Following a successful trial earlier this year, we are now subscribing to Overton, the world’s largest searchable index of policy documents and their relationships with research, people and each other.
Access Overton via this link or via the Cambridge University Libraries A-Z. You will be prompted to create an account with your @cam.ac.uk email and then can login at app.overton.io.
Overton can be used as:
It’s like Google for government reports, think tank publications, white papers and other policy documents. You can structure and/or limit a search by topic, country or geographical region, source type, document type and year. This highly focused filtering helps surface outputs from smaller organisations or geographical areas that are often deprioritised in a regular search process.
Citation reports and dashboards are specifically designed to help with research impact assessment. Search by publication, author or institution to find where your research has been cited or mentioned in policy worldwide. Use as evidence of research impact in grant applications, evaluations and creating case studies. Save your searches and set alerts to be notified of any new mentions/citations.
The past few years have seen growing calls to improve collaboration between researchers and policymakers - for governments to be clearer about where their knowledge gaps are and to lower the barriers for researchers to engage with them. Overton can be used to understand the policy landscape in your area and to identify opportunities to engage and influence policy, e.g. by finding evidence gaps identified by policy organisations or learning about the pathways of influence in your field. See Overton’s guide to impact planning.
Learn more about Overton and how to get the most out of it via its knowledge base and find out about the latest developments on the platform via Overton's blog.
If you’d like to discuss a particular use case or to arrange a demo for your group contact techlib@lib.cam.ac.uk.
The West Hub, with the STEMM libraries in collaboration with Postdocs of Cambridge Society, are pleased to invite you to our new Research Cafés held throughout the year. In a relaxed environment, they will allow you to meet peers outside your immediate research group or discipline to further understanding, collaboration, and engagement across the West Cambridge site.
Next Café Theme: Climate Change
Date: 24 April 2024
The presentations, on the 24th of April 2024, will accompany a keynote given by Professor Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, Co-founder of Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, Emeritus Professor of Cosmology & Astrophysics, Cambridge University and Fellow and 38th Master of Trinity College.
Planned Schedule:
11:30-12:00 - Research Posters and coffee/tea*
12:00-12:05 - Opening
12:05-12:20 - Keynote
12:20-13:15 - Lightning talks
13:15-13:30 - Q/A Session with presenters
13:30-14:30 - Pizza* and Social
14:00 - Prize Draw
*Refreshments and lunch will be provided
Click here to attend.
Apollo, the University repository has been successfully upgraded. Following a period of system downtime while the upgrade took place, it is now possible to make open access, research data and doctoral thesis deposits into Apollo from Elements.
A new preprints deposit service is now available. You can use Elements to deposit preprints in Apollo:
Please do not deposit preprints that have already been published on a subject repository/preprint server unless you have concerns about long-term preservation. See the Open access website for guidance on publishing preprints, including a preprint checker tool to help you select a suitable preprint server for your discipline. See the Unlocking Research blog post for more information.
The Engineering Library will be hosting the Careers Service on Tuesday 30 April between 1.00pm and 4.00pm. Between these times, students can drop-in and say hello to Raj in the library and talk about any aspects of Engineering careers in a fully supportive way. No booking necessary.
The University launched a Self-Archiving Policy on 1 April 2023, following the year-long Rights Retention Pilot.
The policy gives Cambridge researchers a cost-effective route to make the accepted version of their papers open access without embargo – something that is now required by almost all research funders. It applies to all peer-reviewed research articles submitted after 1 April 2023, including reviews and conference papers.
One key difference between the new Self-Archiving Policy and the previous Rights Retention Pilot is that it is opt-out rather than opt-in.
This means that all researchers must either:
Before submission, ensure that your co-authors agree to apply a CC BY licence to the accepted manuscript. Alternative licences are permitted providing they are in line with funder requirements.
It is advisable to include the following sentence in your article’s financial disclosure or acknowledgements section: “For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission”. This ensures that the publisher is aware of your intention to retain the right to distribute the accepted manuscript.
On acceptance, deposit your article into the repository through Symplectic Elements.
Researchers can include any preference for an alternative Creative Commons licence using the options provided.
Email info@openaccess.cam.ac.uk stating your intention to opt out. When depositing papers into the repository through Symplectic Elements, it is your responsibility to inform us that you are opting out by using fields provided in the form.
More information about the new policy can be found at https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/stories/self-archiving-policy
Guidance and FAQs are available at https://www.openaccess.cam.ac.uk/publishing-open-access/self-archiving-policy-guidance
