20-22 March 2024
Cambridge’s Office of Scholarly Communication teams were in the spotlight at this year’s RLUK online conference, whose theme was New Frontiers: The expanding scope of the modern research library.
OSC preprint service
Dr Agustina Martínez-García, Head of Open Research Systems, and Alexia Sutton, Open Access Service Manager, reported first on the OSC’s preprint service which launched in early March. This service, for full drafts of research papers shared publicly before peer review, provides a high-quality publishing option for researchers who do not have a suitable repository to upload their preprints.
It is open to Cambridge University researchers who have no subject-specific repository available to them, or in cases where available preprint servers are unable to offer long-term preservation, or to those who would just like to use Apollo. The service uses Cambridge’s existing infrastructure. It will allow engagement with the wider scholarly community, including participation in COAR Notify.
Accepted manuscripts continue to be deposited separately, but will be linked to the preprint record in Apollo. A present limitation is the need for researchers to still deposit accepted manuscripts, to keep the first date of deposit for the Research Excellence Framework (REF).
The service has been devised with the backing of several work strands in Cambridge, all driving towards the development of Open Research Collections, Digital Preservation, RDM service provision, and the Open Research Ecosystem.
Community-led journals
Martinez and Sutton also reported on a study led by Dr Sam Moore and Dr Mandy Wigdorowitz of OSC’s Open Research Team to explore the community-led journal ecosystem in Cambridge. There are at least 34 of these publishing initiatives, all voluntary and relying on limited financial and technical support. Twenty journals were invited to participate in an interview, and nine semi-structured interviews have taken place with a diverse group of journals. The data is currently being analysed, and a paper will follow shortly.
During the Q&A session, Michael Williams, Cambridge’s Head of Collection Development & Management, added that community OA journals will be within the scope of a legal deposit working group that has just formed to look at university publications.
Diamond OA journals
A complementary OSC project on Diamond OA journals (free to readers, and free to authors to publish) aims to identify and engage with potential pilot participants, and is working with four student-led journals within Anthropology, Architecture, History of Art and the Cambridge Climate Society.
The project will explore the suitability of the DSpace open-source repository platform as an online journal publishing platform, and estimate resourcing requirements. The project team is currently assessing workflows and will then work with the pilot participants to support key activities. This project includes work on long-term preservation and access, on which the final report will make recommendations. It is anticipated that the pilot Diamond OA platform will launch in early May.
Upcoming work is expected to reflect increased community interest in independent journal publishing and open peer review, as repositories and external open peer review providers can enable Diamond open access.
RLUK recordings link
For a full recording of this talk and other RLUK sessions from this year, you can visit the RLUK conference website.