Category: Open Access

Taylor & Francis Open Access Survey June 2014

Taylor & Francis has released the Taylor & Francis Open Access Survey June 2014.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In the first few months of 2014 Taylor & Francis carried out a worldwide survey, with the aim of exploring journal authors' views on open access.

Having previously conducted a survey on open access in 2013, we have been able to see how authors' opinions have developed, and whether the discussion and debate on open access has helped to inform and shape views.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"The Subversive Proposal at 20"

Richard Poynder has published "The Subversive Proposal at 20" in Open and Shut?

Here's an excerpt:

Twenty years ago yesterday, cognitive scientist Stevan Harnad posted a message on a mailing list, a message he headed "A Subversive Proposal." This called on all researchers to make copies of the papers they published in scholarly journals freely available on the Internet. . . .

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Subversive Proposal, I emailed Harnad nine questions yesterday. These questions are published below, with Harnad's answers attached.

Digital Scholarship | "A Quarter-Century as an Open Access Publisher"

"The Determinants of Open Access Publishing: Survey Evidence from Countries in the Mediterranean Open Access Network (MedOANet)"

Thomas Eger et al. have self-archived "The Determinants of Open Access Publishing: Survey Evidence from Countries in the Mediterranean Open Access Network (MedOANet)."

Here's an excerpt:

We discuss the results of a survey conducted between April 2013 and May 2014 in six Mediterranean countries and covering 2,528 researchers from Spain (1,291), Portugal (142), France (380), Italy (596), Turkey (131) and Greece (130). We compare the results to our German survey with 1,913 respondents. We show that there are significant differences between the scientific disciplines with respect to researcher's awareness of and experience with both open access (OA) journals and self-archiving. Accordingly, the publishing culture (e.g. reputation, publishing language) but also other issues like age and certain policies (MedOANet) may explain why researchers make more frequent use of OA publishing in some countries and disciplines.

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"Liberating the Publications of a Distinguished Scholar: A Pilot Project"

Julie Kelly has published "Liberating the Publications of a Distinguished Scholar: A Pilot Project" in Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship.

Here's an excerpt:

Many distinguished scholars published the primary corpus of their work before the advent of online journals, which makes it more challenging to access. Upon being approached by a distinguished Emeritus Professor seeking advice about getting his work posted online, librarians at the University of Minnesota worked to gain copyright permissions to scan and upload older works to the University's Digital Conservancy (UDC). This project then uniquely took the process one step further, using the sharing option of RefWorks to make these works accessible to the widest possible audience while concurrently offering the sophisticated functionality of a citation manager. With open access repositories gaining acceptance as an authoritative long-term venue for making resources available online, including older content that can be digitized, the methods developed in this pilot project could easily be followed by others, thus greatly increasing access to older literature from distinguished scholars.

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"The Dark Side of Open Access in Google and Google Scholar: The Case of Latin-American Repositories"

Enrique Orduña-Malea et al. have self-archived "The Dark Side of Open Access in Google and Google Scholar: The Case of Latin-American Repositories."

Here's an excerpt:

The main objective of this study is to ascertain the presence and visibility of Latin American repositories in Google and Google Scholar through the application of page count and visibility indicators. For a sample of 137 repositories, the results indicate that the indexing ratio is low in Google, and virtually nonexistent in Google Scholar; they also indicate a complete lack of correspondence between the repository records and the data produced by these two search tools. These results are mainly attributable to limitations arising from the use of description schemas that are incompatible with Google Scholar (repository design) and the reliability of web indicators (search engines). We conclude that neither Google nor Google Scholar accurately represent the actual size of open access content published by Latin American repositories; this may indicate a non-indexed, hidden side to open access, which could be limiting the dissemination and consumption of open access scholarly literature.

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"Research Data Sharing: Developing a Stakeholder-Driven Model for Journal Policies"

Paul Sturges et al. have self-archived "Research Data Sharing: Developing a Stakeholder-Driven Model for Journal Policies."

Here's an excerpt:

The Journal Research Data (JoRD) Project was a JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) funded feasibility study on the possible shape of a central service on journal research data policies. The objectives of the study included, amongst other considerations: to identify the current state of journal data sharing policies and to investigate the views and practices of stakeholders to data sharing. The project confirmed that a large percentage of journals do not have a policy on data sharing, and that there are inconsistencies between the traceable journal data sharing policies. Such a state leaves authors unsure of whether they should deposit data relating to articles and where and how to share that data. In the absence of a consolidated infrastructure for the easy sharing of data, a journal data sharing model policy was developed. The model policy was developed from comparing the quantitative information gathered from analysing existing journal data policies with qualitative data collected from the stakeholders concerned. This article summarises the information gathered, outlines the process by which the model was developed and presents the model journal data sharing policy in full.

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"PLOS Data Policy: Catalyst for a Better Research Process"

Emma Ganley has published "PLOS Data Policy: Catalyst for a Better Research Process" in College & Research Libraries News.

Here's an excerpt:

PLOS is seeking to ensure the ongoing utility of research, as making a paper openly accessible is enhanced enormously if that paper is linked seamlessly to the data from which it was constructed. In a time when post-publication peer review is more prevalent and data frequently come under intense public scrutiny, with whistle-blowers, blogs, and websites dedicated to investigating the validity and veracity of scientific publications, requiring access to the relevant data leads to a more rigorous scientific record.

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Learned Society Attitudes towards Open Access: Report on Survey Results

EDP Open has released Learned Society Attitudes towards Open Access: Report on Survey Results.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Key findings include:

  • Learned societies overwhelmingly agree that Open Access will inevitably place some learned societies' journals into financial jeopardy.
  • Competing with large Open Access specialist publishers was also considered a significant challenge for learned societies.
  • Gold Open Access is the Open Access method that is least offered by learned society journals, however nearly two-thirds of learned societies indicated that they would like to be offering this option.
  • More than ever before, with so many journals being published Open Access of dubious origin, learned societies should look to endorse content with a stamp of quality and authority.
  • Collaboration between learned societies could help in the transition to Open Access, by pooling resources and sharing complex tasks.
  • Two-thirds of all learned societies are also looking for support on best approach to OA, and compliance with funder mandates.

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Open Access: Markup of Innovation, Research, Science, and Technology Act Reduces Embargo Period

The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology has marked up the Frontiers in Innovation, Research, Science and Technology Act (FIRST Act), significantly reducing the embargo period for making works open access.

Here's an excerpt from "FIRST Act Amended to Make Open Access Provision Actually Pretty Good":

Calling this [Section 303 in the prior version of the bill] a "public access" section is a charitable reading: it extended embargo periods to up to three years, it allowed for simple linking to articles rather than the creation of an archive, and it delayed implementation unnecessarily long. (We've ranted about this bill time and again.)

But a glimmer of hope appeared at yesterday's markup. Reps. Jim Sensenbrenner and Zoe Lofgren, introduced an amendment that radically changed Section 303. The new amendment [pdf] maps closely onto Sensenbrenner's Public Access to Public Science Act (H.R. 3157). It sets the embargo period at 12 months (like the NIH's current policy), though it allows stakeholders to extend this by 6 months if they can show a "substantial and unique harm." The amendment was also designed to facilitate long-term preservation, broad analysis of works, and closer investigation of broad copyright licenses. The current version is not perfect, but it is much improved—huge kudos to Sensenbrenner and Lofgren for standing up for open access.

Read more about it at "Revised FIRST Bill Would Give Science Agencies 1 Year to Make Papers Free."

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Canadian Researchers’ Publishing Attitudes and Behaviours

Canadian Science Publishing has released Canadian Researchers' Publishing Attitudes and Behaviours.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Some key findings described in the report:

  • Researchers agree with principle, not cost, of open access (OA)
  • Almost half of the researchers reported publishing more than half of their research in open access format in past 2 years, yet availability of open access was 8 times less important than impact factor and 13 times less important than journal reputation when selecting a journal
  • For those who have published OA, institutions and tri-agency funding typically cover cost, yet many researchers indicated they did not know whether Canada's major funding bodies support OA
  • Peer review, reach, and discoverability are considered most important journal features
  • Use of repositories differs widely across disciplines
  • Laboratory/institutional blogs or websites and social media are increasingly being used for research dissemination

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"The Embargoes Don’t Work: The British Academy Provides the Best Evidence Yet"

Cameron Neylon has "The Embargoes Don't Work: The British Academy Provides the Best Evidence Yet" in PLOS Opens.

Here's an excerpt:

Embargoes are an artificial monopoly created to make the competition a bit less fierce. But truly, if a publisher believes that they add value and wants to be competitive then why should they fear a Word doc sitting on the web? Indeed if they do it suggests a lack of confidence in the additional value that they offer in the version of record. The best way to give yourself that confidence is to be tough on yourself and take a good look at how and where you add value. And the best way to do that is to compete successfully with "free."

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U.S. Open Data Action Plan

The White House has released the U.S. Open Data Action Plan.

Here's an excerpt:

The Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Collection plans to make all digitized collections metadata public domain, and digitized collection images without copyright or other restriction publicly available at the highest available resolution for non-commercial, educational use. . . .

The Smithsonian Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery plans to make all digitized collections metadata public domain, and digitized collection images without copyright or other restriction publicly available at the highest available resolution for non-commercial, educational use. . . .

After a successful limited release of an API of the Smithsonian American Art Museum collection and hackathon that resulted in a number of working prototypes, the Smithsonian American Art Museum is planning a staged release, from open metadata, like artist or medium, to an open API of digitized collections images without copyright or other restriction available for non- commercial, educational use.

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"Funding Open Access Journal Publishing Article Processing Charges"

Christine Fruin and Fred Rascoe have published "Funding Open Access Journal Publishing Article Processing Charges" in College & Research Libraries News.

Here's an excerpt:

Libraries are viewed as the primary resource at academic institutions for information on scholarly publishing issues, including OA. Faculty interest in OA publishing is increasing, and when recent federal mandates for OA are implemented, the interest from those doing federally funded research will grow quickly. As such, librarians should be prepared to answer questions from faculty and researchers on how they can cover the costs that are often attendant to publishing in OA journals. While librarians should advocate and educate their constituents on the availability of green OA and the cost-free options available with many gold OA journals, they should also be cognizant of the frequency at which faculty and researchers are publishing in gold OA publications that charge a fee and the available options for covering those costs.

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"Green Open Access Policies of Scholarly Journal Publishers: A Study of What, When, and Where Self-Archiving Is Allowed"

Mikael Laakso has self-archived "Green Open Access Policies of Scholarly Journal Publishers: A Study of What, When, and Where Self-Archiving Is Allowed"

Here's an excerpt:

The degree to which scholarly journal articles published in subscription-based journals could be provided open access (OA) through publisher-permitted uploading to freely accessible web locations, so called green OA, is an underexplored area of research. This study combines article volume data originating from the Scopus bibliographic database with manually coded publisher policies of the 100 largest journal publishers measured by article output volume for the year 2010. Of the 1,1 million articles included in the analysis, 80.4% could be uploaded either as an accepted manuscript or publisher version to an institutional or subject repository after one year of publication. Publishers were found to be substantially more permissive with allowing accepted manuscripts on personal webpages (78.1% of articles) or in institutional repositories (79.9%) compared to subject repositories (32.8%). With previous studies suggesting realized green OA to be around 12% of total annual articles the results highlight the substantial unused potential for green OA.

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The Evolution of Open Access: What Might Happen Next?

The University of Maryland Libraries have released a video of a presentation by Heather Joseph, The Evolution of Open Access: What Might Happen Next? Her presentation slides are also available.

Here's an excerpt:

As Open Access becomes established as a permanent fixture in the scholarly communication area, the challenges and opportunities presented by the Open environment increase in scale and complexity. This talk will examine some of the key trends pointing towards additional opportunities for large-scale change in not only how we access and use scholarly research outputs – but also how they are disseminated, curated and evaluated. Heather Joseph serves as the Executive Director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), an international coalition of academic and research libraries working to expand the global, cost-effective digital communication of research results. As SPARC's Director since 2005, Ms. Joseph leads the strategic and operational activities of the organization, and has focused SPARC's efforts on supporting emerging publishing models, enabling digital archives, and establishing open access policies on the national and international levels.

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"A Survey of Authors Publishing in Four Megajournals"

David J. Solomon has published "A Survey of Authors Publishing in Four Megajournals" in PeerJ.

Here's an excerpt:

Megajournals are drawing an international group of authors who tend to be experienced academics. They are choosing to publish in megajournals for a variety of reasons but most seem to value the quality of the journal and the speed of the review/publication process. Having a broad scope was not a key factor for most authors though being OA was important for PeerJ and SAGE Open authors. Most authors appeared pleased with the experience and indicated they are likely to submit future manuscripts to the same or similar megajournal which seems to suggest these journals will continue to grow in popularity.

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"Librarian, Heal Thyself: A Scholarly Communication Analysis of LIS Journals"

Micah Vandegrift and Chealsye Bowley have published "Librarian, Heal Thyself: A Scholarly Communication Analysis of LIS Journals" in In the Library with the Lead Pipe.

Here's an excerpt:

This article presents an analysis of 111 Library and Information Science journals based on measurements of "openness" including copyright policies, open access self-archiving policies and open access publishing options. We propose a new metric to rank journals, the J.O.I. Factor (Journal Openness Index), based on measures of openness rather than perceived rank or citation impact. Finally, the article calls for librarians and researchers in LIS to examine our scholarly literature and hold it to the principles and standards that we are asking of other disciplines.

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"Statement Regarding the Suspension of Springer’s Membership in OASPA"

The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association has released a "Statement Regarding the Suspension of Springer's Membership in OASPA."

Here's an excerpt:

In February, it was reported by Nature (http://www.nature.com/news/publishers-withdraw-more-than-120-gibberish-papers-1.14763) that around 120 fake articles had been published in apparently peer-reviewed conference proceedings.

Springer, one of the affected publishers, which published 16 of these articles, is a member of OASPA. Given that the publication of these articles is evidence of a systematic problem with editorial processes, we have placed Springer's membership of OASPA 'under review', pending a thorough response and description of the steps that are being taken to strengthen the necessary processes. Springer has already indicated that the fake articles are being retracted (http://www.springer.com/about+springer/media/statements?SGWID=0-1760813-6-1458253-0).

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"’The Returned’: on the Future of Monographic Books"

Mercedes Bunz has published "'The Returned': on the Future of Monographic Books" in Insights: The UKSG journal.

Here's an excerpt:

This article evaluates the current state of academic book publishing based on the findings of the Hybrid Publishing Lab's business model research. With students relying more and more on Google and Wikipedia, the role of books within today's university studies is a difficult one. From the perspective of publishers, open access (OA) embracing the digital is seen as one potential way to bridge this gap between online search engines and traditional monographs. To illustrate this further, the article delivers an overview of its findings, which highlight changes in academic publishing: publishers have switched their emphasis from delivering a product to creating a service, whereby the author rather than the reader becomes their most focused-on customer. Research frameworks, funding and conventions about academic careers, however, often still need to adjust to this new development. If these frameworks acknowledge and foster OA publishing, and new experiments with collaborative book productions flourish, the monograph will have a future.

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"Open Access Monograph Business Models"

Eelco Ferwerda has published "Open Access Monograph Business Models" in Insights: The UKSG journal.

Here's an excerpt:

In recent years, a number of business models have been developed for open access (OA) monographs in the humanities and social sciences (HSS). While each model has been created in response to specific circumstances and needs, some commonalities can be observed. This article outlines some of the main types of model to support the costs of publishing OA books and provides examples of these models across the world.

It is followed by three short sketches providing more depth on: firstly, a traditional publisher's OA monograph offer; secondly, a licensing-based model which draws from existing library budgets; and finally, an experiment with delayed open access for books in philosophy: http://dx.doi.org/10.1629/2048-7754.118.

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"Ethics and Access 2: The So-Called Sting"

Walt Crawford has published "Ethics and Access 2: The So-Called Sting" in Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

John Bohannon wrote a news article in Science that either shows that many open access journals with APC charges have sloppy (or no) peer review…or shows almost nothing at all. This story discusses the article itself, offers a number of responses to it—and then adds something I don't believe you'll find anywhere else: A journal-by-journal test of whether the journals involved would pass a naive three-minute sniff test as to whether they were plausible targets for article submissions without lots of additional checking. Is this really a problem involving a majority of hundreds of journals—or maybe one involving 27% (that is, 17) of 62 journals? Read the story; make up your own mind.

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"Student Embargoes within Institutional Repositories: Faculty Early Transparency Concerns"

David Stern has published "Student Embargoes within Institutional Repositories: Faculty Early Transparency Concerns" in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

Here's an excerpt:

Libraries encourage students to utilize Institutional Repositories (IRs) to house e-portfolios that demonstrate their skills and experiences. This is especially important for students when applying for jobs and admission into graduate schools. However, within the academic sphere there are legitimate reasons why some faculty-student collaboration efforts should not be documented and openly shared in institutional repositories. The need for the protection of ideas and processes prior to faculty publication can be in direct conflict with the intention for institutional repositories to promote the excellent efforts of students. This is certainly true in laboratory situations where details of experiments and research areas are guarded for the lifetime of the exploration process. Librarians must work with others to develop guidelines and educational programs that prepare all stakeholders for these new information release considerations. One outcome of such deliberations could be the development of mutually beneficial publication guidelines which protect sensitive details of research yet allow students to submit selective research documentation into an IR. The other extreme, with no agreed upon partial embargo scenarios, could result in the removal of students from sensitive collaborations. Given the need for scientific laboratories to utilize student workers, and the benefit of real research experiences for students, the academy must find a balanced solution to this inherent conflict situation.

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HEFCE and Three Other UK Funding Bodies Enact Open Access Mandate

The Higher Education Funding Council for England and three other UK funding bodies (the Scottish Funding Council, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales and the Department for Employment and Learning) have enacted an open access mandate.

Here's an excerpt:

5. The core of this policy is as follows: to be eligible for submission to the post-2014 REF, outputs must have been deposited in an institutional or subject repository on acceptance for publication, and made open-access within a specified time period. This requirement applies to journal articles and conference proceedings only; monographs and other long-form publications, research data and creative and practice-based research outputs are out of scope. Only articles and proceedings accepted for publication after 1 April 2016 will need to fulfil these requirements, but we would strongly urge institutions to implement the policy now. The policy gives a further list of cases where outputs will not need to fulfil the requirements.

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"Response to Elsevier’s Text and Data Mining Policy: A LIBER Discussion Paper"

LIBER has released "Response to Elsevier's Text and Data Mining Policy: A LIBER Discussion Paper."

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

LIBER believes that the right to read is the right to mine and that licensing will never bridge the gap in the current copyright framework as it is unscalable and resource intensive. Furthermore, as this discussion paper highlights, licensing has the potential to limit the innovative potential of digital research methods by:

  1. restricting the tools that researchers can use
  2. limiting the way in which research results can be made available
  3. impacting on the transparency and reproducibility of research results.

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ARL Awarded $1 Million Grant for Shared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE)

ARL has been awarded a $1 million grant for the Shared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE).

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has been awarded a joint $1 million grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to develop and launch the Shared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE) Notification Service. SHARE is a collaborative initiative of ARL, the Association of American Universities (AAU), and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) to ensure the preservation of, access to, and reuse of research findings and reports.

SHARE aims to make research assets more discoverable and more accessible, and to enable the research community to build upon these assets in creative ways. SHARE's first project, the Notification Service, will inform stakeholders when research results—including articles and data—are released.

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