FINAL DRAFT

OPEN ACCESS POLICY OF RHODES UNIVERSITY 

PREAMBLE

Rhodes 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 (RU), as a research-intensive university, became a signatory to the Berlin Declaration on 24 October 2013. As a signatory to this Declaration, Rhodes 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 is committed to adopting Open Access (OA) as a paradigm which enhances the institution’s research strategy “to encourage research at the highest level of excellence and to ensure that our research programmes are internationally recognised for their excellence” (Research Office, 2016).

The call to South African universities to support Open Access was strengthened by a statement issued by the National Research Foundation (NRF) in January 2015, after it became a signatory to the Berlin Declaration on 20 October 2014. The NRF announced that from 01 March 2015, all publicly funded authors “deposit their final peer-reviewed manuscripts that have been accepted by the journals, to the administering Institution Repository with an embargo period of no more than 12 months.” (NRF, 2015). The statement advocated institutions to:

• “Formulate detailed policies on Open Access of publications and data from its funded research;
• Establish Open Access repositories; and
• Support public access to the repositories through web search and retrieval according to international standards and best practice” (NRF, 2015).

Furthermore, a statement was issued from the Research Office on 6^th October 2015, wherein the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Research & Development advocated Rhodes 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 researchers register with ORCiD (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) as the preferred institutional researcher profile platform. This OA scholarly communication practice is aligned with the requirements of the National Research Foundation (NRF) on OA advocacy.

 The Rhodes Digital Commons, the official institutional repository, was established and is managed by the Rhodes 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 Library.  

 WHAT IS OPEN ACCESS?

Open Access addresses the limited access to scholarly outputs, usually caused by high journal subscription rates. It is the practice of providing online access to scientific information (articles, monographs, research data and other research outputs) that is free of charge to the reader, and licensed so that they can be further used and exploited by researchers, the industry, and citizens.

Milestone definitions of Open Access include those of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access

HOW TO PROVIDE OPEN ACCESS

Self-archiving (the Green route): Authors publish their research in their preferred venue and upon acceptance archive an electronic copy of their peer-reviewed publication and related research data in an institutional or subject repository through which it is freely available to everyone.

A repository allows the institution to manage, preserve and showcase its scientific output. The repository is a valuable tool in an institution’s research information system and evaluation process, and one that offers added value services for the scientific community.

Open Access publishing (the Gold route):  Authors publish their scholarship in Open Access journals or monograph series. These publications are freely available to the end users on the Internet. Copyright is usually retained by the authors. Open Access publications follow the same processes as toll access publications (i.e. peer review), but provide Open Access to the content of the publications. There is no correlation between the quality of a publication and access to it.

BENEFITS OF AN OPEN ACCESS POLICY

The formal adoption of Open Access through an institutional policy allows institutions to become part of the evolving research and academic ecosystem where access to research is immediate and open to the benefit of funders, researchers and citizens. An institution and its researchers may expect multiple benefits from the implementation of an efficient Open Access policy:

The Institution:

• Collects and preserves its scientific output and disseminates it through the institutional repository
• Provides the possibility of indexing and tracking the scientific output of the institution from international search engines on the Internet, like Google etc.
• Monitors the number of visits and use and collects data and indicators that can be used in institutional planning, and the search for sources of funding etc.
• Provides opportunities for the use and re-use of the institution’s output for scientific purposes (CVs, publications, excellence reports, indicators, institutional websites, personal websites etc.)
• Strengthens international communication and collaboration channels and the institution’s international profile
• To participate, support and advance the OA movement to make African research more accessible and visible

Researchers:

• Increase the visibility of their research and their citations
• Increase the usage of their research
• Increase the impact of their research
• Obtain a permanent link for each of their research outputs

RHODES UNIVERSITY adopts an Open Access Policy based on the following principles:

ARTICLE 1: GENERALPRINCIPLES

1. Rhodes 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网’Open Access policy aims at providing free online access to the outputs of its publicly funded supported research in accordance with the university’s Research Office publication guidelines.
2. Open Access to scientific results is based on the recognition of knowledge as a public good and the social and economic benefits derived.
3. The efficient and wide dissemination of scientific outputs constitutes a significant part of the Rhodes 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网’ role as a public research organization.
4. The increase in the visibility of the scientific outputs resulting from Open Access leads to an increase of the impact of publications.
5. Deposit in the institutional repository, the Rhodes Digital Commons, ensures curation, long-term preservation and further dissemination of the scientific output of Rhodes 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 and access to them for the conduct of internal and external evaluation. RU research publications include post-graduate theses and dissertations, peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and conference papers and posters, and technical reports.

ARTICLE 2:DEFINITIONS

• Creative Commons refers to the OA license used by authors to stipulate copyright and use of research publications
• A Digital copy is the electronic copy of the publication in its final stage (either the author’s final manuscript after peer review or the publisher’s version).
• An Embargo is the period during which a publication can be ‘closed’ while deposited in the  repository (i.e. the publication is not openly available).
• An Institutional Open Access Repository, is established according to international standards, containing digital content from various disciplines and providing advanced tools for search, navigation and Open Access to its digital collections
• Metadata are the descriptors used for describing, tracing, use and management of the deposited item (indicatively: title of publication, author(s), institutional affiliation, name of journal where the publication has been accepted).
• Pre-prints refer to the unpublished draft of research intended for publishing in peer-reviewed journals.
• Post-prints refer to the final print of research articles after peer-review.
• A Publication is defined as the peer-reviewed published (or under publication) work of researchers based in the institution (indicatively this comprises articles, monographs, book chapters, reports, conference presentations).
• A Repository is one that provides Open Access to scientific results, enables citation through permanent identifiers (DOI or other) and provides qualitative metadata (including acknowledgment of research funding) based on accepted guidelines and standards.
• A Researcher is any member of the research/academic/support staff of Rhodes 老虎机游戏_pt老虎机-平台*官网 irrespective of their employment status.
• Research Data is the data (such as statistics, results of experiments, measurements, observations, interview recordings, images, etc.) used to validate the results presented in scientific publications.
• Self-Archiving refers to the deposit of digital documents on the designated institutional platform by the individual.