Open Access is becoming very popular and authors are now realising the benefits of sharing their work with a wider audience. This week I received an email from a researcher in Australian who had visited the University’s repository and located the work of one of our academics, she wanted to make contact with him to discuss his research further. Other authors are very interested to receive their monthly download figures from our site, what often surprises them is the new popularity of their previously published work. I suspect this is a result of a wider audience being able to gain access to the work, which previously may have been hidden away in specialist publications that required a large subscription to access them or an additional one off payment to download the article from the publishers website.
My passion for Open Access is growing and I now point to the possible benefits of sharing research knowledge with the world. Often I am heartened to read articles submitted to the repository, which have the potential to help so many people, in areas like social inclusion, health and community. In the new digital age people are looking to find their own solutions to their problems rather than wait to be informed by traditional methods. If cutting edge research is openly available fairly soon after its written the benefits are going to be felt by a great deal of people, and not restricted to subject specialists who then decide if they need to pass this on.
To mark the International Open Access Week (24th -30th October). Glyndŵr University Research Online Repository will be launching the “going mobile” pilot project, the new feature hoped to make the submission process easier, will give Author’s the option to request a visit from the “Travelling Repository Manager”. Researchers will be able to arrange to have their peer reviewed published research files collected from their office. The Travelling Repository Manager armed with a pen drive is planning to copy files direct from the author’s computer ready for submission to the repository. Removing the need for email attachments and multiple submissions.
If researchers are not sure which items of their work will be suitable , they can arrange a 1:1 consultation or contact Misha Jepson for advice. For further details about this project contact Misha Jepson at d.jepson@glyndwr.ac.uk
If you have not visited Glyndŵr University Research Online repository yet, take a look at the site using this link http://epubs.glyndwr.ac.uk/
You can also follow repository news and see details of all the new submissions via Twitter at http://twitter.com/glyndwr_repos via the RSS feed.
See other open acces events via the UK Council of Research Repositories blog and world events at oad
Posted by Misha Jepson, Graduate School and Research Services Co-ordinator, Glyndŵr University