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Open Access+

Helping authors to reach their audiences.

The increase in Open Access has helped to remove barriers to research for many audiences, both inside and outside the academic community. However, paywalls aren’t the only barrier preventing these audiences from engaging with, learning from and using research. 

Many research papers remain broadly inaccessible as understanding the full-text requires a specialist knowledge which only academics in the same field possess. Furthermore, while journal articles and conference proceedings are often the default method for disseminating research results, they may not be as visible to audiences outside of academia.

The Library recognises the potential to amplify the University’s research impact, and progress its social responsibility goals, by helping authors to broaden the audience for their research. The Library can provide advice and guidance on removing barriers to raise the visibility of research. 

Further information

Kudos

Sharing a plain language translation of a paper makes it more likely to be picked up by key non-academic stakeholders such as journalists, government officials, and the private sector.

Kudos is a free tool that makes it easy to produce a non-technical description of research to be shared across social media.

Press Release

A press release can be a powerful tool to generate media coverage for a paper. The University releases hundreds of press releases each year, many linking to an underlying research article. 

The Library has partnered with the Media Relations Team to allow authors to use the Open Access Gateway to flag if their recently accepted papers has the potential to generate media coverage.

The Library is firmly committed to Open Access and will be working with colleagues across the University to ensure that press releases increasingly link to an Open Access version of the paper where possible.

The Conversation

The Conversation is an independent, not-for-profit blog for academics to provide an informed view on topical issues. All posts are written by academics with guidance from expert editors to ensure posts are well constructed and readable. 

The Conversation website attracts significant global readership, and posts can often attract even larger audiences as they can be republished on third party sites under Creative Commons licenses.

Through the University’s membership, authors have access to a team of professional editors who can help authors craft an effective and engaging blog post. Over 150 University academics have registered to write for The Conversation.

See this Guide for Academics for more information, or to pitch an idea for a blog post.

Twitter

Twitter provides a valuable forum to communicate research to a diverse and potentially vast audience. Around one out of every five University academics are currently active on Twitter.

The Library can provide customised lists of relevant Twitter accounts to help build the most effective network possible.

Contact

For a customised list of relevant Twitter accounts get in touch with us via email: 

Altmetrics

The Library subscribes to a tool called Altmetric Explorer which helps authors conveniently track how their research is being discussed by non-academic audiences across platforms such as news, blogs, social media and policy documents.

 

The Library works with the following partners to help the University reach the broadest possible audience with its research.