply an open licence (usually CC BY) to the accepted manuscript at the point of submission.

Rights retention ensures that your research can be made open access without relying on unsustainable pay-to-publish models, and without facing delays or restrictions from publishers’ web posting policies. Importantly, rights retention is not limited to published research—it can be applied to preprints, data, protocols, and other outputs throughout the research process.

Secondary Publication Rights (SPRs)

Secondary publication rights (SPRs) refer to legislation that allows publicly funded research to be published in an open access repository or elsewhere, at the same time as its primary publication in academic journals. Some European countries already have SPRs, as highlighted by the Knowledge Rights 21 study conducted by LIBER, and LIBER advocates for #ZeroEmbargo on publicly funded scientific publications. There are ongoing calls to harmonise and optimise these rights across countries, ensuring that the version of record becomes immediately available upon publication, overriding contractual restrictions imposed by publishers.

SPRs can apply to different types of research output and are meant to complement rights retention policies. However, introducing SPRs depends on copyright reform, which is not an action individual researchers can take themselves, though it’s still useful to be aware of developments in this area.

Artificial Intelligence and your rights

The rise of Generative AI (GenAI) has introduced broader issues affecting researchers, both as users and as authors of copyrighted works. These include:

• Clauses in subscription agreements that seek to prevent researchers from using resources their institution has subscribed to for AI-related purposes.
• Publishers forming agreements with AI companies to share content from journal articles and books for AI training purposes, often without clear communication to authors. A recent deal between Taylor & Francis and Microsoft for $10 million has raised concerns among scholars about how their research will be used by AI tools. In some cases, authors are given the option to opt in, as seen with Cambridge Press.
• For works already licensed for reuse, such as articles under a CC BY licence or those used under copyright exceptions, questions arise about how the work will be reused, for what purposes, and how it will be attributed.

While including published research in AI training should help improve the accuracy of models and reduce bias, researchers should have enough information to understand and decide how their work is reused. Creative Commons is exploring ‘preference signals’ for authors of CC-licensed works to address this issue.

The key issue is that transferring your copyright or exclusive rights to a publisher restricts what you can do with your own work and allows the publisher to reuse your work in ways beyond your control, including training AI models.

Using Copyright exceptions in research

UK copyright law includes exceptions (known as ‘permitted acts’) for non-commercial research, private study, criticism, review, quotation, and illustration for instruction. As a researcher, you can rely on these exceptions as long as your use qualifies as ‘fair dealing’, as previously discussed in a blog post during Fair Dealing Week. Text and data mining for non-commercial research is also covered by an exception, allowing researchers to download and analyse large amounts of data to which they have lawful access.

Relying on copyright exceptions involves evaluating your purpose and, for some exceptions, making a decision around what is ‘fair’. This also involves some assessment of risk. Understanding copyright exceptions helps you exercise your rights as users of knowledge and make confident assessments as to whether and when a copyright exception is likely to apply, and when permission is necessary. [see links for UK legislation at the end of this article]

Engage with copyright at UCL

The conversations sparked during Open Access Week continue throughout the year at UCL as part of ongoing copyright support and education. To engage further with these issues, you can:

• Add your voice to how copyright literacy is shaped at UCL. Provide feedback on the draft UCL copyright literacy strategy and consider joining the new UCL copyright literacy community.
• Attend a copyright training session or email copyright@ucl.ac.uk to arrange a bespoke session. The newly introduced ‘Copyright, Open Science and Creativity’ game is a fun way of engaging with current debates and learning about recent developments. More dates for this will be released soon.
• Follow copyright news on the Open@UCL blog and the Copyright blog.

Useful Legislation

• Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Section 29: Research and Private Study
• Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Section 29A: Text and Data Mining for Non-Commercial Research
• Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Section 30: Text and Data Mining
• Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Section 32: Copying for non-commercial research

As we continue celebrating International Open Access Week, it’s inspiring to see how open access is shaping research and collaboration across UCL! Earlier this week, we explored the balance between collaboration and commercialisation, and highlighted the important work of Citizen Science initiatives.

Midway through the week, Dhara Snowden, Textbook Programme Manager at UCL Press, shares her insights below on the growing significance of open access textbooks and their role in the broader landscape of open access publishing.

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UCL Press is the UK’s first, and largest, fully open access university press. We have been publishing books and journals for almost ten years, covering a wide range of subjects and formats. In 2021, the press launched a new programme focusing on open access (OA) textbooks. I joined at that time, and over the past three years, I’ve been responsible for managing our progress in this area. As part of this year’s International Open Access Week, I wanted to share some of our thinking and planning around this activity and offer some musings about OA textbook publishing in general and what the future holds.

What are Open Access Textbooks?

Firstly, it’s useful to clarify what we mean by “textbooks.” Through conversations with academics across faculties, I’ve realised this term can mean different things depending on the context and level of study. In the broadest sense, a textbook is a resource that supports the delivery of a course or module. Textbooks can provide a wide-view survey of a field or subject, to be “adopted” as the main guide for study, or they can be part of a reading list that includes chapters from various sources, like journal articles.

Although textbooks were traditionally published in print, there has been increasing demand for digital versions of commercial textbooks, which can be purchased by individuals and licenced to institutions for use for multiple users.

Open access publishing, meanwhile, involves making scholarly content freely available online, removing subscription or purchase barriers. In the context of textbooks, this means students and educators can access high-quality educational resources without significant costs. OA textbooks are typically published under a Creative Commons (CC) licence, which allows for redistribution, adaptation, and modification, promoting a collaborative and inclusive educational environment.

The creation and uptake of OA textbooks has seen a sharp increase in recent years, particularly in the US and UK, with non-profit-funded publishers like OpenStax, collaboratively funded projects like CORE Econ, and platforms like Pressbooks. The Open Textbook Library, supported by Open Education Network, currently indexes 1,542 published open textbooks.

Why do we create them?

The UCL Press textbook programme was set up in direct response to issues around pricing for institutional access to essential e-textbooks, which were exacerbated during the Covid-19 pandemic. The current ecosystem presents an unstable and unsustainable financial model for institutional libraries, as well documented by the eBooks SOS campaign, which calls attention to the lack of regulation in pricing by commercial publishers.

An article published by Insights in 2022, ‘Perspectives on e-books and digital textbooks and the way ahead’, claims that ‘combined spending on book across nationally negotiated library purchasing frameworks increased from £55M in 2019/20 to £73M in 202/21, with e-textbook provision increasing by 281% to £25.1M during that time’.

In addition to concerns about affordability and sustained access, the Insights article outlines that post-pandemic, “shifts in teaching practice are accelerating demand for features that enhance blended learning”, with more flexibility and adaptability in resources being required, which isn’t being delivered by traditional academic publishing.

UCL Press’s aims to disrupt the current academic publishing ecosystem, offering authors and readers an alternative to the commercial model. This connects the theme for OA Week 2024, which calls for community over commercialisation. Bringing publishing back to the hands of academy, we can provide sustainable and high-quality textbooks to facilitate hybrid teaching and remove barriers to access for our content thereby reaching the widest possible audience and increasing chances to impact in scholarly communities.

How do we create them?

The UCL Press textbook programme commissions and publishes textbooks for undergraduate and postgraduate students across a wide range of subjects and topics. Every new proposal (and final manuscript) undergoes a rigorous peer-review process to ensure high-quality and relevant content.

Our approach is to collaborate with lecturers to create resources that provide high-quality guidance for students. Taking a personal and flexible approach to each project, we avoid rigid templates or a one-size-fits-all mentality, tailoring our textbooks to the needs of students and subject matter.

To date, we’ve published two textbooks. The first, An Introduction to Waste Management and Circular Economy, came out in December 2023. This textbook supports a module taught at UCL but also has global relevance for courses in environmental engineering, resource efficiency, bioenergy, and waste-to-energy technologies.

More recently, we published  Methods and Methodologies in Heritage Studies, an edited collection exploring the disciplinary debates, intellectual legacies, and practical innovations that shape contemporary understandings of heritage value.

 

 

Together, these two titles have been downloaded over 12,000 times in 152 countries and territories. Our forthcoming titles include, A Guide to Performing Systematic Reviews of Health and Disease and Fundamentals of Dark Matter, both due to publish early next year.

What are the benefits of writing or using OA textbooks? Where’s the value?

There are many benefits to writing and using OA textbooks and the European Network of Open Education Librarians have created a toolkit to encourage use of OA materials and Open Educational Resources (OER). Some key points are listed below.

• Reaching a Global Audience: downloads and views from readers across the globe, particularly the Global South.
• Cost-Effectiveness: One of the most significant advantages of OA textbooks is their cost-saving potential for both library and student. OA resources can alleviate this burden, allow to redistribution of saved funds and make education more accessible for all.
• Adaptability: open licences enable reuse, modification and adaptation, enabling educators to make the content work best for teaching.
• Showcase Teaching Excellence: OA textbooks can help platform new approaches or area of study, and celebrate examples of teaching excellence.
• Encourage lifelong learning: Provide students with resources they can use and reference after their studies and into their careers.
• Accessibility and Inclusivity: Open access textbooks are available to anyone with an internet connection, supporting diverse learners, including those in remote or under-resourced areas, and those outside academic institutions(e. professionals and policy makers)
• Up-to-Date Content: Traditional textbooks can quickly become outdated. OA textbooks can be updated and revised more readily, ensuring that students have access to the most current information.
• Enhanced Collaboration: Open resources encourage collaboration among educators, fostering a community of shared knowledge and innovation.

To measure impact, we use both qualitative and quantitative measures. Our Statistics dashboard shows the readership and reach of our books, including a map of access. In addition, we are collecting testimonials and feedback from academics and students and engaging with the societal impact of our books (as discussed in a recent article in The Scholarly Kitchen). We interrogate our user analytics to understand which communities are interacting with our content and how they are using it in their own work.

Value in this context is calculated not only in terms of cost-saving on commercial provision, but also in the added value student experience. This includes showcasing teaching excellence to encourage enrolment in a particular course or providing a teaching and learning resources for a module that are underrepresented in commercial provision (i.e. those with smaller cohorts/interdisciplinary topics/less mainstream perspectives).

What does the future hold?

The future of open access textbook publishing in the UK looks promising, with increasing institutional support and growing awareness among educators. As the demand for affordable and accessible educational resources continues to rise, the potential for OA textbooks to reshape higher education is significant.

Open access textbook publishing represents a vital shift in the academic landscape, providing a sustainable, equitable, and collaborative approach to education. As more institutions and publishers embrace this model, we hope to create a future where quality educational resources are accessible to all, empowering students and educators alike.

Significant sea change in the status quo requires a long-term outlook, and significant investment and commitment. If educators, students, and policymakers continue to discover and advocate for the adoption of open access resources within institutions, there is potential to foster an educational environment that fully supports and values accessibility, collaboration, and innovation.

UCL Press will continue to develop its programme of OA textbooks and to keep up to date with our publications, please do sign up to our mailing list or take a look at our website.

As we continue celebrating International Open Access Week, following our earlier post on balancing openness and commercialisation, we’re now turning our focus to Citizen Science initiatives. Sheetal Saujani, UCL’s Citizen Science Coordinator, highlights in her article below how community-driven research and open access are shaping the future of knowledge creation, empowering individuals to make meaningful contributions to global challenges.

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Did you know that ordinary citizens are making significant contributions to solving some of the world’s biggest challenges – from climate change to wildlife conservation?

This year’s International Open Access Week continues to focus on the importance of community in scholarly research and open access initiatives.

Definition of citizen science at UCL

UCL supports a broad approach to citizen science, recognising that there are different applications and functions of citizen science in research, whether they are community-driven research projects or global investigations.

Citizen science is characterised as research conducted by the public, often in collaboration with academic institutions, and is a diverse practice involving academic and community researchers from various disciplines.

At its most inclusive and most innovative, citizen science involves ordinary people as partners in the entire research process, including determining research themes, questions, methodologies and means of disseminating results. The involvement of people in participatory research can range from short-term data collection to intensive involvement in the research process, from technical contribution to genuine research, and from open collaboration to co-creation of knowledge.

Citizen science promotes community-driven collaboration over profit-driven research

Citizen science is a model for open access and collective participation in research, ensuring the benefits of knowledge creation are accessible to all.  It embodies community-driven collaboration because it is built on principles of openness, inclusivity, and shared ownership of knowledge. The focus is on addressing real-world problems and empowering communities to take part in research that benefits everyone – not on generating profit for a select few.

Why does open access matter?

Open access refers to the free, unrestricted access to research outputs like journal articles, data, and educational resources. It ensures that research reaches the widest possible audience, and that it can be used and shared easily.

Open access aligns with the values of community engagement and citizen science by making knowledge and data open to the public. This allows people to engage in research without the barriers of paywalls or proprietary information, unlike commercialised research, where data can be restricted for profit.

Citizen science as an open, community-driven approach

Citizen science is a community-driven approach that focuses on problem-solving and knowledge expansion, promoting open collaboration and ownership. Citizen science projects typically share their findings openly. Initiatives like Zooniverse and iNaturalist offer open access to tools, software, and platforms, democratising knowledge. By enabling people to participate in and shape real research based on publicly accessible data, this approach promotes accessibility and inclusivity. It builds trust between researchers and the public, strengthening the quality and impact of research by drawing on collective wisdom and diverse perspectives.

Case studies: open access in citizen science

Below are two examples of successful citizen science projects that embody this week’s theme.

Air quality monitoring by communities: In the Open AQ project, citizens use open-access, low-cost sensors to track air pollution in their neighbourhoods. The data collected is shared freely and openly, allowing communities to act and policymakers to respond. This contrasts with commercial entities that might charge for proprietary pollution data or sensor technology.

Biodiversity conservation: iNaturalist invites people to document plant and animal species in their area. The data is shared freely, benefiting researchers and conservationists worldwide. No one is excluded based on ability to pay or access to commercial tools – everyone has a stake in biodiversity protection.

Challenges and opportunities: advancing with community in mind

Challenges of commercialisation in citizen science do exist: some citizen science platforms are commercialised, locking data behind paywalls or limiting access to paying users. Profit-driven research models hinder knowledge access, distort priorities, exploit participants, and compromise objectivity. To benefit society and produce shared findings, it is important to prioritise the public good and fair access to research.

Promoting open access in citizen science can enhance participation, diversity, and openness. Because citizen science invites participation from all, it offers opportunities for underrepresented communities and developing countries to contribute to and benefit from research. This inclusive model breaks down barriers in commercialised research systems, ensuring marginalised voices are heard and valued in the research process.

We would encourage everyone to support open access movements and citizen science platforms and projects that rank community benefit over profit.

Empowering the public through open access and citizen science

Open access and citizen science align with the theme of “Community over Commercialization” by prioritising collaboration and transparency in research. Open access removes barriers, while citizen science empowers people to participate in research projects. This approach puts the interests of the public first and benefits the wider population.

Looking towards the future, prioritising community-driven approaches in research can lead to more equitable, inclusive, and impactful research. Citizen science and open access work together to resist commercialised research, leading to a more equitable, community-centred approach to research.

As we celebrate International Open Access Week, let’s remember that when we put community at the heart of research, we empower everyone to contribute to the knowledge that shapes our world and makes a lasting impact on society.

Today marks the start of International Open Access Week 2024! Throughout the week, we’ll be sharing insights from UCL staff on how open access is shaping research, collaboration, and scholarship across the university. To kick off the series, Kirsty Wallis explores the significance of this year’s theme and the challenges and opportunities of balancing openness with commercialisation in ways that benefit both research and society.

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The theme for this year’s International Open Access Week (OA Week), “Community over Commercialisation,” intends to provide a starting point for us to reflect on the importance of community in the work that we do relating to Openness, rather than letting financial or commercial interests take focus.

This is the second year focusing on this theme, which shows its significance in Open Science and Scholarship and the growing interest in these discussions.

The UNESCO Recommendations on Open Science highlight the issues of groups profiting from publicly funded research and advocate for non-commercial, collaborative publishing models.

This year’s OA Week invites reflection on critical questions around commercialisation, corporate control of knowledge and what we can do to encourage a shift towards more open practices. This post will focus on the progress in opening up research worldwide, but also bring to the fore some areas where commercialisation may be able to serve the public interest. Can commercialising research ever be for public good?

Last year in support of the theme, we launched our Citizen Science Community! It was the culmination of a lot of work from the team in the Office for Open Science and Scholarship. Our approach to Citizen Science at UCL foregrounds the need to prioritise community interests and aiming to make everything we do as inclusive as possible and integrate as many subject areas as we can.

We also explored how Creative Commons (CC) licences promote open, reusable research, making scholarly outputs accessible to a wider audience—from researchers to the general public.

International Open Access Week has created a list of profiles of global institutions showcasing how Open Science communities are embedding principles of shared knowledge and equitable access into their practices: visit the International Open Access Week list of Theme Profiles.

Continuing the Discussion in 2024:

As we move forward, OA Week 2024 offers the opportunity to build on the 2023 theme and further explore how community-based approaches can coexist with commercial interests in ways that serve both the research community and the public. Turning this dialogue into concrete action is essential for achieving the goals of Open Science—making knowledge accessible and equitable for everyone.

So, is there ever a scenario where commercialisation of research can work for community? After all, it is possible to share the outputs of research openly while also selling them as a product, for example in software. It is possible and even fairly common in some areas to make the underlying code open source but sell access to supported versions or additional features that can be used by companies and businesses that are unable to support products themselves. There are many examples of this, from the underlying code supporting Android phones and Chrome browsers to the Linux operating system and, also the ePrints repository software that we use here at UCL.

As another example, this time from within UCL itself is the Ventura CPAP Machine developed during 2020 at the height of the pandemic. The designs for the machine were made available free of charge via the UCLB licensing system. This enabled limitations to be put in place for who could use the designs, preventing companies from profiteering from the design while making it available to hospitals and other charitable organisations to build and test their own free of charge. It has always been UCL’s position that profit is not the end game, going back as far as Jeremy Bentham, the spiritual founder of UCL, who believed that education should be more widely available, a core underpinning value of UCL and the Office for Open Science and Scholarship today.

This year’s Open Access Week theme aligns with some of the behind-the-scenes work we’re doing to explore the relationship between openness and commercialisation and investigate scenarios where they may not be as much in conflict as the theme suggests. Keep an eye out for the report and recommendations coming later this academic year!