Starting this year, we will be posting a monthly summary on some of the main topics from the mailing list. You can keep up to date on lots more through our twitter account, @ukcorr . You can become a member of UKCORR and have full access to the mailing list by contacting UKCORR-DISCUSSION-request@jiscmail.ac.uk , you need to work in repositories or have an open access / scholarly comms role within the UK.
Also if you wish to contribute to this blog or have any suggestions or ideas for UKCORR, or just want to get more involved, please let us know by adding a comment below.
Publisher Policies on monographs based on PhD theses
For January, we start with an issue around publishing policies on embargoed theses when the work has been published as a monograph. This topic starts with attempting to verify CUP’s position in light of a researcher request for an extension to an embargo. It then develops into a wider discussion on different publisher policies and sharing knowledge on specific publisher stances and attitudes. It becomes clear that there is ambiguity over a number of policies and that previous assumptions have turned out not to be the case. In CUP’s case, one member cites any future publication does not prevent the thesis from being the submitted version on the ground that there would be a significant re-writing of the work before it’s publication as a monograph. Members felt a document is needed on the same grounds as the spreadsheet on OA Book Chapters, to clarify these policies. A very organised member already has created a spreadsheet and shared this to the team who update the OA Book Chapters document. This is now available on the UKCORR website and is a great example of identifying a community resources and sharing this on the new website:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1VrXFJe_df0svkIvVBgFngrDPjDIsfzJSqFXzyX2lzWc.
Copyright and Embargoed theses
Theses seems a topical theme for January, as another thread focusses on copyright and length of embargo period. The originating question asks members to share how long their institution embargo theses for, who is responsible for ensuring copyright clearance at their institution, whether people provide guidance and training and if there is a named copyright expert. Respondents gave interesting results with embargo lengths ranging from two to five years and even longer under certain situations. Most places have the onus on the student for copyright clearance, nearly all respondents provide some form of guidance and training, whether online or to a lesser extent in person. More and more copyright expertise existed within the repository teams or the Library service. One member points out that this information has been covered before on previous threads, but as the originator replies, the search function on the mailing list is not always as good as it could be.
Who pays for OA?
The final topic to cover is one dear to many of us, who should pay for Open Access charges. The initiating post draws out two options for deciding on who should pay up, either the institution that the author is affiliated to or the institution where the grant is held. Most contributors clearly favour one over the other, although in some cases the author and grant came from the same place. An emerging theme is there tends to be a certain amount of flexibility in towards paying the requested charge and this is tied to funding. One member states that in the earlier days of the UKRI grant they were more flexible in paying out for Gold OA , but as funding is decreasing institutions are taking different approaches, for both Wellcome/COAF and UKRI. One member highlights, this is not as simple as choosing between the two options, sometimes it can be quite complex as the grant is held externally but there is an internal PI.
There are plenty of more topics to explore on the mailing list, including discussion on mirror journals and how a notable publisher is increasing their promotion on these resources.