Category: Open Access

"Hita-Hita: Open Access and Institutional Repositories in Japan Ten Years On"

Ikuko Tsuchide et al. have published "Hita-Hita: Open Access and Institutional Repositories in Japan Ten Years On" in the latest issue of Ariadne.

Here's an excerpt:

This article introduces several ideas and projects that have enhanced the penetration of the OA movement and development of institutional repositories in Japan. Moreover, it also outlines the activities of Digital Repository Federation (DRF)[6], a repository managers' community made up of 145 universities and research institutions that has supported such ideas. The term 'hita-hita' means to be tenacious, persevering and to work step by step without giving up. We adopt the term as the title of this article as we believe 'hita-hita' accurately expresses the character of our continued activity in this area.

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Presentations from Open Repositories 2013

Presentations from Open Repositories 2013 are now available.

Here's a brief selection of talks:

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Helping to Open Up: Improving Knowledge, Capability and Confidence in Making Research Data More Open

The Research Information and Digital Literacies Coalition has released Helping to Open Up: Improving Knowledge, Capability and Confidence in Making Research Data More Open.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The report describes a framework for how to address this challenge when designing training and support for opening data, within the broader questions of RDM. Recommendations are set out, relating to:

– putting opening data at the heart of policy

– putting opening data at the heart of training

– deepening and broadening the training

– identifying and disseminating best practice in opening data

– developing institutional and community support

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"Correlation between Article Download and Citation Figures for Highly Accessed Articles from Five Open Access Oncology Journals"

Carsten Nieder, Astrid Dalhaug, and Gro Aandahl have published "Correlation between Article Download and Citation Figures for Highly Accessed Articles from Five Open Access Oncology Journals" in SpringerPlus.

Here's an excerpt:

Different approaches can be chosen to quantify the impact and merits of scientific oncology publications. These include source of publication (including journal reputation and impact factor), whether or not articles are cited by others, and access/download figures. When relying on citation counts, one needs to obtain access to citation databases and has to consider that results differ from one database to another. Accumulation of citations takes time and their dynamics might differ from journal to journal and topic to topic. Therefore, we wanted to evaluate the correlation between citation and download figures, hypothesising that articles with fewer downloads also accumulate fewer citations. Typically, publishers provide download figures together with the article. We extracted and analysed the 50 most viewed articles from 5 different open access oncology journals. For each of the 5 journals and also all journals combined, correlation between number of accesses and citations was limited (r=0.01-0.30). Considerable variations were also observed when analyses were restricted to specific article types such as reviews only (r=0.21) or case reports only (r=0.53). Even if year of publication was taken into account, high correlation coefficients were the exception from the rule. In conclusion, downloads are not a universal surrogate for citation figures.

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"Creative Commons: Challenges and Solutions for Researchers; A Publisher’s Perspective of Copyright in an Open Access Environment"

Nicola Gulley has published "Creative Commons: Challenges and Solutions for Researchers; A Publisher's Perspective of Copyright in an Open Access Environment" in the latest issue of Insights: The UKSG Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

Copyright in the digital environment is evolving at an unprecedented rate. Copyright exists to protect the rights of an owner of an original piece of work by imposing restrictions on re-use but it does not always fit well with how we use and share information in the digital sphere.

The growth of open access (OA) publishing has also added to the challenge as the right to reuse as well as read content has been emphasized.

Creative Commons (CC) licences were introduced to try and bridge the gaps between the barriers imposed by traditional copyright and the realities of the digital environment but, as they are general licences, it is not always clear how they apply to specific situations.

This article addresses some of the key questions around how the various licences can be applied in academic publishing, what some of the consequences are, and how they affect different research areas.

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"Innovative Approaches to Publishing Open Access Monographs: It’s Not Business as Usual"

the latest issue of Jisc Inform includes "Innovative Approaches to Publishing Open Access Monographs It's Not Business as Usual."

Here's an excerpt:

If open access policies start to include monographs (the Wellcome Trust in May 2013 expanded its open access policy to include funding for authors of monographs and book chapters), what business model will support a vibrant HSS research environment and the wide dissemination of knowledge, and at the same time be affordable and sustainable for all the parties involved, especially those without grant funding?

There is little evidence on different open access models and so there is currently a period of experimentation. Let's look at the business models currently being explored.

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"Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Social Sciences and Humanities? Findings from a 2011 Survey of Academic Publishers"

Marisa L. Ramirez et al. have published "Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Social Sciences and Humanities? Findings from a 2011 Survey of Academic Publishers" in the latest issue of College & Research Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

An increasing number of higher education institutions worldwide are requiring submission of electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) by graduate students and are subsequently providing open access to these works in online repositories. Faculty advisors and graduate students are concerned that such unfettered access to their work could diminish future publishing opportunities. This study investigated social sciences, arts, and humanities journal editors' and university press directors' attitudes toward ETDs. The findings indicate that manuscripts that are revisions of openly accessible ETDs are always welcome for submission or considered on a case-by-case basis by 82.8 percent of journal editors and 53.7 percent of university press directors polled.

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Debating Open Access

The British Academy has released Debating Open Access.

Here's an excerpt:

We decided at an early stage when thinking about putting these papers together, in January 2013, that we needed to have as contributors people who thought open access was a good thing, the way forward; people who thought it was a good thing but fraught with practical problems which were ill-understood by some of its advocates; and people who thought it was a bad thing in principle. This is what we have indeed commissioned. We have not got the full spectrum of views about open access, for sure, which would have required very many more articles . . .There is also diversity in the contributors: academics and publishers, representatives of learned societies, natural and social scientists as well as historians and literary critics, although the important perspective of university librarians is one that is missing.

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"Publishers and Universities Respond to the OSTP Mandate"

Denise Troll Covey has self-archived "Publishers and Universities Respond to the OSTP Mandate" in SelectedWorks.

Here's an excerpt:

Brief summary and comparison of the Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the United States (CHORUS) announced by the Association of American Publishers and the Shared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE) announced by the American Association of Universities, Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and Association of Research Libraries.

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White House to Honor arXiv’s Paul Ginsparg as Champion of Change

The White House will hold a ceremony today that will honor arXiv founder Paul Ginsparg as a Champion of Change.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The White House will honor Cornell's Paul Ginsparg as a Champion of Change June 20. Ginsparg, professor of physics and of information science, is one of 13 people who promote and use open scientific data and publications to accelerate progress.

Ginsparg created the Internet e-Print Archive, familiarly known as the arXiv, where researchers share their research papers online prior to publication in professional journals. arXiv, now based at Cornell, serves as the primary daily information feed for global communities of researchers in physics, mathematics, computer science and related fields.

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SPARC Call to Action for California Taxpayer Access to Publicly Funded Research Act (AB 609)

SPARC has issued a call to action for the California Taxpayer Access to Publicly Funded Research Act (AB 609).

Here's an excerpt:

The California Taxpayer Access to Publicly Funded Research Legislation (AB 609) was introduced into the California State Legislature in April of 2013 by Assembly Member Brian Nestande. On May 30th, AB 609 was passed by the California State Assembly by a wide, bipartisan 71-7 margin. It will be heard in the California State Senate Committee on Governmental Organization on Tuesday, May 25th at 9:30am PST.

If you are a California resident, visit our Legislative Action Center to write your state representatives in support of AB 609.

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Incentives, Integration, and Mediation: Sustainable Practices for Populating Repositories

The Confederation of Open Access Repositories has released Incentives, Integration, and Mediation: Sustainable Practices for Populating Repositories.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

There is an active, thriving community of open access repositories worldwide and their visibility is rising as funding agencies and governments implement open access policies. Still, repositories must continue to adopt strategies that demonstrate their value to the wider research community. Therefore COAR has now published the report, "Incentives, Integration, and Mediation: Sustainable Practices for Population Repositories". It profiles a variety of successful practices for populating repositories from around the world. Aim of the report is to assist the global repository community in implementing sustainable methods for recruiting content. The profiles were gathered from organizations across the globe, and represent a mixture of approaches involving the introduction of incentives; integration of the repository with other institutional services; and/or mediation of the deposit process. The practices reflect a tradition of innovation and openness in the repository community, and are characterized by creative approaches to staffing, imaginative software developments, and adoption of novel policies.

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"arXiv E-prints and the Journal of Record: An Analysis of Roles and Relationships"

Vincent Lariviere, Cassidy R. Sugimoto, Benoit Macaluso, Stasa Milojevic, Blaise Cronin, and Mike Thelwall have self-archived "arXiv E-prints and the Journal of Record: An Analysis of Roles and Relationships" in arXiv.org.

Here's an excerpt:

Since its creation in 1991, arXiv has become central to the diffusion of research in a number of fields. Combining data from the entirety of arXiv and the Web of Science (WoS), this paper investigates (a) the proportion of papers across all disciplines that are on arXiv and the proportion of arXiv papers that are in the WoS, (b) elapsed time between arXiv submission and journal publication, and (c) the aging characteristics and scientific impact of arXiv e-prints and their published version. It shows that the proportion of WoS papers found on arXiv varies across the specialties of physics and mathematics, and that only a few specialties make extensive use of the repository. Elapsed time between arXiv submission and journal publication has shortened but remains longer in mathematics than in physics. In physics, mathematics, as well as in astronomy and astrophysics, arXiv versions are cited more promptly and decay faster than WoS papers. The arXiv versions of papers – both published and unpublished – have lower citation rates than published papers, although there is almost no difference in the impact of the arXiv versions of both published and unpublished papers.

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G8 Science Ministers Issue Statement Supporting Open Access

The G8 science ministers have issued a statement that includes sections supporting open access.

Here's an excerpt:

Open enquiry is at the heart of scientific endeavour, and rapid technological change has profound implications for the way that science is both conducted and its results communicated. It can provide society with the necessary information to solve global challenges. We are committed to openness in scientific research data to speed up the progress of scientific discovery, create innovation, ensure that the results of scientific research are as widely available as practical, enable transparency in science and engage the public in the scientific process. We have decided to support the set of principles for open scientific research data outlined below as a basis for further discussions.

i. To the greatest extent and with the fewest constraints possible publicly funded scientific research data should be open, while at the same time respecting concerns in relation to privacy, safety, security and commercial interests, whilst acknowledging the legitimate concerns of private partners.

ii. Open scientific research data should be easily discoverable, accessible, assessable, intelligible, useable, and wherever possible interoperable to specific quality standards.

iii. To maximise the value that can be realised from data, the mechanisms for delivering open scientific research data should be efficient and cost effective, and consistent with the potential benefits.

iv. To ensure successful adoption by scientific communities, open scientific research data principles will need to be underpinned by an appropriate policy environment, including recognition of researchers fulfilling these principles, and appropriate digital infrastructure.

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Directory of Open Access Journals Releases New Selection Criteria Draft

The Directory of Open Access Journals has released a draft of its new journal selection criteria .

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

We have tried to construct objective criteria that can facilitate compliance verification easily. In order to be listed in the DOAJ, a journal must meet the following criteria:

  • Journal will be asked to provide basic information (title, ISSN, etc.), contact information, and information about journal policies
  • Journal is registered with SHERPA/RoMEO
  • Journal has an editorial board with clearly identifiable members (including affiliation information)
  • Journal publishes a minimum of five articles per year (does not apply for new journals)
  • Allows use and reuse at least at the following levels (as specified in the Open Access Spectrum, http://www.plos.org/about/open-access/howopenisit/ ):
    • Full text, metadata, and citations of articles can be crawled and accessed with permission (Machine Readability Level 4)
    • Provides free readership rights to all articles immediately upon publication (Reader Rights Level 1)
    • Reuse is subject to certain restrictions; no remixing (Reuse Rights Level 3)
    • Allow authors to retain copyright in their article with no restrictions (Copyrights Level 1)
    • Author can post the final, peer-reviewed manuscript version (postprint) to any repository or website (Author Posting Rights Level 2)

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Association of American Publishers: "Understanding CHORUS"

The Association of American Publishers has released "Understanding CHORUS."

Here's an excerpt:

The Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the United States (CHORUS) is a framework for a possible public-private partnership to increase public access to peer-reviewed publications that report on federally-funded research. Conceived by publishers, CHORUS would:

  • Provide a full solution for agencies to comply with the OSTP memo on public access to peer-reviewed scientific publications reporting on federally-funded research
  • Build on publishers' existing infrastructure to enhance public access to research literature, avoiding duplication of effort, minimizing cost to the government and ensuring the continued availability of the research literature
  • Serve the public by creating a streamlined, cohesive way to expand access to peer-reviewed articles reporting on federally-funded research. Reflecting the OSTP memo, CHORUS will present and preserve these as digital form, final peer-reviewed manuscripts or final published documents

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AAU, APLU, and ARL: Shared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE) Proposal

The Association of American Universities, Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and ARL have released a draft of the Shared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE) proposal.

Here's an excerpt:

Research universities are long-lived and are mission-driven to generate, make accessible, and preserve over time new knowledge and understanding. Research universities collectively have the assets needed for a national solution for enhanced public access to federally funded research output. As the principal producers of the resources that are to be made publicly available under the new White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)[1] memorandum, and that are critical to the continuing success of higher education in the United States, universities have invested in the infrastructure, tools, and services necessary to provide effective and efficient access to their research and scholarship. The new White House directive provides a compelling reason to integrate higher education's investments to date into a system of cross-institutional digital repositories that will be known as Shared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE).

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"Repository of NSF-Funded Publications and Related Datasets: ‘Back of Envelope’ Cost Estimate for 15 Years"

Beth Plale, Inna Kouper, Kurt Seiffert, and Stacy Konkiel have self-archived "Repository of NSF-Funded Publications and Related Datasets: 'Back of Envelope' Cost Estimate for 15 Years" in IUScholarWorks.

Here's an excerpt:

The total projected cost of the data and paper repository is estimated at $167,000,000 over 15 years of operation, curating close to one million of datasets and one million papers. After 15 years and 30 PB of data accumulated and curated, we estimate the cost per gigabyte at $5.56. This $167 million cost is a direct cost in that it does not include federally allowable indirect costs return (ICR). After 15 years, it is reasonable to assume that some datasets will be compressed and rarely accessed. Others may be deemed no longer valuable, e.g., because they are replaced by more accurate results. Therefore, at some point the data growth in the repository will need to be adjusted by use of strategic preservation.

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"Delayed Open Access—An Overlooked High-Impact Category of Openly Available Scientific Literature"

Mikael Laakso and Bo-Christer Björk have self-archived "Delayed Open Access—An Overlooked High-Impact Category of Openly Available Scientific Literature."

Here's an excerpt:

Delayed open access (OA) refers to scholarly articles in subscription journals made available openly on the web directly through the publisher at the expiry of a set embargo period. Though a substantial number of journals have practiced delayed OA since they started publishing e-versions, empirical studies concerning open access have often overlooked this body of literature. This study provides comprehensive quantitative measurements by identifying delayed OA journals, collecting data concerning their publication volumes, embargo lengths, and citation rates. Altogether 492 journals were identified, publishing a combined total of 111 312 articles in 2011. 77,8 % of these articles were made open access within 12 months from publication, with 85,4 % becoming available within 24 months. A journal impact factor analysis revealed that delayed OA journals have on average twice as high average citation rates compared to closed subscription journals, and three times as high as immediate OA journals. Overall the results demonstrate that delayed OA journals constitute an important segment of the openly available scholarly journal literature, both by their sheer article volume as well as by including a substantial proportion of high impact journals.

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Publishers Put Forward Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the United States Proposal

A group of scholarly publishers has put forward a proposal to establish a Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the United States.

Here is a list of key posts about the proposal:

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"Economics of Scholarly Communication in Transition"

Heather Morrison has published "Economics of Scholarly Communication in Transition" in the latest issue of First Monday.

Here's an excerpt:

Academic library budgets are the primary source of revenue for scholarly journal publishing. There is more than enough money in the budgets of academic libraries to fund a fully open access scholarly journal publishing system. Seeking efficiencies, such as a reasonable average cost per article, will be key to a successful transition. This article presents macro level economic data and analysis illustrating the key factors and potential for cost savings.

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"The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer: The Effect of Open Access on Cites to Science Journals Across the Quality Spectrum"

Mark J. McCabe and Christopher M. Snyder have self-archived "The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer: The Effect of Open Access on Cites to Science Journals Across the Quality Spectrum" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

An open-access journal allows free online access to its articles, obtaining revenue from fees charged to submitting authors. Using panel data on science journals, we are able to circumvent some problems plaguing previous studies of the impact of open access on citations. We find that moving from paid to open access increases cites by 8% on average in our sample, but the effect varies across the quality of content. Open access increases cites to the best content (top-ranked journals or articles in upper quintiles of citations within a volume) but reduces cites to lower-quality content. We construct a model to explain these findings in which being placed on a broad open-access platform can increase the competition among articles for readers' attention. We can find structural parameters allowing the model to fit the quintile results quite closely.

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"Remarkable Growth of Open Access in the Biomedical Field: Analysis of PubMed Articles from 2006 to 2010"

Keiko Kurata, Tomoko Morioka, Keiko Yokoi, and Mamiko Matsubayash have published the "Remarkable Growth of Open Access in the Biomedical Field: Analysis of PubMed Articles from 2006 to 2010" in PLOS One.

Here's an excerpt:

This study clarifies the trends observed in open access (OA) in the biomedical field between 2006 and 2010, and explores the possible explanations for the differences in OA rates revealed in recent surveys. . . .

OA articles in the biomedical field have more than a 50% share. OA has been achieved through OAJs. The reason why the OA rates in our surveys are different from those in recent surveys seems to be the difference in sampling methods and verification procedures.

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"Types of Open Access Publishers in Scopus"

David Solomon has published "Types of Open Access Publishers in Scopus" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

This study assessed characteristics of publishers who published 2010 open access (OA) journals indexed in Scopus. Publishers were categorized into six types; professional, society, university, scholar/researcher, government, and other organizations. Type of publisher was broken down by number of journals/articles published in 2010, funding model, location, discipline and whether the journal was born or converted to OA. Universities and societies accounted for 50% of the journals and 43% of the articles published. Professional publisher accounted for a third of the journals and 42% of the articles. With the exception of professional and scholar/researcher publishers, most journals were originally subscription journals that made at least their digital version freely available. Arts, humanities and social science journals are largely published by societies and universities outside the major publishing countries. Professional OA publishing is most common in biomedicine, mathematics, the sciences and engineering. Approximately a quarter of the journals are hosted on national/international platforms, in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia largely published by universities and societies without the need for publishing fees. This type of collaboration between governments, universities and/or societies may be an effective means of expanding open access publications.

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University of Michigan Press Launches Maize Books, a Nontraditional Press with an Open Access Option

The University of Michigan Press has launched Maize Books, which will offer an open access publishing option.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The University of Michigan Press, a unit of Michigan Publishing, is committed to producing and disseminating high-quality scholarship. As part of that commitment, we're proud to announce Maize Books, a new Michigan Publishing imprint. This imprint represents a lean, responsive model for publishing scholarly and creative works. We understand that scholarship can take many forms, and that traditional academic publishers arena't always interested in items that don't fit the typical categories of a "monograph" or a "journal article." . . .

The University of Michigan Press has the tools and the expertise to help you distribute your scholarship, regardless of its form, and we offer methods to make your work discoverable, accessible, and preservable for the long term. In keeping with our mission to explore new forms of scholarly publishing, Maize Books titles will be evaluated by the acquiring editors and Editorial Director of the University of Michigan Press. They will undergo peer review when desirable, including experimental forms of peer review designed to suit the requirements of individual publications.

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