Category: Open Access

"Finch 18 Months On: A Review of Progress"

Michael Jubb has published "Finch 18 Months On: A Review of Progress: Based on a Paper Presented at the UKSG One-Day Conference, 'Open Access Realities', London, November 2013" in Insights: the UKSG Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

When the Finch Report was published in June 2012, it represented for me the culmination of nine months of intensive work as secretary to the Finch Group. But I was not allowed to rest on my laurels. The Group recognized that the task of implementation would be complex, involving work from many different stakeholders, and it pointed to the need for an implementation strategy that would involve all of them. Perhaps it should have been firmer in recommending how such a strategy should be developed and implemented. Nevertheless, the Group decided that it should as its final act meet in a year's time to assess progress. I was slightly apprehensive when I was asked to prepare a report for the Group to consider at that meeting. This paper—based on a presentation made at the UKSG conference in November 2013—considers the findings of that report, which was published the following week.

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Developing an Effective Market for Open Access Article Processing Charges

The Wellcome Trust has released Developing an Effective Market for Open Access Article Processing Charges.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In their report, published in March 2014, Björk and Solomon set out a series of scenarios for how funders might develop their approaches for supporting APCs. These cover both full open access journals (which operate exclusively by this model) and so-called hybrid journals (which offer this service for individual articles, while continuing to operate via the subscription model). The authors appraised three combined scenarios, which they conclude to be the most promising for further consideration.

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Open Access: SPARC Opposes Frontiers in Innovation, Research, Science and Technology Act

SPARC has released a statement opposing the Frontiers in Innovation, Research, Science and Technology Act.

Here's an excerpt:

Specifically, Section 303 would:

  • Slow the pace of scientific discovery by restricting public access to articles reporting on federally funded research for up to three years after initial publication. This stands in stark contrast to the policies in use around the world, which call for maximum embargo periods of no more than six to 12 months.
  • Fail to support provisions that allow for shorter embargo periods to publicly funded research results. This provision ignores the potential harm to stakeholders that can accrue through unnecessarily long delays.
  • Fail to ensure that federal agencies have full text copies of their funded research articles to archive and provide to the public for full use, and for long-term archiving. By condoning a link to an article on a publisher's website as an acceptable compliance mechanism, this provision puts the long term accessibility and utility of federally funded research articles at serious risk.
  • Stifle researchers' ability to share their own research and to access the works of others, slowing progress towards scientific discoveries, medical breakthroughs, treatments, and cures.
  • Make it harder for U.S. companies — especially small businesses and start-ups — to access cutting-edge research, thereby slowing their ability to innovate, create new products and services, and generate new jobs.
  • Waste further time and taxpayer dollars by calling for a needless, additional 18-month delay while agencies "develop plans for" policies. This is a duplication of federal agency work that was required by the White House Directive and has, in large part, already been completed.
  • Impose unnecessary costs on federal agency public access programs by conflating access and preservation policies as applied to articles and data. The legislation does not make clear enough what data must be made accessible, nor adequately articulate the location of where such data would reside, or its terms of use.

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"Coherence of ‘Open’ Initiatives in Higher Education and Research: Framing a Policy Agenda"

The "Coherence of 'Open' Initiatives in Higher Education and Research: Framing a Policy Agenda" by Sheila Corrall and Stephen Pinfield is available in IDEALS.

Here's an excerpt:

Within this context, our purpose here is to map out the current Open landscape from a policy development perspective, considering in particular the potential for greater coordination between different Open approaches. We first identify the main characteristics of the various Open domains, deploying a broad definition of "Open" to capture the present range of Open initiatives. We next advance and elaborate a high-level typology of Open to inform policy development, and discuss whether the different Open initiatives can be approached in a coordinated way as part of a single coherent policy agenda. We suggest that a framework put forward by Willinsky (2005) for understanding the convergence of open source, OA, and open science can extend to other Open domains. We then outline the potential shared benefits of the different Open approaches, which we argue strengthen the case for convergence, while also commenting on some limits of openness, and we conclude with our observations on the policy implications of our findings.

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PLOS Clarifies Open Data Policy

PLOS has clarified its open data policy.

Here's an excerpt:

In the previous post, and also on our site for PLOS ONE Academic Editors, an attempt to simplify our policy did not represent the policy correctly and we sincerely apologize for that and for the confusion it has caused. We are today correcting that post and hoping it provides the clarity many have been seeking. . . .

Two key things to summarize about the policy are:

  1. The policy does not aim to say anything new about what data types, forms and amounts should be shared.
  2. The policy does aim to make transparent where the data can be found, and says that it shouldn't be just on the authors' own hard drive.

Correction

We have struck out the paragraph in the original PLOS ONE blog post headed "What do we mean by data", as we think it led to much of the confusion. Instead we offer this guidance to authors planning to submit to a PLOS journal.

What data do I need to make available?

We ask you to make available the data underlying the findings in the paper, which would be needed by someone wishing to understand, validate or replicate the work. Our policy has not changed in this regard. What has changed is that we now ask you to say where the data can be found.

As the PLOS data policy applies to all fields in which we publish, we recognize that we'll need to work closely with authors in some subject areas to ensure adherence to the new policy. Some fields have very well established standards and practices around data, while others are still evolving, and we would like to work with any field that is developing data standards. We are aiming to ensure transparency about data availability.

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University of California Selects Symplectic as Publication Harvesting System Vendor

The University of California has selected Symplectic as the vendor for a publication harvesting system.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The California Digital Library (CDL), in conjunction with University of California campus partners, has chosen Symplectic as the vendor to implement a publication harvesting system in support of the UC Open Access Policy, passed by the Academic Senate in July 2013.

Symplectic's flagship product, Elements, will form the basis of a research information management system intended to simplify participation in UC's OA Policy by providing an efficient method for faculty to deposit their research into eScholarship, UC's institutional repository. This system holds great promise for dramatically increasing the rate of deposit of faculty publications in accordance with the policy.

With a robust set of features that address the specific requirements of the UC OA Policy and the needs of UC authors, Elements will closely monitor publication sources, including public and licensed publication indexes, for any new materials published by UC authors. Once a new publication is detected in the indexes, the system will collect as much information about that publication as possible and contact the author(s) by email for confirmation and manuscript upload. Author-approved publications will then be automatically submitted to eScholarship, where they will be openly available to the public.

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DuraSpace Launches DSpaceDirect

DuraSpace has launched DSpaceDirect.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Today the DuraSpace organization is pleased to announce the public launch of DSpaceDirect—the only hosted repository solution for low-cost discovery, access, archiving, and preservation. DSpaceDirect is now available with convenient features that include fast start-up, you-pick customization, no-cost upgrades, content preservation options, anytime data access and all-the-time data control—all at a price that puts solutions for long-term access to digital scholarly assets within reach of institutions of any size. . . .

Built on DSpace, the most widely-used repository application in the world with more than 1,500 installed instances, DSpaceDirect was inspired by the idea that the past creates the future as each generation builds knowledge on the scholarship that came before. DSpaceDirect is a hosted DSpace repository service that allows institutions of any size to afford to keep their digital content safe and accessible over time. Small institutions are able to get a repository up and running right away that can be made available to patrons as well as to new users worldwide. Users say that the DSpaceDirect easy start-up accelerates discussions about digital content stewardship and preservation best practices at their institutions.

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"A DSpace Mobile Theme for San Diego State University"

Mini Vamadevan Pillai has self-archived "A DSpace Mobile Theme for San Diego State University."

Here's an excerpt:

This thesis is an attempt to install and customize a DSpace mobile theme for San Diego State University. The work also includes development of additional features like adding navigational bars, adding administrative login capabilities, accessing administrative navigational panel via mobile theme. The mobile theme supports other features like search, advanced search, recent submissions, submissions and workflow. With the widespread use of mobile telephony, providing a mobile theme for SDSU DSpace will reach out to faculty and other interested parties.

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"Ethics and Access 1: The Sad Case of Jeffrey Beall"

Walt Crawford has published "Ethics and Access 1: The Sad Case of Jeffrey Beall" in Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large.

Here's an excerpt:

This is the first of a trio of essays: two related to fairly specific situations, one covering a range of ethical discussions. Depending on how you define "ethics," I could also include sections on Elsevier and OA, embargoes, fallacious and misleading anti- OA arguments and the whole area of peer review. Or maybe not. In any case, we lead off with the sad case of Jeffrey Beall.

Since Beall's chief claim to fame is his ever-growing list of supposedly predatory OA journals, and since I'm showing the case for treating Beall as a questionable source, I have to say this: In case you're thinking "Walt's claiming there are no scam OA journals," I'm not—and toward the end of this essay, I'll quote some useful ways to avoid scam journals regardless of their business model.

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PLOS Mandates Immediate Open Access to Article-Related Data

PLOS has mandated that author's provide immediate open access to article-related data upon publication.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In an effort to increase access to this data, we are now revising our data-sharing policy for all PLOS journals: authors must make all data publicly available, without restriction, immediately upon publication of the article. Beginning March 3rd, 2014, all authors who submit to a PLOS journal will be asked to provide a Data Availability Statement, describing where and how others can access each dataset that underlies the findings. This Data Availability Statement will be published on the first page of each article.

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Columbia University’s School of Social Work Adopts Open Access Policy

Columbia University's School of Social Work has adopted an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Columbia University Libraries/Information Services' Center for Digital Research and Scholarship (CDRS) is pleased to announce that the School of Social Work at Columbia University has implemented an open access resolution, in which all faculty and staff have resolved that they commit to making their scholarly works accessible to the public. The policy went into immediate effect after Social Work faculty voted unanimously in favor of the resolution at their faculty meeting on December 2, 2013. . . .

The implementation of the School of Social Work open access resolution comes after the recent adoption of an open access resolution at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health in May 2013, which was the first school at the university to make scholarly research available to the public and free online. The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory became the first program at Columbia to adopt an open access resolution in January 2011, which was followed by Columbia University Libraries/Information Services' adoption of a policy in June 2011.

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"SCOAP3 Lifts Off: An Interview with Ann Okerson"

David Wojick has published "SCOAP3 Lifts Off: An Interview with Ann Okerson" in The Scholarly Kitchen.

Here's an excerpt:

Q: SCOAP3 seems pretty complicated to me. As I understand it they make deals with leading particle physics journals, so that when those libraries that participate in SCOAP3 pay the article publishing charges, everyone's subscription price is either lowered or eliminated, depending on whether some or all of the articles are paid for. Is that correct?

A: Roughly put, that's true. "They" are "we" in this case. Let me note here that without the interest and participation of the publishers, SCOAP3 would not have launched on January 1st, already with hundreds of 2014 articles in the SCOAP3 repository at CERN and now flowing in on a daily basis. The SCOAP3 Technical Working Group developed, in conjunction with the Steering Committee, a set of criteria that formed the basis for publisher participation. Publishers received the Invitation to Tender and responded by describing in detail the way in which they would participate and at what cost per article.

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Only 20.56 % of Jounals in DOAJ Use CC BY or CC BY-SA License

The post "CC-BY Dominates under the Creative Commons licensed Journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)" analyzes the use of Creative Commons licences by journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals.

Here's an excerpt:

A total of 2,016 (or 20.56 %) of the guided journal in DOAJ therefore use a license (CC-BY or CC-BY-SA), which is compatible with the requirements of the Open Definition and allow a restriction-free use of the contents within the meaning of Open Access defined the Budapest Open Access Initiative, the RCUK Open Access policy and the Berlin Declaration.

If we consider the subset of journals that use any CC license that the claims of the Open Definition sufficient licenses dominate even slightly: About 54% of all journals that use a CC license , use either CC-BY ( 52.77 %) or CC-BY-SA (1.40 %). Surprisingly low is the proportion of journals which use the most restrictive CC license CC-BY-NC-ND : Only 737 journals (7.52 % of all journals and 19.80% under the CC-licensed journals). This license variant neither allows edits or allows to create derivative works (such as translations) nor a commercial use is possible. Surprisingly allow more than half (2,060, 55.35 %) of which is under a CC license Journals a commercial exploitation of the contents, only 44.65% (1662) prohibit this.

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E-print Copyright Debate Continues: "Its the Content, Not the Version!"

Kevin Smith has published "Its the Content, Not the Version!" in Scholarly Communications @ Duke.

Here's an excerpt:

Throughout this discussion, the proponents of the position that copyright is transferred only in a final version really do not make any legal arguments as such, just an assertion of what they wish were the situation (I wish it were too). But here is a legal point—the U.S. copyright law makes the difficulty with this position pretty clearly in section 202 when it states the obvious principle that copyright is distinct from any particular material object that embodies the copyrighted work. So it is simply not true to say that version A has a copyright and version B has a different copyright.

See also: "Where Copyrights Come from (Part I)—Copyediting Does–Not–Create a New Copyright" by Nancy Sims.

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"Guest Post: Charles Oppenheim on Who Owns the Rights to Scholarly Articles"

Charles Oppenheim has published "Guest Post: Charles Oppenheim on Who Owns the Rights to Scholarly Articles" in Open and Shut.

Here's an excerpt:

Posting D [draft article] on an OA repository is the so-called "Harnad-Oppenheim" solution, first proposed by Stevan Harnad and me more than 10 years ago.

When the solution was first enunciated, publishers dismissed it for two reasons: firstly, why would anyone want to read a draft when the final perfect version can be obtained via the publisher? And secondly, it would be difficult to track down a copy of D anyway. Their comments remain valid today, though the second one is not as strong because of services such as Google Scholar. But no publisher suggested that the solution was illegal because publishers owned the copyright to D, and they were right not to do so. The law is clear that I own the copyright in D. That is why I am so puzzled that some recent non-publisher commentators seem to think publishers own the copyright in D.

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Open Science Win: Johnson & Johnson Clinical Trial Data Sharing Agreement

Johnson & Johnson has announced a clinical trial data sharing agreement with the Yale School of Medicine.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Johnson & Johnson today announced that its subsidiary, Janssen Research and Development, LLC, has entered into a novel agreement with Yale School of Medicine's Open Data Access (YODA) Project that will extend its commitment to sharing clinical trials data to enhance public health and advance science and medicine. Under the agreement, YODA will serve as an independent body to review requests from investigators and physicians seeking access to anonymized clinical trials data from Janssen, the pharmaceutical companies of Johnson & Johnson, and make final decisions on data sharing. This is the first time any company has collaborated with a completely independent third party to review and make decisions regarding every request for clinical data.

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"It’s the Neoliberalism, Stupid: Why Instrumentalist Arguments for Open Access, Open Data, and Open Science Are Not Enough"

The Impact of Social Science has republished Eric Kansa's "It's the Neoliberalism, Stupid: Why Instrumentalist Arguments for Open Access, Open Data, and Open Science Are Not Enough."

Here's an excerpt:

Neoliberal universities primarily serve the needs of commerce. They need to churn out technically skilled human resources (made desperate for any work by high loads of debt) and easily monetized technical advancements. . . .

How can something so wonderful and right as "openness" further promote Neoliberalism? After all, aren't we the rebels blasting at the exhaust vents of Elsevier's Death Star? But in selling openness to the heads of foundations, businesses, governments and universities, we often end up adopting the tropes of Neoliberalism. As a tactic, that's perfectly reasonable. As a long-term strategy, I think it's doomed.

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Fixing the Broken Textbooks Market: How Students Respond to High Textbook Costs and Demand Alternatives

The U.S. PIRG Education Fund has released Fixing the Broken Textbooks Market: How Students Respond to High Textbook Costs and Demand Alternatives.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Today, a survey released by the U.S. PIRG Education Fund shows that 65% of student consumers have opted out of buying a college textbook due to its high price, and of those students, 94% they suffer academically.

Over the past decade, college textbook prices have increased by 82%, or at three times the rate of inflation. . . .

Open textbooks are faculty-written and peer-reviewed like traditional textbooks, but they are published under an open license, meaning they are free online, free to download, and affordable in print. 82% of survey respondents said they would do significantly better in a course if the textbook were free online and a hard copy was optional, which is exactly how open textbooks work.

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John Willinsky Gets SPARC Innovator Award

John Willinsky has received a SPARC Innovator Award.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In the late 1990s, Willinsky founded the Public Knowledge Project and developed Open Journal Systems (OJS), a free, open source platform that allows journals to be more easily and affordably published online. The results speak for themselves—today, more than 1.5 million articles are published in journals using the OJS platform. In 2012 alone, over 5,000 journals published at least 10 articles using the software Willinsky and his team pioneered.

Because Willinsky is both a visionary and pragmatist who brings effective business teams together, SPARC honors Willinsky with its January 2014 Innovator Award.

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Open Access Publishing: A Literature Review

CREATe has released Open Access Publishing: A Literature Review.

Here's an excerpt:

Within the context of the Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy (CREATe) research scope, this literature review investigates the current trends, advantages, disadvantages, problems and solutions, opportunities and barriers in Open Access Publishing (OAP), and in particular Open Access (OA) academic publishing. This study is intended to scope and evaluate current theory and practice concerning models for OAP and engage with intellectual, legal and economic perspectives on OAP. It is also aimed at mapping the field of academic publishing in the UK and abroad, drawing specifically upon the experiences of CREATe industry partners as well as other initiatives such as SSRN, open source software, and Creative Commons. As a final critical goal, this scoping study will identify any meaningful gaps in the relevant literature with a view to developing further research questions. The results of this scoping exercise will then be presented to relevant industry and academic partners at a workshop intended to assist in further developing the critical research questions pertinent to OAP.

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Safe to Be Open: Study on the Protection of Research Data and Recommendation for Access And Usage

OpenAIRE has released Safe to Be Open: Study on the Protection of Research Data and Recommendation for Access And Usage.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This study addresses the most important legal issues when implementing an open access e-infrastructure for research data. It examines the legal requirements for different kinds of usage of research data in an open access infrastructure, such as OpenAIREplus, which links them to publications. The existing legal framework regarding potentially relevant intellectual property (IP) rights is analysed from the general European perspective as well as from that of selected EU Member States. Various examples and usage scenarios are used to explain the scope of protection of the potentially relevant IP rights. In addition different licence models are analysed in order to identify the licence that is best suited to the aim of open access, especially in the context of the infrastructure of OpenAIREplus. Based on the outcomes of these analyses, some recommendations to the European legislator as well as data- and e-infrastructure providers are given on improving the rights situation in relation to research data.

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"Have Digital Repositories Come of Age? The Views of Library Directors"

David Nicholas et al. have published "Have Digital Repositories Come of Age? The Views of Library Directors" in Webology.

Here's an excerpt:

This survey of approximately 150 repositories assessed the achievements, impact, and success of digital repositories. Results show that while the size and use of repositories has been relatively modest, almost half of all institutions either have, or are planning, a repository mandate requiring deposit and small gains have been made in raising the profile of the library within the institution. Repositories, then, have made a good deal of progress, but they have not quite come of age.

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Congress Madates Open Access for Labor, Health, and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies

The passage of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2014 mandates open access for federal agencies under the Labor, Health, and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Senate subcommittee with research budgets of $100 million or more.

Here's an excerpt from the bill:

SEC. 527. Each Federal agency, or in the case of an agency with multiple bureaus, each bureau (or operating division) funded under this Act that has research and development expenditures in excess of $100,000,000 per year shall develop a Federal research public access policy that provides for—

  • the submission to the agency, agency bureau, or designated entity acting on behalf of the agency, a machine-readable version of the author's final peer-reviewed manuscripts that have been accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journals describing research supported, in whole or in part, from funding by the Federal Government;
  • free online public access to such final peer-reviewed manuscripts or published versions not later than 12 months after the official date of publication; and
  • compliance with all relevant copyright laws.

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"Supporting Public Access to Research Results"

P. Scott Lapinski, David Osterbur, Joshua Parker and Alexa T. McCray have published "Supporting Public Access to Research Results" in College & Research Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

We posed the question of what services an academic library can best provide to support the NIH Public Access Policy. We approached the answer to this question through education, collaboration, and tool-building. As a result, over the last four years we have engaged over 1,500 participants in discussions of public access to research results, forged alliances with dozens of partners, and built online tools to ease the process of complying with the NIH policy. We conclude that librarians working in collaboration with other key constituencies can have a positive impact on improving access to the results of scientific research.

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"Multidimensional Journal Evaluation of PLOS ONE"

Christel Fein has published "Multidimensional Journal Evaluation of PLOS ONE" in Libri: International Journal of Libraries and Information Services.

Here's an excerpt:

All 28,852 documents published in PLOS ONE during the 5-year-period between 2007 and 2011 have been extracted from Web of Science. This data provides the basis for the evaluation. The data concerning the conducted evaluation has been collected as well as analysed multidimensionally, to demonstrate more fully the complex structures and aspects of the impact, prestige and position of PLOS ONE, and to assess the information and data obtained as specifically as possible. Based on Juchem, Schlögl, and Stock (2006) and Haustein (2012), a framework of five dimensions of journal evaluation has been applied, in which each contains several metrics to analyse scientific periodicals from various perspectives, i.e. journal output,journal content, journal perception, journal citations, and journal management.

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