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Francis Alÿs: Ricochets at the Barbican – Exploring Creative Commons Licensing for Artists

After a busy day at the Library coalface, last night I headed to the Francis Alÿs exhibition at the Barbican hoping to switch off from work and enjoy a bit of culture.

Alÿs is a Belgian artist based in Mexico working in a wide range of media, including film, painting, photography, performance and video. The Barbican exhibition focuses on a long-term project over the past two decades led by Alÿs and his team of collaborators that documents children’s play around the world. Since 1999, Alÿs has recorded the lived experience of children at play in different contexts and environments in over 15 countries as part of his Children’s Games video series. Now approaching 50 in number, the Barbican exhibition is the most comprehensive survey of the Children’s Games series to date.

The exhibition opens with Imbu, #30 in the series, a mesmerising film of a crowd of children at dusk in the Democratic Republic of Congo mimicking the sound and movement of a swarm of mosquitoes above them.

At the end of the film credits a Creative Commons logo briefly flashed up. I see this logo at least a hundred times a week as part of my work in the Library at Goldsmiths managing our institutional repository Goldsmiths Research Online (GRO) and supporting and advocating for open access publication. I initially thought that I was getting a flashback to work and was slightly irritated at the fact that I never seem able to completely switch off from my job. But as I watched more of the films of children at play in Nepal, Denmark, Cuba, Mexico, Iraq, Hong Kong, Morocco, Afghanistan and London, the Creative Commons symbol was displayed every time at the end of the credits, and it was clear that Alÿs is using Creative Commons licensing as a crucial element of his practice.

In my role as Open Access Adviser, I help to support practice researchers in the visual and performing to arts to create an effective digital representation of their research on the GRO repository. I know when speaking to practice researchers that defining and protecting intellectual property in practice research is complex and it is an area that many researchers in the performing and visual arts understandably lack confidence in.

As I spent more time at the exhibition, I began to think that exploring Alÿs’s work would be an interesting route into discussing what Creative Commons licences are, how they can work for artists and practice researchers, and how Alÿs and other artists have found Creative Commons licensing to be beneficial to their work.

What are Creative Commons licences?

Creative Commons is a system of licences for digital content. They provide a way for creators to licence the use of material they create and share. Creators retain copyright while allowing others to copy, distribute, and make some uses of their work.

Creators can build a license which suits their needs and authorise the appropriate use of their work. There are six main licences; the more letters in the licence, the more restrictive it is:

CC BY (Attribution Licence): anyone can reuse the work as long as attribution is made to the original creator of the work (i.e. they must cite the original work). This allows maximum dissemination, and it enables all kinds of academic and creative reuse.
CC BY-SA (Share Alike): the work can be reused for all kinds of purposes, but any newly created work must also be shared under the same licence (e.g. you could not create a new work and then issue it under a more open or more restrictive licence).
CC BY-ND (No Derivatives): the work can be reused as is, without modification. This might be useful if the integrity of the original work is important.
CC BY-NC (Non-Commercial): all kinds of reuse are permitted as long as they are for non-commercial purposes.
CC BY-NC-SA (non-commercial, share alike): re-use permitted only for non-commercial purposes; any newly created work must be shared under the same licence.
CC BY-NC-ND: the most restrictive CC licence. It only allows others to freely download and redistribute the work for non-commercial purposes, but not modify or build upon it for any purpose.

Francis Alÿs licences his films CC BY-NC-ND which enables the example below to be shared on this blog. Further examples of Alÿs’s films are available on his website.

Alÿs, F. (2015). ‘Cut’ (CC BY-NC-ND)

The licences allow other people to know how to use a work in an appropriate way without infringing copyright, ensuring creators get the appropriate credit. Creative Commons licences do not replace copyright; they let users of digital works to know what they can and cannot do with that content. It protects the rights of creators, while helping them achieve wide distribution of their work.

Creative Commons licencing underpins the system of open access publication and is now commonly used to licence journal articles, monographs, edited collections, PhD theses and research datasets. Although, the licences can be used for any digital content they are yet to be widely applied to licence work produced by practice researchers in the visual and performing arts.

How do Creative Commons licences work for artists and practice researchers?

Defining and protecting intellectual property rights in practice research can be complex. Practice research is often collaboratively produced and can make use of multimedia documentation which can have particularly complex copyright and licensing implications.

Creative Commons licencing will not be appropriate for every practice research project, but many practice researchers have found that making their work openly available under a Creative Commons licence is the most efficient and ethical route for sharing practice research outputs.

In addition to institutional repositories such as GRO which have been the cornerstone for preserving practice research outputs and making them discoverable, there are many interesting examples of practice researchers making their work available through new open access platforms.

Research Catalogue is a non-commercial, collaboration and publishing platform for artistic research with much of its content made available under a Creative Commons licence. The platform hosts several open access journals that disseminates artistic research, including the Journal for Artistic Research (JAR), Journal of Sonic Studies and HUB — Journal of Research in Art, Design and Society.

Other examples include The Journal of Embodied Research which focuses on the dissemination of embodied knowledge through the medium of video, [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Studies a peer-reviewed journal of videographic film and moving image studies, Screenworks an open access publication of practice research in film and screen media, PARSE an international artistic research publishing platform, and Screen Worlds: Decolonising Film and Screen Studies, a five-year research project exploring Africans’ contributions to contemporary screen worlds and audiovisual cultures that makes content available under a Creative Commons licence.

Francis Alÿs on Creative Commons licensing

Francis Alÿs has spoken about the benefits that Creative Commons licensing brings to his work:

“I do not in any way want to commercialize the films. We do it because we love it. And for the vanity of the arts. Putting them into the domain of the Creative Commons is a direct, clear statement. Also, before I start filming, I always tell all the people involved that they will be able to download and watch the films, that the films will not be commercialized, and that nobody is making money out of this. This makes the relation much healthier.

His long-time collaborator Rafael Ortega added that:

“When you put something in the domain of the Creative Commons, people make it theirs. This is very interesting for me because it puts me into contact with a lot of people. I meet will all kinds of people who work with children or, for instance, visit refugee camps to help children as part of NGO work. Some of these people have used the Children’s Games as a trigger to talk to children in particular situations. A friend of mine works as a psychiatric researcher and uses Children’s Games with some of the patients to talk about their memories of childhood. The series has become something completely and gloriously uncontrollable.” (Claes, G. and Symons, S. (2023). ‘Interview with Francis Alÿs and Rafael Ortega, Nov. 9 2022’, in Claes, G. and Symons, S. (ed.) Francis Alÿs: The Nature of the Game. Leuven: Leuven University Press, pp.51-52)

Although, Creative Commons licensing will not be appropriate for every practice research project, it is inspiring to see artists engaging with open licensing and speaking so eloquently about the benefits it can bring in widening access to their work and enabling groups and individuals to reuse the films in novel ways.

Further help and support

If you want to find out more about open access, Creative Commons licensing and using GRO you can read our LibGuide.

In the Library, we support practice researchers at Goldsmiths to create an effective digital representation of their research on GRO. If you need help or advice on adding your practice research to GRO or would like to arrange a 1:1 training session you can contact gro@gold.ac.uk.

Pieter Sonke, Online Research Collections

Lily Greenham archives show the Art of Living

2024, Lily Greenham: An Art of Living, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (curated by James Bulley, Andrew Walsh-Lister, Anja Casser & Alex Balgiu) Mar 8 – May 26, 2024

A selection of archives from the Lily Greenham archives held in Goldsmiths Library’s Special Collections and Archives is on display as part of a compelling exhibition presenting the scale of this artist’s life’s work. In a series of exhibition tables photos, ephemera, letters and documents are laid out. Two huge tables installed in space opening at the base of the gallery stairs display visual art thoughts: one holds working colour tests and sketches relating to the ‘light box’ paintings hung nearby and the other spread with fistfuls of small computer drawings. These covered displays feel more like studio work surfaces, and staged as if the artist has just left the room with a gesture indicating that there’s a lot more where this comes from! While on the walls are framed, specially lit and installed paintings we can view Lily is a visual artist, but the space is full of sound work, recorded voices and electronic musicmaking follows the visitor up and down the stairs and through the individually staged rooms. Lily’s life as a performer is revealed through different archives: photos, announcements, playbills and a group shot photograph is blown up, Lily smiling in a world of artistic men. She thrived as a trusted interpreter of composition and poetry while developing as a composer and poet herself. The exhibition is free of ponderous signage – the projector set to display the details of the sound piece we are hearing at one time enhances the way the space is given over to the ephemeral and performative. The only fixed texts printed topping the walls of each room are selected from Lily’s collection ‘aphorisms for contemplation’ printed using a font design based on the metal type set of Lily’s personal typewriter. The exhibition poster features one:

fixed ideas

hamper hinder thwart

understanding

Andrew Lister-Walsh has been cataloguing the collection and as he sorted through the papers brought to Special Collections, these typed notes slipped out of papers, correspondence, reading material. Did she know how much we’d enjoy them decades later? The exhibition organizers have printed some on coloured squares of paper to be taken away by visitors. I refrain from greedily pocketing the lot. Each one is a gem and they have been transformed into something to have and to hold, sprung from the finitude of making up a unique and rare archive.

I read about another show in Germany, in Weimar looking at the relationship of the Bauhaus to National Socialism. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/article/2024/may/06/bauhaus-nazis-collaborators-auschwitz-crematoriium. The article is illustrated by the photograph of a textile sample, annotated as an item from a textile collection telling this story. It was made by a Bauhaus student, Ottie Berger, who was murdered at Auschwitz. Another student Fritz Ertl was the architect who designed the camp’s crematorium. The idea of this textile surviving to tell an overlooked tale of collaboration fostered in avantgarde artistic circles, relates to a folded poster publication donated to the Women’s Art Library collection. It features another group photograph found in the archives of the Austrian Association of Women Artists (VBKÖ) by the research group Secretariat of Ghosts (Nina Hoechtl and Julia Wieger) who published it in 2015. In contrast to the relaxed smiling group of mostly male artists taken in the 1960s telling Lily’s story, here we have a group of 20 women whose conservative dress style denotes 1930s Vienna and all but six are unknown. The organization’s records during and after the rise of National Socialism are lost, presumed destroyed. During that time all Jewish members of the organization were expelled including Louise Fraenkel-Hahn, the VBKÖ’s 3rd president who was a significant benefactor creating a retreat for women artists to work. She is second from the left in the first row. Under the image of the poster publication, the Secretariat of Ghosts superimposed the words ‘EINLADUNG ZUR RECHERCHE’ (Invitation to Research).

Lily Greenham’s life was shaped by exile driven by the Holocaust and the archives held in Goldsmiths are a tantalizing invitation to follow her trajectory that included the best of experimental art scenes, but characterized by a constant moving through. At the symposium Tune in to Reality exploring Lily Greenham’s work, Andrew began his paper on the cataloguing project by citing Greenham’s contribution to the travelling project of the 1970s, The Museum of Drawers: the message, “sorry! lily greenham cannot be pigeon-holed.” https://schubladenmuseum.org/schubladen/19/lily-greenham

The material reflects the artist and resists yielding an airtight story. Alert to the gaps in the archive, Andrew eloquently cited them as ‘triggers to generate attention’ that maintains an awareness of ‘the bigness of life’ present in the archive, where he also feels himself caught up in the imagination of this artist. Andrew’s account of cataloguing Greenham’s archive included ideas like encircling and becoming part of the constellation of people that Lily’s life’s work created. How enlivening his work with this archive is and what a debt is owed to those who miraculously saved it: Hugh Davies, Michael Parsons and Jeffrey Steele. As a member of the audience remarked about working with archives in general: No one was supposed to spend so much time with this stuff! But Lily Greenham’s relationship to her own writings and recordings is a creative force that the archives enable. As Ian Stonehouse remarked in his wonderfully detailed presentation of Lily Greenham’s biography, the exhibition itself was a means of laying out the archive to see and hear what the curators could discover and like a giant jig saw puzzle, witnessing these elements together to make an experience rather than a complete and final picture of her achievement. The curatorial team brought specialist knowledge to bear on the exhibition’s design that gives information but also space to this restless but deeply connected art practice.

James Bulley’s sound installations celebrate Greenham’s compositions and performance work optimising the pieces within the exhibition space in ways never done before, effectively working with the archived material to both animate the recordings and the building’s space. This is why I felt it was so important to make the trip to the Badischer Kunstverein and see how this artist’s archive will continue to unfold. The writing and discussion inspired by the archive generated an excitement that was beautifully expressed by the performative introduction given by Alex Balgiu initiating the symposium. He’d set up a typewriter amongst his personal collection of books and merrily played the keys as if it were a piano, bringing a burst of sound to our grasp of concrete poetry’s relationship to performance and distribution. Greenham’s work is still being recovered alongside the work of other women concrete poets which Balgiu has researched. (It would be great to get a copy of https://bombmagazine.org/articles/2020/11/29/alex-balgiu-and-m%C3%B3nica-de-la-torres-women-in-concrete-poetry-1959-1979/ )

In addition to the production of reprints, Balgiu’s lively interactive website http://lilygreenham.org/ expands on the unpacking of the archive work and sharing in a digital space that again releases the work that is archived along with the life back into a living connection with new readers and listeners. Throughout the symposium, acknowledging insightful new research included recognizing Goldsmiths’ role in not just preserving but championing this project, between the Music Department and Special Collections in the Library. But this exhibition convinces me that something else has ensured that this material was activated, from academic investigation to spellbinding live performances from Valentina Traïanova, Anna Barham and Ute Wassermann we all became a new audience thoroughly caught up and held in the imagination of Lily Greenham.

2024, Tune in to Reality!, symposium, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (talks, readings & performances by Valentina Traïanova, Alex Balgiu, Andrew Walsh-Lister, Eva Badura-Triska, Ian Stonehouse, Katrina Liberiou, Judith Milz, Anna Barham & Ute Wassermann)

Publications, Records & Editions:
2024, Lily Greenham: An Art of Living, catalogue / record, Badischer Kunstverein & Bricks from the Kiln
2024, tendentious | neo-semantics, Bricks from the Kiln
2022, Tune in to Reality!, Distance No Object
2007, Lingual Music, CD, Paradigm Discs

Althea Greenan Women’s Art Library, Curator

LGBTQ+ Events During May and June

The LGBTQ+ Positive Voices @ Goldsmiths exhibition launched a couple of weeks ago at the Library, and was attended by around 40 people. It was fantastic to be able to celebrate the launch and share the enthusiasm for works in the exhibition with some of the exhibitors, University staff, students and also members of the local LGBTQ+ community in attendance.

We’re running a range of events while the exhibition is on display.

Firstly, there will be a series of short in-person exhibition tours. Tickets available here.

You’ll also have the chance to get creative and get inspired by queer joy and the exhibition in our Queer Joy zine making workshop. Tickets and further information can be found here.

And a more in-depth online virtual tour and introduction for those who can’t make it to the exhibition will be taking place as part of the CILIP LGBTQ+ Network Festival of Pride & Knowledge. You can book your tickets here.

Visitors can also explore the exhibition themselves 9am – 5pm Monday to Friday (tickets for external visitors here) until 20th June 2024.

All are welcome to these free events.

You can find out more about the exhibition here.

LGBTQ+ Positive Voices @ Goldsmiths Exhibition Launches Today

Today sees the launch of the inspirational LGBTQ+ Positive Voices @ Goldsmiths exhibition, running from 7th May to 20th June. This showcase celebrates the creativity and resilience of LGBTQ+ individuals through an array of uplifting and thought-provoking art, videos, music, games, and archival materials.

The exhibition is on display throughout the ground floor of Goldsmiths, University of London Library (New Cross, SE14 6NW), including within the Special Collections and Archives rooms.

Contributions come from over 20 talented creators spanning the globe, including Goldsmiths University students. Delving into historical LGBTQ+ culture and history, the exhibition also hosts materials from the Women’s Art Library and Women’s Revolutions Per Minute archives.

Creatives who have contributed to this exhibition include:

Alessandro Paiano – M+E BREATHE (video)
Magnus Thirteen – 陰陽鳳眼 The Yin Yang Peacock (video and photographs)
Ray Abu-Jaber – Beautiful Bodies: Queer Joy & self-love (visual art)
Ray Abu-Jaber and Kassie Fletcher – CRUISING DYSTOPIA (physical game)
Yufeng Wu – Breathe / Causality/Karma (visual art)
Kuch Bhogal – Proud (visual art)
R.E. and S.W. Lee – Walking in My Friend’s High Heels (video)
Leon Clowes – Andrew (music)
AnimaeNoctis – PRIDEPRIDEPRIDE / Liquid Lyrical Liberty (videos)
Rik Versteeg – It’s Liquid (video)
Konrad Natthagel – Sapphic love between goddesses (visual art)
Geoffrey Doig-Marx (GDM) – Gay ICONS (visual art)
Guillermo “Wildo” Zayas IV – Warmest Embrace (visual art)
Linhtropy – when it’s safe again (digital game)
Paty Rodriguez – ADARIM 1997 (video)
Stefani J Alvarez – Transfinity Testament (video)
Terry Gregoraschuk – “Trans4mation” (visual art)
Salome Zhvania – Only Lovers Left Undead (visual art)
Oxford University Press staff & friends – Pride flag (knitted flag)
Various collaborators – Pixel Pride (digital game)

All pieces within the exhibition remain copyright of the creators.

Goldsmiths Special Collections and Archive materials include pieces from:

Del LaGrace Volcano and Jack Halberstam
Annie Sprinkle
Mandy McCartin
Invasorix
Nina Hoechtl
Tessa Boffin
Gay Sweatshop Theatre Company
Ming de Nasty
Flying Lesbians
The Tokens
Berkeley Women’s Music Collective
Lavender Light: The Black and People of All Colors Lesbian and Gay Gospel Choir
Alix Dobkin
Siren
Judy Small

External visitors can book free tickets to view the exhibition here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lgbtq-positive–voices-goldsmiths-exhibition-tickets-880889372827

There are also tickets still available for the free launch event tomorrow evening (8th May, 6:00 – 8:30pm): https://www.gold.ac.uk/calendar/?id=14968

And we will also be running a free queer joy zine making workshop on 31st May (1:30 – 4:30pm). Free tickets here: https://libcal.gold.ac.uk/event/4207926

On a personal note, it feels like such a long time since I started thinking about this, and discussing it with colleagues in Goldsmiths University. I am so excited that this vibrant and positive exhibition is now launched. And I am extremely grateful for all who chose to contribute their pieces to this exhibition.

Ashleigh Green

LGBTQ+ Positive Voices @ Goldsmiths Exhibition Curator

LGBTQ+ Positive Voices @ Goldsmiths Launches May 2024

We are very excited to announce that the the LGBTQ+ Positive Voices @ Goldsmiths Exhibition will be launching on 7th May 2024, and will run until 20th June.

The exhibition, which is a celebration of LGBTQ+ lives and positive perspectives, will include original printed art works, video, audio, games, as well as items from the Women’s Art Library and Women’s Revolutions Per Minute collection. The Goldsmiths Special Collections and Archives material, and artistic works from 20+ creatives from around the world that make up the exhibition will be on display on the ground floor of Goldsmiths University Library.

Collage of pieces from the LGBTQ+ Positive Voices @ Goldsmiths exhibition

The creators include:

Alessandro Paiano
Magnus Thirteen
Ray Abu-Jaber
Ray Abu-Jaber and Kassie Fletcher
Yufeng Wu
Kuch Bhogal
R.E. and S.W. Lee
Leon Clowes
AnimaeNoctis
Rik Versteeg
Konrad Natthagel
Geoffrey Doig-Marx (GDM)
Guillermo “Wildo” Zayas IV
Linhtropy
Paty Rodriguez
Stefani J Alvarez
Terry Gregoraschuk
Salome Zhvania

Further details of the project can be found here.

LAUNCH EVENT

A launch event will be held on Wednesday 8th May 2024 (18:00 – 20:30). It will provide visitors with an opportunity to find out more about the project, as well as time to explore the exhibition pieces. Book your free launch event tickets here.

EXHIBITION TICKETS FOR EXTERNAL VISITORS

Visitors who are not members of Goldsmiths University Library can visit the exhibition by booking a free ticket here.

Further showcase events will be hosted during the exhibition in May and June. Details will be published both on the Goldsmiths Library blog and on the LGBTQ+ Positive Voices site.

Rendering Houses in Ladakh – Open Access Monograph Case Study

In anticipation of long-form publications coming into scope of the UKRI open access policy from 1 January 2024 we are publishing a series of case studies written by Goldsmiths researchers who have published their monograph Open Access. In the first of our blogs Sophie Day reflects on the process of Open Access monograph publishing and how it has enabled research participants in India to read her latest book Rendering Houses in Ladakh.

Rendering Houses in Ladakh explores house-plots: it tells of the plots that provide foundations for houses-and-people, and it traces plots to the stories that grow in those houses about people who leave and stay, about homes that are partitioned or remain intact, about land lost to new building or floods. This double house-plot is also explored for the wider region of Ladakh (Himalayan India) to illuminate life along heavily militarised borders that are disputed among three post-colonial nation-states, and divisions among the various people who call Ladakh home.

The first circumambulation of the year, Leh, Ladakh (1981)

Because my Ladakhi colleagues do not generally read English, we developed an approach of storyboarding photographs with words to narrate house life, and 60 of these images are included in the book. Seven of the nine book chapters describe individual pastoralist, urban, rural, Muslim or Buddhist houses and these house stories meander across some or all the forty years I have visited the region since I conducted my doctoral research (1981-83). When negotiating a publishing contract, I considered it crucial that this book would be available open access so that my colleagues could see, read, and use it in Ladakh. I was exceptionally fortunate to be able to fund the fees charged by Routledge (who bought Bloomsbury’s anthropology catalogue, with whom I originally signed my book contract) from a research grant. Since it is virtually impossible for most people to buy academic hardbacks (Rendering Houses costs £130) and since our research is intended to be publicly available, the trend towards lower OA fees from publishers and alternative forms of publication without any fees is very welcome.

Thankfully, several hardback copies of Rendering Houses arrived two days before I flew to India for the book launch. In June 2023, Ladakh Arts and Media Organisation hosted my presentation alongside the protagonists from two of the book chapters: Deen Khan tells of exile at home in the

Book launch, Ladakh Arts and Media Organisation, Leh (2023)

place where he was born in Chapter 5, and Tashi Lazom tells of the house and body we sponsored in the form of a chorten or stūpa in Chapter 9. Tashi Chenzom and Tashi Dolma – who describe how they established a nunnery as uneducated elders in Chapter 7 – joined us along with Phuntsog Anchuk, whose father-in-law is depicted in a photograph that I had taken in Kharnak (1981) with its tents, flocks of goat (yielding cashmere wool) and sheep, and yak. This photograph had taken us all some time to decipher and, when it was recognised, only one branch of the family wanted to take it in to their home to add to their collection of family portraits, as I describe in Chapter 4. Several people at the launch, including younger Ladakhis involved in doctoral and other forms of research or creative practice, immediately found Rendering Houses on their phones.

Sophie Day is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London

New UKRI Open Access policy for monographs – what you need to know, how to comply and how we can help

UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI’s) Open Access policy for monographs, book chapters and edited collections comes into effect on 1 January 2024.

If researchers receive funding from UKRI and plan to publish a monograph, an edited collection or a book chapter, they will need to comply with the UKRI open access requirements.

In this post, we will outline the key policy points our researchers at Goldsmiths need to know to ensure compliance and what the Online Research Collections (ORC) team in the Library are doing to help our researchers meet the new requirements.

The monographs policy compliments the UKRI open access policy for peer reviewed research articles which has been in force since 1 April 2022. For information on how to comply with the UKRI open access policy for peer reviewed research articles you can visit our guidance page. We have also created a resource that guides authors through the steps we advise them to take to ensure that their research articles meet the UKRI requirements.

How do I find out more about the policy?

There will be a training event on Thursday 7 December which will summarise the UKRI policy and provide guidance to UKRI-funded researchers on the actions they need to take prior to the submission of a book proposal, as well as licensing requirements, policy exemptions, managing third-party copyright and funding options. You can register for the event here.

The Online Research Collections (ORC) team in the Library have prepared guidance on the new policy.

The team have also created a guide on open access monographs aimed at all researchers at Goldsmiths.

If you have any questions about how the new policy affects your work, please email gro@gold.ac.uk.

Context

The new UKRI policy builds on earlier open access initiatives that focused on research articles with the aim of improving access to monographs and other long-form publications. Alongside UKRI, both the Wellcome Trust and Horizon Europe/ ERC have brought monographs into scope of their open access policies.

It is expected that that there will be an open access requirement for long-form publications for REF2028. The expectation is that any formal open access requirements for long-form publications will be more flexible than the UKRI policy. When the details of the new REF open access policy are announced, the Online Research Collections team will provide guidance and support to researchers at Goldsmiths.

UKRI acknowledge that open access is less established for monographs than for research articles. In anticipation of the new policy, they have been working alongside JISC to develop new open access publishing models and initiatives for monographs. These activities complement other projects such as COPIM (Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs) that aim to build an effective infrastructure for open access book publishing. UKRI will also be providing dedicated funding to support the new policy through a centralised fund of £3.5 million per year that will open for applications on 28 November 2023.

Policy requirements for monographs, book chapters and edited collections from 1 January 2024

Monographs, book chapters and edited collections published from 1 January 2024 (unless a contract has been signed between the author and the publisher before this date that prevents adherence to the policy) which acknowledge funding from UKRI will need to be made open access.

There are two routes to compliance:

Making the Version of Record free to view and download on the publisher’s website within 12 months of publication
Making the Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM) free to view and download on a repository such as Goldsmiths Research Online (GRO) https://research.gold.ac.uk/ within 12 months of publication. The policy allows the author and publisher to agree the appropriate version to self-archive on a repository.

The open access versions of monographs, book chapters and edited collections must be published under a Creative Commons licence. UKRI has expressed a preference for a CC BY licence, but other Creative Commons licences are permitted. UKRI in collaboration with Jisc have produced a guide on ‘Publishing under the UKRI open access policy: copyright and Creative Commons licences’ which provides advice for UKRI-funded researchers on copyright and licensing.

Exemptions to the policy

Authors should seek to publish open access wherever possible, but UKRI allow a number of exemptions to the policy. Please email gro@gold.ac.uk if you are considering applying for one of the following exemptions:

The policy does not apply to trade books (defined by UKRI as an academic monograph rooted in original scholarship that has a broad public audience), scholarly editions, exhibition catalogues, scholarly illustrated catalogues, textbooks, and all types of fictional works and creative writing (including artist’s books).
The only appropriate publisher for the publication, after liaison and consideration is unable to offer an open access option that complies with the policy.
Reuse permissions for third-party materials cannot be obtained and there is no suitable alternative option available to enable open access publication.
Authors have signed a contract with a publisher before 1 January 2024, which doesn’t enable open access in compliance with UKRI’s policy.
Where a monograph, book chapter or edited collection is the outcome of a UKRI training grant (including UKRI-funded studentships) open access is encouraged but not required.

Selecting a publisher

Authors are advised to choose the publisher most appropriate for their research, provided UKRI’s open access requirements are met. To ensure compliance, authors should inform their preferred publisher that the publication is in scope of the UKRI open access policy and check if they can offer a compliant open access publishing option prior to the submission a book proposal and before entering into any contractual agreement.

Although open access publication is most commonly associated with journal articles, there are a growing number of options for making monographs, edited collections and book chapters openly available.

A publisher may charge a book processing fee for open access (the typical cost of a book processing is charge is between £5,000 and £12,000 depending on the publisher and the length of the book) or offer free open access supported via alternative funding models, such as subscribe to open models (for example the MIT Press Direct to Open model) or ‘diamond’ open access. Information on the different publishing models for open access monographs is available here.

Many publishers offer open access of the final Version of Record within 12 months of publication either through the payment of a book processing charge or via an alternative funding model. Information on the open access policies of a range of publishers is available here.

Some publishers may not offer open access of the final Version of Record but may permit authors to deposit their Author’s Accepted Manuscript (a version of your accepted manuscript agreed between you and the publisher) at no cost in an institutional repository such as GRO within 12 months of publication. Information on self-archiving monographs and book chapters in a repository is available here.

If your preferred publisher does not have an open access programme, check for other open access options and consider other publishers before considering an exemption. Authors can contact gro@gold.ac.uk for further advice at this stage.

Working with co-authors and publishers

You should inform any collaborators, (such as co-authors or the editor of a collection you are contributing to) about UKRI’s open access requirements. When contributing a book chapter to an edited collection, you should seek agreement with the editor(s) and publisher for the version of record or the AAM of your chapter to be made open access via the publisher or self-archiving in a repository. UKRI recommend authors inform the editor of the collection and the publisher of the UKRI requirements at the start of the collaboration discussions and before entering into any contractual agreement for the publication. If the publisher charges for making the version of record open access, you may be eligible for open access funding from UKRI.

Third-party material

UKRI does not want the use of third-party materials to be a barrier to making a book, edited collection or chapter open access. They have produced a helpful guide aimed at UKRI-funded researchers that offers advice on how to manage third-party copyright, clear permissions, and use third-party content in line with copyright law.

UKRI also allows authors to claim up to £2,000 to clear third-party material used in an open access book, edited collection or chapter. These costs should be accounted for in grant applications, where possible.

A policy exemption is also available in exceptional circumstances where securing permissions for third-party materials is not feasible, and this means open access is therefore not an option.

Applying for open access funding

UKRI will be providing dedicated funding to support open access monographs, book chapters and edited collections. Funding will be provided through a centralised fund of £3.5 million per year held by UKRI that research organisations will apply for. Successful applications for funding will need to demonstrate a substantial link between the publication and UKRI funding. The Online Research Collections team in the Library are in the process of contacting all UKRI-funded researchers with advice on how to apply for open access funding from UKRI.

UKRI will contribute up to the following maximums (inclusive of VAT, where applicable):

£10,000 for book processing charges
£1,000 for chapter processing charges
£6,000 for participation in an alternative open access model (not exceeding the total cost of participation). UKRI will fund up to another £3,000 where there are two or more eligible outputs.

Funding applications will be in two stages. Authors should send the following information to gro@gold.ac.uk for a Stage 1 application to be made:

UKRI funding reference
Author name(s)
Title of publication (draft)
Name of publisher (if known)
Estimated open access costs requested from UKRI (if known; including VAT)
Anticipated date of publication
Statement about relationship to the UKRI funded project or grant, including the author’s role in this
Additional comments and administrative information

The Online Research Collections (ORC) team in the Library will then register the output with UKRI using the information provided by the author. UKRI will confirm if a publication is eligible for funding after a Stage 1 application.

Stage 1 applications open on 28 November 2023. A publishing contract does not need to be signed for a Stage 1 application to be made and it is recommended that an application is made as soon as you have a commitment from an editor to publish your book or chapter as this will help UKRI allocate funds for you.

At Stage 2 Goldsmiths provides final confirmation of publication to allow UKRI to release funds.

Checklist for authors

To comply with policy, the key steps you need to undertake are:

Inform your publisher, and any collaborators, (such as editor of a collection you are contributing to) about UKRI’s open access requirements.
Check your preferred publisher offers a compliant route. If your preferred publisher does not have an open access programme, check for other open access options, and consider other publishers before contacting gro@gold.ac.uk for advice on applying an exemption.
Email gro@gold.ac.uk to request that Goldsmiths submit a Stage 1 application if your publisher requires a fee to publish your work open access.
Make your version of record or accepted manuscript open access within 12 months of publication and with Creative Commons licence. For any third-party content within copyright, only include the content under the licence or terms under which the rightsholder has released it.
Email gro@gold.ac.uk to request that Goldsmiths submit a Stage 2 application

Can I publish my monograph, book chapter or edited collection open access if I am not funded by UKRI?

At Goldsmiths there is no institutional fund to support the costs of publishing open access for unfunded researchers.

Although open access funding is limited at Goldsmiths, there are alternative open access publishing models that don’t require the payment of a fee to a publisher. In these models, publishers support the costs of making their books open access via alternative sources of funding such as sponsorship, membership or subscription schemes. More information about publishing models that don’t require a fee is available here.

A list of publishers that provide open access with no requirement for the author or institution to pay is available here. Many publishers will allow authors to deposit a version of their monographs, or parts of their monographs, to the GRO repository at no cost, further information is available here here.

Monograph publishing comprises an important share of Goldsmiths’ publishing profile and several current and former researchers at Goldsmiths have published their monographs and edited collections open access. Many of these titles have been published by Goldsmiths Press, that launched in 2016.

Pieter Sonke, Online Research Collections

Submissions Open For Creative LGBTQ+ Project

If you’ve been following this blog for the past few months, you will have read about the LGBTQ+ Positive Voices @ Goldsmiths Library project.

As a reminder, this project is focused on creating a collaborative exhibition to be launched during 2024 in Goldsmiths Library with a theme of positive representation and experiences of LGBTQ+ people.

The exhibition will include content from Goldsmiths University Special Collections and Archives; alongside works by individual creators.

You can find out more about the project in some of our older blog posts.

Today we are opening the form for submissions.

WHAT CAN YOU SUBMIT?

Any art or creative work by an LGBTQ+ person that fits the above theme, and can be shared or represented in a digital file format is welcome as a submission. This can include image, video, audio, text files, but is not limited to these forms only.

And if your creative work relates to or is inspired by LGBTQ+ material in Goldsmiths Special Collections and Archives, even better!

Contributions from amateur, hobby, DIY artists, crafters and creatives, those who do not consider themselves to be artists or creatives, and those who have never submitted to an exhibition before are especially welcome.

Participants must be 18 or over. Submissions will be included in the exhibition at the discretion of the organiser.

Any submission you make must be your own work and something that you are happy to be shared in a public space. You will retain full copyright of your work.

You do not need to either work or study at Goldsmiths to submit an entry.

YOUR PERSONAL DETAILS

All information submitted via this form (except email) will be included in the exhibition. If you would like your submission to appear anonymously in the exhibition, please select the option at the end of the form.

Email addresses submitted will be kept securely and confidentially and will only be used to contact you about the exhibition. They will not appear on the website.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE & GO LIVE

Call for exhibition submissions closes on 31st October 2023.

The exhibition will go live in spring 2024.

Follow the Goldsmiths Library blog for updates about the exhibition.

NEED MORE INFO?

If you’d like more information about the project, please contact a.green (@gold.ac.uk)

Ready to send your contribution? Fill in the form here.

Paper with painted rainbow hearts surrounded by artists tools.

Image by stux on Pixabay.com

A Queer Project We’re Positively Proud Of

Since beginning the LGBTQ+ Positive Voices exhibition project, I’ve been exploring Goldsmiths collections, with a lot of support from the Special Collections and Archives team, and pulling out items of interest. This has been as a way to discover items for the exhibition, and also a way to discover materials that I could use as inspiration for my own creative responses to the exhibition focus – that being “positive reflections and experiences of LGBTQ+ people”.

When I started, I wasn’t sure what shape my creative response would take. In the end, I decided to give myself some rules just so I could start creating something, rather than dithering endlessly about what form it would take. My rules were (1) create something specifically in the Special Collections space itself (2) create something no-tech/low tech/physical, rather than digital.

I’d recently discovered zines via the library’s own Liberate Zines collection, and I also came across the concept of photocopy art in the Women’s Art Library collection.

So, I took those concepts and pulled together a poster collage with a DIY feel to it, which has a focus around the portrayal of gender. Why? Because I am trans*/gender non-conforming, and I wanted to see what items there were in the collection in relation to that. I included photocopied images and “negative” text (ie white on black) by Volcano DeLagrace & J. Jack Halberstam from their Drag King Book; Tessa Boffin’s portrayal of women in masculine presentation; Invasorix tarot cards; and part of a Mandy McCarthy image in a photocopy collage.

Much of the collage comes from a lesbian, drag king, queer feminist perspective, and it was an interesting experience for me to see how that might and might not relate to my own identity as someone who is assigned male at birth.

I decided that I wanted to focus on the creators words only, so I made liberal use of highlighters on the posters to draw attention to who these artists were and draw attention to text and images they used. When I looked at what I’d pulled together/repurposed, and was wondering why this collage of unrelated artists and their thoughts made sense to me, I realised it was a focus on the idea that we can “do” gender however we want to and that’s okay.

As a creative practice, it was useful for me to look at materials I wasn’t aware of, and discover new artists myself. When I was talking to the SCA team about the project and things I was interested in seeing, thanks to their knowledge of the collection and broader thinking they introduced me to all the artists I mentioned above and took me in a direction I had not realised I would go in. The exhibition is about positive experiences/perspectives of LGBTQ+ people, and I wanted this piece to be about things that were positive to me in relation to my identity, and I expected that to come from AMAB bi and trans* perspective – so it was interesting to see that it didn’t work that way. The positivity of this piece in relation to how I felt was gained from an entirely different direction.

Here are a few images of the “Do Gender However It Works For You” work in progress in different stages. Just so you can see how it came together.

A few of the original sources

Content scaled up and photocopied as negatives

Paper folding, sticking and test colouring with highlighters

Photocopied collage and more colour tests

Completed piece?!? Maybe!

We have another workshop for the exhibition coming up on the afternoon of 10th August 2023, which is open to all (including anyone from outside of Goldsmiths University). We’d like anyone who wants to get involved in contributing to the exhibition to come along. The workshop will give people the chance to learn about the project, including how you can get involved. And we’ll share some of Goldsmiths University Special Collections and Archives collection with you to spark ideas about how LGBTQ+ lives can be revealed, celebrated and portrayed positively through it. Getting involved could mean one of many things – create a piece for the exhibition; pull out materials from the collection that speak to you in a positive way from an LGBTQ+ perpspective; contribute a character to a pixel style game; or share your own positive experiences in whatever form you want to.

You can book your place at the workshop here: https://libcal.gold.ac.uk/calendar/SCA/LGBTQPositive3

Ash Green (LGBTQ+ Positive Voices @Goldsmiths curator)

Share Your Pixel Pride – Collaborate On A Game

If you’ve read this blog before, you’ll know that the Special Collections and Archives team is working with Ash Green (they/them) to create an exhibition of LGBTQ+ positive perspectives.

Tied in with this, for Pride month there’ll be a drop-in event in Goldsmiths University Library with the aim of creating a collaborative game (using Bitsy) that will give LGBTQ+ people the opportunity to share snippets of their positive experiences, lives and perspectives.

The event will take place on 27^th June between 12:30 and 14:30, in the Library (Ground floor, in front of the big screen near the cafe).

No Programming, Coding Or Game Making Experience Needed To Participate

This will be a no-tech game making session, with contributors drawing 8×8 characters and writing their dialogue on paper. The characters will be added to a Bitsy game to be created for the 2024 exhibition.

If you’re not sure what you want your character to say, you can take inspiration from some of the LGBTQ+ themed Special Collections & Archive material we’ll have available during the event.

What’s A Bitsy Game?

As mentioned earlier, we’ll be using Bitsy to create the game. This is a great free little game making tool that lets you create retro style narrative pixel games without needing to be a programmer. Take a look at some examples of Bitsy games here: https://itch.io/games/tag-bitsy

You Could Probably Even Contribute in 5 Minutes

Though the event lasts for 2 hours, you can turn up at any time and leave at any time too. It might just take you 5 minutes to draw your 8×8 pixel character, write down the words it will say in the game, and then you’re done. 😊

So, come join us for the event on 27^th June and share your Pixel Pride.

Find out more here.