Open Access: Advantages, Funding, Opportunities

brian.hole@ubiquitypress.com www.ubiquitypress.com / @ubiquitypress

Open Access:
Advantages, funding, opportunities

Brian Hole
OPUS, Oxford – October 24th 2012


1. Background to UP
2. Advantages of OA
3. Funding OA
4. Future opportunities


Background to Ubiquity Press


Advantages of Open Access


The Social Contract
of Science
• Research requires an
effective, efficient
distribution model
• Research funders are now
demanding this – it will
become the main model


• Governments fund
universities to do research.
• They then fund each
Stats on UK research vs. library university library to buy
spending?
Research Bought, Then Paid For back the published results of
By MICHAEL B. EISEN that work.
January 10, 2012
• These research results
“Congress should move to enshrine a simple are only available to those
principle in United States law: if taxpayers paid for
it, they own it.”
universities (not to the
public sector etc.)


RCUK announces new Open Access policy

16 July 2012

The new policy, which will apply to all qualifying publications
being submitted for publication from 1 April 2013, states that
peer reviewed research papers which result from research that is
wholly or partially funded by the Research Councils:
• must be published in journals which are compliant with
Research Council policy on Open Access


Wellcome Trust will penalise
scientists who don't embrace open access
Wealthy medical charity says it will withhold researchers'
final grant payments if they fail to make their results open access
The Guardian, Thursday 28 June 2012
The Wellcome Trust plans to withhold a portion of grant money from scientists who do not make
the results of their work freely available to the public... In addition, any research papers that are
not freely available will not be counted as part of a scientist's track record when Wellcome
assesses any future applications for research funding.

The trust is the second largest medical research charity in the world, spending more than £600m
on science every year. Its director, Sir Mark Walport, has said that publishing research papers
should be considered a cost of a research project in the same way as a piece of lab equipment.


• Coordinated moves
“[Open Access… ] is essential for
towards OA mandate
Europe's ability to enhance its policies in EU
economic performance and improve • Large publishers are very
its capacity to compete through
knowledge. Open Access can also
international
boost the visibility of European and lobby actively
research, and in particular offer small • Recent example of the
and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
access to the latest research for
Research Works Act
exploitation.”


Research Works Act (H.R. 3699)

• Contained provisions to prohibit
open-access mandates for
federally funded research
• Congress members who
introduced the act ‘motivated by
large donations by the academic
publisher X’
• Massive international outcry,
especially from researchers


Amid boycott, X backtracks on research bill
Journal publisher still opposes current U.S. rules mandating access to taxpayer-
funded research

CBC News
Posted: Feb 27, 2012

One of the largest academic publishers in the world withdrew its support Monday
from a controversial U.S. bill, the Research Works Act, that critics feel would restrict
public access to published, publicly-funded research.

The change of heart by Dutch publisher X follows a boycott of its journals and
publishing ventures by thousands of researchers around the world.


Disadvantages?
• Better solutions need to be found for the
developing world
• Partnerships, funding
• Mobile access
• epesa
• Perceptions of low quality due to unethical
practices
• OASPA and COPE membership
• Many publishers are out of touch with
researchers and funders and have lost trust
• Focus is too much on sales, rather than the
product that researchers want most


Funding Open Access


Article Processing Charges (APCs)

• Need to be fair and transparent
• I.e. charge for actual work done, base on
number of pages etc.
• Can be based on number of pages etc.
• Waivers must be given
• Lack of legacy publishing costs means prices
need not be high
• APCs for UP journals:
• Research journals: 0 - £200
• Metajournals: £25


Print on Demand

• Dramatically lowers publisher costs
• No need for large print runs, stock,
distribution
• Greater flexibility
• Issues:
• Lack of distribution in developing
world still
• Perceptions of poor quality due to
quick and dirty approaches


Collaborations and partnerships
• University presses are essential for the
future of academic publishing
• They represent the needs of researchers and
institutions directly, and can adopt OA more
quickly than many big publisher will
• Presses can share resources for efficiency
• Subject expertise
• Technical capability
• UP examples
• Journals: University of Nairobi Press
• Books: Norvik Press, UCL Arts
& Humanities, European Collaboration


Future opportunities


OA eBooks
• Many disciplines (e.g. Humanities) are yet to
fully benefit from electronic OA publishing
because half of their output is in book form
• Many scholarly monographs are overpriced
and poorly distributed
• “At this price, people will only read the
reviews”
• Research libraries are increasingly looking to
save money
• One e copy for multiple students
• No shelf space requirements
• No lending administration overhead


Metajournals


Metajournals
• Highlight research outputs
that would otherwise be
isolated in ‘silos’
• Flexible: different types of
resources and repositories
• Peer reviewed

• Ensure best practice
followed


Metajournals
• Use familiar methods – low
barrier to participation
• Focus on high-reuse
potential
• Incentivise openness
• Reward researchers who
may otherwise go
unrecognised
• www.metajnl.com


Peer review
1. The paper contents
a. The methods section of the paper must provide
sufficient detail that a reader can understand how
the resource was created.
b. The resource must be correctly described.
c. The reuse section must provide concrete and useful
suggestions for reuse of the reuse.

2. The deposited resource
a. The repository must be suitable for resource
and have a sustainability model.
b. Open license permits unrestricted access (e.g. CC0).
c. A version in an open, non-proprietary format.
d. Labeled in such a way that a 3rd party can make
sense of it.
e. Must be actionable.


Data journals
• Data is already citable (e.g.
with DataCite DOIs) but this is
not something researchers
are familiar with doing.
• Even when used, DataCite
DOIs cannot currently be used
for citation tracking.


What is a data paper?
A data paper…
• … describes the methodology with which
a dataset was created.
• … describes the dataset itself.
• … details the reuse potential of the data.
• … is often authored by a data scientist.
• … is citable, enabling reuse to be tracked.
A data paper is not…
• … a research paper. A data paper only
describes a dataset. But it will reference
research papers that are based on the data.
• … simply replication of the information in a
data repository.


Software journals
• Software is an important research
output that is not currently
tracked for impact. Yet for some
researchers, it is their biggest
output.
• Essentially the same as a data
journal except:
• Use of code as well as
preservations repositories
• Reusability metrics


Questions?

Links
http://www.metajnl.com
http://www.openpublichealthdata.metajnl.com
http://www.openpsychologydata.metajnl.com
http://www.openarchaeologydata.metajnl.com
http://www.openresearchsoftware.metajnl.com


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