Current Open Access position and challenges of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

1. FWF Open Access Policy
Current Activities and Challenges
Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
FWFOpenAccess - FWF Open Access on Twitter
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2. Open Access activities in a nutshell (I)
2001  Covering APCs up to three years after conclusion of the project
with additional funds
2003  Signing the Berlin Declaration
2004  Launching OA Policy incl. Green and Gold, mandate since 2006
2008 – now  strong engagement for a common European OA policy
via Science Europe (see also C. Kratky NATURE 29/8/2013)
2010  Joining Europe PubMedCentral, now > 4000 papers are OA
2011  Starting one of the first OA book programme, incl. the
FWF E-Book Library, ~ 260 books are now OA + ~ 60 p.a., Ø 231
downloads per year
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3. Open Access activities in a nutshell (II)
2012  OA testimonials from over 40 top researchers in Austria
2012  Foundation of the Open Access Network Austria (OANA),
members from 45 organizations
2012  Initial funding programme for OA journals from the Humanities
and Social Sciences, 8 journals are funded
2013  Financial support of: SCOAP³, OA Days, OAPEN, DOAJ,
OA Monograph Conference London, arXiv, Wellcome Trust study on
APCs
2013  OA Monitoring: 33% of FWF funded articles are Gold or Hybrid
articles + ~ 30-35% Green
2013  Making publication costs for 2013 publically available
2014  One of the first pilots on offsetting Hybrid OA costs against
subscriptions with IOP Publishing
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4. Current FWF OA Policy - Three Options …
Green  Archiving the final “accepted manuscript” in any sustainable
subject or institutional repository with a maximum embargo of 12
months (Europe PMC in the Life Sciences)
Gold  Direct publication in an Open Access medium by applying CC-BY
license, APCs are covered
Hybrid  If offered by publishers and if explicitly chosen by FWF
funded authors, payment for Open Access for single articles in
subscription journals can also be covered (CC-BY)
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5. FWF Publication Costs 2013*
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Type No
Ø Cost per
unit
Costs
Classical Publications Costs for Journals 257 € 1.074 € 275.916
APCs for OA Journals 209 € 1.393 € 291.047
APCs for Hybrid Journals 922 € 2.278 € 2.100.675
OA Books (incl. copy editing, printing costs) 49 € 15.704 € 769.500
Total Cost € 3.437.138

6. Current Challenges
After collecting data of publication costs for 2013 and the report
Developing an Effective Market for Open Access the FWF faces following
challenges:
 Negotiating together with the Austrian Library Consortium offsetting
deals for Hybrid OA with publishers (see the IOP deal)
 Enforcing the principles of “Openness”, see HowOpenIsIt
 Introducing price caps for Gold and Hybrid APCs ?
 Cease to pay for any additional publication costs for subscription
journals (e.g. colour figures, page charges and submission fees) ?
 Enforcing Green OA with uniform embargos
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7. Long-Term Challenges (I)
 Green Open Access: setting clear and uniform rules for a common
OA policy among funding and research institutions in Europe, e.g.
embargo periods of max. 12 months
 Levels of Openness: defining the principles of openness more
strictly, see HowOpenIsIt
 Publisher Services: defining the services publishers have to offer if
publications fees for OA are covered by funders or research
institutions (see 2.)
 Price-Services-Sensitivity: including publication costs in the
research budgets so that researchers become more sensible for the
price-service-relation by publishers, see Solomon/Björk (2014)
 Transition Models: negotiating transition models with publishers
which avoid the problem of double dipping for publication costs, see
IOP Publishing and Austria / UK, SCOAP³, Knowledge Unlachted
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8. Long-Term Challenges (II)
 Funding the Transition: launching cross-border funding models
which support the transition of toll access to full OA
 Funding Academia-governed Publication Models: launching
cross-border funding models which support new non-commercial,
academia governed publication models with no or very low
publication fees, see for example the proposals of OLH, K|N
Consultants or OPuS
 Funding OA Infrastructure: cross-border funding of international OA
infrastructure and service provider like repositories (e.g. arXiv,
Europe PubMedCentral, OAPEN) or databases (e.g. DOAJ, Romeo
Sherpa)
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