About the Centre for Research Communications

The CRC was founded in April 2009 as a University research centre for research and development work with local, national and international partnerships. The CRC has global impact in the R&D that it carries out in the development of projects and global reach in the provision of services in the field of research communications. The CRC builds on the work of SHERPA in helping the establishment and development of instiutional repositories across higher education institutions in the UK.

Projects

The CRC houses work on a number of significant research communication projects

• RCS (research communications strategy project). This acts as a strategic advisory project for senior institutional managers on changes in research communication, and informs JISC strategy in funding and developments in the area. http://crc.nottingham.ac.uk/projects/rcs
• The RSP (repositories support project). This helps UK higher education institutions to establish and develop institutional repositories, providing open access to their research outputs. http://www.rsp.ac.uk/
• OpenAIRE. The University of Nottingham is the UK representative of the OpenAIRE consortium. This acts as a coordinating body for repository development across all European Union member states. http://www.openaire.eu/ This is coming to an end at the end of November 2009
• NECOBELAC. This project is a collaborative European project to advocate and establish open access for healthcare information between Europe, Latin America, and Caribbean countries. http://www.necobelac.eu/

SHERPA Partnership

The CRC houses the work of SHERPA (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/), which is a body which has been active in open access research communications for six years. There is a SHERPA partnership of over 30 research-led institutions in the UK.

SHERPA Services

There are three principal SHERPA services for open access information -- RoMEO, JULIET, OpenDOAR. SHERPA has previously been awarded the SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communication for our work in open access, particularly for these services. http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/news/award.html

RoMEO provides information on publishers copyright contracts, as an advisory service for academic authors wishing to archive their work on line. http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo

JULIET provides information on funders open access policies, as an advisory service for academic researchers wishing to check the requirements of their grants http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/juliet

OpenDOAR is the global directory of open access repositories of academic materials (just over 1500 currently registered) http://www.opendoar.org/