Sussex Researcher School

Celebrating Researcher Success

Doctoral researchers experience the benefits of Gold open access

Congratulations to the following doctoral researchers, who have all recently published research articles in key journals: Jennifer Wathan (funded by the BBSRC), Peter Rostron (EPSRC), Kyle Shackleton (NERC), and Ben Keen (BBSRC).

They have been able to benefit from the RCUK grant, which covers the cost of publishing funded research via the gold open access route. This means it is freely available for anyone to read online or download direct from the journal website, rather than being hidden behind a subscription paywall.  Published with a Creative Commons licence, research can be shared, reused, and reproduced, provided the original work is properly cited.

Open access means greater dissemination and a higher profile for your research. Jennifer’s research has been picked up by 16 news outlets, including the Independent and Science Daily, blogged about and tweeted. Her article has received more attention than 98% of comparable articles, and is in the top 5% of all articles ever tracked by Altmetric. Altmetric scores are a recently-added feature to Sussex Research Online, the University’s institutional repository and capture relevant discussions around scholarly articles from a number of sources.

Jennifer commented "The opportunity to publish my work under open access substantially increased the outreach of my article. In particular, I was struck by the number of non-scientists that accessed my work, who clearly would not have been able to had I published through the traditional route.  The process of arranging open access with the journal was smooth, and I felt very supported by the team in the library throughout".

If you are a funded student and are planning to publish, then contact openaccess@sussex.ac.uk early in the process to discuss your options in complying with your funder’s open access requirements. The Library administers the grants for Open Access charges centrally, and can advise about eligibility. If you aren’t funded, you can still make your work open access and reap the benefits. Contact the Library for information about taking the Green route by adding a version of your article to Sussex Research Online.

For further information about Open Access for researchers, see our Library webpages. You can also contact sro@sussex.ac.uk to find out how to add your publications to Sussex Research Online. 

Doctoral Researcher's play longlisted for a BBC Audio Drama Award

Hannah Vincent, 2nd year doctoral researcher in English, had her play 'Come to Grief' dramatized on Radio 4 in July this year, and and it has just been longlisted for a BBC Audio Drama Award.  Alarm Girl is Hannah’s first novel, an extract from which was shortlisted for the Writer's Retreat Competition and Hookline Novel Competition.

New Researcher Led Initiatives

We received a great response to our recent call for applications to our Researcher Led Initiative Fund and are pleased to be able to support 11 exciting initiatives which doctoral researchers are leading across campus.  To find out more about the successful applications and the interdisciplinary events we will be supporting in 2015, see our funding pages.

 

Sussex Researcher School

E: researcher-school@sussex.ac.uk