Category: Open Access

Submission Fees—A Tool in the Transition to Open Access?

The Knowledge Exchange has released Submission Fees—A Tool in the Transition to Open Access?

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The general conclusion of the report bearing the title "Submission Fees—A Tool in the Transition to Open Access?," written by Mark Ware, is that there are benefits to publishers in certain cases to switch to a model in which an author pays a fee when submitting an article. Especially journals with a high rejection rate might be interested in combining submission fees with article processing charges in order to make the transition to open access easier. In certain disciplines, notably economic and finance journals and in some areas of the experimental life sciences, submission fees are already common.

| Digital Scholarship |

Open Access Bibliography vs. Transforming Scholarly Communication through Open Access: What’s the Difference?

There are two book-length bibliographies available from Digital Scholarship: Open Access Bibliography: Liberating Scholarly Literature with E-Prints and Open Access Journals and Transforming Scholarly Publishing through Open Access: A Bibliography. What's the difference?

Feature Open Access Bibliography Transforming Scholarly Communication
Publication Date 2005 (not updated) 2010 (not updated)
Coverage Fairly comprehensive:
diverse published and unpublished works in English		 Selective: published
works in English, primarily books and journal articles
Number of
References		 Over 1,300 Over 1,100
Paperback? Yes, $45 Yes, $15.95
OA PDF? Yes Yes
OA XHTML? Yes Yes
XHTML Version Search Engine? Yes Yes
Links to Freely Available Works? Yes (live in XHTML) Yes (live in XHTML)
Creative Commons License? Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License		 Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License
Publisher Association of Research Libraries (paperback and OA PDF) and Digital Scholarship (XHTML) Digital Scholarship

| Digital Scholarship |

CERN Signs COPE (Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity)

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, has signed the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity. CERN is the fourteenth institution to sign COPE.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

As a publicly and internationally funded research institution, CERN believes everyone should get access to its results without any financial barrier. The most important tool to implement this vision in the high-energy physics community, which CERN embodies, is the SCOAP3 initiative, through which CERN and partners in over twenty countries are working to convert to open access existing high-quality high-energy physics journals. While waiting for SCOAP3 to be operational CERN and leading publishers in the field (the American Physical Society, Elsevier, SISSA, and Springer) have reached agreements to make the scientific publications from the flagship Large Hadron Collider available open access and under a Creative Common license, as suggested by the publication policy of the CERN Physics Department.

| Digital Scholarship |

Open Access Principles for Australian Collecting Institutions, Version 1

Opening Australia's Archives has released Open Access Principles for Australian Collecting Institutions, Version 1.

Here's an excerpt:

The internet, digital recording devices and the ready availability of content production software have together drastically changed the creative landscape. As a result, linear models of knowledge and cultural production are rapidly being supplanted by more distributed, collaborative, user-generated and open networking models. Yet Australians wishing to participate in this new digital culture have great difficulty gaining access to quality content from their own culture and history that can be legally and safely reused. This limits our ability to access the full benefits that could be provided by new technologies to fields such as education, the creative industries and business innovation.

The Opening Australia's Archives project aims to address this problem by working with Australia's collecting institutions to increase the public's ability to access and reuse our national collections. Run by the Innovation Law program of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation at Queensland University of Technology the project encourages the adoption of open access approaches through coordinated policy, implementation and advocacy initiatives across the collecting sector.

Opening Australia's Archives: Open Access Principles for Australian Collecting Institutions were prepared in consultation with representatives of the Australian collecting sector commencing with a series of meetings held nationally during 2009. For more information on the meetings, principles and project see the Opening Australia's Archives website.

| Digital Scholarship |

Open Access in Southern European Countries

Francisca Abad et al. have self-archived Open Access in Southern European Countries in E-LIS.

Here's an excerpt:

In order to move towards common policies for open access to science, experts in each country were asked to provide reports on the situation of open access. We used a common template including three main sections: scientific journals (number, format, quality, subject specialization, type of publishers, type of access, etc.); institutional repositories and harvesters; and policies supporting open access. Common data sources were used as far as possible (Ulrich's directory, OpenDOAR, DOAJ, ROAR, etc.), and were complemented in most cases by directories and other national sources.

Preliminary versions of the national reports were submitted and discussed at a conference held in Granada in May 2010, and served as a starting point for drafting a declaration of principles (the Alhambra Declaration) that aims to foster open access and the involvement of the various actors of the scientific communication process.

The published document contains updated and revised versions of the national reports, along with general conclusions, the Alhambra Declaration, and several appendices which offer more detailed information on journals and repositories in each of the countries. Statistical data included in the reports and in the appendices were updated as of May 2010. As such, this is the temporal reference for tables and figures if no other date is indicated.

| Digital Scholarship |

Public.Resource.Org Launches Yes We Scan

Public.Resource.Org, a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation, has launched its Yes We Scan campaign to digitize and make available 300 volumes of the First Series of the Federal Reporter.

Here's an excerpt:

Now, you too can help, by adopting one of the 300 volumes of the First Series of the Federal Reporter, which are all out of copyright. Your tax-deductible contribution of $1200 will pay to double-key 1,000 pages of Federal Appellate Opinions, and copies will be donated to the National Archives and the Government Printing Office.

Your name—and the link of your choice—will be inscribed on the Public Domain Wall of Fame and each case in your adopted volume will be a separate HTML file with a common footer

This volume of American Law was transcribed for use on the Internet through a contribution from [Your Name Here!!]

| Digital Scholarship |

Gary Ward Named Chairman of the Public Library of Science

Gary Ward has been named Chairman of the Public Library of Science.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

We're delighted to announce that the PLoS board of directors has appointed Gary Ward as board chairman, effective January 1, 2011. Gary has a longstanding association with PLoS as a charter member of the PLoS Biology Editorial Board, has a deep understanding of Open Access and a strong devotion to its widespread adoption.

Gary received his PhD from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and did post doc work at UC San Francisco with Marc Kirschner. He was a Senior Staff Fellow at the NIH’s Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases, and Treasurer and Member of the Executive Committee of the American Society for Cell Biology. He is currently Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at the University of Vermont.

Gary’s Open Access credentials are as impressive as his scholarly credentials: he is Chair (through year-end) of the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central National Advisory Committee, a past member of the NLM Public Access Working Group, and member of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) Open Access working group.

| Digital Scholarship |

Harvard Divinity School Adopts Open Access Policy

On November 15, 2010, the Harvard Divinity School adopted an open access policy. Five other Harvard units have an open access policy: the Business School, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Graduate School of Education, the Kennedy School of Government, and the Law School.

Here's an excerpt:

The Faculty of the Harvard Divinity School is committed to disseminating the fruits of its research and scholarship as widely as possible. In keeping with that commitment, the Faculty adopts the following policy: Each Faculty member grants to the President and Fellows of Harvard College permission to make available his or her scholarly articles and to exercise the copyright in those articles. More specifically, each Faculty member grants to the President and Fellows a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of his or her scholarly articles, in any medium, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit, and to authorize others to do the same. The policy applies to all scholarly articles authored or co-authored while the person is a member of the Faculty except for any articles completed before the adoption of this policy and any articles for which the Faculty member entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement before the adoption of this policy. The Dean or Dean's designate will waive application of the license for a particular article or delay access for a specified period of time upon express direction by a Faculty member.

Each Faculty member will provide an electronic copy of the author's final version of each article no later than the date of its publication at no charge to the appropriate representative of the Provost's Office in an appropriate format (such as PDF) specified by the Provost's Office. The Provost's Office may make the article available to the public in an open-access repository.

| Digital Scholarship |

Emerald Group Publishing Limited’s Use of the Attributor Anti-Piracy Service

In "Thanks but No Thanks Emerald," Kristin Eschenfelder reproduces and discusses a letter that she received from the Emerald Group Publishing Limited. In short, this letter says that Emerald is expanding it's use of Attributor to detect copyright violations from "cyberlockers" to "the full breadth of the internet," and it requests the URLs for her personal, institutional, and corporate websites so that they can be excluded from Attributor searches and its "legally-binding takedown notices."

Will this expanded use of Attributor affect self-archiving of articles from Emerald journals?

Emerald's publication policies are detailed in its Authors' Charter and its Review Copyright Assignment Form. Emerald requires that authors assign their article copyrights to Emerald as a condition of publication.

The Authors' Charter states that (I have added italics in certain places in the below quotes):

Authors are not required to seek Emerald's permission to re-use their own work. As an author with Emerald you can use your paper in part or in full, including figures and tables if you want to do so in a book, in another article written for us or another publisher, on your website, or any other use, without asking us first.

It further states that:

It does NOT, in any way, restrict your right or academic freedom to contribute to the wider distribution and readership of your work. This includes the right to: . . . .

2. Reproduce your own version of your article, including peer review/editorial changes, in another journal, as content in a book of which you are the author, in a thesis, dissertation or in any other record of study, in print or electronic format as required by your university or for your own career development.

3. Deposit an electronic copy of your own final version of your article, pre- or post-print, on your own or institutional website. The electronic copy cannot be deposited at the stage of acceptance by the Editor.

Authors are requested to cite the original publication source of their work and link to the published version — but are NOT required to seek Emerald's permission with regard to the personal re-use of their work as described above. Emerald never charges its authors for re-use of any of their own published works. Emerald does not allow systematic archiving of works by third parties into an institutional or subject repository.

The Review Copyright Assignment Form says:

This assignment of copyright to Emerald Group Publishing Limited is done so on the understanding that permission from Emerald Group Publishing Limited is not required for me/us to reproduce, republish or distribute copies of the Work in whole or in part.

Given the above, it would appear that the author can: (1) self-archive an article on his or her personal website, (2) self-archive an article in his or her institutional repository, and (3) self-archive an article in a subject archive (the restriction is for “systematic archiving of works by third parties,” not self-archiving). Institutional repository staff or subject repository staff cannot archive articles for authors.

If this is not correct, it would be helpful to hear from Emerald what its interpretation of these documents is.

Unlike the RIAA and the MPAA, scholarly journal publishers have a limited primary customer base—academic libraries. Moreover, academic librarians are authors as well as customers, and, for some publishers, they are a significant subset of their authors. The endless serials crisis has already seriously strained relations between academic librarians and publishers. Hopefully, scholarly journal publishers will be sensible and sensitive to customer concerns in their attempts to cope with difficult digital copyright issues.

[See Emerald's reply in the comments.]

University of Oregon Libraries and Oregon State University Libraries Establish Open Access Journal Publishing Service

The University of Oregon Libraries and Oregon State University Libraries have established an Open Access Journal Publishing Service.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The University of Oregon Libraries and Oregon State University Libraries have joined forces to establish an Open Access Journal Publishing Service that will support the broader dissemination of scholarship and promote the advancement of both universities’ research. Open access journals represent an emerging academic publishing model that makes the results of scholarly research freely available online to all readers who have access to the Internet. . . .

The initiative will provide support to UO and OSU faculty members for the creation, management, distribution, and preservation of open access journals, primarily based on the Open Journal System (OJS) open source software. In addition to hosting journals on an OJS server, the initiative will assist in the migration of journal content from traditional print format to digital format. The OJS program supports the full cycle of journal publishing from article submission to archiving. . . .

Plans for creating new open access journal titles are already underway at both universities. For example, at the University of Oregon the first issue of the open access journal Humanist Studies and the Digital Age is expected to appear this winter. The journal will provide scholars and students with free and immediate online access to the results of humanities research conducted by scholars throughout the world. At Oregon State University, the Journal of the Transportation Research Forum is currently offered as an open access publication, and other titles are in the development stages. The website for the service at http://journals.oregondigital.org/ provides additional information on the new program and access to individual journals.

| Digital Scholarship |

Simon Fraser University Signs Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity (COPE)

Simon Fraser University has signed the Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity (COPE). Simon Fraser University is the thirteenth institution to sign COPE.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Today Simon Fraser University joins 12 other leading post-secondary institutions as a signatory to the Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity (COPE). Open access makes scholarly and other content freely available online to all users, without barriers, such as subscriptions or pay-per-view/use costs. Signatories to this Compact agree to support new business models for the publication of open access journals. Specifically, the Compact commits each signatory to developing ways of underwriting reasonable publication charges for articles written by its faculty and published in fee-based open-access journals and for which other institutions would not be expected to provide funds.

Since February 2010, the SFU Library has operated an Open Access Fund. The Fund meets COPE requirements by covering many author-side fees for SFU researchers who publish in open access journals that charge such fees. The third such fund in Canada, SFU’s Open Access Fund has covered 22 articles to date. The SFU fund is part of a set of SFU-based programs that support open access. The Library hosts the SFU institutional repository where the digital scholarly output of the university is collected and maintained. The Library partners with the SFU-based Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing, along with Stanford University and the University of British Columbia to develop and maintain the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) suite of software – Open Journal Systems (OJS), Open Conference Systems (OCS), Open Harvester Systems (OHS) and soon Open Monograph Press (OMP). The Library also hosts over 250 journals using OJS with many having adopted an open access publishing model.

Dr Mario Pinto, Vice President for Research, articulates the philosophy underlying SFU’s commitment as follows: “SFU is a recognized leader in the use of innovative technologies and initiatives that enhance and simplify access to scholarly knowledge. We were one of the first Canadian universities to embrace open access publishing. By making the results of research freely available, we stand to gain the maximum benefit from publicly-funded research investment by facilitating the transfer of knowledge and stimulating creative thought.” Simon Fraser University consistently ranks among the top research universities in Canada in terms of sponsored research income, publication rates and impact factors. In 2010, SFU placed fourth in Canada and 66 out of 6000 higher education institutes from across the globe in the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities.

Arizona State University Librarians Assembly Passes Open Access Resolution

The Librarians Assembly of the Arizona State University Libraries has passed an open access resolution.

Here's an excerpt:

Specifically, we resolve:

  1. To disseminate our scholarship as broadly as possible. We endeavor to make our scholarly work openly accessible in conformance with open access principles. Whenever possible, we make our scholarship available in digital format, online, and free of charge.
  2. To grant ASU Libraries a Creative Commons "Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States" license to each of our scholarly works to allow the ASU Libraries the right to archive and make publicly available the full text of our scholarly works via the ASU Libraries' digital repository.
  3. To deposit the author's final version of our scholarly work in the digital repository as soon as is possible, recognizing that some publishers may impose an embargo period.
  4. To seek publishers whose policies allow us to make our scholarly works freely available online. When a publisher's policies do not allow us to make our works freely available online, we resolve to engage in good faith negotiations with the publisher to allow deposit of pre- or post-print versions of our scholarly work in the digital repository.
  5. To promote Open Access on campus and assist scholars in making their research openly available.

| Digital Scholarship |

SPARC Profiles Four Scientists Involved in Open Access Movement

SPARC has profiled four scientists involved in open access movement: Jonathan Eisen, Michael Eisen, Josh Buckholtz, and Neil Buckholtz.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

In celebration of Open Access Week (October 18-24), SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) is showcasing the stories of two exceptional families who have embraced Open Access as a value and have advanced their own work — though not always without reservations. The personal stories of brothers Jonathan and Michael Eisen (both evolutionary biologists), along with Neil Buckholtz and his son, Josh (neuroscientists), grappling with the pros and cons of Open Access are now profiled on the SPARC Web site.

As a teenager, Josh Buckholtz asked his father, Neil, endless questions about science. Neil is a neuroscientist at the NIH National Institute on Aging and Chief of the Dementias of Aging Branch. Josh, 33, is completing his Ph.D in neuroscience at Vanderbilt University.  Together they share a passion to unlock the mysteries of the brain, and are pioneers who advocate for Open Access in their area of research. Neil helped conceive the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI), which has openly shared data — making every single Alzheimer’s-related research finding public immediately online. Josh is a review editor at Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, an online open-access journal published by the Frontiers Research Foundation.

Science has always been an integral part of the lives of the Eisen brothers.  Their parents and grandfather were all working scientists. As kids, Jonathan was fascinated with bugs and Michael was a math whiz who liked to program computers. Their career paths eventually converged, with both working as evolutionary biologists in California. Michael was the first of the pair of siblings to embrace Open Access, as the founder of the Public Library of Science (PLoS). He helped convince Jonathan, initially skeptical of open sharing of his scientific work, to join in his efforts to push for free access to research. Jonathan was on the first editorial board of PLoS Biology and has been an outspoken advocate of Open Access since 2003. Even their mother, Laura, now a professor who teaches chemistry and biochemistry at George Washington University, also promotes Open Access, rounding out the family affair.

"The compelling, personal stories of individual scientists who are pursuing Open Access to their works — and the works they need access to — are powerful examples of why adoption of Open Access is growing," says Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC, which is the lead organizer of Open Access Week. "Scientists on the front lines of research are keenly aware of the limitations that access places on the ability of research to move forward. And, as Michael Eisen notes, it all starts with walking the walk; if you don’t  choose an open-access option yourself, how can you convince your family it's a good idea? How can you possibly convince anyone else to give it a try? For both the Eisen and the Buckholtz families, Open Access is a matter of values — and a moving family affair."

| Digital Scholarship |

Special OA Issue of New Review of Academic Librarianship on Dissemination Models in Scholarly Communication

The New Review of Academic Librarianship has published a special issue on dissemination models in scholarly communication. All of the articles are open access.

Here's a selection of articles

| Digital Scholarship |

Over 50 Open Access Policies Registered in ROARMAP to Date in 2010

Over 50 open access policies have been registered in ROARMAP (Registry of Open Access Repository Material Archiving Policies) so far in 2010.

Here's a selection of approved policies:

Institutional

Departmental/School

Theses

| Digital Scholarship |

Australian National University Adopts Open Access Policy

The Australian National University has adopted an open access policy. The policy is embodied in three documents: (1) "Guidelines: Depositing Scholarly Work to the ANU Research Repository," (2) "Policy: Code of Practice for Scholarly Publication and Dissemination at ANU," and (3) "Policy: Intellectual Property."

Here's an excerpt from the "Policy: Intellectual Property":

Section 6. Terms of Publication: Open Access

6.1 The object of this Section is to promote the availability of Scholarly Works Created within the University free or at a low cost to Members and the public in accordance with Open Access Principles, without causing unreasonable detriment to the creating Member.

6.2 A Member who Creates a Scholarly Work must, when it is accepted by a publisher for publication or otherwise the Member deems the work ready for publication, provide a copy of the Scholarly Work to the University.

6.3 Subject to Sub-section 6.4, copies of Scholarly Works received by the University under this Section may be made published by the University to Members or the public.

6.4 If the Member reasonably believes that the exercise by the University of rights under Sub-section 6.3 may:

a) impede the Member's ability to disseminate the Scholarly Work by publication through a third party or otherwise;

(b) result in unreasonable financial loss to the Member; or

(c) impede collaboration with co-authors outside the University,

the Member may, when providing the work to the University, indicate that the work may not be published by the University or it may not be published by the University for a specified time.

| Digital Scholarship |

Trinity College Dublin Adopts Open Access Policy

Trinity College Dublin has adopted an open access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

In a move aimed at broadening access to its research and scholarship, Trinity College Dublin has adopted a policy to make its scholarly articles available to the public for free and open online access. The new policy confirms Trinity's commitment to disseminating its research outputs and scholarship as widely as possible. This move places Trinity at the forefront of academic institutions worldwide that are pioneering the move to Open Access.

Trinity's Dean of Research, Dr David Lloyd said: "Knowledge must be accessible widely if its benefits are to impact on society. Trinity is proud to make the work of our world class researchers and scholars available on open access. This policy means that the institutional supports will be in place to assist our researchers in making their work freely available.”

Under the new policy, faculty authors give TCD nonexclusive permission to disseminate their journal articles and other scholarly publications for open access through TARA, Trinity's Access to Research Archive. The policy covers all scholarly articles, peer reviewed conference papers, reports and TCD research theses. The deposit of books, book chapters and datasets associated with published research is strongly encouraged.

TCD's Open Access policy is the first such policy adopted by an Irish university and is the result of an ongoing partnership between TCD Library and its Faculty to capture the intellectual outputs of the University, facilitate access to them via the Web and maintain and preserve that access into the future. TCD's resolution is similar to those adopted by the universities of Harvard, Stanford, and MIT, but differs from those policies in that it does not require faculty members to retain copyright to their publications. Instead, it works within the boundaries of scholarly publishers' copyright policies (up to 95% of these publishers allow authors to make some version of their papers freely accessible).

The new policy was approved unanimously at Trinity's recent Research Committee meeting and will take immediate effect.

Open Access policies have been adopted by over 96 universities worldwide and 46 research funding councils. Major research funders such as the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the Wellcome Trust, the European Research Council and all UK research funding councils have mandated Open Access, as have almost all Irish funders (such as the Irish Research Council for Science Engineering and Technology (IRCSET), Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and the Higher Education Authority (HEA)). Last year, Dublin Institute of Technology became the first Irish Higher Education Institution to adopt an Open Access policy.

Here's an excerpt from the policy:

To assist the University in providing Open Access to all scholarly papers published by its members of staff and research students, each staff member and research student will provide, immediately upon acceptance for publication, an electronic copy of the final peer-reviewed draft of each article at no charge to the appropriate representative of the Provost's Office in an appropriate format (such as PDF) specified by the Provost's Office. This can be done either by depositing it directly in TARA via the Research Support System or by emailing it to the Library to be deposited in our open access institutional repository on the author's behalf. Metadata will be made publicly available immediately; open access to the full text paper will be available as soon as is practicable, and not later than six months after publication. Embargos will be applied as necessary.

In order to support our researchers to comply with funders' Open Access mandates and in keeping with College's Information Systems Policy Guidelines and its requirement to reduce duplication of the creation of the same data, when metadata and papers are deposited in TARA the Library will undertake to assist with the deposit and/or enable harvesting of scholarly publications to other repositories (eg PubMed Central) as required by funders such as NIH, Wellcome Trust, SFI (life sciences), and HRB. Compliance with this policy automatically confers compliance with the IRCSET, HEA, European Research Council and SFI mandates.

The policy will apply to all scholarly articles, peer reviewed conference papers, reports and TCD research theses written while the person is a member of staff or a research student except for any publications completed before the adoption of this policy. The deposit of books, book chapters and datasets associated with published research is strongly encouraged. The Library will undertake to develop and monitor a plan for a service or mechanism that will render compliance with this policy as convenient for our researchers as possible.

| Digital Scholarship |

Harvard Signs Budapest Open Access Initiative and Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities

Harvard University has signed the Budapest Open Access Initiative and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Harvard is committed to making research freely and widely available and working with other organizations to support this goal. Harvard’s endorsement of these two proclamations expresses the university’s support for the principles of open access, consistent with other policy actions that the university has undertaken, including enactment of open access policies in our faculties, development of open access repositories for distributing Harvard research, and support for open access journals through leadership in the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity.

| Digital Scholarship |

"Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research"

Yassine Gargouri et al. have published "Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research" in PLoS ONE.

Here's an excerpt:

Background

Articles whose authors have supplemented subscription-based access to the publisher's version by self-archiving their own final draft to make it accessible free for all on the web (“Open Access”, OA) are cited significantly more than articles in the same journal and year that have not been made OA. Some have suggested that this “OA Advantage” may not be causal but just a self-selection bias, because authors preferentially make higher-quality articles OA. To test this we compared self-selective self-archiving with mandatory self-archiving for a sample of 27,197 articles published 2002-2006 in 1,984 journals.

Methodology/Principal Findings

The OA Advantage proved just as high for both. Logistic regression analysis showed that the advantage is independent of other correlates of citations (article age; journal impact factor; number of co-authors, references or pages; field; article type; or country) and highest for the most highly cited articles. The OA Advantage is real, independent and causal, but skewed. Its size is indeed correlated with quality, just as citations themselves are (the top 20% of articles receive about 80% of all citations).

Conclusions/Significance

The OA advantage is greater for the more citable articles, not because of a quality bias from authors self-selecting what to make OA, but because of a quality advantage, from users self-selecting what to use and cite, freed by OA from the constraints of selective accessibility to subscribers only. It is hoped that these findings will help motivate the adoption of OA self-archiving mandates by universities, research institutions and research funders.

| Digital Scholarship |

"Implementing Open Access: Policy Case Studies"

Chris Armbruster has self-archived "Implementing Open Access: Policy Case Studies" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

A first generation of open access policy development and implementation is coming to a close. It is thus possible to begin evaluation. Evaluating implementation establishes evidence, enables reflection, and may foster the emergence of a second generation of open access policies.

This study is based on a small number of cases, examining the implementation of open access around the world. Some of the pioneer institutions with open access mandates have been included, as well as some newer cases. The emergence of the new stakeholders in publishing is examined, such as digital repositories, research funders and research organisations.

Because this is a groundbreaking study, no claim is made that the results are representative. The emphasis is on variety and on defining a methodological standard. Each case is reconstructed individually on the basis of public documents and background information, and supported by interviews with professionals responsible for open access implementation.

| Digital Scholarship |

Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) Issues Statement on Open Scholarship

The Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) has issued a statement on open scholarship. CAUL has also established COSI (CAUL Open Scholarship Initiative).

Here's an excerpt:

CAUL and its members seek to facilitate Open Scholarship by:

  • Collaborating with researchers, research institutions and publishers to raise awareness of the principles, practice and benefits of open access publishing.
  • Working with researchers and others to enable appropriate open access to both their published works and their primary research data.
  • Advocating and implementing policies to ensure fair use of copyrighted information for educational and research purposes.
  • Cooperating with the Australian Government to improve access to scholarly information through maximising the amount of information in the public domain or otherwise available without economic restriction through open access to publicly funded research findings and data.
  • Developing infrastructure components, including institutional repositories, that will facilitate open access to scholarly information

| Digital Scholarship |

JISC Open Access Week Microsite

JISC has established an Open Access Week microsite.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Interactive resources for vice chancellors, senior managers and heads of information services will help them explore open access publishing from today as part of an international week of events involving over 60 countries.

JISC is bringing advice on implementing open access to the attention of universities and research institutions through a series of briefing papers, interviews and web resources released each day this week on a special site. The schedule of topics for the week's resources is:

Monday: Putting open access policy in place
Tuesday: Making an open access policy effective
Wednesday: Funding open access developments
Thursday: Measuring the benefits of open access
Friday: Open access copyright and licensing

| Digital Scholarship |

University of Tromsø Adopts Open Access Policy

The University of Tromsø in Norway has adopted an open access policy.

Here's the English translation:

Free access to scientific results is an important prerequisite for a well-functioning democracy, for the free exchange of opinions and to enable science to be a tool for the development of society and industry. The University of Tromsø has as its goal that all scientific publications from the university shall be made available either in an Open Access journal or in an institutional repository. Hence, the University of Tromsø will adhere to the following basic principles of Open Access to scientific results.

  • Self-archiving: The University of Tromsø has as its general rule that students and researchers shall self-archive their publications in Munin, the university’s institutional repository. Publications will be made available through Munin within the constraints of the agreements the authors have made with the publisher and publishers’ principles for self-archiving. The University Library of Tromsø has the responsibility for investigating and ensuring compliance with publishers’ policies and other questions regarding intellectual property rights in this context.
  • Choice of publishing venue: The University of Tromsø has as its general rule that students and researchers shall – provided publications are of equal scientific worth and stature – choose publishing venues that provide the freest access to the publications, either through having a positive attitude to self-archiving or by being an Open Access publishing venue.
  • The University as a publisher: The University shall endeavour to make journals and other publications published by the University Open Access publications. It is a goal that all publications published by the University shall permit self-archiving, and that self-archiving of the final published version (publisher’s PDF) shall be encouraged.

| Digital Scholarship |

SPARC Announces Start of Open Access Week 2010

SPARC has announced the start of Open Access Week 2010.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Today marks the start of Open Access Week 2010, as thousands of scholars, faculty, and students in nearly 90 countries worldwide participate in events to raise awareness and advance understanding of the benefits of Open Access (OA). The week features the voices of top researchers who have stepped forward with first-hand accounts of how Open Access to research has positively impacted them and their ability to do their work.  In opening remarks today, OA Week organizers note:

"The exciting opportunity we have with this year's Open Access Week stems from the fact that Open Access is mature enough that good examples now exist of what you can do as a scholar in an open-access enabled world that you simply can't do in a closed environment."

With these words, Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition and organizer of OA Week), tees up the official 2010 Open Access Week Online Kick-off Event. Leading the event is pioneering Open Access advocate Dr. Harold Varmus, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who currently directs the U.S. National Cancer Institute. Varmus is joined by Dr. Cameron Neylon, a biophysicist and open research advocate; Dr. Mona Nemer, professor and vice-president for research at the University of Ottawa; Dr. Roger Wakimoto, Director of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research; and a host of other leading researchers from around the globe. This recorded event can be viewed online at http://www.vimeo.com/15881200 by anyone, in any time zone, on any day during OA Week.

Presenters paint a clear picture of how Open Access has contributed to changing the research landscape and point to opportunities that lay ahead. Dr. Varmus describes Open Access as an "incredibly important development in the history of science," and adds:

"Open access publishing… establishes the framework in which a much wider repertoire of adventures can take place… All of these adventures are tremendously exciting because they markedly enrich the experience of being a scientist, of reading the work of others, and of exchanging views with others in the scientific community."

Dr. Neylon notes how popular news stories now highlight a growing amount of research published in open-access journals, which make that material directly available to people who want to dig deeper:

"We've made more of this available to people, to form their own opinions, but at the same time they're now going to expect to be able to contribute back, to be able to bring their expertise to the research process."

He suggests that continuing to reach a wider community, but also "really engaging" with them, should be the focus of Open Access advocates in the coming years.

Dr. Arianna Betti, professor of philosophy at VU University Amsterdam, describes the open-access Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and its rapid entry update process: "This model increases collaboration, puts collective intelligence at work, and speeds up research."

The Kick-Off Event, along with the voices of a large international host of researchers, will be highlighted in Open Access Week programs everywhere and is now available through the Open Access Week Web site at www.openaccessweek.org/video.

A global event now entering its fourth year, Open Access Week (October 18 to 24) is an opportunity for the academic and research community to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access (OA), to share ideas with colleagues, and to inspire wider participation in establishing Open Access as a new norm in scholarship and research. Research funding agencies, academic institutions, research organizations, non-profits, businesses, and others use as a valuable platform to launch expanded open-access publication funds, institution-wide open-access policies, and new reports on the societal and economic benefits of OA.

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