Celebrating Open Access Week is a perfect time to shine a light on the University of Limerick’s unwavering commitment to Open Access (OA).
One of UL’s strategic goals in our Wisdom for Action strategy is Research Excellence.
By championing and celebrating the pursuit of excellence and embracing the spirit of openness and discovery we can contribute towards global challenges.
UL was one of the first Irish signatories to the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA).
CoARA is an international initiative dedicated to transforming the way research is assessed across academic institutions. Founded in 2022, the group aims to create a more inclusive and collaborative scientific ecosystem by redefining traditional assessment metrics and promoting open science practices.
University of Limerick is also a signatory to the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) which is a global initiative encouraging best practice in and the development of the evaluation of researchers and research outputs.
UL has incorporated the commitments and guiding principles of these two associations into the fabric of our research community to allow our researchers excel and innovate.
At UL, the Glucksman Library is not just a place for books and quiet study; it’s a hub of innovation and progress in the world of open research. The library has taken a leadership role in supporting open access to research, knowledge, and information through several key initiatives.
Open Access Repository
UL’s first institutional Repository was launched in 2008 with more than 12,500 individual research works by UL authors now available on the Research Repository. By providing a platform for researchers to share their work openly, the library contributes to the global OA movement, making valuable research readily available to a broader audience.
Open Access publisher agreements
Open Access publisher agreements or transformative agreements are contracts negotiated between institutions and publishers that transform the business model underlying scholarly publishing towards a fully open access model. They represent a further shift away from a subscription-only model to one which covers both subscription payments (the “read” element of the agreement) and article processing charges (the “publish” element).
The library as members of the IReL consortium manage 23 of these agreements on behalf of UL. These agreements greatly open up the OA opportunities for UL researchers at no cost to the individual researcher.
Support for Open Journal and Book publishing
As part of our commitment to a diverse and sustainable scholarly publishing system the library has supported key OA journal and book publishers such as Knowledge Unlatched and the Open Library of the Humanities. Through our IReL membership UL has supported Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3), the world’s largest disciplinary OA initiative.
Also, through IRel we support the following SCOSS-endorsed initiatives:
- Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
- Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) & OAPEN
- Sherpa Romeo
These infrastructures are key to libraries and their users and are crucial to maintaining a diverse scholarly communications landscape.
Training and Advocacy
UL library recognises the importance of empowering its academic community with the knowledge and tools needed to embrace OA principles. Through workshops, training sessions, and active advocacy, the library is creating a culture of openness, collaboration, and transparency. As part of its dedication, the Library provides 2 ECTS accredited modules to PhD students on Open Science topics as part of regularly scheduled Summer and Winter Schools.
Collaborations and Partnerships
Collaboration is key to driving change. The library actively collaborates with like-minded organisations and global initiatives like Plan S and COARA which seek to accelerate the transition to OA publishing and collectively promote open research practices.
As we celebrate Open Access Week, we acknowledge the involvement of library staff in a number of national projects focused on implementing Ireland’s National Action Plan for Open Research. These include TROPIC, National Open Access Monitor, National Open Access Repositories, PublishOA. SCOIR UL library’s research data manager Armin Straube is leading iFrame, a project to create a National Research Data Management Framework.
In a world that increasingly recognises the importance of open knowledge, UL library continues to lead the way, championing the values of accessibility, collaboration, and transparency.
Success at YERUN Open Science Awards
Researchers’ commitment to upholding the principles of open science are reflected in UL’s three wins in a row on the YERUN Open Science Awards.
In 2023, Professor Aedín Culhane, Professor of Cancer Genomics and Dr Maria Doyle, Bioconductor Community Manager, who are both based at UL’s School of Medicine, won for their work on the Bioconductor project.
Bioconductor is an open-source software project in the R statistical language, widely used in biomedical research. It provides tools for analysing genomic data, critical for understanding diseases at a molecular level.
In 2022, Lero, the UL-hosted Research Ireland Centre for Software was chosen as one of the awardees. The Lero Open Science Committee was awarded for developing centre-wide strategies that lead to increased visibility for researchers, greater opportunities for collaboration and greater transparency in the research process.
They established Lero’s Open Science Programme Office and Open Science Charter to set out a roadmap for how the Research Ireland centre deals with Open Source in its day-to-day activities.
While in 2021, Dr Elaine Toomey won for the Open Science Special Interest Group of the European Health Psychology Society. The pan-European project aims to foster and promote open science practices within behavioural science and health psychology.
The group was established to develop the important yet untapped tole for behavioural science to improve open science behaviours across all disciplines.
