Open research, also known as open science, refers to the practice of making research processes and outputs transparent and freely accessible, whenever possible. Below are some of the terms that you might come across and what they mean. The list is in alphabetical order.
Accepted date: The accepted date is the date the publisher accepts your work for publication. Sometimes you may have several dates such as a provisional acceptance when the publisher accepts your work but requires you to make changes. You should always use the final acceptance date which is usually the one accompanied by a contract of some kind.
Accessible: Once a user finds the required content, they need to know how it can be accessed, possibly including authentication and authorisation.
Altmetrics: Altmetrics are alternative metrics that look at performance of a piece of research. Such as social media results or appearances in the news. They can be a way to assess public engagement with your research.
AM/AAM = Author Manuscript/Accepted Manuscript/Author Accepted Manuscript: the post-peer review version of a research output/publication, incorporating changes from peer review, normally a Word document with no publisher markings but may be a template. The AM is required for repository open access and can be cited as you would cite the final published version as the content is identical.
AO/Author’s Original: the pre-peer review version of a research output. It may have been submitted but no decision received. Also known as a preprint or submitted manuscript.
APC/Article Processing Charge: fee charged by some journals for publishing an article open access.
Bibliometrics: a snapshot in time view of how research is performing, there are many different types of metrics that can be used and what you use will depend on the assessment you are carrying out.
BPC: Stands for Book Processing Charge a fee charged by some journals for publishing a book or monograph open access.
CARE principles for Indigenous Data Governance: The CARE principles are fundamental to the cultural heritage sector and address the tension between open data and data sovereignty, https://www.gida-global.org/care. CARE stands for Collective benefit, Authority to Control, Responsible, Ethics. #BeFAIRandCARE.
CC BY: the open access license required by many funders for publisher open access. CC BY stands for Creative Commons Attribution. The license allows users to share and adapt the material in any way including for commercial purposes, to the benefit of society, so long as attribution/credit is given to the creator. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Closed Access: Closed access refers to content that cannot be shared, there may be valid reasons for this such as a content that contains sensitive information or commercial sensitive information included. The aim of open access it so avoid closing information where possible. The University policy is as open as possible as closed as necessary.
CoARA: Coalition of Advancing Research Assessment The CoARA initiative was launched in January 2022 and builds on DORA and other initiatives. Its core principle is “that in the assessment of research, researchers and research organisations need to recognise that diverse outputs, practices and activities contribute to the quality and impact of research. This requires basing assessment primarily on qualitative judgement for which peer review is central, supported by the responsible use of quantitative indicators” (metrics).
COALITION S: the national research funders, European and international organisations and charitable foundations that endorse Plan S. https://www.coalition-s.org/about/.
CRediT: CRediT is a list of 14 contributor role taxonomy that can be used to describe the key types of contributions typically made to the production and publication of research output such as research articles. https://credit.niso.org/.
Creative Commons licenses: Creative Commons is an organisation which has released freely- available copyright licenses. These licenses allow people to say how they would like to share their work. They are designed to help people share their works more easily without barriers at the point of use. It tells the user what they can do with the work https://creativecommons.org/choose/.
Licenses take the form of CC (Creative Commons) followed by 1- 3 sets of 2 letters.
CRIS: Current Research Information System – ours is Pure.
Data Management Plan/DMP: Data management is essential for good research practice and should be integrated into everyday processes. A data management plan is a roadmap for your data that details how your data will be handled during and after a research project.
Data Statement/Data Access Statement: Data access statements, also known as data availability statements, are included in publications to describe where the data associated with the paper is available, and under what conditions the data can be accessed.
Diamond Open Access: Community funded open access, the author and the reader do not have to pay any fees as a community led initiative has funded the publication.
DOAB: Directory of Open Access Books - A directory of academic peer-reviewed books from many publishers. The primary aim of DOAB is to increase discoverability of Open Access books.
DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals - The DOAJ aims to list all fully open access scientific and scholarly journals that publish research and review papers.
DORA: Declaration of Research Assessment DORA is a set of principles that were published in 2012. They are designed to ensure that the quality and impact of scientific outputs is “measured accurately and evaluated wisely”. The University of Southampton is a signatory of DORA.
DOI: (Digital Object Identifier) This is a permanent identifier to enable a user to find an item electronically. For example, a journal article can have a DOI that looks like this: 10.1000/182.
Embargo: the length of time after publication required by some publishers for the Accepted Manuscript in a repository to be restricted before it can be made open access, may be 6-48 months. Our repository team set any required embargoes. (This is separate to a press embargo).
ePrints Soton: our institutional repository, fed by Pure.
eprints@soton.ac.uk: our email address for your open access, publishing or metrics questions.
Epub date: is the date the article was first published online or first made available anywhere online.
FAIR principles: The FAIR data principles are increasingly important as we use computational support to find and deal with data. They are a set of guidelines to enhance the openness of research to ensure that data can be found and used by both humans and machines. The 4 principles are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/ In Cultural Heritage work you may use these in conjunction with CARE principles.
Findable: The first step in (re)using data and content is to find it. Metadata and data should be easy to find for both humans and computers. Machine-readable metadata is essential for automatic discovery of datasets, outputs and services.
First Published: the date the publication was made available to a consumer, this may be an early release date or the epub date.
Fully Open Access Journal: A journal where its entire content is open access and available to anyone with an internet connection, authors may have to pay an Article Processing charge/APC to publish in the journal.
Gold Open Access: the journal article is made open access on the journal website and is available to any internet user. Also known as Publisher Open Access. Typically requires payment of an APC, may be sponsored by an organisation, or may be covered by a deal we have with the publisher: https://library.soton.ac.uk/openaccess/agreements
Green Open Access: self-archiving the Accepted Manuscript in Pure. Also known as Repository Open Access. Our repository team will add any required publisher embargo, after which time it will be open access via ePrints Soton. There is no additional cost to the author to make a publication open access this way.
Hybrid Access: Hybrid journal also known as a subscription journal contains a mix of both open access and paywalled content. Many of our publisher agreements are designed to help hybrid journals transition to full open access and are usually supported by open access block grants.
Institutional Repository: an archive for collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the research outputs of an institution. ePrints Soton is the University of Southampton’s archive.
ISSN: International Standard Serial Number or ISSN is an eight-digit to uniquely identify a periodical publication, such as a journal or magazine.
Interoperable: Content is in a format that can be used with different applications or software.
Jisc: Jisc is a United Kingdom not-for-profit organisation that provides network and IT services and digital resources in support of further and higher education and research. They negotiate for the sector with publishers.
Jisc Open Policy Finder: Jisc Open Policy Finder is an online database of journals Open access policies. We use it to check journal embargo periods. https://openpolicyfinder.jisc.ac.uk/ Previously known as Sherpa.
Journal: A journal is an academic magazine covering a particular subject. They are really useful as they tend to cover a topic in depth, and collect articles, essays and pieces written by people who are studying or working in a particular area of study. The typically are indexed with an ISSN identifier. Journals have different access types, fully open access, subscription, hybrid and closed. These terms are also explained in this guide.
Metadata: metadata is a set of data that describes and gives information about other data. In publishing a type of metadata would be the author’s names.
OABG: OABG is an acronym we sometimes use in the Library for the Open Access Block Grants provided by funders in support of publishing research outputs. These funds may be available for research articles acknowledging these funders grants in fully open access journals. https://library.soton.ac.uk/openaccess/howto
Open Access: Open Access when applied to publications means that the content is freely available to anyone anywhere in the world that has an internet connection.
Open Data: Open data refers to digital data that is freely available for anyone to use, reuse, and redistribute. It is data that is accessible, exploitable, editable, and shareable by anyone for any purpose. Open data is typically licensed under an open license, allowing for broad usage and re-purposing.
Open Peer Review: Open peer review is a type of peer review where transparent practices are upheld such as identities of authors and reviewers being made publicly available. You can read more about Open peer review practices at this blog post from PLOS. https://plos.org/resource/open-peer-review/
Open Publishing: Open Publishing is the online process the online process of creating text, audio and video by methods that are fully transparent to the readers.
Open Science: Open Science is an umbrella term to describe making scientific research, data, and knowledge more accessible and transparent to everyone. For example Open Access is a part of Open Science. Open Science can be used interchangeably with Open Research.
Open Source: Open source refers to software where the original source code is made freely available for anyone to use, study, modify, and distribute.
ORCID ID: ORCID is a unique researcher ID. It helps avoid confusion between researchers with the same or similar names. ORCID stands for Open Researcher and Contributor IDentifier.
Plan S: Plan S is an initiative for open access publishing, driven by cOAlition S, an international consortium of research funders. https://www.coalition-s.org/about/
Press Embargo: A press embargo is when authors cannot publicly share details of their article/book etc until a date set by the publisher – usually the date of first publication. This is important for press releases and taxonomic works. Please contact eprints@soton.ac.uk if a press embargo is required on your research output.
Predatory Publishing is an exploitative academic publishing business model, where the journal or publisher prioritizes self-interest at the expense of scholarship. predatory publishing include deception and lack of quality controls, and a range of warning signs exist when assessing a journal.
Pre-registration: Pre-registration involves creating a detailed study plan or protocol outlining research questions and methods before data collection or analysis. This plan is then submitted to an open registry, making it publicly accessible and available for future reference.
Preprint: A preprint is a full draft of a research paper that is shared publicly before it has been peer-reviewed. A preprint is known as the ‘Author’s Original’ version of a manuscript. A preprint is not peer reviewed and published on preprint servers.
Publisher Open Access: the journal article is made open access on the journal website, and is available to any internet user. Also known as Gold Open Access.
Pure: is the University’s Current Research Information System. It is a closed system available to University staff and Post Graduate Research students. Research Outputs are then uploaded to Pure and then published to ePrints which is the University public Institutional Repository.
Read and Publish deal: A Read and publish deal also known as a Transformative Agreement, is a publishing model that combines subscription access to journal content with open access publishing for authors from participating institutions.
REF: Research Excellence Framework, the system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education institutions.
Reusable: Users can reuse the content. To achieve this, metadata and data should be well-described so that it can be replicated and/or combined in different settings.
Repository Open Access: Also known as green open access. Authors upload permitted versions of their publications to a repository so any internet user can access the content. Typically, this is the accepted manuscript or the Author’s original. There are different types of Repository Open Access, Institutional such as ePrints Soton or Subject such as ArXiv.
Reproducibility: Reproducibility in research refers to the ability to obtain the same results when a study or experiment is repeated, either by the original researcher or by others.
researchdata@soton.ac.uk: The email address for help with data management and research data lifecycle.
Research Outputs: A research output is anything published/produced from research. It can be a journal article, conference paper, book, thesis, music score, software (and many more).
Responsible Metrics: Responsible metrics as an approach of “framing appropriate uses of quantitative indicators in the governance, management and assessment of research” The Metric Tide 2015.
Rights Retention: As the author of original work, you can retain the rights of the Author Accepted Manuscript, even if you transfer copyright of the final published version to the publisher. The Author Accepted Manuscript, also known as the Accepted Manuscript, is the version incorporating any changes resulting from peer review but no publisher branding. You have the right to choose and assign a license to your Author Accepted Manuscript, determining how it can be shared, used and built upon.
Rights Retention Statement: The Rights Retention Statement (RRS) is the wording you apply to your submitted manuscript to retain your rights to your accepted manuscript, typically it will be a version of ‘For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons attribution license (CC BY) to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.'
Self archiving: Self Archiving is when the author deposits their accepted manuscript in an institutional or subject repository. It is sometimes known as green open access.
SciFree journal checker: This is the tool we have so authors can search for journals included in the no additional cost to the author agreements we have the publishers https://search.scifree.se/soton.
Sherpa Romeo: Sherpa Romeo is the old name for Jisc Open Policy finder.
Subscription journal: a subscription journal contains paywalled content. Also known as a hybrid journal. University users will often have access to a journal as the University has purchased a subscription.
Transformative Agreement/TA: a TA deal we have with a publisher, generally negotiated nationally, providing open access at no cost to the author. Find out more: https://library.soton.ac.uk/openaccess/agreements.
Transformative Journal: A transformative journal is a subscription-based (or hybrid) journal that is actively transitioning to become a fully open access (OA) journal.
UKRI: UK Research and Innovation is part of the UK Department of Science, Technology and Innovation and directs research and innovation funding through seven subject research councils Research England and Innovate UK https://www.ukri.org/.
UKRN: The UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN) is a national peer-led consortium that aims to ensure the UK retains its place as a centre for world-leading research. The UKRN does this by investigating the factors that contribute to robust research, promoting training and disseminating best practice. https://www.ukrn.org/.
Version of Record (VoR): Version of Record (VoR) is also known as the definitive, authorised, formal, or published version, although these terms may not be synonymous.