All posts by John Heyderman

LSHTM Historic Theses to be Digitised

LSHTM Library has reached an agreement with the British Library to produce digital copies of 148 doctoral theses completed between 1973 and 2007 currently held by them on microfilm.

Although all PhD candidates have had to provide a PDF of their thesis since 2014, in addition to the hard copy…

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Open Access Round-up: Summer 2018

The end of EU or national funding for hybrid journal APCs? 

The EU’s 2021-27 R&D programme will not pay for articles to be published in hybrid open-access journals under new proposals published by the European Commission in June. Horizon Europe would pay for article processing…

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Parliament’s Uncommon Library

I’d never thought I would enter Parliament, but earlier this year, I was lucky enough to be able to take part in a visit to the House of Commons Library, through a programme provided by the M25 Consortium of Academic Libraries. Once I’d got through the strict security…

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Open access roundup – October 2017

Each month, the Research Publications Team will aim to provide a roundup of open access and scholarly communications news. In addition, we’ll highlight any tips, tricks and tools we’ve come across that help to make disseminating, finding and using open access content easier. Here’s our roundup for…

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Be selfish — let people read your work for free!

How publishing open access raises the profile of your research
We all know that we should be publishing open access. Sharing scientific information is good for science and good for humanity, facilitating progress and helping to distribute its fruits more widely and equitably. And if that doesn’t persuade you…

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Five ways to find open access research

You find a citation for an article in a little-known journal that is just right for your dissertation. Unfortunately, the library doesn’t subscribe and you haven’t time to wait for an interlibrary loan.  You are looking for grey literature (such as conference reports and dissertations) but Google…

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Who owns scientific knowledge?

Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

Article 27, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Fortunately for most, academic researchers don’t have to live off their royalties alone. Although there…

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“A standing invitation to the whole world”: how more open access facilitates progress in science

When the nineteenth-century philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote his essay On Liberty[i] in 1859, one of his main aims was to secure the right to freedom of speech, to demonstrate that the state should not attempt ‘to control the expression of opinion’. While today, at least in Western…

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Getting our money’s worth

Gold open access doesn’t come cheap. In the last academic year LSHTM authors produced 126 Open Access research papers which were paid from Wellcome Trust, RCUK, COAF and the School Open Access Fund at a total cost of £255,391 .  The average cost of an article processing charge (APC…

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