Open Scholarship at NUI Galway Library

Open Scholarship is an exciting development that aims to make research and teaching materials more accessible to students, staff, and the general public. Open Scholarship is an umbrella term for a number of Open practices, and the Library is engaged in many of them. See below a few highlights how the Library can help you become a more Open student or staff member.

Open Access publishing

Did you know that most of published research papers are behind a paywall? This means that the public can’t look at the latest research papers even if it was taxpayer funded, or that researchers in developing countries don’t have access to current research. The Open Access movement wants to resolve this issue and make research outputs accessible to everyone. Here at the library, we believe that researchers should have this resource available to them.

There are two ways that the Library can help you publish your publication on Open Access:

1.   You can make your publication available through our institutional repository ARAN. There are instructions on LibGuide to help you navigate through it. When making your publication Open Access via a repository this process is called Green Open Access.

2.     The library can also avail you with Gold Open Access. This means that your publication is available on Open Access at the journal’s website. Publishers charge a fee to make this happen, but we have more than 20 Open Access agreements in place where you can publish ‘Gold Open Access’ with no cost to you.

FAIR and Open Data

Integrity and visibility can be promoted by publishing data that underpins your research. The way to do this is called FAIR, which stands for making your data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. The Library can guide you on how to manage your data properly and make your data FAIR. Please have a look at our LibGuide.

Open Educational Resources

You can easily adapt and reuse Open Educational Resources (OER) using the Library’s NUI Galway Open Press platform. OER are teaching materials such as Open Textbooks that are published with an Open license so that anyone can build on existing content. OER remove many barriers to learning materials such as cost and accessibility.

We currently are running a project supported by the ‘Student Project Fund’ where students and academics create OER for our NUI Galway courses. This will save students at least 45,000 EUR per annum! If you want to learn more about OER please have a look at our LibGuide.

Open Scholarship Community Galway

The Library supports the Open Scholarship Community Galway (OSCG), a grassroots group of students and staff who support Open practices. OSCG is modelled on Open Science Communities in the Netherlands. The aim of OSCG is to connect likeminded Open enthusiasts, learn from each other and advocate for Openness in research and teaching. There are regular Open Scholarship Cafés where you can learn about Open practices or you can become an OSCG member connecting with others in the Community. You can stay up to date with current affairs by following OSCG newsletter

To learn more about publishing Open Access and its benefits, you can attend an on-campus workshop held on the 30th June, 2022. For more information and to register for this event click here.

If you have any questions relating to Open Scholarship at NUI Galway Library, please send an e-mail to: library@nuigalway.ie

Hardy Schwamm