The 2019 EUI Open Access events at the EUI

The theme of the Open Access Week 2019 was “Open for Whom? Equity in Open Knowledge”.

A number of events were organised at the EUI to celebrate the open access week.

1. A course on Commercial Publishers and Open Access: know your rights took place on Wednesday 23 October, by Lotta Svantesson and Monica Steletti. Download the presentation.
2. An Open Access Roundtable organised by the Law department’s Working Group InfoSoc on Thursday 24 October. A summary of what happened and what was discussed is below or download the complete description.
3. The official EUI Open Access Roundtable, organised by the Library, took place in the morning of Friday 25 October. Presentations and a description of what was discussed is available below.
4. The Library Impact Challenge – organised from Monday 21 to 25 October. You can still follow and do the five steps of the Library impact challenge in order to boost your online presence.

The Law Open Access Roundtable

“If you were to describe what characterizes open knowledge, what would your answer be?” This was the opening question posed by Sunita Tripathy, PhD Researcher (Law) inviting all the attendees to share their impressions about the concept of openness in the creation and consumption of knowledge. The responses explained that knowledge that is accessible, reliable, of good quality, has aspects of transparency and inclusiveness and overall is of social relevance, is understood as open knowledge. This reflection led us to think about the merits and challenges of producing research of that nature, and unraveled the role played by interests that drive incentive structures in the knowledge economy.

As the round-table came to a close, it emerged rather organically that building trust and accountability in the production and consumption of research – that may inform our audience (be they peers, consumers or users of data) was critical to making openness the default for research. We thank Prof. Peter Drahos and all our professors for their encouragement as well as the Law Department and the administration at EUI for their generous support in organising this academic event at its best level. We were happy to receive positive feedback from the attendees and hereby extend an invitation to join us for more interesting discussions and flash-talks on themes that may be of your academic interest. The complete description of the Infosoc Roundtable

The Library Open Access Roundtable

The programme of the event

Pep Torn, Library Director, welcomed speakers and participants.  The EUI President, Prof. Dehousse, gave an Introduction to Open Access at the EUI and underlined his strong belief and commitment to Open Access.

Prof. Dorothee  Bohlee, Dean of Postdoctoral Studies and Director of the MWP, chaired the keynote session.

Prof. Alexandra Segerberg, Associate Professor in the Department of Government at Uppsala University, and Founding Editor-in-Chief of PRX – Political Research Exchange, the open access journal of the European Consortium for Political Research

Opening up Political Science Research: the view from a Scholarly Society Journal

Scholarly communication is in a time of transition that reflects fundamental shifts in how research is done, communicated, disseminated and assessed. Recent moves by funding bodies to mandate open access to research, exemplified by ‘Plan S’, have brought an extra edge to this process. Nevertheless, even among stakeholders who support the idea of open access, there are different positions regarding what needs to be prioritised, why, when and how. Prof. Segerberg presented the path chosen by one scholarly society for its flagship open access journal, and discussed the goals and experiences of the project from the point of view of the founding Co-Editor in Chief.

The European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), the largest political science association in Europe, launched its first open access journal, Political Research Exchange (PRX), in 2018. Like many scholarly societies, the ECPR already owns a number of successful conventional journals, from which it derives significant revenue through licensing deals with publishers. As a pure open access initiative, PRX represents a move in a novel direction.

The journal was developed to establish a strong open access publishing vehicle for political science that (a) has the hallmarks of rigorous professional and scholarly quality, and (b) is run on a funding model that evens the playing field for individual researchers and can be sustained over time. This is why it is published in partnership with a large professional publisher, Routledge/Taylor & Francis, online only as gold open access, and with substantial funding by the ECPR in order to keep author costs low. A key ambition is to incorporate both the traditions of the discipline with respect to quality and integrity as well as the emerging priorities of the contemporary profession. In practice, the project therefore entails significant continuity but also potential shifts in the journal’s role and relations with the publisher, authors, and the scholarly society itself. Against this background, the talk discusses: (1) the considerations underpinning the launch and structure of the PRX project; (2) critical experiences from the implementation process; (3) key challenges for the future.

Lotta Svantesson, EUI Repository manager, introduced the next intervention made by two researchs from the EUI Law department, Anna Krisztian, Editor-in-Chief, and Olga Ceran, Managing editor, European Journal of Legal Studies (EJLS), An EUI Open Access Journal: from the legal perspective – The latest special issue on Brexit was just published.

Monica Steletti, EUI Library, introduced Rebecca Ravalli, also researcher from the EUI Law department, and involved with EUI Engaged Academics, Engaging citizens with academic research

 

Lotta Svantesson finally introduced the last presentation of this year’s open access roundtable New Cadmus – EUI Research Repository: publications and data

With a new design and user interface it also includes EUI Research Data collection. besides nearly 24,000 publications. This merge between research publications and data will increase the visibility for EUI members’ research output.

The Library Open science team members worked since March this year to reach this achievement. The new logo was developed together with Communications Service.

Simone Sacchi, Open Science Librarian, presented the History of Cadmus, the New Cadmus home  followed by a Live demonstration on the new Cadmus. The blog post Cadmus: new visual design and data collection explains the new features.

Other Library Open Access Research Skills sessions

6 Nov – BF Room 1, Simone Sacchi: Foster Research Impact: Introduction to Open Scholarship Practices

20 Nov – BF Room 1, Thomas Bourke: Research Data Management and the EUI Research Data Collection in the Cadmus Repository

27 Nov– BF Room 3, Serge Noiret: Using Turnitin to Contextualize Citations & Dig Into Big Textual Data

11 Dec – BF Room 1, Simone Sacchi: Making your data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable: Introduction to the FAIR Principles of Research Data Management

Go to Library Research Skill sessions

Key facts on Open Access at the EUI

Open Access at the EUI: latest achievements

• The EUI adopted a strong institutional Open Access Policy  in November 2017. The aim is to support the widest possible dissemination and reuse of EUI research outputs by making publications available in Cadmus, the EUI’s Research Repository
• As of October 2019 Cadmus, the EUI Research Repository also includes EUI ResData repository, and has a new joint home page with a user-friendly graphic design. This will increase the visibility for EUI members’ publications but also of their research data output
• The EUI ORCID integration with Cadmus and the Library’s Wikipedia project increases the visibility of EUI member’s publications.
• Statistics and numbers:
  • Library’s Alumni outreach project has resulted in an increase of EUI theses available in Open Access. Today 31 % of all EUI theses is available in Open Access (917)
  • Out of EUI publications 2018: 42% were Open Access