Open Access – Page 90

"Anatomy Of Open Access Publishing: A Study of Longitudinal Development and Internal Structure"

Mikael Laakso and Bo-Christer Björk have published "Anatomy Of Open Access Publishing: A Study of Longitudinal Development and Internal Structure" in BMC Medicine.

Here's an excerpt:

The primary aim of this study was to measure the volume of scientific articles published in full immediate OA journals from 2000 to 2011, while observing longitudinal internal shifts in the structure of OA publishing concerning revenue models, publisher types and relative distribution among scientific disciplines. The secondary aim was to measure the share of OA articles of all journal articles, including articles made OA by publishers with a delay and individual author-paid OA articles in subscription journals (hybrid OA), as these subsets of OA publishing have mostly been ignored in previous studies.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography: "This bibliography is recommended for everyone interested in open access publishing." — M. Blobaum, Journal of the Medical Library Association 100, no. 1 (2012): 73. | Digital Scholarship |

Open Access Now Launched

A new digital publication, Open Access Now, has been launched.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Open Access Now launched today, a resource for news and information about open access and scholarly publishing. The goal of OANow is to provide a centralized, regularly updated, curated news feed, accomplished through active monitoring of scholarly, popular and niche sources. Built on the PressForward platform, which aims to "produce vital, open publications scholarly communities can gather around," this project sees the current ramping up of open access initiatives around the globe as the opportunity to gather and re-present that knowledge to open access advocates.

With initial support from the Center for History and New Media, Open Access Now borrows the structure of Digital Humanities Now and the recently launched American History Now, utilizing a process of aggregation, curation, discovery and review to showcase the relevant and "need-to-know" items, while encouraging the progress of scholarship on the open web.

| Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals | Digital Scholarship |

"HowOpenIsIt?"

PLOS, SPARC and OASPA have released "HowOpenIsIt?"

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In preparation for Open Access Week (October 22-28), we are issuing the final version today so that people can download and print it for their use next week and beyond. This resource outlines the core components of open access (e.g., reader rights, reuse rights, copyrights, author posting rights, etc.) across the continuum from "open access" to "restricted access." Its aim is to help authors make informed decisions on where to publish based on journal policies. It also provides a resource for funders and other organizations to help establish criteria for the level of Open Access required for their policies and mandates. Ultimately, the conversation must shift from "Is It Open Access?" to "HowOpenIsIt?" The phrase "HowOpenIsIt?" will be used for a family of offerings to foster and promote open access in research communications. The Open Access Spectrum is our first program with more to come.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Good Practices For University Open-Access Policies

The Harvard Open Access Project has released Good Practices For University Open-Access Policies.

Here's an excerpt:

This is a guide to good practices for university open-access (OA) policies. It’s based on the type of policy adopted at Harvard, Stanford, MIT, U of Kansas, U of Oregon, Trinity, Oberlin, Rollins, Wake Forest, Duke, U of Puerto Rico, Hawaii-Manoa, Columbia, Strathmore U, Emory, Princeton, Jomo Kenyatta, Utah State, Bifrõst, Miami, California-San Francisco, and the U Massachusetts Medical School (listing some but not all, and in chronological order). However, it includes recommendations that should be useful to institutions with other sorts of OA policy as well.

The guide is designed to evolve. No early version will cover every point on which good practices would be desirable or might be discernible. We plan to revise and enlarge it over time, building on our own experience and the experience of colleagues elsewhere. We welcome suggestions.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Copyright Clearance Center Launches New Service for Publishers: Open Access Solutions

The Copyright Clearance Center has launched a new service for Publishers called Open Access Solutions.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

CCC helps publishers manage variable Open Access (OA) models through its RightsLink™ platform, which supports unique pricing rules, licenses and messaging for OA journals, encouraging compliance with funding agency requirements. . . .

CCC makes it easier for publishers to charge different Open Access fees pre-publication based on variables such as author affiliation/membership, funding source and journal type; communicates publisher-specified reuse rights post-publication to users seeking permissions for all content including Open Access articles; captures valuable data about user interest in and reuse of publishers' Open Access publications; and provides the ability for publishers to add RightsLink to its content wherever it resides online, even in third-party repositories such as HighWire or PubMed Central.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

New Open Access Series from UC Berkeley: California Classical Studies

The University of California, Berkeley's Department of Classics has established a new open access series, California Classical Studies.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The series is intended to provide a peer-reviewed open-access venue for disseminating basic research, data-heavy research, including archaeological research, and highly specialized research of the kind that is either hard to place with the leading publishers in Classics or extremely expensive for libraries and individuals when produced by a leading academic publisher. . . .

Apart from aiming to publish 15 titles in the first three to four years, the startup phase will also test different workflows for production and assess the impact of various pricing models for Print on Demand and ebook versions. Some works will have images, plans, datasets, or other material offered only online. While every work will be available in full for page view from the date of first appearance, the series will experiment with the feasibility of shorter and longer embargo periods, or no embargo period, before free download of a full PDF is made available. Finally, the project is intended to find a path to sustainability, which will depend partly on how much revenue can be generated from sales and how far down production costs can be driven, but also on the willingness of institutions, administrators, and individual scholars with access to research grants to make an initial investment in open-access scholarly communication rather than bear the costs of library purchases and especially of ongoing licensing fees for digital material controlled by major publishers.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

"Open Access Repositories in Asia: From SAARC to Asian Tigers"

Bijan Kumar Roy, Subal Chandra Biswas, and Parthasarathi Mukhopadhyay have published "Open Access Repositories in Asia: From SAARC to Asian Tigers" in Library Philosophy and Practice.

Here's an excerpt:

This paper provides an overview of Open Access Repository (OAR) initiatives taken in Asian Countries with special reference to SAARC [South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation] Countries. The purpose of this study is to take a broad look at the current state of deployment of OARs in the Asian countries. It also compares selected OARs against a set of carefully crafted criteria. Key findings have been highlighted along with suggestions for further development of OARs in global context.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Open Access: SCOAP3 Launched

The SCOAP3 open access initiative has been launched at a meeting at CERN, and it will become operational in 2014.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

In the SCOAP3 model, libraries and funding agencies pool resources currently used to subscribe to journal content and use them to support the peer-review system directly instead. Journal publishers then make their articles Open Access, which means that anyone can read them. Authors retain the copyright, and generous licenses for re-use are used.

Publishers of 12 journals, accounting for the vast majority of articles in the field, have been identified for participation in SCOAP3 through an open and competitive process, and the SCOAP3 initiative looks forward to establishing more partnerships with key institutions in Europe, America and Asia as it moves through the technical steps of organizing the re-direction of funds from the current subscription model to a common internationally coordinated fund.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

"Beyond Open Access: An Examination of Australian Academic Publication Behaviour"

Paul Mercieca has self-archived his Ph.D. theses, "Beyond Open Access: An Examination of Australian Academic Publication Behaviour," in the RMIT Research Repository.

Here's an excerpt:

This study explored the publication behaviour of academics from Australian universities and how this impacted on the adoption of open access models of scholarly publishing. . . .

The outcome of this study was a number of theoretical models that suggested that the changing policies associated with research recognition have narrowed the publication behaviour of the Australian academic community and that this could be to the detriment of the adoption of alternative models of scholarly publishing.. . .

The study also examined engagement with institutional repositories and highlighted the importance of mediation in populating the content of repositories. The process of permission-based mandates was supported as a means to develop repository content.

| Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals | Digital Scholarship |

"Understanding and Making Use of Academic Authors’ Open Access Rights"

David R. Hansen has published "Understanding and Making Use of Academic Authors' Open Access Rights" in the latest issue of the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

Here's an excerpt:

METHODS To understand the scope of author-retained rights (including the right to purchase hybrid or other open access options) at some sample universities, author-rights data through the SHERPA/RoMEO API was combined with individual article citations (from Thomson Reuters' Web of Science) for works published over a one-year period (2011) and authored by individuals affiliated with five major U.S. research universities. RESULTS Authors retain significant rights in the articles that they create. Of the 29,322 unique articles authored over the one year period at the five universities, 28.83 percent could be archived in final PDF form and 87.95 percent could be archived as the post-print version. Nearly 43.47 percent also provided authors the choice of purchasing a hybrid paid open access option. DISCUSSION A significant percentage of current published output could be archived with little or no author intervention. With prior approval through an open access policy or otherwise, article manuscripts or final PDFs can be obtained and archived by library staff, and hybrid paid-OA options could be negotiated and exploited by library administrators.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Important Changes for Users and Participants of the Open Access Tracking Project

The Open Access Tracking Project is migrating to TagTeam.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) is moving to TagTeam.

If you previously subscribed to OATP feeds as a reader, or helped build OATP feeds as a tagger, this page explains how to continue with the TagTeam version of the project. If you haven't previously participated in OATP, this page explains how to get started.

As a reader, you should stop subscribing to the Connotea versions of the OATP feeds and start subscribing to the TagTeam versions. Starting September 17, 2012, only the TagTeam versions will be comprehensive.

As a tagger, you may continue to tag at Connotea if you wish. But you are now free to tag for OATP from other tagging platforms as well. Either way, you'll have to tell TagTeam to follow your OATP tagging activity.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Budapest Open Access Initiative Issues Recommendations for Next Ten Years of Open Access Development

The Budapest Open Access Initiative has issued recommendations for the next ten years of open access development.

Here's an excerpt:

Ten years ago the Budapest Open Access Initiative launched a worldwide campaign for open access (OA) to all new peer-reviewed research. It didn't invent the idea of OA. On the contrary, it deliberately drew together existing projects to explore how they might "work together to achieve broader, deeper, and faster success." But the BOAI was the first initiative to use the term "open access" for this purpose, the first to articulate a public definition, the first to propose complementary strategies for realizing OA, the first to generalize the call for OA to all disciplines and countries, and the first to be accompanied by significant funding. . . .

The problems that previously held up the adoption and implementation of OA are solved, and the solutions are spreading. But until OA spreads further, the problems for which OA is a solution will remain largely unsolved. In this statement, we reaffirm the ends and means of the original BOAI, and recommit ourselves to make progress. But in addition, we specifically set the new goal that within the next ten years, OA will become the default method for distributing new peer-reviewed research in every field and country.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

"Copyright and the Harvard Open Access Mandate"

Eric Priest has self-archived "Copyright and the Harvard Open Access Mandate" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

This Article argues that permission mandates can create legally enforceable, durable nonexclusive licenses. First, it argues that although there are important justifications, including academic freedom concerns, for recognizing the controversial “teacher exception” to the work for hire rules for scholarly articles, such an exception may be unnecessary because a strong argument also exists that much scholarship is produced outside the scope of employment for work for hire purposes. Second, it argues that permission mandates provide sufficient evidence of the grantor's intent and the rights granted to create effective nonexclusive licenses. Third, permission mandates satisfy the requirements of § 205(e) and establish the license's priority over the subsequent transfer of copyright ownership largely because they fulfill the underlying purposes of § 205(e) by providing sufficient evidence and notice of the license to potential copyright transferees (typically academic publishers).

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography: "This work gives an outstanding overview of scholarship relating to the growing Open Access movement." — George Machovec, The Charleston Advisor 12, no. 2 (2010): 3. | Digital Scholarship |

UK Government Allocates £10 Million to Support Open Access

The UK Government has allocated £10 million to support open access in UK research universities.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The investment will enable a number of research-intensive UK institutions to kick-start the process of developing policies and setting up funds to meet the costs of article processing charges (APCs). This is in line with the recommendations of the Finch report on open access, published in June. . . .

The investment will be made to 30 institutions receiving funding through Research Councils and UK higher education funding councils. It is in addition to the contribution RCUK will be making to institutions to support payment of APCs associated with open access through block funding grants from 1 April 2013 onwards. More details of this will be announced in the autumn.

The UK Funding Councils will launch a consultation this autumn on implementing a requirement that research outputs submitted to any future Research Excellence Framework (REF) should be as widely accessible as possible.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Researcher Attitudes and Behaviour Towards the ‘Openness’ of Research Outputs in Agriculture and Related Fields

Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development has released Researcher Attitudes and Behaviour Towards the 'Openness' of Research Outputs in Agriculture and Related Fields.

Here's an excerpt:

An online worldwide survey of researchers in agriculture and related fields was carried out in March 2011 by the CGIAR, FAO and GFAR on behalf of the CIARD (Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development) initiative. The aim of the survey was to gain greater understanding of researcher behaviours and attitudes in relation to communicating research outputs and making such outputs open and accessible. There were almost 1500 responses to the survey, with 50% of respondents identifying that they worked in Latin America and 33% in Africa. The survey analysis shows that, although researchers are driven in their work by many different and interacting motivations, institutional/organizational factors are very important and have much influence over individuals' behaviour. Often, making a research output freely and openly available can be in the hands of the individual, and some will act in this way. However, for many others there are perceived barriers to this, such as the lack of required resources and of institutional policies to drive these activities. Further, current behaviours in choosing routes to communicate research results are still strongly biased toward the traditional routes of publishing in journals and books and appearing at conferences, though the availability and increasing use of digital formats is starting to broaden the spread of communication pathways used. The paper ends with reference to the relevance and importance to the CIARD initiative of the results of the survey.

| Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals | Digital Scholarship |

"Tectonic Movements toward OA in the UK and Europe"

Peter Suber has published "Tectonic Movements toward OA in the UK and Europe" in the latest issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter.

Here's an excerpt:

Because this article is long, I'm including a table of contents:

1. Three major OA announcements from the UK on the same day

2. Some recent history as context for these announcements

3. Basics of the new RCUK policy

4. Basics of the Finch recommendations

5. General agreement between the RCUK policy and Finch recommendations

6. Appreciation of the large-scale shift to OA in the UK

7. Some consequences for journals and authors

8. Responding to publisher fears of green OA

9. Objections and recommendations

10. Announcements from Europe the day after the UK announcements

Moving Towards an Open Access Future: The Role of Academic Libraries

Sage has released Moving Towards an Open Access Future: The Role of Academic Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

On 26 April 2012, a group of 14 librarians and other industry experts met together at the British Library to discuss the role of the academic library in an open access (OA) future. The aims of the roundtable were to provide an international perspective on the likely impact of an open access future on librarians, to identify support and skills required for librarians in such a future, and to further current discussion on support for the library community from their institutions, publishers, funders and other parties.

The group discussed a number of key questions, beginning with setting parameters for what the likely shift towards OA might be in different disciplines and different geographic regions, then considering what the impact of such a shift would mean for the academic library community. This report is a summary of that discussion and the opinions of all participants.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Simons Foundation Gives arXiv Multi-Year Operating Grant

The Simons Foundation has given arXiv a multi-year matching operating grant from 2013 through 2017.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Thanks to an operating grant from the Simons Foundation, Cornell University Library has helped arXiv take a major step toward sustainability. Beginning in January and running through 2017, the Simons Foundation will provide up to $300,000 per year as a matching gift for the funds generated through arXiv's membership fees. The grant also provides $50,000 per year as an "unconditional gift" that recognizes the Library's stewardship of arXiv. . ..

The Library has been steering arXiv toward sustainability since January 2010, when it launched an initiative to create a business model that would engage libraries and research laboratories that benefit most from arXiv's service. A 2011 planning grant from Simons Foundation helped arXiv's leaders develop operating principles and establish a governing board for the new model.

Annual membership fees, paid by voluntary contribution from these institutions, help cover arXiv's costs—and, now, will provide a sum for the Simons Foundation to match.

The newly established model has garnered partners all over the globe. To date, more than 120 member institutions in over a dozen countries have pledged their support, totaling $285,000. Among the 100 institutions that use arXiv most heavily, nearly three-quarters committed to five-year pledges.

| Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals | Digital Scholarship |

"The Inevitability of Open Access"

David W. Lewis has published "The Inevitability of Open Access" in the latest issue of College & Research Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

Open access (OA) is an alternative business model for the publication of scholarly journals. It makes articles freely available to readers on the Internet and covers the costs associated with publication through means other than subscriptions. This article argues that Gold OA, where all of the articles of a journal are available at the time of publication, is a disruptive innovation as defined by business theorist Clayton Christensen. Using methods described by Christensen, we can predict the growth of Gold OA. This analysis suggests that Gold OA could account for 50 percent of the scholarly journal articles sometime between 2017 and 2021, and 90 percent of articles as soon as 2020 and more conservatively by 2025.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Wiley Open Access Program Adopts Creative Commons Attribution Licence

Effective immediately, journals in the Wiley Open Access program will use the Creative Commons Attribution Licence for articles.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Rachel Burley, Vice President and Director, Open Access, commented, "Wiley is committed to meeting the evolving needs of the authors who wish to provide open access to the published articles that convey the results of their research."

Burley continued, "Our announcement today concerns Wiley’s fully open access journals. We are also reviewing the licensing arrangements for our hybrid program OnlineOpen, our open access option for individual articles published in subscription journals. In consultation with our publishing partners, we aim to continue to develop and deliver sustainable open access products providing author choice and high levels of service."

In the first instance, the journals moving to the CC-BY licence are Brain and Behavior, Ecology and Evolution, MicrobiologyOpen, Cancer Medicine, Food Science & Nutrition, Evolutionary Applications, Geoscience Data Journal and EMBO Molecular Medicine.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Royal Society of Chemistry Launches £1 Million Gold Open Access Initiative

The Royal Society of Chemistry has launched a £1 million gold open access initiative for British researchers.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

'Gold for Gold' is an innovative experiment to support the funder led evolution to Gold OA, by recognising institutes that subscribe to RSC Gold, a premium collection of 37 international journals, databases and magazines offering online access to all published material.

UK institutes who are RSC Gold customers will shortly receive credit equal to the subscription paid, to enabling their researchers, who are being asked to publish Open Access but often do not yet have funding to pay for it directly, to make their paper available via Open Science, the RSC's Gold OA option.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

"Open Access versus Subscription Journals: A Comparison of Scientific Impact"

Bo-Christer Björk and David Solomon have published "Open Access versus Subscription Journals: A Comparison of Scientific Impact" in BMC Medicine.

Here's an excerpt:

Overall, average citation rates, both unweighted and weighted for the number of articles per journal, were about 30% higher for subscription journals. However, after controlling for discipline (medicine and health versus other), age of the journal (three time periods) and the location of the publisher (four largest publishing countries versus other countries) the differences largely disappeared in most subcategories except for journals that had been launched prior to 1996. OA journals that fund publishing with article processing charges (APCs) are on average cited more than other OA journals. In medicine and health, OA journals founded in the last 10 years are receiving about as many citations as subscription journals launched during the same period.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

Open Access Status of Journal Articles from ERC-Funded Projects

The European Research Council has released Open Access Status of Journal Articles from ERC-Funded Projects.

Here's an excerpt:

The main objective of this analysis is to estimate the extent to which journal articles from ERC funded projects are available in an open access. . . .

The results show that 62 % of journal articles from ERC funded projects are available in open access. The share of articles in open access varies across research domains. It is close to 70 % in Life Sciences, 65 % in Physical Sciences and Engineering and nearer 50 % in Social Sciences and Humanities. A comparison with the data on open access status provided by the grant holders in their mid-term reports shows that self-reporting leads to an underestimation of the proportion of open access articles.

| Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals | Digital Scholarship |

After UK’s RCUK Policy, European Commission Announces Another Major Open Access Policy

Yesterday DigitalKoans reported on the Research Councils UK's new open access policy. Today, the European Commission has announced another major open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The European Commission today outlined measures to improve access to scientific information produced in Europe. Broader and more rapid access to scientific papers and data will make it easier for researchers and businesses to build on the findings of public-funded research. This will boost Europe's innovation capacity and give citizens quicker access to the benefits of scientific discoveries. In this way, it will give Europe a better return on its €87 billion annual investment in R&D. The measures complement the Commission's Communication to achieve a European Research Area (ERA), also adopted today.

As a first step, the Commission will make open access to scientific publications a general principle of Horizon 2020, the EU's Research & Innovation funding programme for 2014-2020. As of 2014, all articles produced with funding from Horizon 2020 will have to be accessible:

articles will either immediately be made accessible online by the publisher ('Gold' open access)—up-front publication costs can be eligible for reimbursement by the European Commission; or

researchers will make their articles available through an open access repository no later than six months (12 months for articles in the fields of social sciences and humanities) after publication ('Green' open access).

The Commission has also recommended that Member States take a similar approach to the results of research funded under their own domestic programmes. The goal is for 60% of European publicly-funded research articles to be available under open access by 2016.

The Commission will also start experimenting with open access to the data collected during publicly funded research (e.g. the numerical results of experiments), taking into account legitimate concerns related to the fundee's commercial interests or to privacy.

| Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography | Digital Scholarship |

"Government Response to the Finch Group Report: ‘Accessibility, Sustainability, Excellence: How to Expand Access to Research Publications’"

David Willetts, the UK Minister for Science and Universities, has issued "Government Response to the Finch Group Report: 'Accessibility, Sustainability, Excellence: How to Expand Access to Research Publications'."

Here's an excerpt:

The Government has listened carefully to what publishers, learned societies and the Finch Group collectively have had to say on this issue. We prefer the 'gold' over the 'green' model, especially where the research is taxpayer funded so the Government agrees with the sentiment expressed in the Finch Report. Embargo periods allowed by funding bodies for publishers should be short where publishers have chosen not to take up the preferred option of their receiving an Article Processing Charge (which provides payment in full for immediate publication by the 'gold OA' route). Where APC funds are not available to the publisher or learned society, for the publication of publicly-funded research, then publishers could reasonably insist on a longer more equitable embargo period. This could be up to 12 months for science, technology and engineering publications and longer for publications in those disciplines which require more time to secure payback. Even so, publications with embargo periods longer than two years may find it difficult to argue that they are also serving the public interest.

| Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals | Digital Scholarship |