Freeing up Research with Open Access

Editor's Notes

• #2: Paper presented at National Tertiary Learning and Teaching Conference, Bay of Plenty Polytechnic, October 1, 2015. Kia ora koutou katoa. Nau mai haere mai, welcome to this presentation about open access! One of the themes of this conference is around the sustainable future of education and I’m hoping that this session will show how open access can contribute to sustainability in a significant way. Or... As Ngahiwi Apanui reminded us in our keynote yesterday it is important that we involve ourselves in research and I’m hoping to show you that by freeing up research and the research process it makes it much easier to apply its findings to inform our teaching and learning practices.
• #3: So first up just an overview of what this session will cover or what you need to know about open access. What it is, origins, benefits, concerns, how make work openly accessible with creative commons licences, open access policies. I’m speaking to you from the perspective of a librarian, whose professional purpose centres around promoting the free flow of ideas and increasing access to information and facilitating the creation of new knowledge. As these ideas are central to the philosophy of open access, I’m unashamedly supportive of it. This is intended as a very general and basic overview of open access for those who don’t already know too much about it. Open Access 101, I am not an expert on the topic, just someone who is interested in open access and its possibilities. The focus of this session on open access publishing. There are two other branches of open access – open data and open educational resources. This presentation won’t be covering those branches, but as open educational resources may be of interest to some of you, I have provided some information is provided about it in the appendix of this presentation and the accompanying paper.
• #4: This is a simple and practical definition of open access – “ making published research freely available to anyone with an internet connection” (University of Auckland Libraries and Learning Services 2015). However there is just a little bit more to it than that. The fact that it is freely available online does not strictly make it “open access” Ok so it’s free of charge, and freely available on line. But how do you know if you have permission to copy, share, or remix it? What is also needed to make something open access is the removal of permission barriers to accessing it. Here’s another definition that encompasses that idea.
• #5: Peter Suber (2012), one of the gurus of the open access movement, defines open access literature as being “digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions” (p. 4). So here we have the inclusion of the concept of removing permission barriers.,. You don’t have to ask permisstion to use it because it’s been made free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. This is achieved by the inclusion of an open licence, which enables users to share, reuse and remix material without needing to ask permission from the copyright owner (CCANZ, 2014). The only restriction that remains is that authors retain the right to be acknowledged through proper attribution (Suber, 2012). Attribution is a must. It is worth pointing out that researchers do not receive payment, or royalties, for articles that are published in journals. You are probably all aware of that but it is worth pointing out.
• #7: Suber (2012) describes these articles as “royalty-free” (p. 17). Researchers are paid as an employee of an organization or as a recipient of a research grant, and do their work not for royalties, but to advance knowledge in their field, and for professional recognition. This provides the means for them to be able to publish their work in an open access way (Suber, 2012). They were never going to receive revenue from it…so it can be open access. This scholarly environment contrasts with the creative market where writers, musicians, and movie makers receive loyalties for sales of their work. In this environment there is not such a strong argument for an open access mode of delivery. But it doesn’t preclude it. For example textbooks, novels, music, video, multi-media and software could be open access if the creators believe that the benefits will exceed the value of royalties (Suber, 2015). Another important point to note about open access is that it does not equate with universal access (Suber 2012). Although cost and permission barriers are eliminated, other kinds of barriers may still limit access. These barriers can include filtering and censorship, language, digital accessibility for people with disabilities, and connectivity (Suber, 2015). Open access is a meaningless concept for people without access to computers or the Internet. So it’s not the cure all for everything but it is pretty cool nevertheless
• #8: There are two other important terms used to describe degrees of open access, “libre” and “gratis.” Gratis open access is available to read online free of charge, but it may not be free of copyright and licensing restrictions, so users must seek permission if they wish to go beyond fair use. Libre open access is both free of charge and expressly permits uses beyond fair use (Suber 2015) through the application of an open licence (CCANZ, 2014). These concepts are important to understand because sometimes publishers make a claim that their journals are “fully open access.” However often what they mean by this is that the access is gratis – freely available online, but not libre, or free of copyright restrictions. Only libre open access meets the requirements set out in major international statements on open access such as The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Science and Humanities (2003).
• #9: The Open Access movement is a response to a number of developments and challenges within scholarly communications For hundreds of years the system of scholarly communications has involved “research being created free of charge, edited and peer reviewed also free of charge, printed and published at cost and sold to libraries and research institutions to disseminate” (Yiotis, 2005). This is still the prevailing model for most scholarly publishing. Initially the publishers of the research were scholarly societies; however as the quantity of research grew, commercial publishers began to move into what they saw as a potentially lucrative market (Yiotis, 2005). By the end of the twentieth century, commercial publishing had become hugely profitable. In 2013 the estimated profit from STM journals was $US 11 billion (Ware & Mabey, 2015).
• #10: Estimate put Springer’s 2012 profit margin at 35% and Elsevier’s 2014 profit margin was 37% (Holcolme, 2015). When this is compared to Apple’s current profit margin of 29% and Google’s of 25%, academic publishing stands out as particularly lucrative (Holcolme, 2015; Rathemacher, 2015).
• #11: As the market developed, monopolies emerged and with these came regular and significant subscription increases (Yiotis, 2005). During the period 1986 to 2003, the price per subscription of serials rose by 215% (Association of Research Libraries, as cited in Panitch & Michalak, 2005). Alongside these developments there was a rapid increase in the number of peer reviewed journals. Subscription costs keep climbing and libraries are struggling to keep up with the costs and the increasing numbers of journals. Even Harvard University Library is no longer able to afford to continue renewing all of its journal subscriptions (Harvard University, 2012). In addition many academic libraries’ budgets are either frozen or reducing. This has led to a situation which some have described as a crisis (Yiotis, 2005; Palfrey, 2015). In New Zealand, much publicly funded research is not freely available and people have to pay to access it (Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand [CCANZ], 2015). One of the key drivers of the open access movement is that the public should have the right to be able to freely access and reuse research outputs they have paid for (CCANZ, 2015). Out of this environment, the global open access movement arose with the aim to make publicly funded scholarship freely available to everybody. Groups of interested people started working together and the first open journals were published in the late 1980s (Crawford, 2015b). The open access movement could not have developed without the Internet. Technology, especially the internet has increased the possibility and ease, and lowered the cost of dissemination. Open access has “built on the capacity of the Internet for free sharing with everyone and the scholarly tradition of giving away academic articles and peer review services” (Morrison, Salhab, Calvé-Genest, & Horava, 2015, p. 1). Another key moment in the open access movement was the creation of the Budapest Open Access Initiative in 2002 which “unified in a single statement and under a common name and purpose, the different terms that the many groups used for the same idea” (Yiotis, 2005, p. 160). In 2003 the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Science and Humanities was published “and momentum for OA started to build” (CCANZ, 2014, p. 3). “By 2011, 11% of the world's articles were being published in fully open-access journals” (Van Noorden, 2013).
• #12: Open access has benefits for students, teachers, institutions, libraries, publishers, communities, business and government. Benefits for students and teachers include free access to resources for those in both poor and rich countries, wherever the internet is available. Open access makes more knowledge available, makes it easier to obtain and share, and is an enabler of effective learning and teaching. Open access brings research out behind paywalls and makes accessible to anyone with an internet connection. As tuition prices continue to rise and internet adoption is widespread, it makes sense to open up knowledge to students and teachers. There is also no need to seek permission to copy, mix and share resources. Freedom to use and re-purpose research materials in new and interesting ways All that is required is proper attribution. This saves a lot of time. Students and teachers can easily share resources with each other and others round the world. Teachers can use the latest education research to inform their teaching practice, and keep up with the most recent developments in their fields, ensuring that students have the best available to them (Bloom, 2015). Open access also makes it easy to collaborate and work together
• #13: Open access benefits researchers because it opens up more knowledge beyond what is available in libraries or behind a publisher’s paywall. Many researchers work in educational institutions where only some journals are available through the library, and other researchers work in situations without access to an academic library at all. Another benefit for researchers is that publishing using an open access method provides greater exposure and a larger potential audience than publishing in a subscription based journal. Links to open access articles can be easily shared on personal and social networks such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. A related benefit is research impact. According to Björk and Solomon (2012), open access journals receive about as many citations as subscription journals. Analysis by Eysenbach (2006) of the impact of open access and non-open access articles from the same journal “showed that OA articles are cited earlier and are, on average, cited more often than non-OA articles” (p. 696). Another study of articles across four disciplines found that freely available articles have a greater research impact than those that are not (Antelman, 2004, p. 372). Results of a meta-analysis of studies on whether or not there is a citation advantage for open access articles - 46 out of 70 studies found that open access brings increased citations for research papers (17 showed no such advantage and 7 were inconclusive” (SPARC Europe, 2015) In addition there are many high impact open access journals such as PloS Biology which has a journal impact factor of 12.9 (AOASG, 2015b). Makes it easier to collaborate and share with other researchers.
• #14: Open access provides fairness for citizens who are able to access the results of research that they have funded through their taxes. Encourages lifelong learning Even if they are not interested in reading the research themselves they will benefit indirectly from others who apply the research findings. Open access hastens “the translation of research into new medicines, useful technologies, solved problems, and informed decisions that benefit everyone” (Suber, 2015). The benefit for the wider community, including business, is greater access to the results of publicly funded research providing “real opportunities to substantially further the progress of research and innovation” (Research Councils UK, 2012, para 2). CCANZ New Zealand (2014) states that open access can “unlock innovation and increase social, cultural and economic returns” and can foster the development of business that depends on research. The Human Genome Project (HUGO) provides evidence on how making research openly accessible stimulates business innovation. The results were made openly accessible in 2003. By 2010 the total value of the economic output generated was US $796 billion, from an original investment of US $3.8 billion. Every dollar invested generated economic activity worth $141 (Tripp & Grueber, 2011, p. 6). Governments, too, as funders of research gain an increased return on investment from the higher visibility, but also benefit because open access promotes democracy by sharing government information as widely as possible (Suber, 2015).
• #15: Benefits for institutions include enhanced reputation and a greater return on investment through wider availability of research, and higher national and international visibility (SPARC Europe, 2014). Additionally an institution which encourages open access can claim to be contributing to faster economic growth in its local community, by opening up research results to industry and other bodies. Open access also stimulates new partnerships, collaborations and has the potential to generate research income (SPARC Europe, 2014). Open access makes a significant contribution to the mission of higher education institutions to advance and share knowledge. Benefits for libraries include the ability to provide increased access to information for members, regardless of the library’s collection and budget constraints. There are also potential savings to be made if some subscriptions to journals are no longer required. Additionally, by supporting and encouraging researchers to choose open access publishing, libraries can help them to increase their audience and impact, as well as enhancing their institution’s research profile (Suber, 2015).
• #16: Types of open access There a two main ways in which researchers can make their work open access, “green open access” and “gold open access.”
• #17: Green open access With green open access, a version of a paper is placed in an institutional repository or a discipline specific repository. These open access repositories are databases where the use of metadata allows search engines to easily find material in them (Australasian Open Access Support Group [AOASG], 2015a). Green open access works alongside traditional publishing. Most publishers permit green open access by allowing an author’s pre-print and post-print versions to be placed in institutional repositories. A pre-print is any version before peer review and publication, usually the version submitted to a journal. A post-print is any version approved by peer review (Suber, 2015). Sometimes publishers will require that the publisher’s version must not be archived, and a link to the published version provided (University of Auckland Libraries and Learning Services, 2015). May be embargos Many researchers are unaware that most journal publishers permit green open access and Suber (2015) considers this “one of the best-kept secrets in scholarly publishing”. They are able to publish in any journal (open access or non-open access) that will accept their work and also place their work in an open access repository.
• #19: Gold open access With gold open access, a paper is made freely available online by a journal publisher. No charge for users. Gold open access is provided by either pure open access journals or by hybrid journals which offer a mix of open access and subscription based content (Suber, 2012). Open access journals pay their costs in a variety of ways. Quite a few journals charge an article processing charge (APC), sometimes known as an author side fee, which is either paid by the author or their employer or funding body. APCs are sometimes waived and many journals do not charge them at all (Crawford, 2015b). Some open access journals have income from advertising or value added services. Sometimes journals are subsidised by an institution RoMEO is a searchable database of publisher's policies regarding the self- archiving of journal articles on the web and in Open Access repositories. Articles are made openly accessible through the application of a CC licence
• #20: An internationally accepted and increasingly common way to provide consent to open access is by applying an open licence such as a Creative Commons licence. Without express consent, a work is protected by copyright and cannot be shared, or reused without permission from the copyright holder, until 50 years (or 70 years in some countries) after the death of the copyright holder. A Creative Commons licence permit others to share, reuse and remix their material legally. The licences are legally robust, free and easy to understand. There is a suite of different licences that provide a range of options between full “all rights reserve” copyright, at one end of the spectrum, to the “public domain” at the other end. All Creative Commons licences carry an attribution condition. People re-using the work must credit the original creator (CCANZ, 2014). Components BY, non commercial, share alike, no derivatives In New Zealand the non-profit group Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand administers the licences and provides information for the public on their website.
• #21: The Creative Commons Attribution licence – abbreviated as CC-BY – is the licence preferred by open access advocates - it permits re-use and remixing of works, including for commercial purposes on the condition that the original creator is attributed.
• #22: A range of concerns have been expressed about open access. One misconception (according to Suber, 2015) is that open access is vanity publishing of poor quality. However open access is merely a delivery mechanism and like conventional publishing, the open access publishing process can and does include rigorous quality controls. Suber (2015) points out that open access is “compatible with peer review and all the major OA initiatives for scientific and scholarly literature insist on its importance” (para. 11). Journal quality relates to the quality of authors, editors, referees, and this is independent of the journal’s delivery model (Suber, 2009). There are some open access journals of questionable quality (Beall, 2015), just as there are many of excellent quality. Another concern is about cost. Although open access literature is freely available to readers it is not free to produce. The costs of producing gold open access are sometimes met by charging APCs and the number of these being paid by universities is increasing exponentially (Earney, 2015). Systems are now being developed whereby the cost of a university’s APCs are offset against the subscription fees they pay to access a hybrid journal (Earney, 2015, para 5). Some of these journals have been accused of “double dipping” as they are receiving income from both APCs and journal subscriptions There are also many open access journals which do not charge APCs (Crawford, 2015a). An argument might be made that open access is not sustainable long term. However Suber (2015) expresses confidence that open access journals are economically viable because all of the costs including peer review, and dissemination are lower than what is paid for subscription-based journals. As the open access models grow, libraries will be able to make savings from the cancellation of subscription journals. A further concern is that open access threatens the viability of publishers and may put them out of business. However, according to the AOASG (2015b), “there is currently no evidence that depositing work in open access repositories causes journal cancellations. In high energy physics, where researchers have been archiving for over 21 years, the two main publishers have publicly acknowledged that they have seen no cancellations attributable to open access deposits” (para. 1). In fact open access may enhance the financial viability of a journal. It can provide greater visibility and discoverability of articles. Suber (2015) points out that if a journal is open access this can be leveraged to attract submissions, advertising, greater numbers of readers and higher citations. Additionally a wider audience and greater impact may make it more appealing to researchers and librarians (AOASG, 2015b). Suber (2015) points out that the aim of open access is not a destructive one of putting publishers out of business. “The purpose of OA is not to punish or undermine expensive journals, but to provide an accessible alternative and take full advantage of new technology —the internet— for widening distribution and reducing costs" (para. 16). Suber also notes that even if green open access were to take over from gold open access, the scholarly publishing industry is not the only industry to face challenges from alternative business models. The music and movie industries have had to adapt in response to digital disruption. The AOASG (2015b) expresses the view that those “companies which offer a service their customers want at a fair price will flourish” (para. 3). Consideration needs to be given to traditional indigenous knowledge when thinking about open access. There can be different access and use expectations based on the chain of custody of indigenous knowledge (Morehu, 2015). These expectations depend on the material itself and the local context from which it derives. Privacy and intellectual property issues should be considered, and tangata whenua consulted, before making indigenous knowledge open access. There are traditional knowledge licences starting to become available now which can help establish culturally appropriate forms of managing control and access (Local Contexts, 2015).
• #23: The open access movement has grown from strength to strength and many organizations are promoting open access and developing open access mandates. In 2012, a report was released in the UK recommending that funding bodies mandate gold open access and Creative Commons licences for all funded research (Finch 2012). The United States, Australia and the EU have all introduced similar policies (CCANZ, 2014). As CCANZ (2015) puts it “across the world, public funding bodies are insisting that all funded research be made freely available in order to increase public engagement, maximise innovation and accelerate the production of new knowledge” (para. 3). Although the New Zealand government has not made a similar mandate about research, “it has articulated a clear position on open access and open licensing to other publicly funded content and data” (CCANZ, 2014, p. 4). The New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing Framework advocates for the use of Creative Commons Attribution licenses for publicly funded copyright works (New Zealand Government, 2014). Many New Zealand researchers are choosing to publish in open access journals, and in 2010 the Council of New Zealand University Librarians (CONZUL) issued a statement on open access encouraging open scholarship. All New Zealand universities and most institutes of technology and polytechnics have a repository for their researchers’ outputs, and Lincoln University (2013) and the University of Waikato (2014) have specific open access policies.
• #24: In order to demonstrate commitment to open access and to leverage its benefits, it is recommended that Bay of Plenty Polytechnic develop open access policy and guidelines. This will encourage content produced by staff to be openly shared. Guidelines could include general principles on open access, the right of the institution to archive and make publicly accessible the full texts of all research publications, requirement to submit publications to an institutional repository, consideration of traditional indigenous knowledge, and encouragement of the use of a Creative Commons licence to show how material may be shared, reused and remixed. The Harvard Open Access Project (2015) has written a useful guide to developing an open access policy. Some examples of open access policies are listed in the appendices. Bay of Plenty Polytechnic does not currently have an institutional repository. All higher education institutions should have a repository to increase the visibility and impact of the research that is undertaken, and to give researchers the option of open access publishing. Bay of Plenty Polytechnic is intending to take part in the Performance Based Research Fund process so it will be even more important to have a repository as research outputs increase. There is free, open source software available to build and maintain an institutional repository, or proprietary systems are available. An alternative and simple option could be to use Digital New Zealand’s shared repository as several New Zealand polytechnics have done (Digital New Zealand, 2015).
• #25: This paper has provided a general overview of open access and shown that it provides a range of benefits for a wide range of people in education and beyond. Most publicly funded research can be made freely available without restriction. Open access can help an institution increase its value and reputation and provide greater impact and visibility for researchers. It can contribute to social and business innovation, economic growth, and the advance of democracy. It can reduce many barriers for both learners and teachers as they work to create new knowledge. In seeking to tertiary education sustainable and future proof, open access is a powerful tool. Another benefit I haven’t mentioned, and perhaps the best of all is that open access... just makes you feel good. On one hand when you’re doing research and you find open access material it feels good knowing you can copy share and remix it without needing to ask permission. And it feels great acknowledging an open access creator. And on the flip side, it feels good to free up your own research, , knowing that by making it openly accessible it is likely to get more exposure and be more widely read. Thanks for your time. Any questions?