Global Accessibility Awareness Day

Posted on May 16, 2023 by saraht

Thursday 18^th May 2023 is Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD)! From their website: “The purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking and learning about digital access and inclusion, and the more than One Billion people with disabilities/impairments.”

Library staff are committed to offering accessible digital resources to those who need them. When we purchase books and other resources, our preference is to buy electronic versions. However, this isn’t always possible due to licence or publishing restrictions. We have access to some additional free services for qualifying users – please get in touch to discuss how we can help you.

Our email address is librarydisability@abdn.ac.uk, please contact us any time, for any reason. We’re happy to answer any questions: if we can’t help, we’ll find out who can!

A close-up of a person holding tablet device in front of the Sir Duncan Rice Library.

RNIB Bookshare

RNIB Bookshare is a database of electronic resources offered by the Royal National Institute of the Blind. Their collection includes more than a million books and is completely free to use! All books can be downloaded in various formats and are compatible with screen readers and other assistive software. More information can be found on the RNIB Bookshare website.

To request an account, please ask your disability advisor to contact Library staff – this is so that we can make sure you meet RNIB Bookshare’s eligibility criteria. Library staff will create an account on your behalf then send you an email with the login details. Your account can be used until you leave the University.

Requests to publishers

Library staff can request free accessible materials directly from publishers. To do this, we must meet one of the following criteria:

at least one print copy of the title in stock, or
have electronic access to the title (but for disability-related reasons the student would benefit from a different file type or format), or
the student will own a personal copy and can provide proof of purchase which will be sent to the publisher

This isn’t always successful, or very quick, but we are more than happy to make requests. If you need access to a specific item, please email us at librarydisability@abdn.ac.uk with the title, author’s name, year/edition, and the format you require (eg. PDF, EPUB, or even a print copy). All enquiries are strictly confidential: we don’t share your details with publishers, and we’ll never share your personal information without your consent.

Personal scans

If you need access to a work available only in physical format, library staff can scan items on your behalf. These are only for personal use and must not be shared with anyone else. To make requests, please email librarydisability@abdn.ac.uk with book/article details. We will get back to you if we have any questions, then email the scan to you.

Reading lists

The library works closely with teaching staff to provide digital reading lists for each course. These are hosted in a web-based software package called Leganto. Leganto is compatible with screen readers and has options to change contrast, font size, and pop-up duration. It is also possible to export your entire reading list into an accessible file.

When essential materials are only available in physical format, teaching staff can request digital scans. These must comply with copyright law, so are usually less than 10% of the total work (more information on copyright can be found on our website). These scans can be accessed directly from Leganto and can be read using Optical Character Recognition (OCR).

E-resource providers

Many of our e-resource providers and databases offer features to help with accessibility. For example, VLEBooks offers a Readaloud feature, allowing you to use text-to-speech from any browser. A list of accessibility statements from providers can be found on our website.

Library staff member demonstrating how to borrow books on the self-issue machine.

Direct support

Library staff can also offer one to one support, either in-person or as an online session, at a time that suits you. We can help with a wide range of queries; including how best to use our catalogue, Primo, help with referencing, how to find resources for your assignments, or anything else!

We can make referrals to other support services if you want them (such as Assistive Technology).

Physical accessibility

We can offer a gentle introduction to the library, either for individuals or small groups. We recognise that our users may be neurodiverse, so these can be held at quiet times to minimise distractions. Staff can help with navigating physical spaces and finding an area that works for you, locating and borrowing books, and more. We also offer a book fetching service for our users – let us know if you’d like to access this.

We hope this information is useful. Our email address is librarydisability@abdn.ac.uk. Again, please do get in touch with us any time, for any reason. We’re happy to receive feedback and answer any questions: if we don’t immediately have answers, we’ll investigate and get back to you as soon as possible!

New UKRI Open Access Policy

Posted on November 9, 2021 by lucyd2020

UKRI will implement a new open access policy in 2022 that will allow more opportunity for the findings of publicly funded research to be accessed, shared and reused. There are some significant changes so it is important that you are aware of this. The new policy will apply to peer reviewed research and review articles and conference papers submitted for publication from 1^st April 2022 to publications with an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) and will be extended to include monographs from 1^st January 2024. UKRI will provide increased funding to support compliance with this policy for both research articles and in-scope longform publications with further information on the block grant due in December 2021.

Authors can publish their output in the journal or platform they consider most appropriate for their research, provided UKRI’s open access requirements are met via one of two open access routes.

Gold Open Access – the final published article is published immediately open access on the publisher website, free to read, download and reuse under licence, usually requires payment to publish.

publish in an open access publication or platform where the version of record (VoR) is made immediately open access on publication
apply a CC BY licence or where an article is subject to Crown Copyright, An Open Government Licence (OGL)
CC BY-ND licence allowed by exception agreed with funder
may require payment of an Article Processing Charge (APC); see here for information on the block grant
the University has signed up to a number of transitional open access publisher agreements where you can publish your research gold open access at no cost to you
use of the block grant for publishing in an ‘hybrid’ journal that is not part of a transitional agreement will no longer be permitted

Green Open Access – a version of the article, usually the unformatted manuscript as accepted for publication after peer-review, is deposited in an institutional or subject repository. Free to publish but requires a subscription to read the VoR.

deposit the author accepted manuscript (AAM) in a subject or institutional repository immediately on first online publication. The AAM is the author’s final draft including corrections resulting from peer review but before the publisher formatting has been applied
apply a CC BY Creative Commons licence or where an article is subject to Crown Copyright, An Open Government Licence (OGL)
CC BY-ND licence allowed by exception agreed with funder (UKRI will outline process in November 2021)
embargoes on making the manuscript publicly available are no longer permitted
submissions taking the green route must include a statement in the funding acknowledgement section of the manuscript and any cover letter/note accompanying the submission stating that a specific licence (e.g. CC BY, OGL, CC BY ND) will apply to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising

For either open access route, biomedical research articles that acknowledge MRC or BBSRC funding are required to be archived in Europe PubMed Central, in accordance with MRC’s Additional Terms and Conditions and BBSRC’s Safeguarding Good Research Policy.

Published outputs must include a statement to specify how the underlying research data can be accessed.

From 1^st January 2024 the open access policy will apply to in-scope monographs, book chapters and edited collections. See the UKRI open access policy for further information on whether your output is in-scope.

the VoR or AAM must be free to view and download via an online publication platform, publishers’ website, or institutional or subject repository no later than 12 months after publication
a Creative Commons licence must be applied, a CC BY licence is preferred but other Creative Commons licences will be permitted (or OGL where required) which allow the reader to search for and reuse content, subject to proper attribution
the open access version should include, where possible, any images, illustrations, tables and other supporting content but where copyright for these is held by a third party and require a more restrictive licence the policy does not apply
where an Author’s Accepted Manuscript is deposited, it should be clear that this is not the final published version

The Scholarly Communications Team in the Library are here to help you ensure that your research outputs comply with the UKRI open access policy. We will provide communications to our researchers as more information is made available by UKRI. Key resources for community engagement are to be made available by UKRI in January 2021.

You should continue to send details of newly accepted papers to paperaccepted@abdn.ac.uk to ensure deposit in Pure/AURA in compliance with funder and current REF policy. See our webpages or contact us for more information.

The University Librarian would be also pleased to attend relevant School meetings to listen to views and answer questions.

Did you know…? – Extensive online access to publications from the British Academy

Posted on May 17, 2021 by jennastor

We thought you might be interested in additional e-resources from the British Academy that have been made available through our subscription to University Press Scholarship Online (UPSO). Recently expanded content includes 207 publications, spanning subjects in the humanities and social sciences, with new items being added as they are published.

Access to this electronic collection of books, essays and journals includes the series Proceedings of the British Academy, lectures delivered at the British Academy, available online from 2002 onwards.

The Library also has earlier and current print copies of this journal on Floor 2 of The Sir Duncan Rice Library and at other locations.

Picture of male student reading from his computer

Access to UPSO is via the Find Databases tab in Primo. Once you are on the UPSO platform, please look for the Sign in via your Institution option.

Details of other collections that remain available on a temporary basis can be found on our designated Library page, which we update regularly.

In addition to highlighting expanded content available via our Library subscriptions, please see here a list of relevant and appropriate Open Access e-resources.

Please email us with any questions you may have as we are always happy to help!
subjectteam@abdn.ac.uk

Jenna Storey, jennifer.storey@abdn.ac.uk

Wellcome seeks comments on implementing the principles of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA)

Posted on February 5, 2020 by ewanag

The University of Aberdeen Library invites members of our academic community to submit comments on Wellcome’s new Open Access Policy, to help in the development of guidance around this issue.

Wellcome has published draft guidance for funded research organisations on implementing the principles set out in the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).

The requirement to publicly commit to the DORA principles is a key element of Wellcome’s new Open Access Policy which will come into force in January 2021.

To help them shape and refine the guidance, they are now inviting feedback. Simon Bains, University Librarian, is leading on a response for Aberdeen, and welcomes any comments by 5pm on Wednesday 19 February. Please send any comments to simon.bains@abdn.ac.uk.

Open Access Publishing Briefing: cOAlition S releases new version of Plan S and Aberdeen launches a Scholarly Communications Service

Posted on June 20, 2019 by ewanag

Background

Plan S was launched in September 2018 by cOAlition S (a global coalition of research funders) in order to effect a decisive shift to Open Access (OA) for the research that they fund. Despite a number of initiatives in recent years, these have been at the national level and different approaches have made them hard for researchers to understand. They have not provided sufficient incentives for researchers, institutions, funders and publishers to make all the changes necessary to make a full transition to OA. Members of cOAlition S include the European Research Council, UKRI, Wellcome and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Plan S has two primary objectives: to recognise the importance of open research (often referred to as open science, but intended to apply more widely to academic research) and ensure that funder policies require and support it; and to address longstanding and substantial financial pressures caused by the combination of year on year journal subscription increases and the emergence of article processing charges (APCs), known as Gold OA, as the preferred option.

The release of the first draft of Plan S in 2018 caused concern amongst researchers, publishers and universities as the proposals had the potential to be very expensive, and to create unintended consequences. There were particular misgivings in relation to the possible impact on small and society publishers, the implications for research outputs in other forms (particularly monographs), and the potentially significant expense associated with moving to full Gold OA by removing ‘hybrid’ journals (where both subscription and OA options are offered). The University of Aberdeen emphasised these risks in its response to the consultation.

Revisions

The revised proposals respond to key concerns from the community. In particular, they address the need for more time by extending the timeline by 12 months to 2021, so research outputs resulting from funding calls from 1 January 2021 will need to comply. Additionally, publishers now have until the end of 2024 to make the transition from subscription business models to full OA.

Additionally, the revisions address the following points:

More options for transformative arrangements are supported, making it easier for publishers, libraries and Jisc (as negotiating agent) to work together on sensible and affordable journal deals;

Plan S is clearer about its support for a variety of models for OA, and stresses that Open Access does not have to be accomplished through individual APCs;

The technical requirements expected of repositories to support the Green route to OA (deposit of final accepted manuscript in a local repository) have been made less stringent. However, where Green OA is selected, manuscripts must be made available immediately, with no embargo;

A commitment by funders to value the intrinsic merit of the work and not consider the publication channel, its impact factor (or other journal metrics), or the publisher. This is in line with the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), which the University of Aberdeen is now considering adopting;

Monographs are excluded and will form a separate process (still to be announced);

While the default reuse licence option remains CC BY (the most liberal licence), funders can permit a more restrictive when it can be justified. This responds to the concerns of a number of publishers and researchers about reuse permissions. The proposal is very clear that copyright should remain with the author or the institution, and should not be signed over to a third party.

A rationale for the revisions is available on the cOAlition S site.

Next steps

It is expected that cOAlition S members will make their own decisions on the way that they choose to implement Plan S. UKRI announced in April that there will be a public consultation later this year as part of a review of their OA policy and have previously indicated that they do not feel bound to implement it exactly as it is written.

On 31 May 2019, The Wellcome Trust announced that they will align their policy with Plan S and as a consequence have extended their own deadline by 12 months in the same way. This is helpful both in terms of allowing more time and by reducing the issues caused by multiple funder policies with differing implementation dates.

The University Library will continue to work with Jisc and other research libraries to engage funders and publishers as policies continue to evolve.

Digital & Information Services, in conjunction with Research & Innovation, are pleased to announce the launch of a Scholarly Communications Service which will provide support and advice in relation to all aspects of scholarly publishing. Questions and comments about this briefing, and any other related matters, are very welcome at scholcomms@abdn.ac.uk.

Simon Bains

University Librarian

simon.bains@abdn.ac.uk

Friends of Aberdeen University Library Postgraduate Research Bursaries 2019/20 – Applications Invited

Posted on May 30, 2019 by ewanag

Applications are invited for the Friends of Aberdeen University Library Postgraduate Research Bursary awards 2019/20. Applicants must hold an offer of study from the University to begin in September 2019 or be less than 50% through their period of study at that time.

This award of £3000 is offered to a candidate in the early stages of a supervised postgraduate research degree (PhD or Masters by Research). It is a one-off bursary payment designed to support research based on and making particular use of rare and distinctive materials held in University of Aberdeen’s Libraries, Museums, or Special Collections.

For Further details and to apply please visit the Friends of Aberdeen University Library website.

Workshop on Web of Science InCites tool – places still available

Posted on February 19, 2019 by ewanag

Places are still available on a workshop next week (Thursday 28 February, 1400-1500) that will guide academic staff and researchers through InCites and Web of Science (WoS), two powerful tools that can play an important part in any research process. See below for full details of the workshop. You can book your place through the University’s Coursebooking site. An earlier occurrence of this workshop is taking place next Tuesday, 26 February, but is already fully booked.

WoS is a citation index that offers comprehensive citation and publication searches across multiple databases to enable in-depth exploration of research.

InCites Benchmarking & Analytics is a customized, web-based research evaluation tool that allows you to monitor collaboration activity, identify influential researchers, showcase strengths, and discover areas of opportunity.

Independently or together, these tools can be used to create powerful analytics that complement the research process. The software provider (Clarivate) of these products was recently awarded a contract to supply the Research Excellence Framework (REF2021) with citation analysis.

This short session, aimed at academic staff, early career researchers and PhD students who have published (or are on the point of publishing), will guide you through the use of InCites and Web of Science. The session will include:

· Hints and tips for using Web of Science and InCites

· Advanced searches in Web of Science and InCites

· Evidencing research strengths, and collaborations

· Notes on Open Access and Full text publications

· Analytics: Citations, Collaborations, Journals, Authors, and Trends

· Brief overview of Alternative metrics

You can book your place on this workshop through the University’s Coursebooking site but please pay attention to the two actions required of you before attending the session.

Search our digital collections using Find Databases on Primo

Posted on February 13, 2019 by ewanag

Primo will tell you about the hundreds of thousands of digital resources available through the University and will link you to one of over 200 different online academic databases to let you read the material that you’re interested in.

Did you know, though, that if you go straight to the website of specific academic databases you can perform even more powerful searches, often looking across every word contained in every item within that collection? A simple search in Primo is the best place to start a piece of research but using the Find Databases option is the next step, improving the quality of any academic research that you do.

These databases often focus on specific subject areas, meaning that your searching becomes more focused and efficient, saving you time looking and giving you more time to read and write. See below for details of how to use the Find Databases feature in Primo to link straight to digital collections best suited to your area of study.

Use the Find Databases option at the top of Primo. Please remember to login with your username and password.

You can search for specific databases or you can filter by subject area. It is also possible to browse an alphabetical listing of all databases available.

Once you have identified an academic database that you wish to search simply click on its name to link out to it. You may be asked to log in again.

Please note that it is not possible to search across multiple databases at once using this Find Databases option. You must link out to each database that you are interested in and search them individually. This method will allow you to perform the most powerful searches available to you.

For further guidance on using Primo please see our short videos on its various features. For guidance on accessing online resources, particularly when off campus, please see our Library Guide on Accessing Electronic Information and the Toolkit’s section on Remote Access.

Ewan Grant, e.grant@abdn.ac.uk

PhD Literature Searching workshops open for booking

Posted on January 30, 2019 by ewanag

As you begin, or continue, your PhD it is important that you feel confident that you are locating and managing all the literature and information you require to achieve your research aims. For researchers like yourself the University’s Library Service is here to support you.

We are running a short series of Information Skills Workshops in February 2019 which will help you understand the library resources available to you as researchers here at the University of Aberdeen, and how to get the best out of them. Read on for further information on the workshops. To book workshops visit www.abdn.ac.uk/coursebooking and look for Library Information Skills classes.

There are three workshops on offer, each lasting two hours:

Literature searching – Part 1: Getting started
Literature searching – Part 2: Using databases
Literature searching – Part 3: Managing your references using RefWorks

Across the three workshops we will look at:

Planning your search
Looking for books: using Primo and E-books
Databases of academic literature
Getting the best out of Google
Managing your references with RefWorks
Formatting Word documents with in-text citations and bibliographies

Feedback from those who have previously attended these sessions have been positive and they highlight how after attending they felt better equipped to find and manage the materials they need for research. One quote from a previous attendee nicely sums up what we are aiming for with these sessions:

“I will definitely be searching smarter than before”

Our aim is that after you attend you will also leave feeling this way.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The sessions focusing on the management of references is not suitable for research postgraduates in the School of Law, as the software used does not support the OSCOLA referencing style required for legal theses.

To find out more, and to book onto the different workshops please visit www.abdn.ac.uk/coursebooking and look for Information Skills classes. We look forward to seeing you at the workshops.

In the meantime, do not forget that Library staff are always here to help with any information needs that you may have. Visit our website for further information on our services.

Information Skills workshops for PhD researchers now open for booking

Posted on September 26, 2018 by eleni boro

The Library is here to help all postgraduate researchers as they begin, or continue their in-depth research with a short series of Information Skills workshops designed to their needs. With so much academic literature available through the University of Aberdeen, these workshops will give you the confidence and skills to locate and manage the materials you need.

The workshops will take place between the dates: 30th of October – 15th of November and will help you understand the resources available to you as researchers here at the University of Aberdeen, and how to get the best out of them.

There are three workshops on offer, each lasting two hours:

Literature searching – Part 1: Getting started
Literature searching – Part 2: Using databases
Literature searching – Part 3: Managing your references using RefWorks*

Across the three workshops we will look at:

Planning your search
Looking for books: using Primo and E-books
Databases of academic literature
Getting the best out of Google
Managing your references with RefWorks
Formatting Word documents with in-text citations and bibliographies

*IMPORTANT NOTE: The workshop focusing on the management of references
(Part 3) is not suitable for research postgraduates in the School of Law, as the software used does not support the OSCOLA referencing style required for legal theses.

To find out more, and to book onto the different workshops please visit www.abdn.ac.uk/coursebooking and look for Library Information Skills classes.

We look forward to seeing you at the workshops!

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Category Archives: research