Destination Open Access: Getting Researchers On Board

This Open Access (OA) Poster - ‘Destination Open Access: Getting Researchers on Board’, was devised by the Queen’s University Belfast’s OA Team. It outlines the advocacy strategy undertaken to strengthen researchers’ uptake of OA at the University. Research funders, such as the Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE), are increasingly mandating that researchers make their work publically available via an institutional repository. It is therefore imperative that researchers and departments fully engage with open access to ensure future funding.

The team’s advocacy strategy centres around collaboration with the Heads of Schools, Subject Librarians, the Research and Enterprise Office and, most importantly, the researchers themselves. The team regularly organises training sessions and events, on understanding OA, funder compliance and using the institutional repository. We also run outreach activities, such as practical drop-in sessions, promotional give-aways, OA updates to library staff and direct communications to schools. Finally, the team maintain a strong online presence via LibGuides, LibAnswers, the Library Blog and Twitter. We utilise these platforms to highlight topical OA issues, to advertise events, to provide support materials and to interact with researchers.

Statistics indicate that researchers are increasingly engaging with the OA training, communications and outreach events. Since August 2014 over 1200 researchers have attended advocacy sessions. Additionally, the numbers of papers uploaded to the repository each year has steadily increased and there are now over 3, 000 full-text OA research outputs in the Queen’s Research Portal.

This reflects positively on the team’s established approach of working with researchers to develop an OA culture within the University. Whilst it is clear that an open access strategy is essential, support for the open access ethos must come from individual researchers and Schools in order for the University to reach its desired destination of maximum uptake of open access.

''Setting 'Em Up'': Personal, Familial and Institutional Grooming in the Sexual Abuse of Children

The term ‘grooming’ has been used to describe the offender’s actions during the preparatory stage of sexual abuse. This paper will argue that current discourses on grooming have created ambiguities and misunderstandings about child sexual abuse. In particular, the popular focus on ‘stranger danger’ belies the fact that the majority of children are abused by someone well known to them, where grooming can also occur. Current discourses also neglect other important facets of the sex offending pattern. They fail to consider that offenders may groom not only the child but also their family and even the local community who may act as the gatekeepers of access. They also ignore what can be termed ‘institutional grooming’ – that sex offenders may groom criminal justice and other institutions into believing that they present no risk to children. A key variable in the grooming process is the creation and subsequent abuse of trust. Given that the criminal law may be somewhat limited in its response to this type of behaviour, ultimately concerted efforts must be made to foster social and organisational awareness of such processes in order to reduce the offender’s opportunity for abuse.

Neuropeptide signalling: a repository of targets for novel endectocides?

The only available parasiticides with a spectrum of action that includes a broad range of helminth and arthropod parasites are the macrocyclic lactones. Designated endectocides, these drugs have action against both endoparasitic nematodes and ectoparasitic arthropods. Unfortunately, the discovery of such drugs is exceedingly rare and there is no evidence that novel endectocidal agents will be identified and developed in the short to medium term. However, the discovery of neuropeptides with motor-modulatory activities in both arthropods and helminths, coupled with recent progress in the characterization of invertebrate neuropeptide receptors, has the potential to propel neuropeptide signalling to the forefront of efforts to develop a novel endectocide.

Discourses and Strategic Visions: The U.S. Research University as an Institutional Manifestation of Neoliberalism in a Global Era

It is argued widely that the academy today is in the process of significant change—in the institutional assumptions of what constitutes the university and the construction of knowledge and in its relations with the city and the world. This article addresses the evolution of the modern university in the context of the discourses of contemporary globalizing institutions. Further, it empirically assesses the organizational priorities of U.S. research universities in light of the application of these discourses to their objectives and practices, finding that they are playing a key role in the formal representation of the institutional direction, goals, and values of American higher education.