Open Access – Page 87

"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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Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health Adopts Open Access Policy

The Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health has adopted an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In accordance with their open access resolution, Mailman School researchers commit to having their published scholarly articles included in Columbia's digital repository, Academic Commons, where content is freely available to the public, or in another repository, such as the National Institutes of Health's PubMed Central, that makes the research publicly available. . . .

The resolution covers all scholarly journal articles as of May 1. There is an opt-out feature built into the resolution, permitting the researcher to request that an article that appears in a journal that insists on exclusivity not have that piece included in the repository.

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"Hot Times for Open Access"

Walt Crawford has published "Hot Times for Open Access" in the latest issue of Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large.

Here's an excerpt:

These are hot times for open access. Maybe not a tipping point, certainly not where everything will be in a couple of years, but more action—and even more progress—than I'd seen in a while.

What we have here is a hybrid: part catching up with three vibrant months in the development of OA, part supplemental material for my OA precon-ference in Vancouver, Washington. This issue ap-pears slightly after that preconference—but attendees got early access to it. That hybrid nature may affect the organization, always sketchy in any case. It also means a few things are noted that wouldn't qualify as new material.

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"Science Europe Position Statement: Principles on the Transition to Open Access to Research Publications"

Science Europe has released "Science Europe Position Statement: Principles on the Transition to Open Access to Research Publications." Science Europe is an "association of 51 European national research organisations."

Here's an excerpt:

Therefore the Science Europe Member Organisations:

will continue to support any valid approaches to achieve Open Access, including those commonly referred to as the "green" and "gold" routes; . . . .

stress that research publications should either be published in an Open Access journal or be deposited as soon as possible in a repository, and made available in Open Access in all cases no later than six months following first publication. In Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, the delay may need to be longer than six months but must be no more than 12 months; . . .

require that funding of Open Access publication fees is part of a transparent cost structure, incorporating a clear picture of publishers' service costs;. . . .

stress that the hybrid model, as currently defined and implemented by publishers, is not a working and viable pathway to Open Access. Any model for transition to Open Access supported by Science Europe Member Organisations must prevent "double dipping" and increase cost transparency;

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"House of Commons Oral Evidence Taken before the Business, Innovation And Skills Committee Open Access"

The UK Parliament has released an uncorrected transcript of "House of Commons Oral Evidence Taken before the Business, Innovation And Skills Committee Open Access."

Here's an excerpt (below comments by Alicia Wise, Director of Universal Access, Reed Elsevier):

With the Government's policy that we are all implementing, we will see an increase in the amount of hybrid open-access publishing done at scale. For the open-access components of that hybrid publishing, it is clear that the costs are sustainable through the article-publishing charges. For the subscription part of those titles, the costs continue to need to be covered through the subscription model. If the content is freely available too quickly, there will be no need for libraries to continue to pay those subscription costs. While we have not seen clear evidence of an undermining or cancellation of subscriptions at this point, there is evidence, such as that Audrey referred to, that librarians are watching this space very closely and are very mindful of it. We have also seen that where content is deposited at scale, there can be an erosion of transactional revenues-the pay-per-view business model. Those are very modest components of most of our revenue streams, but again it is a potential early-warning sign.

"Expanded Public Access: A New Era with New Challenges"

The Association of American Universities, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and the Association of Research Libraries have released "Expanded Public Access: A New Era with New Challenges."

Here's an excerpt:

During a short six-month period, agencies will develop draft plans for how this long-term preservation and access will occur ["Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research"]. Research universities have a significant stake in the plans the Director ultimately approves—universities are responsible to federal research funding agencies for compliance with the regulations attendant to the grants received by their researchers. If we are faced with different deposit requirements for manuscripts and data by each of the 15 and possibly more agencies subject to the directive, the compliance bill could be very expensive and might not reflect the interests of the academy. Given that PubMed Central has established a useful model for deposit of and access to research manuscripts, we can hope that the example of good practice established by them will be drawn upon by other funding agencies as they establish their own public access policies, and that the resultant products interconnect across and between agencies and external stakeholders that promote effective, seamless public access.

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"Open Access—Are the Barriers to Change Receding?"

Bo-Christer Björk has published "Open Access—Are the Barriers to Change Receding?" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

The move from subscription only publishing of scholarly articles to open access has been much slower than previously anticipated by many Open Access (OA) advocates. Despite the many advantages that OA offers, this particular branch of E-commerce imposes several formidable barriers to change. A framework conceptualizing these barriers that was developed over a decade ago was revisited to see if the significance of these barriers has changed. Nowadays, building the IT infrastructure, support from indexing services and finding a sustainable business model are no longer important barriers. For gold OA publishing the academic reward system is still a major obstacle, whereas more marketing and critical mass is needed for both gold OA and green OA. Green OA self-archiving is still also strongly affected by what subscription publishers allow. In the overall balance the situation has nevertheless improved significantly.

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