Scholarly Communications and Research Outputs 2022 Highlights

2022 proved to be an eventful year for the Scholarly Communications and Research Outputs teams in Scholarly Services (the University Library). These teams provide support around scholarly publishing, open access, researcher profiles, and the management of research outputs. Dr Zachary Kendal (Scholarly Communications Consultant) and Amin Khaliqi (Research Outputs Coordinator) take us through some of the highlights.

Open Scholarship Website

We rolled out new content and major updates to the Open Scholarship website in 2022, including:

• A redesigned Open Scholarship landing page with improved navigation.
• A new “What is Open Access?” page, with short explainer videos and information on both publisher and repository pathways to opening up research outputs.
• Substantially revised “Preregistering Research” and “Preprints” pages, with short explainer videos.
• A series of new pages on open educational resources (OERs): “What are OERs?”, “Find and Evaluate OERs”, and “Adopt, Adapt, or Share OERs”.

Why not head on over and take a look around?

Open Access Publishing Agreements

In January 2022, a range of new open access publishing agreements between the University of Melbourne and journal publishers became active. Most of these were Read and Publish (R&P) agreements negotiated by the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL).

These R&P agreements can enable University of Melbourne corresponding authors to publish articles open access in selected journals without facing article processing charges (APCs). Each agreement has its own eligibility criteria and limitations, and you can read these on our “Open Access Publishing Agreements” page (our most-viewed webpage of the year!).

Notable 2022 R&P agreements included: Springer Nature, Wiley, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, CSIRO Publishing, Brill, and De Gruyter. Our 2022 agreements have all been renewed for 2023. We will also have several new R&P agreements commencing in 2023, including: Elsevier, SAGE Publishing, and Taylor & Francis.

As these agreements continue to expand, we’re keen to ensure researchers are aware of other cost-free pathways to open access:

• Repository open access. Authors can deposit their peer-reviewed and revised Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAMs) for free open access in a repository, such as our institutional repository, Minerva Access.
• Open access journals without APCs. Many open access journals do not levy APCs for open access publishing, instead being supported by institutions, organisations, societies, or grants. You can find thousands of examples in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

We are also exploring ways to support other open access initiatives and publishers, for both journal and book publishing. We currently have an open access publishing agreement with the open access publisher Cogitatio Press, which will continue in 2023. We also financially supported several journal publishers in their adoption of Subscribe to Open publishing models in 2022, including Annual Reviews, Berghahn, and Practical Action Publishing. In terms of open access book publishing, we supported several excellent initiatives, including Knowledge Unlatched, Open Book Publishers, and MIT Press’s ‘Direct to Open’ program.

ORCID read-and-write integration with Elements

The integration of ORCID with Elements is now complete and will ensure continuous, accurate, and automatic updates to and from ORCID profiles. To make use of this new read-and-write functionality, researchers should:

1. Register for an ORCID, if they do not already have one.
2. Connect their ORCID to their Elements account. By default, the ORCID connection will start as a read-only connection. To change this to a read-and-write connection, follow the steps described under Upgrading your ORCID integration.

ORCID is an open, non-profit, community-driven effort to create and maintain a registry of unique researcher identifiers. It also offers a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers. Benefits of ORCID profiles include:

• Increasing automation and the visibility of published works.
• Distinguishing researchers and their work from those with the same (or similar) names.
• Creating an accurate record of research outputs and grants that can be reused by funders, research organisations, and publishers.
• Creating a public profile and research record that is portable across institutions.
• Providing a unique, persistent identifier that can be linked to other IDs, including Scopus Author Identifier and ResearcherID.

Use of ORCID identifiers is increasing among journals and publishers, funding bodies, and university repositories. ORCID has been endorsed by the University of Melbourne since 2016 and their use is mandated by the NHMRC and ARC. University of Melbourne graduate researchers are also required to include their ORCID on the title page of their thesis. You can find out more about ORCID identifiers on  the ORCID website and on our Researcher Profiles Guide.

Awards received by the Research Outputs team

In recognition of the Research Outputs team’s efforts throughout the year, they were thrilled to receive two awards:

1. The Australasian Research Management Society’s 2022 RMIT Paul Taylor Award for Excellence in Research Management Practice. This award recognises the significant achievements of the Research Outputs team since their establishment in Scholarly Services in March 2021. The team won in the category of “working smarter,” having demonstrated creativity and innovative problem solving that enabled their work to be carried out more easily, efficiently, and productively, without compromising on quality.
2. 2022 University of Melbourne Excellence Awards. An award for professional excellence and innovation.

Open Access Week 2022

As noted in an earlier blog post, the final week of October was International Open Access Week 2022, which was themed around Open for Climate Justice. The Scholarly Communications team ran a series of Researcher@Library webinars on open access for University of Melbourne students and staff. Open Access 101 and Open Access and Your Thesis were recorded and are now available for viewing.

The team also participated in delivering a series of webinars for Open Access Australasia, recordings of which are now on the Open Access Australasia website. A particular highlight was the panel webinar Look at the Evidence: Climate Journalism and Open Science, which was chaired by Dimity Flanagan (Manager, Scholarly Communications) and featured a great line-up of speakers, including Melbourne’s own Dr Jeff Sparrow. You can watch the full recording on YouTube.

Find out more

You can find out more about the work of the Scholarly Communications and Research Outputs teams on the following sites:

• Open Scholarship
• Research Outputs (internal only)
• Publishing and Profiles