Open Access explained

Pocock House Library
235 Southwark Bridge Road
London SE1 6NP
library@lsclondon.co.uk
Open Access
explained
G. Gabriel
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

What is “Open Access”?
It’s the availability of digital literature,
free of charge and free of most
copyright and licensing restrictions so
that people can read, download, copy,
distribute, print, link or use without
financial, legal, or technical barriers.

What is the Open Access
movement?
It’s a global movement to make scientific
and scholarly literature openly accessible
online to all users, free of charge so that
everyone benefits from the dissemination
of knowledge and information.

Factors for OA emergence
• Exponential growth of information and the need to
access information;
• New ways to store/share information using the WWW;
• Divergence between authors’ and editors’ interests;
• Editors monopoly of scientific publications;
• Struggle by many academic institutions to provide
access to information while dealing with budget cuts and
increasing journals prices.

Source: http://icis.ucdavis.edu/?page_id=22

Publishing in the past
Source: http://www.ansp.org/explore/online-exhibits/stories/the-philosophical-transactions

Initialimage©LucaBarcellona
Researchers give their articles to
publishers for FREE or have to pay
themselves to get published.
Researchers
peer review
for FREE.
Universities and other institutions
pay for access to journals.
Researchers give their copyrights
to publishers for FREE.
Publishers get articles, copyrights,
and labour for FREE, and then
charge huge fees for access!
Publishing today

Journal publishing is a
big business!
(Bosh et al., 2013)

Journal publishing is a
big business!

The costs of
journal
subscription
(Association of Research
Libraries, 2012).
Journal prices are
increasing at an
alarming rate, straining
academic library
budgets.

Open access to
scholarly journal
articles
and other
scholarly
materials!

• Consortiums (e.g. SPARC - Scholarly Publishing and
Academic Resources Coalition);
• Open Access Journals (e.g. The Bryn Mawr Classical
Review, Psycoloquy);
• Open archives (like the arXiv.org created in 1991 by
Paul Ginsparg);
• Free online databases (e.g. Medline);
• Online institutional repositories for published or
unpublished research.
Early initiatives

• OpenAIRE – Open Access Infrastructure for Research
in Europe www.openaire.eu
• COAR – Confederation of Open Access Repositories
www.coar-repositories.org
• “Horizon 2020”, and “Open Access Pilot FP7” –
European Commission policy on OA
http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/
• “Open Research Data Pilot” – European Commission
policy on open data;
• RCUK (Research Councils) policy on OA
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/openaccess/
Recent initiatives

To publish articles/data in OA journals,
making them immediately and freely
available.

To publish in a traditional journal but
making the article/data available in an
institutional website, repository or
archive.

Publication process
Research
results
Decision of
forms of
protection (e.g.
Patenting)
Dissemination by
publication of
research results
Not
Open
Access
Open
Access
Green OA
Gold OACommercialisation
of research results

 Toll-free access to information;
 Data (re)use;
 Greater control over one’s work (no need to relinquish
copyright to publishers, and publishers don't dictate
copying, sharing, etc.)
 Quicker publication and diffusion of research;
 Greater research efficiency through early discussion of
findings;
 Increased visibility (more readers, more scholarly
impact, more citations…);
OA benefits for authors

 Research easier to link (e.g. blogs, Social Media),
which increases worldwide awareness;
 Increased findability via search engines;
 Possibility of higher citation rates in a shorter period of
time;
 New possibilities for international collaboration;
 Safe archive of research.
OA benefits for authors
Annotated bibliography of articles on the
OA advantage:
http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html

 Cost benefits since there is no need to pay researchers,
articles and journal subscriptions;
 Better financial management of R&D;
 Efficient use of research previously done in new
projects or research;
 Promotion on international/inter-disciplinary
cooperation;
 Faster publication of research, increasing the public
recognition;
 Birth of new industries, products and services;
 Faster development of applications for the general
public.
OA benefits for institutions

 Access to research results that otherwise would not be
available, which can contribute to better informed
individuals, voters, doctors, teachers, etc.;
 Efficient use of public funding and more transparency in
their attribution;
 Increase in jobs due to new industries, products and
services;
 Possibility of collective involvement in research;
 Improvement of research monitoring, evaluation and
management.
OA benefits for society

“Todd turned publicly
available data into a
global effort to help
identify new anti-
malaria drugs. He did
this by creating an
open-source
collaborative involving
scientists, college
students and others
from around the world.”
(Accelerating Science
Award Program, 2013)

Jack Andraka (15 years
old) used OA articles to
research and create a
new early detection
dipstick test for
pancreatic cancer that:
• is 168 times faster
than current tests;
• is 400 times more
sensitive;
• costs 3 cents per test
to produce;
• takes 5 minutes to run.
(Tucker, 2012)

A team of researchers
from IUCN “developed
an innovative method
for calculating the
value of ecotourism for
endangered animals,
based on freely
available data from the
International Union for
Conservation of
Nature.” (Accelerating
Science Award
Program, 2013)

A growing number of universities have OA policies:
Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, MIT, University of
Kansas, Princeton, etc.
Some funding agencies have OA mandates:
National Institutes of Health, Gates Foundation,
MacArthur Foundation, Wellcome Trust, Research
Councils UK, etc.
Some states and countries have OA policies!
E.g., Illinois, Ireland.
Who thinks OA is
important?

Gargouri et al. (2010) tested a sample of 27,197
articles published 2002–2006 in 1,984 journals.
The authors concluded:
“The OA advantage is greater for the more
citable articles (...) 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.”
Impact factor: OA
journals vs non-OA

(Harnad et. al., 2004)
Impact factor: OA
journals vs non-OA

If OA journals are free to read, how do they cover
costs?
• Volunteers;
• Institutional subsidies;
• Institutional memberships;
• Advertising;
• Fees for print or premium editions;
• Publication fees;
• Endowments and donations;
• A combination of the above.
Business model for OA
journals
For more information:
http://oad.simmons.e
du/oadwiki/OA_journ
al_business_models

Some OA journals charge publication fees.
Some do not.
Fees are not necessarily paid from researchers' pockets:
• Some institutions pay fees for their employees.
• Grants can be used to pay publication fees.
• Some journals waive fees for those who cannot afford
them.
Publication fees?

• Subscription-based journals that give authors the
option to pay a fee to make their individual articles
permanently OA (e.g., Taylor & Francis’s “Open
Select” option, Springer’s “Open Choice” option);
• A given issue is a combination of OA and non-OA
articles;
• Some publishers decrease the subscription price
based on how many authors pay to go OA.
Hybrid journals

www.doaj.org
OA tools you should know
NOTE: DOAJ also contains
information on OA journal
preservation program and OA
journal quality standards.

www.doabooks.org
http://doabooks.wordpress.com

www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo
Directory of publisher
policies around OA.
Search can be done
by journal or
publisher in order to
learn about
copyright and self-
archiving policies.

www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo
There are currently (Oct.
2014) 1,696 publishers in
the RoMEO database, of
which:

Very good!

Quite good!

Very bad!

www.openaccessweek.org

http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Mai
n_Page

http://open-access.net

Advice for authors
Research any journal/publisher you’re considering.
(Quality? Peer reviewing process? Copyright policy?)
If you have the right to self-archive, exercise that right.
If you don’t have the right to self-archive, request it.
Choose the best publishing venue for you, your research, and
your career... but also think about the system you’re contributing
to and the system you want to contribute to.
If you need to negotiate your contract, try the Scholar’s
Copyright Addendum Engine that will help you generate a PDF
form that you can attach to a journal publisher's copyright
agreement to ensure that you retain certain rights:
http://scholars.sciencecommons.org

Subject repositories: Business
Corporate Governance Network (CGN)
http://www.ssrn.com/en/index.cfm/cgn/
EconStor www.econstor.eu/
Subject repositories: Economics
AgEcon Search http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/
Munich Personal RePEc Archive http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/
Subject repositories: Law
Bepress Legal Repository http://law.bepress.com/
Legal Scholarship Network (LSN)
www.ssrn.com/en/index.cfm/lsn/
Where to self-archive?

Subject repositories: Social Science
Digital Repositories E-Science Network www.dresnet.net/
Digital Repository of the Institute for Population and Social
Research http://ipsr.healthrepository.org/
Subject repositories: Computer Science
CiteSeerX http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu
Computing Research Repository http://arxiv.org/corr/home
Curious? See a list of subject repositories at:
http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Disciplinary_repositories

Institutional Repository: online database offered by an
institution to collect, preserve, and make freely
available scholarly journal articles and other
works created by that institution’s community.
Open access institutional repositories can “serve as
tangible indicators of a university’s quality and to
demonstrate the scientific, societal, and economic
relevance of its research activities, thus increasing the
institution’s visibility, status, and public value.” (Crow,
2002, p. 1)

“There are
more things in
heaven and
earth...”
Hamlet (1.5.167-8)

The OER term was
firstly coined at
UNESCO’s 2002
Forum on Open
Courseware.
Other ‘open’ initiatives
 Open Educational Resources
OER are freely accessible, openly licensed
documents and media that are useful for
teaching, learning, assessing, as well as
for research purposes.
E.g.: MIT OpenCourseWare: an initiative of
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
to make available all educational materials
from its undergraduate and graduate level
courses. http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

 Open Data
Data – factual records used as
primary sources for scientific
research (OECD, 2007) – should
be freely available to everyone to
be used and reused without
restrictions from copyright, patent
or other mechanisms of control.
E.g.: the World Data Center system was created by the
International Council of Science to archive and publicise
data produced worldwide. www.icsu-wds.org/

 Open Source
Open source promotes universal
access via free license to a
product’s blueprint or source
code, fostering worldwide
collaboration and improvement.
E.g.
Apache Software Foundation www.apache.org/
ARPANET (Internet’s predecessor)
Linux www.linux.com/
C++ (programming language) http://isocpp.org/

Accelerating Science Award Program, 2013. ASAP award recipients. Available at http://asap.plos.org/finalists/global-
collaboration-to-fight-malaria/ [Accessed 15 October 2014].
Association of Research Libraries, 2012. ARL Statistics 2010-11 (2012). Available:
http://www.arl.org/stats/annualsurveys/arlstats/arlstats11.shtml. Accessed 7 Feb 2013 [Accessed 17 October 2014).
Bosch, S. and Henderson, K., 2013. The winds of change: periodicals price survey 2013. Library Journal [Online] 21 July.
Available at http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2013/04/publishing/the-winds-of-change-periodicals-price-survey-2013 [Accessed
15 October 2014].
Branin, J. and Case, M., 1998. Reforming scholarly publishing in the sciences: a librarian perspective. Notices of the
American Mathematical Society, 45 (4), pp.475-486.
Budapest Open Access Initiative, 2002. Budapest Open Access Initiative. Available at
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml [Accessed 5 October 2014].
Crow, R., (2002). The case for institutional repositories: a SPARC position paper. Washinton D.C.: ARL. Available at
http://www.sparc.arl.org/sites/default/files/media_files/instrepo.pdf [Accessed 17 October 2014].
Gargouri Y, Hajjem C, Larivière V, Gingras Y, Carr L, 2010. Self-selected or sandated, Open Access increases citation
impact for higher quality research. PLoS ONE 5(10). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0013636
Harnad, S., Brody, T., Vallieres, F., Carr, L., Hitchcock, S., Gingras, Y., Oppenheim, C., Stamerjohanns, H., and Hilf, E.,
2004. The access/impact problem and the green and gold roads to open access: an update. Serials Review, Vol. 34, pp.
36-40.
OECD. (2007). OECD Principles and guidelines for access to research from public funding. Available at
www.oecd.org/sti/sci-tech/38500813.pdf [Accessed 5 October 2014].
Sompel, V. and Lagoze, C., 2000. The Santa Fe convention of the Open Archives Initiative. D-lib Magazine [Online] 6(2).
Available at www.dlib.org/dlib/february00/vandesompel-oai/02vandesompel-oai.html [Accessed 5 October 2014].
Tucker, A. (2012). Jack Andraka, the teen prodigy of pancreatic cancer. Smithsonian Magazine [Online]. Available at
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/jack-andraka-the-teen-prodigy-of-pancreatic-cancer-135925809
[Accessed 15 October 2014].
Bibliography

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
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235 Southwark Bridge Road
London
SE1 6NP
library@lsclondon.co.uk
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