19-25 October is International Open Access Week.  The University of Salford is offering a series of events to mark this and to support researchers to increase the reach and impact of their research by making it more openly accessible.  It is increasingly common for researchers to make the outputs of their research freely available online, including releasing published papers and the data sets that underpin the findings.

Making research open access is becoming more important for researchers, both in increasing the visibility and impact of research and to comply with funders’ policies. read more

The University has set up an Open Access Support Scheme to help you make your peer reviewed journal articles Open Access by way of paying an Article Processing Charge (APC) to the publisher.

This way you will be able to benefit from immediate, unrestricted access to the final published version of your paper.

To apply to the fund please complete the form at: http://www.salford.ac.uk/library/research/repository/APC

There are no submission deadlines.

To find out more about your Open Access options, you can contact Helen Kenna, the Repository Manager at the Library on extension 56370 or on h.kenna@salford.ac.uk. read more

The University has set up an Open Access Support Scheme to help researchers make their peer reviewed research Open Access by way of paying an Article Processing Charge (APC) to the publisher. Open Access ensures that your research benefits from immediate, unrestricted access to the final published version of your paper.

Making publicly funded research Open Access is a condition of grant for many funding bodies and it is important that researchers are fully informed about the policy of their Research Funder before submitting articles to any publishers. read more

A recent study, funded by the European Commission, suggests that around 50% of scientific papers published in 2011 are made available via open access.

Open access will be mandatory for all scientific publications produced with funding from the new EU research funding programme Horizon2020.

The study, undertaken by Science-Metrix, looked at the availability of scholarly publications in 22 fields of knowledge in the European Research Area, Brazil, Canada, Japan, and the United States. Two further reports by the same group have also been released, one examining open access policies and the second focusing on issue surrounding open access to data. The research suggests that open access is reaching the tipping point, with around 50% of scientific papers published in 2011 now available for free. This is about twice the level estimated in previous studies, explained by a refined methodology and a wider definition of open access. The study also estimates that more than 40% of scientific peer reviewed articles published worldwide between 2004 and 2011 are now available online in open access form. The study looks at the EU and some neighbouring countries, as well as Brazil, Canada, Japan and United States of America. read more