Abstract
The academic landscape of the Netherlands has been influenced in recent years by new governmental policies regarding open access and open science, national and European legal guidelines, developments in ICT, and changes in how researchers are assessed. The University of Groningen Library (UB) has seized the opportunity in these developments, providing research support in the domains of registration and archiving of research output, open access publishing, research data management, and research analytics. Increased efficiency in traditional library procedures and the introduction of project-based funding have provided staff capacity for these developments. Full-service customization, to meet the needs of researchers and alleviate their time and work pressure, lies at the heart of the UB's research support.
TopIntroduction
This chapter describes how research support services at the University of Groningen Library (UB; Universiteitsbibliotheek) developed and how they are embedded in the organization—both in the library and the University of Groningen (UG; Rijksuniversiteit Groningen). What is UB research support, in the complex context of European (EU) and national (Dutch) science policies, the research funding ecosystem, the requirements of the university and faculties, and calls from research groups and individual researchers? What value does it add to UG research? Four specific academic support services are highlighted here: registering and archiving research output, open access publishing, research data management, and research impact analysis. The final section summarizes results and challenges, and attempts a look ahead.
Key Terms in this Chapter
European Research Council: A public body for the funding of scientific and technological research conducted within the European Union (EU).
Hybrid Open Access: A subscription journal that offers open access publication for individual articles upon payment of an APC.
Research Data Management (RDM): The structuring, organization, and control of data produced throughout the research cycle, RDM can involve recording, dissemination, and archiving of research data and results. Responsible RDM must respond to the policies and conventions of local research institutes and funding agencies, as well as national and international legislation and codes of conduct for research integrity.
Open Science: An umbrella term for a movement that aims to make scientific and scholarly activities more accessible to a large number of people. This includes making research results as openly accessible as possible. It includes, but is not limited to, practices such as open access publishing, open data, sharing code and software, and improving the transparency and reproducibility of the research process. It can also be understood as the opening up of scientific processes, which includes citizen participation.
Open Access: A publishing model through which scholarly publications are made available online to readers at no cost and with an open license allowing for re-use of the material.
Green Open Access (also known as Self Archiving): Researchers upload their publications to a freely accessible online website. This can be a personal website, the website of the research institution that funded the research (e.g., the institutional repository of the university), or an open repository. The version of the publication is ideally the final publisher’s version (or version of record) or the accepted author’s manuscript (final author’s version). Embargo periods may apply.
Gold Open Access: All articles in a journal are available for free on the journal's website upon publication under an open license. Many gold open access journals charge publication fees (so called Article Processing Charges, or APCs). A variant of Gold open access is Diamond (or Platinum) open access, in which the journal or platform is financed by the research community (research funders, libraries, learned societies). No APCs are charged in this model.
Read and Publish Agreement: A deal between a library or a consortium of libraries and a publisher which combines the traditional license fee for reading access with an arrangement for the (pre-)payment of publishing articles in open access.
Current Research Information System (CRIS): A database in which all sorts of research output are registered and stored, usually by a research institution and with a focus on publications. Data sets, presentations, awarded research funding, prizes, and so forth may also be registered. Metadata describing the research output can be used to present, manage, analyse, and exchange the research performed at an institution or aggregated at a national or supranational level.
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): A European regulation, which came into effect 25 May 2018, designed to harmonize data privacy laws across Europe and to empower all EU citizens to protect their data privacy. In addition to other effects, it protects participants in research projects by offering transparency about the processing of data, and by requiring adequate security measures during the entire data lifecycle, including long-term archiving. The GDPR defines new obligations for organizations that handle and control the processing of personal data.