Dissemination, Sustainability

Auditing the University’s journals

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As part of the HOAP project’s sustainability planning, we aimed to audit the University Schools and Services for other journal titles and to use the outcomes of this project as best practice to develop and launch other titles.

After contacting our REF Unit of Assessment Coordinators, the Research Office and the University’s Teaching and Learning Institute we have now compiled a list of our journal titles

Mental Health & Learning Disabilities Research & Practice

http://www2.hud.ac.uk/hhs/mhrg/journal/index.php

The journal is a joint publication between South West Yorkshire Mental Health NHS Trust and the University of Huddersfield and is now in its 8th Volume. However, due to funding issues the title ceased with the latest issue. After discussions with the editor, we have committed to move the journal from its current web page to the new Repository platform after the HOAP project completes. As part of this we will assign DOIs in order to preserve the content.

Radar

http://www2.hud.ac.uk/ada/research2/RADAR.php

RADAR, the Review of Art, Design and Architecture Research, is published annually by the School of Art, Design and Architecture. It is intentionally compiled to highlight the growing range of researchers in the school and their broad research work and experiences from early career to established researchers. Its intention is to communicate and signal University research both internally and more importantly externally. One of its aims is to act as an open invitation for further collaborations in the education and creative industry sectors.

This title is now in its second volume and we hope to begin talks with the editors over the coming weeks.

CeReNeM

http://www2.hud.ac.uk/mhm/mmt/research/cerenem-journal/index.php

CeReNeM’s (Centre for Research in New Music) research team brings together researchers and artists at the cutting edge of contemporary music performance, composition and new sonic media. The journal is peer reviewed and acts as a forum for discourse surrounding the research projects and activities such as intoacoustics, sound spatialisation, digital interface technologies, improvisation, experimental performance practice, composition, sonic art, new notations, the study of musical perception, temporality, cross cultural aesthetics and interdisciplinary collaborations.

The journal has published two issues, the second featuring articles by postgraduate composers from across the UK and internationally.

We hope to meet with the editors to discuss the journal in the next few weeks.

North American Journal of Welsh Studies

http://welshstudiesjournal.org/index

The North American Journal of Welsh Studies was first published in 2001, it took a break between 2006 and 2010, but has now been re-launched at Huddersfield. It is published on behalf of the North American Association for the Study of Welsh History and Culture, a multidisciplinary association of scholars, teachers and individuals dedicated to advancing scholarship on Welsh studies.

The journal is using OJS, however, we have had a meeting with Professor Paul Ward, the journal’s editor, with a view to collaborating on best practice such as sharing notes for contributors, the licence to publish, etc. We hope to work with the team to look at assigning DOIs to the articles and registering the journal with the Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE). Looking forward, it will be interesting to see how the two platform, OJS and Eprints compare.

Teaching and Learning Management Board

The project team gave a paper to the University’s Teaching and Learning Management Board this week on the progress of the HOAP project. The Teaching in Lifelong learning journal is partly funded by the University’s Teaching and Learning Institute (TALI). In the meeting it was agreed that a short article would be prepared for the in house newsletter, Teaching and Learning Matters, as part of the project dissemination, however, matters also turned to the future of the in house newsletter.

Teaching and Learning Matters (TLM)

http://www2.hud.ac.uk/news/tlm/archive/

It was agreed that TLM would benefit from being part of the suit of journals on the EPrints platform and also needed to be registered for an ISSN etc. The project will discuss this further with TALI with a view to moving the newsletter over to the new platform after the HOAP project has concluded.

New journals

There are a number of new titles currently under discussion in the University and it was agreed in the Management Board that those that fall under the remit of TALI will follow the guidelines set out in this project.

In addition, a policy document on University publications, including the University Press, Huddersfield Contemporary Records, departmental publications and journals is currently being drafted. The aim is to use the toolkit and workflows from this project to support this document.

News, Sustainability, Users

Social media

We have been experimenting with social media and web 2.0 tools and technologies at Huddersfield since 2005:

Stone, Graham (2011) Social Media in Computing and Library Services at the University of Huddersfield. Illuminea (7).

We plan to feature the usual RSS feeds from the Teaching and Lifelong Learning landing page and also to Tweet new articles as they are published. However, we would like to go a step further than this by encouraging authors and readers to use social media based on the recommendations of the RIN report, ‘If you build it, will they come? How researchers perceive and use web 2.0’

Ultimately this is more than we can achieve during the life of this project, as it will involve buy in from funders, universities, computing and library services and the researchers themselves. However, as a university we are committed to this. Huddersfield and then Imperial College were the first universities to run courses promoting social media to researchers:

Stone, Graham and Collins, Ellen (2011) 25 Research Things @ Huddersfield: engaging researchers with social media. ALISS Quarterly.

Collins, Ellen, Pattern, David and Stone, Graham (2010) 25 Research Things.

Imperial College, Blogs, Twitter, wikis and other web-based tools: Collaborating and building your online presence (2011)

In addition Publishing Perspectives have put together a round up, ‘What Role Does Social Networking Have in Scholarly Publishing?’ based on discussion at the Association of Learned and Professional Scholarly Publishers (ALPSP) conference.

We are also looking into the SNEEP suite of social networking extensions as part of the journal pages on the Repository – for this we have to thank our fellow JISC project SAS Open Journals for the inspiration for this. This will allow readers of the journal to comment, tag and make notes once they log in. However, this will be dependent on how comfortable readers feel with social media and this leads us back to the way this is encouraged by their host institutions.

We do have more ambitious ideas which we will keep working on after the project completes. One of the project team, Dr. Ian Pitchford, is very keen on the concept of open peer commentary from a group of appointed expert individuals. One such model can be seen at Behavioural and Brain Sciences, which has thousands of appointed open peer commentators. It’s become so prestigious to be a Behavioural and Brain Sciences affiliate that it is the sort of thing academics put on their CVs!

Benefits, News, Sustainability, Wins and fails

Customising the Repository

The main aim of the HOAP project is to use Eprints software to develop a low cost platform for our University journals. In our original project plan we scheduled this for completion by the end of month 4 of the project (August). However, we underestimated the complexity of this and also the fact that August is not the best time to meet!

The delay has also worked in our advantage as the University is currently rebranding its web presence and the HOAP pages will now reflect this. In addition, research at the University is now to be defined into the six themes below. The delay in getting the Eprints pages launched will now allow us to brand each journal we launch under one of the themes.

We have some very rough mock-ups of what the Teaching in Lifelong Learning journal may look like below. Basically we intend to have a landing page in the Repository and then a contents page for each issue which will link directly to the abstract/references and the full text in PDF.

After discussions with Eprints we have decided to create a ‘new’ Repository, which will sit alongside the existing Repository. This involves a little extra work at the planning stage; hence the delay, but the benefits far outweigh this. The main reasons for doing this are to be able to maintain navigation throughout – if we didn’t do this readers may not be able to get back to the journal front page from the abstract and PDF. In addition, we want to keep the browse list of journal article authors separate from Repository authors.

We are also working on a revised Eprints article workflow in order to streamline the workflow as much as we can. We hope to include an improved references display that will allow users to see all references, including DOI links, in the abstract view.

As CrossRef publishers we are committed to add DOIs to all article references (about 400 in total). We estimate that this will take us well beyond the end of the HOAP project, however, as part of the sustainability planning we have committed to do this. We will then build this into the workflow for issue publication and costs, which we will blog about in the coming weeks.

Benefits, News, Wins and fails

Preparing the Teaching in Lifelong Learning journal for open access

The journal has just published Vol. 3 Issue 1; the final print issue will be published in November. From Volume 4 the whole journal will move from print only to online – the editorial board made this decision as there are print subscriptions to honour for 2011.

Because the journal has never had an online version, we have been busy adding PDFs and metadata to the University Repository for all of the back issues. There was a slight complication in doing this, which caused us to stop adding the full text. At the same time, the University Press investigated the feasibility of joining CrossRef as a publisher. The decision was taken over the summer to do this, however, this means that we have to go back through the PDFs and add DOIs to each article. We are currently discussing how we build our DOIs before assigning them, however, we are confident that the full text for all the issues will be available by the end of the project.

Of course, things are never quite that simple! One of the membership rules states that:

Members have an obligation to link references in the journal articles they deposit via CrossRef. The Membership Agreement states that a Member has an obligation to actively maximize and maintain its own Cross-Linking to other members of PILA or other qualified users of the PILA System. Members who have not informed CrossRef within 18 months of joining that they have instituted outbound linking will have their accounts suspended. Members are encouraged to link references in other content types for which DOIs are deposited but are not currently required to do so.

We will attempt to do this as part of the project, but it will take time to complete, however as CrossRef Publishers we are now committed to do this.

Another impact of moving from a subscription model to an open access model is the need to review the notes for contributors. The current print version requires the authors to assign the copyright to the Press, but this goes against the ideals of open access.

We now have a new ‘notes for contributors’ section, which will appear on the journal pages when completed. This also includes a new ‘Licence to Publish’ (LtP), which replaces the previous copyright transfer agreement. The LtP now lets the author retain the copyright under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License (cc-by). This allows the University Press to publish the article first in the journal, but allows the author to add the PDF into their institutional Repository and to re-use their work as they see fit without having to ask the Press for further permission.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

The LtP has been approved and amended by the University Secretary who also sits on the University Press Technical Advisory Board. This LtP is freely available for other to use and adapt as they see fit.
Once we confirm the URL for the journal landing pages we will request a new ISSN for the British Library in order to reflect the change in format.

Finally in preparation for the open access launch, we have become a member of the Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE).
COPE is a forum for editors and publishers of peer-reviewed journals to discuss all aspects of publication ethics. It also advises editors on how to handle cases of research and publication misconduct.

The Press will cover the membership costs of CrossRef and COPE in future years, we’ll post a blog about the sustainability of the project in the next few weeks.

News

Consortium Network Meeting

The Consortium Network of 27 colleges received further information about the development of the Journal and its anticipated launch for the e-version in November 2011. This Network meeting included the CertEd/PGCE tutors, BA, FD for Learning Support and the Skills for Life tutors. An emphasis was placed on the benefits to not only themselves and their colleagues, but to their students and teacher trainees.

In discussion with one teacher educator, she described to me how she has used the journal (multiple copies) in the past. This is what she said:

We run different workshops and one of them is an introduction to Academic Writing. A lot of our trainees on the In-Service course are CertEd and have never used Harvard Referencing or read many journal articles. Within the workshop we use the CETT journals to introduce them to journal articles and referencing. We ask different groups in the class to read different parts of the articles and to put some of it into their own words, therefore using indirect referencing. We then get to do some direct referencing from the articles and create a reference list. Within the Advanced Academic Writing workshops, we introduce different articles.

This is something I will be promoting about the open access journal.

Dr. Denise Robinson
Director Consortium and HUDCETT
National Teaching Fellow

Benefits, News

Moving to Open Access

Although the Summer period has seen a slowing down in both the submission of author papers and reviewers’ comments, there has been a heightened awareness of the Journal and its role as a result of the project and the communication about future issues through Network meetings (June and August 2011) and the Consortium Newsletter. The Newsletter is distributed to over 150 individuals across the North of England in Lifelong Learning institutions; the Newsletters are normally posted on boards etc, and the electronic version is available on the Consortium web site; individual email group lists are also used to distribute the e-version of the Newsletter. This ensures that something like 300 individuals also receive the e-version and links to the web site.
The experience this Summer of the latest version of the (print only) Journal confirms the potential benefits of the e-version in the future. There have been problems and delays with this edition which will not be experienced with e-versions.

The Autumn edition (which is central to the JISC HOAP project) is presently being prepared with the usual flow of reviewers’ feedback to author and their amendments, underway. I am also encouraging potential authors and the CETTs to write papers for future editions, rather than the position we have at the moment, which is more akin to the ‘just in time’ practice of industry. This is, possibly, a reflection of the practices and culture of the sector; stringent timeframes, heavy workloads and a prioritisation of action research over the writing and publication of papers being the norm. Moves to expand HE work in FE colleges may shift the focus towards the latter however, and this is where the foundations being laid by the Journal will come to fruition.

Dr. Denise Robinson
Director Consortium and HUDCETT
National Teaching Fellow

Benefits, News, Users

Getting started

Initiating dissemination early-on in a project seems to me to be vital for maximum potential impact at a later stage; it is part of the process rather than an end-product. In order to heighten the profile of the journal (Teaching in Lifelong Learning) and encourage more authors from the Lifelong Learning Sector (LLS) (one of the objectives of the journal created by the Centres for Excellence in Teacher Training [CETTs]), I informed the immediate audience and supporters of the journal as soon as we started to consider and during the development of the bid, as well as immediately after we were informed of its success. The members of the national Association of CETTs have responded enthusiastically and appreciate the benefits that will accrue to the sector and the work they do to support initial teacher training in the LLS and continuing professional development, as well as sustaining novice researchers and future researchers. We know there are teachers and lecturers who have undertaken projects and written dissertations for a Masters award but who have never produced any publication for a wider audience who would benefit from the dissemination of their work. Our aim is to give support to such individuals to write for publication.

Closer to home, I have informed the Post Compulsory in Education and Training (PCET) Network of teacher educators at their meeting (20th May) of the project and how this will be a benefit to themselves and their trainee teachers. This network is composed of some 27 Further Education Colleges (FECs) across the North of England which delivers the Education courses awarded by the University of Huddersfield. It includes 2,500 adults undertaking one of the following: Certificate in Education/Professional Graduate Certificate in Education; BA in Education and Professional Development; the Foundation Degree in Learning Support; and Certificate in Skills for Life. These are all in-service (i.e. they are undertaking the course on a part-time basis) and the majority (just under 2,000) are trainee teachers. This will give the teacher educators and tutors a resource that is free, easily accessible and is written by individuals from their sector.
I have also written a summary of the project for the Steering Committee of the PCET Consortium which meets bi-monthly and is responsible for the HEFCE numbers and resources that are distributed across the 27 partner FECs. This next meets on 27th May.

Dr. Denise Robinson
Director Consortium and HUDCETT
National Teaching Fellow

News

Summary

This project aims to develop a platform using EPrints software as a low cost, sustainable method to convert the University journal, Teaching in Lifelong Learning, from its existing model of a print subscription journal to an open access e-journal with a print-on-demand option. This platform will then be used as a pilot to convert other existing University journals in the future as well as a ‘best of Huddersfield research’ title that would draw its content from the Repository. The project will develop a toolkit for other institutions to use, including protocols to promote open access and self-archiving as well as a fully functional platform from EPrints that can be adopted for other open access journals