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Spotlight on Ben Watson: Champion of Digital Accessibility at UCL 

By Rafael, on 8 July 2024

This is the first instalment of our profile series, and we shine a light on Ben Watson, UCL’s Head of Digital Accessibility. Ben’s journey from teaching to digital accessibility shows his unwavering dedication to inclusivity. He works hard with the Digital Accessibility Team and together, they put in place and advocate for accessible digital practices. Below are the highlights of his conversation with the UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship. Here, he shares his story and vision to make UCL more accessible.

Black and white photo of Ben Watson. He has  short hair and wears a dark-colored shirt. He is looking to the side with a neutral expression. The background appears to be outdoors with some wooden structures.

Ben Watson

Current Role

Ben Watson describes his role as putting in ‘ramps and lifts’ to information. He underscores the need of making digital resources not only available but accessible to all. My role is about ensuring that all UCL systems and content, and the way we design, deliver, and share information, addresses potential barriers. If digital resources aren’t accessible to everyone, their full potential remains untapped’. 

Journey to Digital Accessibility

Ben’s path began with a background in teaching and librarianship. Early in his career, he worked at a school for blind and partially sighted students, where he discovered the transformative power of digital information. This experience ignited his passion for advocating better e-resources and focusing on accessible learning design. I’ve always been fascinated by how people consume information. As a teacher, I saw how digital information should be the answer to many accessibility issues’.

Teaching Experience and Advocacy 

His teaching background provided him with insights into diverse learning styles and the adverse impact of inaccessible materials. Now at UCL, the Digital Accessibility team assists research and teaching staff in meeting accessibility standards, promoting the idea that highly accessible digital experiences can only benefit students, staff, and institutions. One of the really lovely things about digital accessibility and promoting it is that genuinely it’s one of those things that benefits everyone’.

Addressing Challenges and Organisational Change 

Ben acknowledges the complexities of ensuring digital accessibility at a large institution like UCL. He emphasises the need to influence content creators to prioritise accessibility and integrate inclusive design from the outset. ‘To make UCL more digitally accessible, we must influence the entire information cycle. We need to support content creators to excel at what they are experts in while giving them confidence to deliver this accessibly. UCL can lead by example in many areas, including accessibility’. 

Progress, Not Perfection 

Ben champions the idea of progress over perfection in the evolving field of digital accessibility. ‘I always talk about progress, not perfection. In such a dynamic landscape, expecting 100% perfection is unrealistic, but we can certainly achieve significant, long-lasting positive progress’ 

Simple Steps for Digital Accessibility This is the accessibility icon. It is black stick figure inside a black circle. It's on a white background.

Making digital content accessible can be straightforward with built-in tools in software applications such as Microsoft’s Accessibility Checker.Ben also highlights the importance of structured headings, alternative text descriptions, and other features to make documents navigable for all users. Simple steps like using headings, alternative text and accessibility checkers can greatly enhance accessibility. UCL Accessibility pages offer extensive guidance on this to support UCL staff’

Accessibility and Open Science: Benefits for All

We asked Ben how accessibility principles can advance Open Science and Scholarship. He advocates for making research accessible to everyone. This involves adding accessibility standards to open science publishing. ‘Publishers need to meet these standards for Open Access to reach its full potential. This helps everyone by boosting the reach and impact of research.’ Challenges exist, but the benefits of accessibility are broad. Accessibility improves research impact, openness, and discoverability. ‘At the end of the day, this isn’t just about legal mandates for public sector bodies, although that’s a compelling reason. It’s about fulfilling ethical obligations to ensure that everyone can fully engage. Why should we prevent anyone from being inspired and affected by our work? With some effort, but not a huge amount, we could make our work future-proof and accessible to everyone’

European Accessibility Regulations 

Ben is enthusiastic about the European Accessibility Act, which extends obligations to commercial suppliers beyond existing legislation. He views this as a significant advancement for the education sector, making it easier to ensure accessibility compliance from the design stage. ‘The European Accessibility Act is a powerful addition to existing legislation. It mandates accessibility by default, simplifying our work to ensure compliance’

Proactive Accessibility and Legacy Content  

It’s much more challenging to retrofit accessibility into already published content, that’s why proactive measures are key. ‘It’s much more difficult to make something accessible after it’s been published. UCL collaborates with partners like the Royal National Institute for Blind People to review legacy content. We aim to integrate accessibility from the start and have clear processes for addressing older content’

Envisioning the Future 

Ben hopes for a future where digital accessibility is an integral part of everyday life and education. He highlights UCL’s research initiatives, like the Global Disability Innovation Hub, and the work of the Institute of Education at UCL (with telepresence robot projects like the one led by Jennifer Rode)  as examples of a commitment to global outreach and inclusive design. ‘I’d love the field of digital accessibility to become everyone’s business as usual. It should be included in standard training, teacher qualifications, and even the school curriculum because it’s really that important’

Accessibility is Not Just About Compliance

We should advocate for a holistic approach to accessibility, considering diverse needs, including those of neurodiverse individuals. Ben stresses the importance of inclusive design in education, promoting flexible assessment methods and delivery modes. ‘Accessibility isn’t just about compliance; it’s about creating inclusive experiences that anticipate diverse needs. By embedding accessibility into every aspect of education, we enable everyone to reach their full potential’

Librarians are Awesome 

Ben’s transition from librarianship to digital accessibility was one of the focal points of his career. Working as a librarian provided him with a unique perspective on accessibility and understanding on how people engage with information. ‘I think about information like a librarian—considering how people find and use it. This perspective is essential for ensuring digital content is accessible’. As a librarian, his involvement in e-book accessibility campaigns solidified his dedication to making digital resources accessible to all. ‘Librarians play a crucial, often underappreciated role in advocating for accessible information. It’s no wonder Michael Moore calls them the most important public servants in a democracy

Accessibility Can Make a Difference 

He explains that his commitment to accessibility comes from a deep belief in equitable information access. He is driven by a desire to remove barriers to inclusion and citizenship. ‘I’ve seen firsthand the impact of inaccessible information—it can hinder potential and make people feel excluded. My motivation is to remove barriers and ensure everyone feels included and respected. Information is vital for education and broader citizenship. Accessible design, is good design, and ensures no one is excluded and that information is adaptable for new technologies like AI’.

Inspirations  

Ben draws inspiration from key figures in disability studies, such as British sociologist and activist Mike Oliver, a founding theorist of the social model of disability. ‘Meeting Professor Mike Oliver at the University of Kent profoundly influenced my work. His theories on disability have been foundational.’ He also acknowledges the contributions of colleagues like Kirsty Wallis in raising accessibility awareness in open science. ‘Kirsty’s work in promoting accessibility in open science has been outstanding.’

Passions  

Outside of his professional life, Ben takes greater pride in his daughters’ kindness: ‘I’m incredibly proud of my two daughters. They are kind, caring, and thoughtful young people who genuinely put the feelings of others before their own’. He also has a passion that takes him on quite a ride: ‘I love motorbikes. Riding them, fixing them, and generally thinking about them!’

UCL’s Vision: We Should Lead by Example  

Ben advocates for UCL to be a leader in digital accessibility and inclusive design. ‘UCL can lead by example, ensuring accessibility is integral to everything we do. Accessibility is not extra work; it’s about completing what was left unfinished. Embracing this ethos across UCL would ensure no work is deemed complete until it’s accessible to all’. 

The Digital Accessibility Team stands beside a banner. The banner reads "Digital Accessibility" and has more information. They are in an office environment, with visible smiles.

UCL Digital Accessibility Team.

Ben Watson’s work at UCL shows he is strongly committed to making information and education open and inclusive. He invites everyone to embrace inclusive design at UCL with the Digital Accessibility Team. Through a collaborative effort, we can pave the way for a better future.  

Follow Ben’s lead. Integrate accessibility into your work by following the steps provided on the UCL Accessibility Pages. You could also attend a Digital Skills training course, or join the Accessibility Champions Network. 

 For more information or help, check out the Digital Accessibility Services, or contact the Digital Accessibility Team. 

Get involved!

alt=""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 Discovery reaches 50 million downloads!

By Rafael, on 27 June 2024

Guest Post by Dominic Allington-Smith (Open Access Publications Manager)

Decorative image displaying fireworks filling the night sky with bursts of red, orange, and blue lights. Sparkling circles of light create a festive and celebratory atmosphere.

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:

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!

alt=""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

A close up of old leather-bound books on a shelfHow 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:

  1. 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.
  2. The relative citation impact of UCL papers has had a corresponding increase, though with some year-to-year variation.
  3. UCL’s open access papers are cited around twice as much, on average, as non-open-access papers.
  4. UCL is consistently the second-largest producer of open access papers in the world, behind Harvard University.
  5. 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!

alt=""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!

 

The Predatory Paradox – book review

By Kirsty, on 29 February 2024

Guest post from Huw Morris, Honorary Professor of Tertiary Education, UCL Institute of Education. If anyone would like to contribute to future blogs, please get in touch.

Book cover: "The Predatory Paradox: Ethics, Politics, and Practices in Contemporary Scholarly Publishing'. Review of The Predatory Paradox: Ethics, Politics and the Practices in Contemporary Scholarly Publishing (2023). Amy Koerber, Jesse Starkey, Karin Ardon-Dryer, Glenn Cummins, Lyombe Eko and Kerk Kee. Open Book Publishers. DOI 10.11647/obp.0364.

We are living in a publishing revolution, in which the full consequences of changes to the ways research and other scholarly work are prepared, reviewed and disseminated have yet to be fully felt or understood. It is just over thirty years since the first open access journals began to appear on email groups in html and pdf formats.

It is difficult to obtain up-to-date and verifiable estimates of the number of journals published globally. There are no recent journal articles which assess the scale of this activity. However, recent online blog sources suggest that there are at least 47,000 journals available worldwide of which 20,318 are provided in open access format (DOAJ, 2023; WordsRated, 2023). The number of journals is increasing at approximately 5% per annum and the UK provides an editorial home for the largest proportion of these titles.

With this rapid expansion questions have been raised about whether there are too many journals, whether they will continue to exist in their current form, and if so how can readers and researchers assess the quality of the editorial processes they have adopted (Brembs et al., 2023; Oosterhaven, 2015)

This new book, ‘The Predatory Paradox,’ steps into these currents of change and seeks not only to comment on developments, but also to consider what the trends mean for academics, particularly early career researchers, for journal editors and for the wider academic community. The result is an impressive collection of chapters which summarise recent debates and report the authors’ own research examining the impact of these changes on the views of researchers and crucially their reading and publishing habits.

The book is divided into seven chapters, which consider the ethical and legal issues associated with open access publishing, as well as the consequences for assessing the quality of articles and journals. A key theme in the book, as the title indicates, is tracking the development of concern about predatory publishing. Here the book mixes a commentary on the history of this phenomenon with information gained from interviews and the authors’ reflections on the impact of editorial practices on their own publication plans. In these accounts the authors demonstrate that it is difficult to tightly define what constitutes a predatory journal because peer review and editorial processes are not infallible, even at the most prestigious journals. These challenges are illustrated by the retelling of stories about recent scientific hoaxes played on so-called predatory journals and other more respected titles. These hoaxes include the submission of articles with a mix of poor research designs, bogus data, weak analyses and spurious conclusions. Building on insights derived from this analysis, the book’s authors provide practical guidance about how to avoid being lured into publishing in predatory journals and how to avoid editorial practices that lack integrity. They also survey the teaching materials used to deal with these issues in the training of researchers at the most research-intensive US universities.

One of the many excellent features of the book is its authors practicing much of what they preach. The book is available for free via open access in a variety of formats. The chapters which draw on original research provide links to the underpinning data and analysis. At the end of each chapter there is also a very helpful summary of the key takeaway messages, as well as a variety of questions and activities that can be used to prompt reflection on the text or as the basis for seminar and tutorial activities.

Having praised the book for its many fine features, it is important to note the questions it raises about defining quality research which could have been more fully answered. The authors summarise their views about what constitutes quality research under a series of headings drawing on evidence from interviews with researchers in a range of subject areas they conclude that quality research defies explicit definition. They suggest, following Harvey and Green, that it is multi-factorial and changes over time with the identity of the reviewer and reader. This uncertainty, while partially accurate, has not prevented people from rating the quality of other peoples’ research or limited the number of people putting themselves forward for these types of review.

As the book explains, peer review by colleagues with an expertise in the same specialism, discipline or field is an integral part of the academic endeavour. Frequently there are explicit criteria against which judgements are made, whether for grant awards, journal reviewing or research assessment. The criteria may be unclear, open to interpretation, overly narrow or overly wide, but they do exist and have been arrived at through collective review and confirmed by processes involving many reviewers.

Overall I would strongly recommend this book and suggest that it should be required or background reading on research methods courses for doctoral and research masters programmes. For other readers who are not using this book as part of a course of study, I would recommend also reading research assessment guidelines for research council and funding body websites and advice to authors provided by long established journals in their field. In addition, it is worth looking at the definitions and reports on research activity provided by Research Excellence Framework panels in the UK and their counterparts in other nations.

Get involved!

alt=""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!

OOSS Annual Recap 2023

By Rafael, on 17 January 2024

As we step into a new year, let’s reflect on the collective achievements and milestones of the UCL Office for Open Science & Scholarship (OOSS) and our associated teams in 2023. This year witnessed the growth and integration of OOSS within the institutional culture of UCL, offering pivotal support to academic staff, researchers, and students. From the successful return to in-person events with our annual conference to pioneering initiatives and awards, let’s revisit the highlights that shaped our work last year!

Annual Conference & Open Access Celebrations

Poster for the Open Science Conference: 'The Case for Social Justice'

In April 2023, we successfully organized our annual conference, marking our first return to in-person events. Themed Open Science and the Case for Social Justice, the conference fostered important discussions on sustainability in research practices, addressing critical issues such as gender, language, authorship, and geographical disparities. Recordings of these insightful discussions are available. Notably, a workshop during the conference addressed equity in authorship, contributing to a forthcoming UCL statement on Authorship. Additionally, October saw the celebration of our Open Access week, themed Community over Commercialisation. This included a series of blog posts, activities, and discussions, emphasizing equitable access to a wide range of works.

Honouring Excellence: Inaugural Open Science and Scholarship Awards:Group photo of the 12 Winners of the inaugural Open Science and Scholarship Awards standing together in front of a white wall.

Another highlight was the inaugural Open Science and Scholarship Awards at UCL in collaboration with the UK Reproducibility Network. These awards aimed to recognize and celebrate the efforts of UCL students and staff who champion open science practices. Learn more about the winners and their innovative work!

Open Access: Profiles & Transformative Agreements

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The Open Access Team played a pivotal role in ensuring the open availability of UCL academics’ research outputs throughout 2023. A major achievement was the successful introduction of the new Profiles platform, replacing the outdated IRIS. Profiles acts as UCL’s public search and discovery tool, significantly improving the visibility of academic profiles, publication lists, research and teaching activities, and collaborations with UCL colleagues. The team also facilitated the Gold open access publication of 3,383 papers in 2023, contributing to the thriving UCL Discovery with over 44 million downloads. The repository now boasts over 166,000 open access items, including 23,400 theses, with over 18,500 uploads in the preceding twelve months.

Aligned with the UKRI and Wellcome open access policies, the Open Access Team provided robust support for UCL researchers. This included facilitating compliance through publishing in fully open access journals, making use of transformative agreements with publishers encompassing over 12,000 journals, and using funders’ language to secure the right to make accepted manuscripts freely accessible upon publication under the CC BY license.

Research Data: Enhancing Support to Researchers

The Research Data team introduced a more user-friendly version of the UCL Research Data Repository, incorporating enhanced features and a comprehensive user manual. The repository saw a significant influx of 193 new items, including data sets, media items, and software applications. Engaging with researchers, the team provided substantial assistance, reviewing 32 data management plans and conducting successful training sessions for 61 researchers. Additionally, the team expanded and refined frequently asked questions (FAQs) for better user support.

Citizen Science: New website and initiatives

Word cloud image featuring key terms related to citizen science

The Citizen Science Team expanded its reach and impact in 2023 through new Citizen Science website pages and an enhanced list of citizen science projects at UCL, fostering a greater understanding of the breadth of such initiatives across the university. The creation of a unifying definition of citizen science at UCL, accompanied by an inclusive word cloud, provided clarity on the diverse subject areas and disciplines covered by citizen science projects.

The development of the UCL Citizen Science Certificate, in collaboration with the UCL Citizen Science Academy, marked a significant milestone and underscored our commitment to fostering collaborative initiatives. A new Citizen Science community on MS Teams was launched, providing a dedicated space for discussions and updates. Get involved!

Bibliometrics: Measuring Research Impact

The Bibliometrics Team, in collaboration with the Open Access Team, played a crucial role in implementing the new Profiles system. Their research confirmed the citation advantage associated with open access practices. After a detailed analysis of UCL publications over recent years, the study demonstrated that open access materials are utilised and cited more extensively, and confirmed the place of the institution as leading organisation in making material available in open access.

Additionally, the team introduced new courses, including an introduction to altmetrics and the Overton database, aiming to assess the broader impact of published research in the wider world and cover policy documents and official documents. Another training provided an overview of understanding and demonstrating research impact, further supporting UCL’s researchers. The Bibliometrics Team’s dedication to understanding and demonstrating research impact through various courses and collaborations reinforced UCL’s position as a leader in research output accessibility.

Stay connected and Informed

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The combined efforts of OOSS teams in 2023 exemplify UCL’s commitment to open and accessible research practices across diverse disciplines. As we move forward, the OOSS remains dedicated to fostering an inclusive culture of open science and scholarship, shaping a transformative academic environment at UCL.

Join us in 2024 for updates and insights, and follow us on X, formerly Twitter, to find out more about open science and scholarship at UCL!

Open Science & Scholarship Awards Winners!

By Kirsty, on 26 October 2023

A huge congratulations to all of the prize winners and a huge thanks to everyone that came to our celebration yesterday! It was lovely to hear from a selection of the winning projects and celebrate together. The OOSS team and the UKRN Local leads Sandy and Jessie had a lovely time networking with everyone.

Just in case you weren’t able to join us to hear the prize winners talk about their projects, Sandy has written short profiles of all of the winning projects below.

Category: Academic staff

Winner: Gesche Huebner and Mike Fells, BSEER, Built Environment

Gesche and Mike were nominated for the wide range of activities that they have undertaken to promote open science principles and activities in the energy research community. Among other things, they have authored a paper on improving energy research, which includes a checklist for authors, delivered teaching sessions on open, reproducible research to their department’s PhD students as well as staff at the Centre for Research Into Energy Demand Solutions, which inspired several colleagues to implement the practices, they created guidance on different open science practices aimed at energy researchers, including professionally filmed videos, as well as developed a toolkit for improving the quality, transparency, and replicability of energy research (i.e., TReQ), which they presented at multiple conferences. Gesche and Mike also regularly publish pre-analysis plans of their own research, make data and code openly available when possible, publish preprints, and use standard reporting guidelines.

Honourable mention: Henrik Singmann, Brain Sciences

Henrik was nominated for their consistent and impactful contribution to the development of free and open-source software packages, mostly for the statistical programming language R. The most popular software tool he developed is afex, which provides a user-friendly interface for estimating one of the most commonly used statistical methods, analysis of variance (ANOVA). afex, first released in 2012 and actively maintained since, has been cited over 1800 times. afex is also integrated into other open-source software tools, such as JASP and JAMOVI, as well as teaching materials. With Quentin Gronau, Henrik also developed bridgesampling, a package for principled hypothesis testing in a Bayesian statistical framework. Since its first release in 2017, bridgesampling has already been cited over 270 times. Other examples of packages for which they are the lead developer or key contributor are acss, which calculates the algorithmic complexity for short strings, MPTinR and MPTmultiverse, as well as rtdists and (together with their PhD student Kendal Foster) fddm. Further promoting the adoption of open-source software, Henrik also provides statistics consultation sessions at his department and uses open-source software for teaching the Master’s level statistics course.

Honourable mention: Smita Salunke, School of Pharmacy

Smita is recognised for their role in the development of the The Safety and Toxicity of Excipients for Paediatrics (STEP) database, an open-access resource compiling comprehensive toxicity information of excipients. The database was established in partnership with European and the United States Paediatric Formulation Initiative. To create the database, numerous researchers shared their data. To date, STEP has circa 3000 registered users across 44 countries and 6 continents. The STEP database has also been recognised as a Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 impact case study. Additionally, the European Medicines Agency frequently refer to the database in their communications; the Chinese Centre for Drug Evaluation have also cited the database in their recent guidelines. Furthermore, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have provided funds to support a further 10 excipients for inclusion in STEP. The development and evaluation of the STEP database have been documented in three open-access research papers. Last but not least, the database has been integrated into teaching materials, especially in paediatric pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences.

Category: Professional Services staff

Winner: Miguel Xochicale, Engineering Sciences and Mathematical & Physical Sciences

Miguel hosted the “Open-source software for surgical technologies” workshop at the 2023 Hamlyn symposium on Medical Robotics, a half-day session that brought together experts from software engineering in medical imagining, academics specialising in surgical data science, and researchers at the forefront of surgical technology development. During the workshop, speakers discussed the utilisation of cutting-edge hardware; fast prototyping and validation of new algorithms; maintaining fragmented source code for heterogenous systems; developing high performance of medical image computing and visualisation in the operating room; and benchmarks of data quality and data privacy. Miguel subsequently convened a panel discussion, underscoring the pressing need of additional open-source guidelines and platforms that ensure that open-source software libraries are not only sustainable but also receive long-term support and are seamlessly translatable to clinic settings. Miguel made recording of the talks and presentations, along with a work-in-progress white paper that is curated by them, and links to forums for inviting others to join their community available on Github.

Honourable mention: Marcus Pedersen, PHS

The Global Business School for Health (GSBH) introduced changes to its teaching style, notably, a flipped classroom. Marcus taught academics at their department how to use several mostly freely available learning technologies, such as student-created podcasts, Mentimeter, or Microsoft Sway, to create an interactive flipped classroom. Marcus further collected feedback from students documenting their learning journey and experiences with flipped teaching to evaluate the use of  the tools. Those insights have been presented in a book chapter (Betts, T. & Oprandi, P. (Eds.). (2022). 100 Ideas for Active Learning. OpenPress @ University of Sussex) and in talks for UCL MBA and Master’s students as well as at various conferences. The Association of Learning Technology also awarded Marcus the ELESIG Scholar Scheme 23/24 to continue their research.

Category: Students

Winner: Seán Kavanagh, Chemistry

Séan was nominated for his noteworthy contribution to developing user-friendly open-source software for the computational chemistry/physics research community. They have developed several codes during their PhD, such as doped, ShakeNBreak and vaspup2.0 for which they are the lead developer, as well as PyTASER and easyunfold for which they are a co-lead developer. Séan not only focuses on efficient implementation but also on user-friendliness along with comprehensive documentation and tutorials. They have produced comprehensive video walkthroughs of the codes and the associated theories, amassing over 20,000 views on YouTube and SpeakerDeck. It is important to note that software development is not the primary goal of Séan’s PhD research (which focuses on characterizing solar cell materials), and so their dedication to top-quality open-source software development is truly commendable. Additionally, Séan has consistently shared the data of all his publications and actively encourages open-access practices in his collaborations/mentorship roles, having assisted others in making their data available online and building functionality in their codes to save outputs in transferable and interoperable formats for data.

Honourable mention: Julie Fabre, Department of Neuromuscular Diseases

Julie is recognized for developing the open-source toolbox bombcell, that automatically assesses large amounts of data that are collected simultaneously from hundreds of neurons (i.e., groups of spikes). This tool considerably reduces labour per experiment and enables long-term neuron recording, which was previously intractable. As bombcell has been released under the open-source copyleft GNU General Public License 3, all future derived work will also be free and open source. Bombcell has already been used in another open-source toolbox with the same licence, UnitMatch. The toolbox’s code is extensively documented, and Julie adopted the Open Neurophysiology Environment, a standardised data format that enables quick understanding and loading of data files. In 2022, Julie presented bombcell in a free online-course. This course was attended by over 180 people, and the recorded video has since been viewed over 800 times online. Bombcell is currently regularly used in a dozen labs in Europe and the United States. It has already been used in two peer-reviewed publications, and in two manuscripts that are being submitted for publication with more studies underway.

Honourable mention: Maxime Beau, Division of Medicine

Maxime is recognized for leading the development of NeuroPyxels, the first open-source library to analyze Neuropixels data in Python. NeuroPyxels, hosted on a GitHub public repository and licensed under the GNU general public license, is actively used across several neuroscience labs in Europe and the United States (18 users have already forked the repository). Furthermore, NeuroPyxels relies on a widely accepted neural data format; this built-in compatibility with community standards ensures that users can easily borrow parts of NeuroPyxels and seamlessly integrate them with their application. NeuroPyxels has been a great teaching medium in several summer schools. Maxime has been a teaching assistant at the “Paris Spring School of Imaging and Electrophysiology” for three years, the FENS course “Interacting with Neural Circuits” at Champalimaud for two years, and the UCL Neuropixels course for three years where NeuroPyxels has been an invaluable tool to get students started with analysing neural data in Python.

Honourable mention: Yukun Zhou, Centre for Medical Image Computing

Yukun was nominated for developing open-source software for analysing images of the retina. The algorithm, termed AutoMorph, consists of an entire pipeline from image quality assessment to image segmentation to feature extraction in tabular form. A strength of AutoMorph is that it was developed using openly available data and so its underlying code can be easily reproduced and audited by other research groups.Although only published 1 year ago, AutoMorph has already been used by research groups from four continents and led to three new collaborations with Yukun’s research group at UCL. Moreover, AutoMorph has been run on the entire retinal picture dataset in the UK Biobank study with the features soon being made available for the global research community. Yukun has been complimented on the ease with which any researcher can immediately download the AutoMorph tools and deploy on their own datasets. Moreover, the availability of AutoMorph has encouraged other research groups, who are conducting similar work, to make their own proprietary systems openly available.

Category: Open resources, publishing, and textbooks 

Winner: Talia Isaacs, IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society

Talia is recognized for their diverse and continuous contributions to open access publishing. As Co-Editor of the journal Language Testing, they spearheaded SAGE’s CRediT pilot scheme, requiring standardized author contribution statements; they approved and supported Special Issue Editors’ piloting of transparent review for a special issue on “Open science in Language Testing”, encouraged authors to submit pre-prints, and championed open science in Editor workshops and podcasts. Additionally, in 2016, Multilingual Matters published Talia’s edited volume as their first open access monograph. Talia also discussed benefits of open access book publication in the publisher’s blog. As a result, the publisher launched an open access funding model, matching funding for at least one open access book a year. Further showcasing their dedication to open science, Talia archived the first corpus of patient informed consent documents for clinical trials on UK Data Service and UCL’s research repository, and delivered a plenary on “reducing research waste” at the British Association for Applied Linguistics event. They have also advocated for the adoption of registered reports at various speaking events, Editorial Board presentation, in a forthcoming article, editorial, and social media campaign. 

Honourable mention: Michael Heinrich and Banaz Jalil, School of Pharmacy

Banaz and Michael were nominated for co-leading the development of the ConPhyMP-Guidelines. Ethnopharmacology is a flourishing field of medical/pharmaceutical research. However, results are often non-reproducible. The ConPhyMP-Guidelines are a new tool that defines how to report the chemical characteristics of medicinal plant extracts used in clinical, pharmacological, and toxicological research. The paper in which the guidelines are presented is widely used (1613 downloads / 8,621 views since Sept 2022). An online tool, launched in August 2023 and accessible via the Society for Medicinal Plant and Natural Product Research (GA) website, facilitates the completion of the checklist. Specifically, the tool guides the researchers in selecting the most relevant checklists for conducting and reporting research accurately and completely.

Honourable mention: Talya Greene, Brain Sciences 

Talya is recognized for leading the creation of a toolkit that enables traumatic stress researchers to move toward more FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) data practices. This project is part of the FAIR theme within the Global Collaboration on Traumatic Stress. Two main milestones have so far been achieved: 1) In collaboration with Bryce Hruska, Talya has collated existing resources that are relevant to the traumatic stress research community to learn about and improve their FAIR data practices. 2) Talya also collaborated with Nancy Kassam-Adams to conduct an international survey with traumatic stress researchers about their attitudes and practices regarding FAIR data in order to identify barriers and facilitators of data sharing and reuse. The study findings have been accepted for publication in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology. Talya has also presented the FAIR toolkit and the findings of the survey at international conferences (e.g., the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies annual conference, the European Society for Traumatic Stress Studies Biennial Conference).

Office for Open Science & Scholarship 2022 review

By Harry, on 18 January 2023

A new exciting year is starting, and what better way to give the initial kick than celebrating the achievements and milestones of the multiple teams linked to the UCL Office for Open Science & Scholarship (OOSS). We are proud to see how the OOSS kept growing and consolidating itself inside UCL’s institutional culture, supporting academic staff, researchers and students.

One of last year’s highlights was undoubtedly the UCL Open Science Conference, reuniting people from all over the world in sessions discussing Citizen Science, Open data and code, Open and the Global South and more. You can still watch the recordings of day one and day two on our blog! And get ready to participate in the 2023 version in late April. You will hear about it soon on our pages and social media. We are working to make the event hybrid to facilitate participation across territories, do not miss your spot!

After various months of revisions and collaborative work, we published new Open Science Resources for 2022-2023. The first is the video ‘Open Science and Scholarship as part of UCL Research Culture’ and ‘Open Science – a practical guide for PhD students’.

Our office connects to several other teams inside UCL that make an exquisite blend of services, skills and expertise, and we want to celebrate their achievements and news.

The UCL Open Access team has grown their range of transformative publisher agreements and upgraded Research Publications Services (RPS). Users will notice a refreshed look and feel, differences to the Homepage layout, and a new menu structure and navigation. Check the step-by-step guide if you missed it!

UCL Press has proven the importance of open-access scholarly publishers, reaching six million downloads last May (and close to seven million now!), reaching 246 countries and territories, and publishing 272 titles since its launch in 2015.

The Bibliometrics team now is able to support Altmetric, which will be useful for anyone interested in public engagement or research impact, as well as individual researchers looking at the response to their work online. Altmetrics are “alternative metrics” – measuring the impact of research beyond scholarly literature. Helping to get a wider sense of the impact of papers that might otherwise be missed were we to focus on traditional academic citations.

Our Research and Data Management team upgraded their webpages, reviewed dozens of data management plans, and created brand new online Data Management Plan Templates with DMP online. Their services and the Bibliometrics team were both classified as excellent regarding the user’s experience of our online support service. We are proud of such a hard-working and supportive team!

During the second half of 2022, the OOSS gained two additional members: a Citizen Science Coordinator and a Support Officer. Both new team members are currently working with the Office Coordinator on ambitious projects that will see the light later this year, aiming to diversify the support and resources of our virtual office for wider audiences.

Undoubtedly, the diversity of professionals, backgrounds and interests made our small office inside Library, Culture, Collections & Open Science (LCCOS) a prosperous place to develop services, ideas and projects for wonderful audiences inside and outside our university.

Last year’s achievements were only possible due to the support of the university to embrace an open culture, thanks to the collaborative work between the teams, and always supporting each other and the office users. We will keep working together to democratise knowledge and keep UCL one of the Open Science & Scholarship leaders worldwide.

Open Access in Genealogy

By Harry, on 7 December 2022

Post by Marie Dewerpe, Open Access team. Library, Culture, Collections and Open Science.

This blog post relates to personal experiences I have had with open data and open access in genealogy. Besides working as an open access assistant, I am an amateur genealogist. Therefore, I asked myself: what about open access in genealogy?

Family history is bit like a detective work in the archives. You are looking for clues and proof of where your ancestors lived and who they were. To create your family tree, you need to access records. The main records genealogists use are the birth, marriage and death (BMD) and census records collected by the government. They are usually stored by the state at the national, regional or local level.

Depending on the country, the data is archived differently by the civil services. I will be writing about accessing records that do not concern living individuals protected by blanket policies such as the Data Protection Act in the UK.

The field of genealogy has a history of collaboration and volunteering. Fellow genealogists will search on your behalf in exchange for you helping other genealogists. Transcribers, translators and online forums are on hand to provide help. This kind of free support from other genealogists is quite common. But when I started looking into open data and open access in genealogy, I realised there is little information on the topic. From my experience of navigating archives in different countries (France, Estonia and the UK) I also noticed some similarities and disparities in gaining access to genealogical resources.

In France, many genealogical resources are free to access in the public archives. They can be reused under similar terms as the Creative Commons licence. For example, the Office Français De Protection Des Réfugiés Et Apatrides (French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons) allows the user to reuse their public data with some restrictions, such as respecting the integrity of information. But these resources are not always easily searchable. When they are searchable you often need to use a private company’s database or a local group database. Furthermore, you must subscribe to the volunteer group or a private company in order to access the transcribed data and their searchable database.

In Estonia, documents like birth, marriage and death certificates are available freely. You can also ask the national archives to digitise their physical records for a small fee. After a while these digitised documents are shared on their website and are also freely available. As with France, it is not easy to navigate the resources when you are not literate in classification. But unlike France, some of the archival material is searchable on the National Archives website. Because France and Estonia are part of the European Union, their approach to public data is quite similar.

In the UK almost all “basic” records such as birth, marriage and death certificates are behind a pay wall. You must subscribe to private companies to access what is available freely to those based in other countries. The information includes census, birth, marriage and death records. Having to pay for these records no doubt affects who can access the genealogical resources. Local libraries facilitate access to family histories, but they also have to subscribe to databases that are originally stored by public entities like the National Archives, but are managed by private companies.

I found one initiative, FreeUKGenealogy, which supports free access to genealogy data without restrictions on its use. As explained on their website, they want to bypass pay walls and allow users to access public data.

To sum up this exploration of open data and open access in genealogy, there are differences in access levels from country to country. When in France and Estonia, the records are freely accessible, in the UK you need to subscribe to private companies. However, free access does not mean easy access. Indeed, it is difficult to use the material without proficiency in archiving. In France, you have the option to access searchable databases, but there are fees involved. These current limitations place financial and knowledgeable barriers on those who wish to consult and use the records. This is where initiatives like FreeUKGenealogy are extremely useful.

Here are some free resources on getting started in genealogy:

https://www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/getting-started/best-free-genealogy-websites/

https://ukdataservice.ac.uk/help/other-data-providers/ready-made-statistics/genealogy/

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/non-conformist-records

More resources:

https://cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/information-management/reproduction-of-birth-death-marriage-certificates.pdf

https://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/brick-walls-and-lost-ancestors/

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/shows/the-open-source-show/using-open-data-to-build-family-trees

https://www.reclaimtherecords.org/

https://www.ra.ee/vau/index.php/en

https://www.ra.ee/en/the-national-archives-of-estonia-100/

For more information on open data in France, here is a fascinating paper:

https://doi.org/10.4000/communicationorganisation.6766

The open-access subject gap

By Harry, on 25 November 2022

Post by Dominic Allington-Smith & Damian Kalinowski, UCL Library, Culture, Collections & Open Science

A common criticism of the Open Science movement is that it is geared towards the needs of researchers in of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), to the detriment of researchers in arts, humanities and social sciences (AHSS).  Not only does the phrase “Open Science” itself have connotations of a subject-based preference in English, hence UCL’s decision to specify “Open Science and Scholarship, but funder and institutional requirements to make research outputs open access also prioritise certain publication types over others, leading to a potential inequality between disciplines.

For STEM subjects, as a general rule, journal articles and conference papers are the most important form of research output.  The two routes to achieving open access: Gold – whereby the publisher makes the content freely available to read and reuse, usually in exchange for a fee – and Green – whereby a copy of the output is made openly available in the researcher’s institutional repository (in UCL’s case, this is UCL Discovery) – are most available to these two publication types: almost all major, international publishers of academic publishers have well-established mechanisms for the payment of Article Processing Charges to facilitate the Gold route, and standard policies for author self-archiving of content that can be followed to achieve the Green route.

Furthermore, funder and institutional open access requirements are also framed with these two types of output in mind: journal articles and conference papers submitted to the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF) from 1 April 2016 onwards had to be made open access in order to be eligible; this requirement also continues for the post-2021 REF until further notice.  In terms of funders, the current UKRI and Wellcome open access policies also have mandatory open access requirements for funded journal articles and journal articles.

In contrast, AHSS researchers are likely to consider books a comparatively more important class of research output, whether a monograph or a chapter contributed to an edited collection.  The open access landscape for books is considerably less mature than for journal articles and conference papers: publishers are less likely to have mechanisms in place for the provision of Gold open access, and may have more restrictive policies (or no policies at all) that allow authors to pursue Green open access through self-archive.  Elsevier, for example, do not permit book or chapter content to be made available in UCL Discovery at all.

This is reflected in the above-mentioned funder and institutional open access requirements as well: books and chapters are currently not subject to any open access requirements for the post-2021 REF, and the UKRI open access policy for this content does not come into effect until 1 January 2024; Wellcome is the only one of the three to currently mandate open access for funded books and chapters in some form.  The disparity even extends to journal articles by extension: as books are important in AHSS fields, so in turn are the reviews of these books published in journals, but these may not be considered to be “original research” by funders and therefore may not be eligible for Gold open access funding, or not considered necessary to be made open access via the Green route in UCL Discovery.

With all this theoretical inequality in mind, the question to answer is: how is this reflected in the proportion of UCL research outputs that have been made open access across the different subjects represented by our schools and departments?  We can attempt to answer this with some data from two example departments.

Two UCL departments, at the same level within the overall hierarchy, have been selected to typify the worlds of STEM and AHSS: the School of Pharmacy and the History department, respectively.  The publications recorded in RPS from the period 2016-2020 (i.e. the period for which there was an open access requirement for the submission of journal articles and conference papers to REF 2021) are analysed:

UCL Department Total outputs (2016-2020) Journal articles and conference papers Books and chapters
School of Pharmacy 2348 1756 (74.79%) 94 (4.00%)
Dept of History 534 249 (46.63%) 219 (41.01%)

 

The proportions are strikingly different: the School of Pharmacy’s research outputs are dominated by journal articles and conference papers, constituting almost three-quarters of the total recorded outputs, whereas books and chapters form a paltry four percent.  In contrast, the two groups of publication have an almost equal share of the total within History.

The next step is to analyse the proportion of these outputs for which the author has uploaded the full text to make it open access in UCL Discovery, bearing in mind the fact that books and chapters from this period were not subject to any REF or funder requirements in this regard:

UCL Department Journal articles and conference papers Books and chapters
Total Uploaded Total Uploaded
School of Pharmacy 1756 1411 (80.35%) 94 12 (12.77%)
Dept of History 249 145 (58.23%) 219 105 (47.95%)

 

Unsurprisingly, the combination of books and chapters not having to be made open access for REF or funder requirements, and journal articles and conference papers being more significant in disciplinary terms for the School of Pharmacy than for History, results in a markedly higher upload proportion for the former: across all four publication types, the overall upload proportion is 76.92% for the School of Pharmacy and 53.42% for History.

The final consideration is the proportion of uploaded publications that have actually been made open access in UCL Discovery, bearing in mind publisher limitations being more prevalent when it comes to books and chapters.  A further analysis of the uploaded publications produces the following results:

UCL Department Journal articles and conference papers Books and chapters
Uploaded Open access Uploaded Open access
School of Pharmacy 1411 1405 (99.58%) 12 5 (41.67%)
Dept of History 145 142 (97.93%) 105 72 (68.57%)

 

This indicates that if a journal article or conference paper was uploaded in RPS, it was almost always made open access in UCL Discovery, whereas the equivalent proportion for books and chapters was lower once again, even a minority in the case of the School of Pharmacy.

The incentives to make journal articles and conference papers open access, and the barriers against achieving open access for books and chapters, therefore result in a stark difference between not only the publication types, but also the departments.  Only 24.60% of all books and chapters recorded in RPS during this period by both departments have been made open access, compared with a far more favourable 77.16% for journal articles and conference papers.  The History department’s comparative focus on the former two types means that only 45.73% of recorded outputs have been made open access.  If only the publications for which the full text was uploaded in RPS are counted, there is still a figure of just under 15% that could not be made open access due to publisher-imposed restrictions.  In contrast, the typical STEM experience represented by the School of Pharmacy has resulted in 76.22% of all recorded publications of these types being made open access.  Perhaps most stark is the fact that fewer than 1% of uploaded publications could not be made open access, illustrating that the vast majority of academic publishers in this field permit open access via self-archiving in an institutional repository.

It is to be hoped that the extension of funder open-access mandates to books and chapters, which may well also be reflected in revised open-access requirements for the post-2021 REF in due course, will help to close this discrepancy in outcome between publication types, and by extension, departments by subject area within UCL and other UK Higher Education Institutions.