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University libraries are increasingly pushed to provide services dedicated to research and to support the academic community in the process of disseminating scientific products. Librarians provide their support to authors on issues related to the concept of intellectual paternity/responsibility, to the ethical and integrity aspects of scientific research, to the strategies and criteria for choosing the editorial positioning of products, to the technical-organizational aspects of editorial workflow, to the technical and regulatory parameters of the self-archiving of scientific research products by the University authors and to the bibliometric implications in the evaluation of scientific products.

Open access

For years, the University of Palermo has recognized the effectiveness of open access strategies as a tool for disseminating scientific knowledge and for the economic and cultural growth of society, and aims at raising the awareness of the academic community with respect to the adoption of policies to support Open Access. With this aim, the service makes authors aware of the issue of publishing open access scientific papers, providing detailed information on the OA obligations for national and European funding (FP7, Horizon 2020, OpenAIRE ...); on how to publish in open access safely, learning to recognize reliable publishers and OA journals, avoiding predatory publishers and predatory journals; on the localization of the main international bibliographic indexes listing open access resources; on the identification of the policies of the main scientific publishers on OA and self-archiving; on regulatory compliance and on the procedures followto autonomously manage an open access journal; on open access to research data.

 

Advice on copyright 

Information sections are provided, aiming at raising researchers' awareness of the possibility of maintaining the rights of reuse of their scientific works, with respect to: copyright laws, with specific references to the academic activity; the different methods of negotiating their rights to use the scientific works to be published, supported by a model of addendum to the publication contract and a “license to publish” model, available in an Italian and English version. Information on publishers' policies, and advice on specific databases to be used during the self-archiving in the Repository are provided, in order to raise the awareness, among authors, of the importance of self-archiving in the institutional repository, dispelling the myth that open access would be incompatible with copyright.

 

Bibliometric analysis

To respond to the increasingly needs for research measurement, by now an indispensable condition in the evaluation of the impact of scientific production for individual researchers as well as for research departments, the service provides advice to the University authors, with respect to the features and use of bibliometric tools to maximize the impact of research; it advises on the calculation of productivity and impact indicators extracted from the main citation databases; it provides advice for the creation of the individual bibliometric profile of each teacher and researcher in the citation databases, for the possible disambiguation of the author profiles and for linking the profile to ORCID; it also advices for the reconstruction of the bibliometric profile of the institution and of the subjects and research groups for statistical purposes and for the benchmarking with other national and international institutions.

 

Control of bibliographic data relating to research materials and advice on metadata 

In line with the provisions of the "University Regulations for the storage of research products in the institutional archive and open access to scientific literature", the service provides technical support for the correct archiving and management of metadata, with respect, in particular, to bibliographic research products, also in relation to the correct transfer to the MIUR “teacher” webpage. The coordination, conducted by librarians in support of the departments, of the technical validation activitiesof the research products self-archived by the University authors is also guaranteed. The service also prepares guidance and support materials for authors with respect to the self-archiving of scientific works in the various digital collections of the University, of the institutional repository, and studies possible implementations to improve its functionality.

 

UniPa publishing initiatives

The publishing activity has always been a key component of the University activities, in which the authors of the scientific contributions can benefit from the editorial projects of recent years (Unipa Press, Unipa Springer Series) and the departmental initiatives that lead to publication of volumes, series, journals, working papers. The library system promotes the knowledge and use of these bibliographic resources and encourages their use.

 

 

Specialist reference

Among the services offered by libraries, the (information and advice) reference service is also useful for anyone who carries out research to navigate among tools and methods (bibliographies, collection of data useful for laboratory tests, bibliographic reviews, editing, preparation of teaching material, cooperation with teachers and researchers in the publication processes, research evaluation, etc.).