This slideshow is a mash-up of http://www.slideshare.net/cirasella/you-know-what-you-write-but-do-you-know-your-rights and http://www.slideshare.net/cirasella/open-access-putting-the-public-back-in-publication

1. Scholarly Publishing Mash-Up:
Protecting Your Rights As an Author +
Putting the Public Back in Publication
Jill Cirasella
jcirasella@gc.cuny.edu
The Graduate Center, CUNY
Slides at: http://tinyurl.com/OAmashup

2. Where Do Public Intellectuals Publish?
Lots of venues!
Today’s focus:
 scholarly journals
 popular magazines
 newspapers
 books
What’s the difference? Whether or not author gets paid.

3. Scholarly Publishing Then

4. Scholarly Publishing Now

5. What was once difficult and costly
is now easy and inexpensive.
Do journal prices reflect this?
For the most part, no!

6. The traditional system
of scholarly communication
is outmoded, expensive,
and suboptimal.
And exploitative, too!

7. Cripplingly High Prices…
Journal prices are increasing
at an alarming rate, straining
academic library budgets.
From 1986 to 2011, serial
expenditures at research
libraries increased 402%.
(Book expenditures rose only
71% in the same period.)

8. Insanely High Profits!

9. Don’t Take My Word for It!
“Publishing obscure academic journals is
that rare thing in the media industry:
a licence to print money.”
Source: "Open sesame: Academic publishing." The Economist 14 Apr. 2012.
http://www.economist.com/node/21552574

11. “Sign here!”
http://youtu.be/GMIY_4t-DR0

12. Yes, many subscription-based scholarly
journals require authors to sign away
their rights to their own articles.
JAMA’s transfer agreement:

13. No, authors don’t always fully read and
understand what they’re required to sign.
Wiley’s transfer agreement:

14. Do authors WANT to give up
all of their rights to their work?

15. Do authors HAVE to give up
all of their rights to their work?

16. Three Kinds of Journals
1) Traditional Toll Access Journals
Subscription-based journals that require
authors to transfer copyright to the journal,
which then has exclusive rights to the article.

17. Three Kinds of Journals
2) Open Access Journals
(“Gold OA”)
Journals that automatically and immediately make
their articles available online to all at no cost.
(There are a variety of business models,
but the articles are always free to read.)
Gold OA journals do not take copyright.
They use Creative Commons licenses instead.

18. Three Kinds of Journals
3) Journals That Let Authors Share
(“Green OA”)
Journals (of any kind) that permit
authors to post (aka “self-archive”)
their articles in OA repositories.
Many of these journals do take copyright,
but “give back” some rights to the author.

19. Is Self-Archiving Allowed? Ugh…

20. Is Self-Archiving Allowed? Easier!
SHERPA/RoMEO
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/
Search by journal/publisher to learn
its copyright and self-archiving policies

21. Very Good...

22. Quite Good...

23. Not Great...

24. Very Bad...

25. Prevalence of Permission?
Among Publishers
SHERPA/RoMEO covers 2187 publishers as of April 2016.
79% allow some form of self-archiving.
For more information:
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/statistics.php

26. Prevalence of Permission?
Among Journals
Of the 18,000+ journals covered by SHERPA/RoMEO in Nov. 2011:
• 87% allow immediate self-archiving of some version of article
• 60% allow immediate self-archiving of post-refereed version
• 16% allow immediate self-archiving of published PDF
• Allowing for embargoes (usually 6 to 24 months), 94% allow
self-archiving of post-refereed versions
For more information:
http://romeo.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2011/11/24/

27. Beyond SHERPA/RoMEO
There’s more to a copyright agreement
than self-archiving policies!
Sometimes you need to read
the contract itself.

28. Can I Negotiate My Contract?
Sometimes.
Your best shot is the
Scholar’s Copyright Addendum Engine:
http://scholars.sciencecommons.org/

29. Can I Ask After the Fact?
Yes! (Ask for a sample!)
Dear Publisher,
I am writing to ask permission to mount a copy of an article of mine,
which was published in one of your journals, in the City University of
New York’s research repository, CUNY Academic Works…
If possible, I would like post the final, journal-braded PDF version. The
PDF version is preferable to my manuscript version because it maintains
consistency in appearance of the article wherever it is read and more
closely associates the article with the journal…

30. Suppose you have the right to
self-archive your article.
Where can you self-archive?
Where should you self-archive?

31. Where to Self-Archive?
Institutional Repositories
An institutional repository (IR) is an 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.
Of course, self-archiving in an institutional repository
is possible only at institutions with a repository.

33. Where Else to Self-Archive?
Subject Repositories
arXiv.org
PubMed Central
Research Papers in Economics (RePEc)
Social Science Research Network (SSRN)
Curious if there's a repository for a certain field?
http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Disciplinary_repositories
Note: Not every field has a subject repository.

34. Where Else to Self-Archive?
Commercial Sites
ResearchGate.net and Academia.edu
encourage users to upload their works,
but they require login for viewing/downloading
…and what are they doing with users’ data?
Personal Websites
A good step in the direction of green OA,
but not permanent and therefore
not the best option!

35. More about Gold OA
Reminder:
“Gold OA” means publishing with publishers
that automatically and immediately make
the work available online to all at no cost —
i.e., journals that are “born” open access

36. Respectability of Gold OA Journals?
OA = anyone can read the journal
OA ≠ anyone can publish in the journal
OA journals are real journals. Publishing in an OA journal is not
self-publishing or vanity publishing!
OA journals earn respectability the same way other journals
do: through the quality of their articles and the prominence of
the people they attract as authors, editors, etc.
Of course: Just as some non-OA journals are better than others,
some OA journals are better than others.

37. Peer Review & Gold OA Journals?
A journal's peer review practices are
independent of its openness.
Most scholarly journals,
open access and subscription-based,
are peer reviewed.
(Some open access journals are not peer reviewed;
some subscription-based journals are not peer reviewed.)

38. Business Models
If OA journals are free to read, how do they cover costs?
There are many business models for OA journals:
• Volunteers & institutional subsidies
• Advertising
• Fees for print or premium editions
• Endowments & donations
• Publication fees
• Institutional memberships
• A combination of the above
For more information, see:
http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/OA_journal_business_models

39. Publication Fees?!
Yes, some OA journals charge publication fees.
Some do not.
(Some subscription-based journals charge publication fees!)
Ideally, fees are not paid from researchers' pockets:
Some institutions pay fees for their employees.
Grants can be used to pay publication fees.*
Some journals waive fees for some.
* Many funders (NIH, NSF, Gates Foundation, etc.)
now require the work they fund to be made OA!

40. Publication Fees ≠ Vanity Publishing
Some people worry:
Are publication fees tantamount to vanity publishing?
NO!
At reputable journals, fees have no bearing
whatsoever on whether an article is accepted.

41. What about Disreputable Journals?
“Predatory” Open Access Publishers
unscrupulous, unserious, spamming
Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers
http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/
(Note: Beall’s List is useful but problematic!)
Beyond Beall’s List
http://crln.acrl.org/content/76/3/132
Think. Check. Submit.
http://thinkchecksubmit.org/
Of course, low-quality journals are not unique to OA publishing!

42. Independent Variables
x-axis: openness
y-axis: quality
(impact, rigor of peer
review, etc.)
Cell
Nature
Journal of Finance
Philosophical Review
Low-quality and “predatory”
OA journals
PLOS Biology
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
Philosophers’ Imprint
College & Research Libraries
Just about every field has some
bottom-of-the-barrel
subscription-based journals…

43. Bad OA Does Not Invalidate All OA
“To suggest . . . that the problem with scientific publishing
is that open access enables internet scamming is like saying
that the problem with the international finance system is that
it enables Nigerian wire transfer scams.
There are deep problems with science publishing. But the way
to fix this is not to curtail open access publishing. It is to fix
peer review.”
— Michael Eisen, University of California professor and
Public Library of Science co-founder
Source: http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2013/10/04/open-access-is-not-the-problem/

44. Finding Good Gold OA Journals
Directory of Open Access Journals
http://www.doaj.org
Browse or search 11,000+ open access journals
that have been vetted for quality

45. Speaking of Predation…

46. Speaking of Predation…
https://www.flickr.com/photos/liquidsunshine49/4747655198/

47. Gold OA: The Takeaway
Don’t let the “predatory” publishers scare you off!
Open access is a viable and sustainable publishing model.
Some journals are better than others, but the model is sound.
Traditional scholarly journal publishing:
restrictive, expensive, outmoded, and sometimes exploitative
Gold OA can and should be:
author-friendly, reader-friendly, research-friendly

48. Creative Commons Licenses
Most OA publishers use Creative Commons (CC) licenses,
which grant the public permission to use the work
in more ways than traditional copyright allows.
CC licenses also grant you more rights than you’d have
after signing a traditional copyright transfer agreement!

49. Making Sense of CC Licenses
Keep some rights or waive all interests?

50. Making Sense of CC Licenses

51. Using CC Licenses
Most publishers limit your copyright/licensing options.
But you create more than just books and journal articles!
And you can choose how to license many of your works:
posters
slideshows
conference papers
open educational resources
reports / working papers
blog posts
etc.

52. Who Benefits from OA?
Readers:
More content is available to everyone, regardless of
institutional affiliation or ability to pay
Students:
Students have access to the literature they need to
master their fields, no matter what college/university
they attend

53. Who Else Benefits?
Authors:
Increased availability
 More readers
 More scholarly citations, impact in the field
Easy to link to
 More mentions/links in news, blogs, etc.
 Broader awareness in the world
Greater control over own work
 No need to relinquish copyright to publishers
 Publishers don't dictate copying, sharing, etc.

54. The Colbert Bump
“the curious phenomenon whereby
anyone who appears on this program
gets a huge boost in popularity”
— Stephen Colbert
Colbert Report, 6/21/07
Photo by David Shankbone

55. The Open Access Bump
Similarly, open access boosts
the impact of articles:
easier to access
 read more
 cited more
It makes intuitive sense, but
it’s also been studied and
shown to be true.
Annotated bibliography of articles on the OA advantage:
http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0013636

56. What Benefits from OA?
Libraries:
As OA becomes increasingly prevalent, libraries will no
longer be hamstrung by astronomical journal prices.
Institutions:
Institutions no longer pay twice for research:
researchers’ salaries + journal subscriptions
In the case of public institutions, the tax-paying public
no longer pays three times for research:
salaries + research grants + journal subscriptions

57. What Else Benefits?
Fields of Study:
Greater access to information
 More informed research
 Better research
Articles made OA before they appear in journal
 Ends reliance on journal publication cycles
 Allows others to respond more quickly
 Speeds innovation

58. And What Else?
The Public:
Greater access to information
 Better informed doctors, teachers, journalists, etc.
 Better informed individuals, voters, etc.
 Healthier, better educated people
 A cleaner, safer, more evidence-based world

59. Advice to Authors
1. Research any journal/publisher you’re considering.
(Quality? Peer reviewing process? Copyright policy?)
2. If you have the right to self-archive, exercise that right.
3. If you don’t have the right to self-archive, request it.
4. Choose the best publishing venue for you and your career…
5. …but also think about the system you’re contributing to and the
system you want to contribute to.
Know your rights to what you write!

60. In the News: Sci-Hub
“the first pirate website in the world
to provide mass and public access
to tens of millions of research papers”
https://sci-hub.io/ (for now, anyway…)

61. In the News: Sci-Hub
“While we don’t condone fraud and using illegal sources, I will say that
I appreciate how she is shining a light on just how out of whack the
system is of providing easy access to basic information that our
universities and scholars need to advance science and research.”
— Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC
Read more at http://wapo.st/1ZKSnLp

62. In the News: Sci-Hub
“What Elbakyan is doing — ignoring foreign copyright — was official US
government policy for more than a century.”
— Thomas Munro
“That the publishing industry thrived in the U.S. by ignoring copyright is
a well-known but little discussed aspect of our history with scholarly
communication.”
— Kevin Smith, Director of Scholarly Communications @ Duke
Read more at http://bit.ly/1QRP9PI

63. What Do You Think?
civil disobedience?
theft? illegal and immoral?
tipping point?
revolutionary?
wrong?
right?
sign of the times? illegal but not wrong?
Robin Hood?

64. Credits
This slideshow is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Specific graphics may have different licenses.
Expenditures chart from ARL
http://www.arl.org/storage/documents/monograph-serial-costs.pdf
Profit margin chart, CC BY Alex Holcombe
https://alexholcombe.wordpress.com/2015/05/21/scholarly-publisher-profit-update/
“What Is the Problem?” graphic,
content by Jill Cirasella / graphic design by Les LaRue,
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
Open access advantage graph from Gargouri Y, Hajjem C, Larivière V, Gingras Y, et al.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0013636
Shark photo, CC BY-NC liquidsunshine49
https://www.flickr.com/photos/liquidsunshine49/4747655198/
Stephen Colbert photo, CC BY-SA David Shankbone
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stephen_Colbert_2_by_David_Shankbone.jpg

65. Thank you!
Questions?
Jill Cirasella
jcirasella@gc.cuny.edu
The Graduate Center, CUNY
Slides at: http://tinyurl.com/OAmashup