Open Access: an introduction

Editor's Notes

• #3: Canada will be implementing a Tri-Agency Open Access publishing policy sometime in the near future – likely later this month This will affect about 150 Brock researchers who receive funding from those agencies > so I hope the Library and ORS can work together to support our researchers during this transition Canada will be joining major nations including US, UK, EU, Australia, who have implemented mandating Open Access to taxpayer-funded research Triggered by: -ethical imperative > research funded by taxpayers should be available to taxpayers -financial imperative > journal publishing is a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, with huge profit margins; in today’s era of shrinking academic budgets, we can no longer to afford to pay the publishers what they want
• #5: Key features: -immediate access with no user fees -But, since there is no such thing as free publishing, OA publishers finance editorial production with various means, including charging article processing fees, selling advertising, or other means. -the key distinction is who pays – it’s not the user Drivers: -ethical imperative > research funded by taxpayers should be available to taxpayers -financial imperative > journal publishing is a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, with huge profit margins; in today’s era of shrinking academic budgets, we can no longer to afford to pay the publishers what they want
• #7: Scholarly communication is a rapidly changing environment Open Access publishers are entering a journal market which always has been dominated by subscription publishers - at the same time, researchers are experimenting with new ways of making their work more accessible
• #9: Market share: in the past 10 years, OA journal publishing has increased its relative share of all j publishing by about 1 per cent per year. In 2011, about 17 per cent of 1.66 M articles published and indexed in Scopus were OA (including 5 % with 12 mo embargo)
• #11: Aligned with growth in OA publishing, policies are being established to promote and guide how OA works at various levels including institutional and national – e.g some institutions, such as Concordia, have policies mandating that researchers must deposit their articles in their IR or give reasons why not.
• #12: Internationally, Canada is playing ‘catch up’to US, UK, EU, Australia: -UK - RCUK Policy on Open Access – 2012 funded researchers must publish final published version in either immediate OA + archive OR final manuscript in any repo within either 6 (STEM) or 12 mos (SSH) - Australia – Australian Research Council OA Policy “any publications arising from an ARC supported research project must be deposited into an open access institutional repository within a twelve (12) month period from the date of publication.” Early 2013 US Fair Access to Scientific Technology Research Act (FASTR) –require OA j manuscripts repo deposit for agencies with annual research expenditures of $100M +; max 6 month embargo EU – funded articles must be OA by publisher immediately, or by researcher via IR within 6 mos China – National Natural Science Foundation announced in May 2014 that funded papers must be archived within 12 mos
• #13: Canada = -tri council – SSHRC, CIHR and NSERC working towards a harmonized OA policy; goal by fall 2014 -currently: -SSHRC & NSERC “encourages” OA -CIHR: As of January 1, 2008, researchers must make papers OA thru publisher or IR within 12 mos
• #16: I can provide a list of Canadian libraries with OA funds that I compiled and point you to another list from SPARC that includes US libraries
• #27: “Open access increases cites to the best content (top-ranked journals or articles in upper quintiles of citations within a volume) but reduces cites to lower-quality content.”
• #33: This article was funded by Brock’s Open Access fund. I worked with the author to find a suitable OA venue and suggested Cancer Cell International. It was a good fit and her article was accepted July, published in January. It created a very strong reaction including significant positive media coverage and social media sharing. This kind of impact – sharing critical research results which can affect people’s lives – really highlights the significance of Open Access. My role in funding the article and supporting the author made me feel really good.