If you are a University of California (UC) academic author who is employed at the UC but not part of the Faculty Senate, you will soon have a new way to post copies of scholarly articles you’ve written into eScholarship.org, UC’s open access repository.
This news post answers questions and provides assistance to those authors affected by this change.
What is happening?
There will be a procedural change to how certain UC authors upload copies of their scholarly articles to the UC’s institutional repository to make these articles available “open access.”
Publishing scholarship open access means making it available to be read online by anyone at no cost to the reader. Within the UC, there are many ways to publish open access, including by “depositing” or uploading a copy of your “author accepted manuscript” into the UC’s institutional repository in accordance with UC’s Open Access Policies. Author accepted manuscripts (or AAMs) are the final textual version of your article without publisher formatting and final copy edits.
What’s happening now are changes to how some UCSF employees upload AAMs to eScholarship. Some UCSF faculty (those in the Professor, Professor in Residence, and Professor of Clinical X series) already use a special software system for the uploading process, whereas other scholars (i.e., anyone else employed within the UC who creates academic scholarship) instead have had to upload AAMs directly to escholarship.org through the eScholarship website. Soon, everyone (that is, both faculty and all other employees who create scholarly works) will begin using the special software system for uploading.
The software system is called UC’s Publication Management System (UCPMS). In addition to streamlining how authors upload their AAMs into eScholarship, the software also proactively searches scholarly literature databases for articles that it thinks you authored and that you can deposit in accordance with UC’s Open Access Policies. If the system identifies an article that it thinks you’ve published, you will receive an e-mail notification requesting that you verify your authorship and upload your AAM through the UCPMS platform.
In summary:
- Nothing is changing for faculty authors in the Professor, Professor in Residence, or Professor of Clinical X series who already have access to and use the UC Publication Management System.
- For all other academic authors within the University of California, you’ll soon have a new way to deposit your author accepted manuscripts (AAMs) to eScholarship via UCPMS, and will receive periodic emails letting you know when to do so.
Why is this happening?
The University of California has two open-access policies addressing the deposit of AAMs into the eScholarship repository. One such policy pertains to UCSF Academic Senate faculty and has been in place since 2012. The other, called the Presidential Open Access Policy (because it was issued by the UC President in 2015), covers some faculty as well as non-faculty authors. Specifically, the Presidential Open Access Policy includes faculty in the Adjunct Professor and Health Science Clinical Professor series, as well as postdoctoral scholars, residents, fellows, staff researchers, librarians, and student employees.
California Digital Library, which oversees and manages the eScholarship repository, had already added everyone covered by the Academic Senate open access policy to the UC Publication Management System, making it easier for Academic Senate faculty to get their articles into eScholarship.
To date, however, authors covered by the Presidential Open Access Policy have only been able to upload their articles directly via the eScholarship website, and have not yet had access to UCPMS. California Digital Library (CDL) is now adding these “Presidential” policy authors to UCPMS to facilitate them making their AAMS open access on eScholarship.
Who is affected?
Scholarly authors who are employed by the UC and who are not part of the Faculty Senate. At UCSF, this includes:
- Health Sciences Clinical Professors
- Adjunct Professors
- Postdoctoral Scholars
- Residents & Fellows
- Staff Researchers
- Library employees
- Students who are paid employees
Students who are not also employees of the university are not covered by the Presidential Open Access Policy.
The CDL and UCSF Library teams have made their best assessment regarding which job series to activate in the Publication Management System (UCPMS). If you are a scholarly author and are not able to log in to UCPMS, please contact the Library to let us know.
Faculty Senate authors already use the UC Publication Management System software to upload their articles to eScholarship. Nothing is changing for Faculty Senate authors. Soon, non-Senate authors will also begin using the software to make their uploads, rather than uploading their AAMs directly via the eScholarship.org website.
How does the UCPMS software work?
UC’s Publication Management System searches multiple publication databases such as PubMed, Web of Science, and Dimensions to automatically locate scholarly articles matched to your name-based search. When it makes a match, UCPMS sends you an e-mail notification (notifications are sent twice a month, only when the system identifies a new publication). The email asks you to review the publication(s) identified under your name, and to upload a policy-compliant version of the article. The UC Open Access Policies grant covered authors the right to share their author accepted manuscript (the final, peer-reviewed, but not yet publisher-formatted version) immediately upon publication in a journal.
UCPMS is integrated with eScholarship, UC’s open access publishing platform, so that deposits can be made without having to log in separately to eScholarship. In addition to using UCPMS to claim and upload open access versions of articles, authors can also integrate scholarly profiles such as ORCID, generate individual publishing reports, and get up-to-date citation and Altmetric statistics on their published works.
When is this happening?
The California Digital Library and UCSF Library are rolling out the change over the course of a few months, beginning in June and ending in August 2022. We will roll out UCPMS to all new users in the same department or school when possible. If you have a question about when you or your group will be activated, contact the Library.
Once your record in the system is activated, you will receive a welcome email from UCPMS with “UCSF Open Access Policy Team” as the sender. Use this email to link to your record in UCPMS and to walk you through the process of verifying and depositing your publications. After this initial email, you will only receive emails when UCPMS identifies a new publication for you.
Where can authors get assistance?
Authors covered under the Presidential Open Access Policy can explore the UC Publication Management System now by logging in at UC Publication Management. Search settings will be activated in a staged manner group by group, so if you do not see any “Pending” publications, it might be because your searches have not yet been enabled.
California Digital Library maintains documentation on how to navigate and use the Publication Management System, including helpful articles about how to get started with claiming and depositing your OA-compliant articles. The UC Open Access Policies frequently asked questions (FAQ) address questions about the policies.
UCSF Library staff are here to provide additional assistance. Please send your questions to oapolicy@ucsf.edu and we’ll be in touch.
Thank you to Tim Vollmer at UCB Library for sharing UCB’s version of this post, so I didn’t have to write the entire thing from scratch!
Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash