1.
Encouraging Openness
- and how stakeholder policies can
support or block it!
CIARD webinar
5th June 2014
Bill Hubbard
Director, Centre for Research Communications

2.
Outline
• What is Open Access and how to achieve it
• Incentives and Blocks
• Getting movement in policy development
• The clash of policies and expectations
• Supporting researchers

3.
Open Access
• Access to research articles (and other
outputs) that is free at point of use
• Use of research articles (and other outputs)
free of most licensing restrictions
• Increasingly, open access to underlying
research data as well

4.
Routes to Open Access
• Depositing material in an open access
repository AND publishing as normal
(“Green”)
Contrasted with
• Publishing in a journal that makes the article
open access (“Gold”)

5.
Repositories
• Listed in OpenDOAR
– Institutional repositories
– Subject based (i.e. Europe PubMedCentral)
– Governmental repository
• Free for user to deposit, as centrally funded
• And publish as well

6.
Open Access Journals
• Fully OA journals listed in DOAJ
• Also, “Hybrid” OA journals
• Most likely payment of a fee
– £1,000 - £2,000 and up
• And deposit as well

7.
Incentives
• Wider readership
• Greater citations
• More use of research
• Better return on investment
• Perpetual record of work
• Easier assessment of research
• Cross-study and meta-study research
• Automation, text-mining and data-mining

8.
Moral case
• IF publicly funded research can be freely
available, then surely - it should!

9.
Stakeholders
• Authors
• Researchers
• Publishers
• Funders
• Learned societies
• Institutions
• Government
• Public

10.
Blocks to OA policies
• Publishers’ traditional business models rely
on selling access - how can this change?
• Administrative adoption of journal “brands” as
measure of quality
• Funders reluctance to upset researchers
• Academics’ established publication habits
• Effective policies have to address each of
these issues

11.
Policies to encourage - don’t work
• RCUK policy encouraging OA in 2006
• Institutions with policies encouraging OA
• What is the incentive to change?
• What is the inertia to be overcome?
– Embedded publication habits; value-judgements;
professional-esteem indicators; financial
arrangements and expectations; complexity of
proposed changes . . .

12.
The place of funders
• Funder policies are the key
• Funders are “upstream” of all research
activity
• Other policies have to respond to and respect
these policies - and if they don’t, then the
political question can be asked - why not?
• Conversely, without funder backing, what can
succeed?

13.
Time to get tough . . . well, a bit
• NIH, RCUK, European Union 7th Framework
• then - the Financial Crisis
• UK - Finch Report
• UK - Government policy
• UK - RCUK policy
• EU - Horizon 2020
• UK - Research Assessment 2020

14.
UK Government
• Following Finch Committee Report
• Funded research to be made Open Access
• Maximum 12 month embargo
• Implication for so-called “unfunded”, in-house
research

15.
Research Councils UK
• Open Access mandatory for funded research
• All Councils
• Various embargoes allowed
• Gold as target, Green allowed
• Initial compliance target of 45%, now rising
• Compliance will affect future grants

16.
UK Research Assessment 2020
• HEFCE
• To be eligible - articles and conference
proceedings to be made open access – from
point of acceptance for publication
• Embargo periods are accepted
• Green OA - not Gold OA

17.
Policy clashes
• Complex, restrictive policies
– some publishers, e.g. Elsevier, have policies that
change if the institution or funder has a policy!
• Push for take-up of hybrid option, for a fee
– concerns of double-dipping, on national scale
– speculation on fee-levels in future
• Moves into asking for rights in data?
• Consider place of publisher in process
• Overall picture fragmenting

18.
Pity the researcher . . .

19.
Researchers view from the past . . .
Funder
Public Funder
Institution
Publisher
Funding
Researcher

20.
Researchers view
Researcher
Funder
Public Funder
Institution
Publisher
with OA Option
Open Access
Publisher
Central/subject
Repository
Institutional
Repository
?
?
Mandate
Funding
Mandate
Institutional
Database

21.
Researchers view . . . with data
Researcher
Funder
Public Funder
Institution
Publisher
with OA Option
Open Access
Publisher
Central/subject
Repository
Institutional
Repository
?
?
Mandate
Funding
Mandate
Institutional
Database
Mandate #
Mandate #
Central/subject
Repository
Institutional
Repository
Institutional
Database
Publisher
with Data Option

22.
Integrated policy framework
• Authors and researchers have clarity
• Responsibility for compliance check is defined
• Funders adopt common policies
• Institutions harmonise their policies with funders
• Publishers simplify their response and adapt
• . . . and systems for archiving, payment,
compliance, etc in place and automated

23.
Funder policies
• Mandate Open Access with sanctions
• Recognise cost: Green cheaper than Gold
• Archiving - define what, when and where?
• Respect current conditions
– allow embargoes reluctantly with the aim of elimination
– allow discipline differences
• Have realistic targets
• Work with stakeholders, but insist on change

24.
Inevitable development
• On-line journal access will become the
primary form and will change to
accommodate on-line potential
• Open Access will continue to grow and
become the dominant method of research
dissemination
• Open Access to data will develop and allow
new research to be built on top
• Our policy structures have to support this

25.
Discussion

26.
Contact

27.
Support infrastructure
• Repository
• Mediated deposit service
• OA publication funds
• Institutional OA support service
• Gold fee finance systems
• Institutional policies
• Funder grant compliance systems
• Research assessment planning

28.
Support examples
• RoMEO - summarises Publisher policies
• JULIET - summarises Funder policies
• FACT - combined policy advice for authors
• OpenDOAR - lists OA repositories
• DOAJ - lists OA journals
• OAK - payment intermediary for OA fees
• CORE - UK national aggregation
• OpenAIRE - European policy support

29.
Support examples - URLs
• OpenDOAR - www.opendoar.org
• DOAJ - www.doaj.org
• RoMEO - www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo
• JULIET - www.sherpa.ac.uk/juliet
• FACT - www.sherpa.ac.uk/fact
• OAK - www.openaccesskey.com
• CORE - core.kmi.open.ac.uk
• OpenAIRE - www.openaire.eu

30.
Abstract
• Funders, authors and readers may want open access to research,
but can they achieve it? A researcher who has been encouraged to
make their work open has to deal with regulations, guidance, and
mandates from their institution, their funders, their publisher and
their national government. These policies are often complex and can
be ambiguous, or in conflict with each other. A supportive policy
environment and guidance through the relationship of one policy to
another has proved to be essential for real progress in opening
access to research. How should policies support the researcher and
the research process? How can policies based on commercial profit
fit into an open environment? What role do funders have in
protecting their investment and the public interest? The webinar will
address these issues, reflect on current policies and suggest best
practice.