Open Access Publishing
Open Access Defined
Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. Peter Suber (2015)
Open Access is the free, immediate, online availability of research articles coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment. Open Access ensures that anyone can access and use these results to turn ideas into industries and breakthroughs into better lives (SPARC).
Open Science is the practice of science in such a way that others can collaborate and contribute, where research data, lab notes and other research processes are freely available, under terms that enable reuse, redistribution and reproduction of the research and its underlying data and methods (FOSTER).
Open data is the idea that some data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control (Wikipedia)
CONTACT
Manager: Digital Scholarship
Anelisa Mente-Mpako
Email: amentempako@uwc.ac.za
Telephone: 0219593953
UNIVERSITY OF THE WESTERN CAPE OPEN ACCESS POLICY
The Open Access (OA) policy at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) was passed in 2014, as a response to the global movement to bring about the widest circulation of knowledge for the benefit of science and society more broadly. As an institution focused on building and applying knowledge
to achieve transformation for the alleviation of problems in our society, UWC recognised that the principles of open access aligned with its own mission and became a signatory of the Berlin
Declaration and shortly thereafter produced an OA policy for the institution.
The UWC Electronic Theses and Dissertations repository holds full-text theses submitted for degree purposes since 2004, with selected titles prior to 2004. Access to the complete theses (print) collection is available via the online catalogue. To access UWC Theses online, conduct a search or browse using the options as listed on the right.
Welcome to the UWC Research Repository. The repository is a service that stores, distributes and displays digital copies of research output of UWC faculty. Search across the entire collection or browse amongst the research communities associated with our faculties.
Researchers register for an account and are given authorisation to deposit files to relevant collections.
The ETD Submission Portal Guideline outlines instructions for Students, Faculty Administrators and Supervisors. Note the portal as described below is a temporary administrative platform to aid in the capture of graduating theses. The OJS operating system that we use in the portal is also an operating system used to host journals in a separate workflow. This system however has been further customized to fit the purpose of our ETD submission portal. This means that within the portal we have been able to change the names of various roles, sections and buttons, but this has not been the case through the platform. As a result, there are areas where naming still reflects the publishing processes as per the original design of the software.
To submit your graduating thesis please follow the link to the ETD submission portal https://submissions.uwc.ac.za
Institutional Repositories (IR) is for content published in paid-for journals and then self-archived as discipline repositories
- Africarxiv – preprint service for African scientist.
- Arxiv physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics.
- BioRxiv – for biology.
- Engineering archive
- PhilSci – an electronic archive specifically tailored to and run by philosophers of science, including general philosophy of science, philosophy of particular sciences (physics, biology, chemistry, psychology, etc.), feminist philosophy of science, socially relevant philosophy of science, history and philosophy of science and history of the philosophy of science.
- PsyArXiv – for Psychological sciences.
- PubMed – for biomedical and life sciences.
PREDATORY ACADEMIC PRACTICE
This practice includes activities such as publishing and conferencing that exploit academic research output for financial gain to the detriment of the academics, researchers and their institutions.
Predatory publishing exploits the principles of Open Access by profiting from a researchers’ need to publish and distribute their research. These publishers often charge lower article processing charges (APCs), provide little or no peer review, and promise remarkably short publishing times. One of their key characteristics is the limited contact information provided.
Common characteristics of predatory practice:
- Their primary goal is to make money (i.e. there will be fees).
- They do not care about the quality of the work published (i.e. no or little editing or peer-review).
- They make false claims or promises (i.e. claims of impact factors and indexing).
- They engage in unethical business practices (i.e. not as advertised).
- They fail to follow accepted standards or best practices of scholarly publishing (various).
WHAT IS A PREDATORY CONFERENCE?
Predatory conferences appear legitimate, but use an exploitive business model similar to that of predatory publishers. Organisers exercise little or no editorial control over presentations and submitted papers. The involvement of prominent researchers is often claimed (usually without their knowledge) in an attempt to boost conference attendance numbers, if the conference exists at all.
Some aspects to look out for
- Is the conference in your field or does it cover a broad range of subjects?
- Does the conference appear to be a one-off event? Are the details and papers of the previous event available?
- Who is organising the conference? Is there any connection to a legitimate research organization, professional society, or institute?
- What sort of fees are associated with attending the conference? Are registration fees with accommodation, meals, and travel?
- Do organisers claim that abstracts and papers will be peer reviewed or promise a fast review time, high acceptance rate?
- Do organisers guarantee publication in a list of specified journals?
TIPS FOR SELECTING A JOURNAL
What is a journal Impact factor?
Impact factors are one indicator of journal quality. They are calculated by determining the number of times published articles have been cited in the preceding two years. The higher the impact factor, the more articles have been cited. The impact factor, however, should not be used exclusively to establish journal quality. Informed peer-review should also be considered.
Some tips for choosing the right journal:
- Your literature review will contain journals in your field that have provided you with quality resources;
- Consult your supervisors, peers and colleagues to obtain a list of journals they have used;
- Does the aim and scope of the journal match your article content?
- Has the journal published articles similar to your article?
- Does the journal have any restrictions?
- User the library provided services as well as online services such as Journal Finder (see right panel);
- Consult your librarian.
(How to choose a journal, 2018)