ORCID iD for Researchers

You may have heard the term ORCID identifier mentioned in the context of publishing your research. When you sign up for an ORCID iD, you will be assigned a unique code of letters and numbers, similar to a DOI. This makes it simple for a search engine to distinguish between the thousands of Smiths or Wangs in a database. An ORCID iD will be a relief to those of you with popular names or for those whose name has changed (or might change) throughout the course of your research career. An ORCID iD eliminates the issues of multiple name spellings or misspellings and also cultural variations such as a family name preceding a given name. Its ultimate goal is to attribute scholarship accurately.

It's free to sign up for an ORCID iD and you can choose which level of privacy you prefer. ORCID itself will manage this open and transparent registry of  researchers. ORCID is compatible with other persistent identifiers such as ResearcherID, and the registry itself is an independent, non-proft organisation. If your work is already registered by Web of Science or Scopus you may even have already been assigned a ResearcherID. It's easy to link the standards together.

You may not yet need an ORCID iD but will find that it becomes a useful tool for organising your contributions to YSJ's research repository, or for a new job (your ORCID will stay the same even if your email address and institutional affiliation change).

Tracking specific papers

In our help sessions on keeping track of your reading, we mention the importance of keeping track of key papers and knowing when they have been cited by other researchers.  Did you know that our database search tools will also often allow you to set up alerts, so that you are informed when a specific paper is referenced by another?  So, if you have recently published a journal article, you could set up an email alert to let you know if someone else publishes research that cites it.  Alternatively, you could set up an alert for any article that is central to your research.  One key search tool to offer this is Web of Science.  If you are interested in how this works, check out their short help video:

Two New Open Access Journals - Geo and Burnout Research

In cooperation with the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), Wiley has launched a new open access environmental and geographical journal called Geo. Similarly, Elsevier have launched a new open access journal called Burnout Research which will be covering the cross-disciplinary phenomenon of burnout.

What's interesting about these titles, apart from the content which might be relevant to your research, is the fact that they're both published by major for-profit publishers and that both are peer-reviewed. Burnout Research and Geo are far from rare in these respects of course, but there is a persistent misconception that open access means lack of scholarly rigour or publisher support.

To publish in either of these titles, authors would pay an article processing fee (APC) of between $750/£440 - $1,800/£1,150. Authors are also able to choose which copyright license to use. This license dictates how the author themself (as well as others) may redistribute the article, regardless of the fact that '[a]ll articles published Open Access will be immediately and permanently free for everyone to read, download, copy and distribute' according to Elsevier.

Though certain scholarly societies have in the past been resistent to open access publishing, Geo's support from the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) demonstrates that APCs might help to fund scholarly societies in the way that subscriptions formerly did. Many societies which formerly opposed open access have modified their policies and launched their own OA journals.

If you're interested in more about open access and what types of journals you might find in your research area, check out last week's post.

Open Access Journals

We've done a couple of posts recently about the Open Access movement and how it also links with the requirements of the next REF. One option for article publication will be to do so via a purely open access journal (i.e. one that has rigorous peer review but is freely available on the Internet, without subscription). This will adhere to the principles of Gold Open Access, without you or your institution having to pay additional fees.

You can check possible publication options and their policies and fees using the Sherpa Romeo service.  However, if you just want to find titles that are open access, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a good place to start. You can check out the titles in your research area and also assess whether they are good options for your publication. You may also find some useful, freely available, research to download whilst you are there.

Publishing open access isn't just about adhering to REF. It's also a great way of getting your research circulated and letting more people see what you do.

We'll be doing more posts on the different types of open access in the coming months, but if you need to know anything in particular, please contact your Academic Liaison Librarian.