Publishing options

As you research, and publicise the work you have done, you may receive emails from companies asking you to consider using them to publish your findings.  This can happen after conference presentations, or depositing your work in the institutional repository.  Sometimes these are completely genuine, but sometimes they are from predatory publishers.

So, how can you tell the difference?  At the most basic level, do some quick investigations about the company.  Search for them online and check whether they are established in your subject area.  See what else they have published and if these are from researchers you would expect to find in your field.  If you are being asked for any money, or to transfer all of your rights to the work, alarm bells should start to ring.  If in any doubt, the Academic Liaison Librarians would be happy to assist with this.

These publishers have always existed, and you find them in every publishing  model, but they are now using the Open Access movement and requirements as their latest reason for approaching researchers. This is probably because some Open Access journals charge Article Processing Charges themselves, so it is becoming more common to make a payment for publication (it is by far not the only Open Access option though - there are several other options that do not involve paying fees).

You can check possible journal 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.

Pre-print and Post-print definitions

The terms pre-print and post-print can be ambiguous as they mean different things to different people which can cause confusion. For the purposes of uploading into RaY we use the same definitions as the Sherpa/Romeo site which lists publisher copyright and self-archiving policies for individual journal titles.


Pre-print
Also known as the Author's original manuscript. This is the author's version of a paper which has not been through peer-review or had any copy-editing or formatting done by the publisher.


Post-print
Also known as the Author accepted manuscript. This is the version of the paper which has been through peer-review, with revisions, but before any publisher copy-editing or formatting.


For more information see the glossary in Your guide to RaY and Open Access. If you have a query about which version of your article you need to upload to the repository contact RaY for advice.

Changes in the ILS research support team

For some time, Leah Emary and Clare McCluskey Dean, two of the Academic Liaison Librarians, have been leading the ILS support for researchers.  Sadly, Leah is leaving YSJ to take up a post at Northumbria University, so we have made some changes. Clare will be continuing with research support, and this blog, but will be joined by Ruth Mardall, the ILS repository librarian.  Ruth has expertise and experience of open access and institutional repository matters, so please let us know if you have any queries at all on these matters.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year from all in ILS. And to start off the new term with good news, we are pleased to report that some of our newest collections are now accessible via the library catalogue.

We've had three collections of historical texts available via separate links for a little while, but these are now indexed and available in the library catalogue.

Early English Books Online, containing scanned images, and full text digital versions where available, of over 125000 books published 1473-1700.

Eighteenth Century Collections Online, with over 180000 titles published 1701-1800.

British Library 19th Century Collection, offering access to over 65000 digitised editions from the BL's collections 1789-1914.

We hope this move will make these valuable collections even more accessible to our researchers of historical material.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from all at ILS. The University closes down over Christmas, but you will still be able to access all of our online resources and self-service will be available in Fountains. Our opening times are available on the ILS website.




Merry Christmas by Tom Gill. Used under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Available from https://flic.kr/p/qv8j8K

Measuring research impact with Altmetric

YSJ offers a new way to measure research impact through a subscription to Altmetric. This service is designed to offer an alternative to journal impact factors (impact factors measure importance by quantifying how many times and where in the scholarly literature research has been cited). Altmetric looks at where research is mentioned in grey literature like government reports, popular media, social media, online and elsewhere. It is particularly good for getting a quick early snapshot of who is talking about research and where.

Altmetric will automatically analyse all research outputs uploaded to RaY and there are a number of different ways to explore the data. More information on how Altmetric works is available on the ILS website.

Please send us your NVivo issues

We are aware that a number of researchers using NVivo software for qualitative data management are experiencing issues. We are discovering that it's not just one quick fix to solve these issues but, because the software itself relies on a complex database, there are likely a number of different problems going on.

If you are indeed experiencing issues, please email either Clare McCluskey-Dean or Leah Emary a detailed description of your problem.We're aware that these issues may have occurred in the past and so you won't necessarily be able to screenshot or resurrect the exact problems you encounter but the types of details we're interested in hearing about are as follows:

• Where are you accessing NVivo (grad centre, home, other YSJ location)?
• Are you using the virtual desktop or do you have a local copy of NVivo installed on a personal machine?
• If you have a local copy of NVivo, which version is installed and what type of machine are you using (Mac, PC, operating system etc.)?
• If you are using a USB stick or cloud storage (Drop Box, Google Drive etc) to import and/or save your data, what type of USB stick are you using or which cloud-based storage medium are you using?
• Are you experiencing storage issues because files are exceeding your storage capabilities? If so, where are you saving your project files?
• Do you ever have trouble locating your project files or the NVivo sample project?
• Screenshots of error messages or other failures are very helpful.
• Any other details about your context or issues are greatly appreciated.