The library is pleased to announce that we now have access to the database DETAIL Inspiration.
Over 3,600 architecture / building projects from over 30 years of DETAIL magazine are available in the database with new projects added monthly.
The database is available on the A-Z database list but if you would like to take a look now simply follow the link below and log in with your RGU username and password when prompted.
And if you have any queries please contact the library at library@rgu.ac.uk.
As many of you may know, towards the end of October each year we usually celebrate International Open Access Week. This event is also celebrated by many other people and institutions around the world, and it aims to raise awareness of the importance of Open Access within the research landscape.
As a reminder, Open Access means making the results of research as widely available, as easily accessible and as flexibly reusable as possible. Traditionally, research has been shared largely in the form of pay-to-read books and journals, distributed under strict copyright rules that limit what people can do with the material that they have paid to read. When something is made open access, it means that it is permanently free to read and is also accompanied by more liberal permissions for how the material can be used. You can read more about Open Access in our guide on the basics.
Open Access is incredibly important for everyone. From the perspective of researchers, it means that their work is more likely to be read, cited and used, which means that their research is likely to be more impactful. It also means that it is far easier for researchers to share their results with each other, rapidly accelerating the speed of progress in advancing knowledge and understanding of complex issues. This is why, for example, most publishers agreed to make all COVID-19 research open access (though only temporarily) – to hasten the development of a vaccine.
From the perspective of other people, Open Access makes it possible for high quality research to more easily affect practical applications, such as helping to improve fitness coaching, environmental policy or fire safety. It is particularly useful for individuals, institutions or countries with limited financial resources, who might otherwise not be able to pay for access to traditionally-published research.
Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for the Publications Team to work from home, we have not been able to prepare any special events for this week – nor will we be touring the campus to hand out free food as we have done in previous years. However, we hope to use this blog post to raise awareness of Open Access within the RGU community, and to point people in the direction of some open access resources that you might find interesting or useful.
The resources below are split up into three sections: browser extensions, general databases and subject-specific databases.
| Browser Extension | Description |
| Open Access Button | Enter the details of an article on the Open Access Button website, or simply click on the browser extension icon (on Chrome or Firefox) when viewing the page for an article. This resource will then search thousands of sources to try and find a free and legal copy of the full text for you. If it cannot find such a copy for you, it will also start a request that can be sent directly to the author of the article. |
| Unpaywall | Click on the browser extension icon (on Chrome or Firefox) when viewing the page for an article. This resource will then search the Unpaywall database for a free and legal copy of the full text for you. |
| General Database | Description |
| DOAB (Directory of Open Access Books) | The DOAB aims to increase the discoverability of open access books. You can use the DOAB website to search or browse for openly available books, linking from the directory to the publisher’s website, where you can then read the books for free! |
| DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) | The DOAJ aims to host a curated list of high quality, peer-reviewed open access journals. You can use the DOAJ website to search or browse for open access journals and articles, linking from the directory to the publisher’s website, where you can then read the journal content for free! |
| EThOS | EThOS is the British Library’s database of doctoral theses written at institutions across the United Kingdom. Many of these theses are available for immediate download from the EThOS website, which harvests content from open access institutional repositories. |
| OpenAIR@RGU | OpenAIR is the open access institutional repository for RGU, which currently holds over four thousand outputs such as book chapters, conference papers and journal articles. While it includes some embargoed content (which will eventually become open access), most of the outputs are available for immediate download from the OpenAIR website. |
| OpenAIRE | Not to be confused with OpenAIR@RGU, OpenAIRE is the European repository for research, harvesting content from open access institutional repositories across Europe (including the United Kingdom). You can search the OpenAIRE Explore website for over 116 million publications, over 14 million datasets and almost 200,000 pieces of researcher-developed software, all of which are openly accessible and reusable. |
| Subject-Specific Database | Description |
| arXiv | arXiv is a database of freely-available working papers and pre-prints in various mathematics-focused fields, such as physics, computer science, quantitative finance and electrical engineering. |
| Free Music Archive | The FMA is a curated database of high-quality, legal audio downloads. Every audio file in the library has clear information about how it can be reused. |
| Nature Communications | This journal provides open access to all its contents, publishing high impact research from all areas of the natural sciences. |
| Wellcome Open Research | This database has been provided by the Wellcome Trust have provided this database to make it easier for Wellcome-funded researchers in various health sciences to share their results, even ahead of publication. |
| World Bank Open Knowledge Repository | The OKR is a database of over 31,000 open access publications from the World Bank Group, on many different subjects associated with economics and international development. |
We hope that you enjoy exploring these resources and reading about Open Access. If you have any questions or would like to know more about how RGU supports Open Access, please get in touch with the Publications Team and we will be happy to provide more information!
We are pleased to report that the access problems we reported for Lexis Library News and Lexis Library International earlier this week have now been resolved.
We apologise for the inconvenience this caused and please get in touch if you have any further problems by emailing us at library@rgu.ac.uk.
We are sorry to report we are currently having problems with the databases: Lexis Library News and Lexis Library International.
When any search is performed on these sites no results are returned.
We have reported this to the company and will update once we know more. We are very sorry for the problems this is causing.
Welcome to the latest update on RGU’s open access institutional repository, OpenAIR. If you have any suggestions for things that you would like to see in these monthly updates, or if you have any questions about the repository service, please get in touch with the Publications Team.
We wish all staff and students a positive start to the new academic year, with an especial welcome to any people for whom this will be their first academic year at RGU. The Publications Team are still working from home and we do not yet have an update on when we may be able to offer training on the use of Worktribe’s Outputs module. We are also not intending to run any events for the annual “Open Access Week” this year, as we have not had sufficient time or resources to be able to run anything online. We apologise for this continued inconvenience.
Although we will not be present on campus during Open Access Week, you can still contact us with any questions or consult our online researcher guides for various information. You may particularly want to read the following guides:
OpenAIR currently contains 4102 outputs. Some examples of recent additions to the repository include the following:
Each School is currently linked to the following number of outputs on OpenAIR:
Last month, in August, there were a total of 2915 downloads from OpenAIR. The most-downloaded items were:
The above data were gathered on 29.09.2020.
