Open Access & Institutional Repository: 2nd Open Research Symposium - Credit where credit is due

This event was the 2nd in our Open Research Symposium series. The first event, in 2019, looked at the implications of Plan S. The 2nd event evolved from the questions asked in the first and although postponed and adapted due to the pandemic, we held this event virtually on the 7th July 2021 via Zoom to an internal and external audience with over 100 participants.  Please see recordings of all the talks as well as some of the Questions and Answers raised by the chat during the event and during the Panel. 

This event was co-hosted with our colleague Julie Reeves, who works as a Researcher Developer in the Centre for Higher Education Practice (CHEP) at the University. 

This year’s event had a three-fold focus on:

• maximizing credit and impact for your research;
• understanding the importance of appropriate attribution to research integrity; 
• exploring wider platforms for research and publishing, including open peer review.

Steven Vidovic, Head of Open Research and Publication Practice at the University of Southampton introduced the new Authorship, Contribution and Publishing Policy - which was written jointly by the Open Research and Publication Practice team in the library and the Research Integrity and Governance team. This has been developed as part of our Concordat to Support Research Integrity, as well as supporting our commitment to our technical staff and promoting an equitable and inclusive culture – to create a fair playing field - for all staff who could be involved in publishing process. 

• How to get recognized, as a researcher, for your mentions in the acknowledgment section
  • Ultimately it is up to the authors what acknowledgements they include, but a contribution should warrant an acknowledgement or author status depending on how substantive the contribution was. Early and continuing conversations are the best way to manage expectations around what constitutes authorship or an acknowledgement. There are several academic social media platforms which text mine acknowledgements and can alert you to your inclusion.
• How to get recognition for an influential key citation in published work by other authors?
  • You can ensure post-publication engagement by raising awareness of your contribution. Work with other authors on a communications plan early on and use tools such as Altmetrics as well as appropriate citation metrics to track the citations. Additionally, tools such as Scite provide greater context for citations, indicating if the citation is a mention, or a supporting or contrasting statement. Scite’s plugin can be used with limited results and functionality for free, the University currently does not subscribe. For more details on appropriate citation metrics, please see the institutional responsible research metrics policy for further guidance. Please also see the Kudo’s presentation for information on post-publication engagement.   
• Is credit for peer review just a way to make people feel warm and fuzzy about giving their labour to commercial publishers for free? 
  • No, peer-review is an essential part of the academic publishing process – It is part of a collegiate effort – if you don’t do it for someone else who will do it for you? Credit for individual peer-reviews is a helpful way of demonstrating your engagement with the process. Peer-review can help with areas of personal development recommended by the Vitae Researcher Development Framework. You can gain credit for your work using Publons which can supply a validated record of your peer-review activity to attach to your CV.
• How does CRediT mesh with other established taxonomies such as All Contributors? Should we use whichever taxonomy we feel best fits our community? 
  • All Contributors is code that will help you recognise contributors to an open source project in a way that rewards each and every contribution. CRediT is a taxonomy to identify roles typically played by contributors to scientific scholarly content. They both seek to demystify the publication process and ensure credit is appropriated fairly for work done. Use whatever taxonomy fits best for your community as well as the journals that you seek to publish in. Talk to your co-authors early so everyone knows what is required.
• Does the CReDiT taxonomy feature in the UoS Authorship Policy? 
  • Yes. It is mentioned as a guide that is used by publishers.
• The CRediT taxonomy is STEM focused which places limitations on recognition of interdisciplinarity & practice research. Is there scope to expand the taxonomy to level the playing field? 
  • Yes. please contact them directly. nisohq@niso.org
• What's the best way to ensure credit is shared appropriately regardless of the type of research output? 
• Journal articles, working papers, book chapters, monographs, datasets and software are just some of the types of research output that may result from a project. The University authorship policy covers this, recommending that authors have a discussion early to define roles to ensure contributions are recognised. With software and datasets, having a DOI as a persistent link to the output and a clear reuse licence help to make the output easy to find and cite. The dissemination strategies outlined in the symposium presentations are relevant to all output types.
• What kind of information do you think Universities should be collecting or monitoring, to maximise research impact? 
  • This is a multifaceted question which we can’t answer specifically or in full, but the Institutional Responsible Research Metrics Policy says that we should measure what we value. It is also possible for metrics to incentivise changes in behaviour, so we need to be mindful of the impact of what we measure on what we value.
• Is the Authorship policy going to be available to read outside the university or will it be limited to Southampton only? 
  • The policy will be available externally, the guidance, flowcharts and related resources will be for internal use only
• What other ways can we maximize the impact of our research post publication?
  • You can use the publication plan mentioned in the Kudos presentation. Know your audience, tailor your communications accordingly. For example, Social media. Wikipedia entries, Guest blogs, Conferences, poster, Training, webinars, Lay summaries. Write for “The conversation” – a website with the tagline "academic rigour, journalist flair".
• Are there tools for measuring engagement? 
  • Yes. Altmetrics. Please see link for more information.
• Does the new UoS policy build on current publications practices or will we have to manage significant change? What are the incentives to do so? 
  • There is no significant change, but more a formalizing of current best practice with sign posting and raising awareness. We want to minimise disputes and promote early conversations.
• Authorship "official" requirements are stricter for certain publishers/disciplines. What's the best way to get the information across to (imposing) co-authors? 
  • Don’t make assumptions, Start conversations early about authorship and contribution. Use CRedIT or the publisher’s own guidance to help you.
• Are there copyright issues of communicating our published research via Kudos? Will I be penalised by the publishers? 
  • Please see blog post from Kudos outlying concerns  https://blog.growkudos.com/news/2017/11/15/kudos-solution-illegal-sharing-copyright-content
• What are the benefits of post-publication engagement for an individual piece of research?
  • By raising awareness more people may get to know your name and associations, they may retweet you, like your posts, comment on your blogs, invite you to speak, cite your publications, leading to greater reputational benefits for you and your institution.