This document discusses open access in the humanities and social sciences. It defines various types of open access like gold, green, and delayed open access. It outlines the growth of the open access movement due to factors like rising journal costs and the ability of the internet to disseminate research. Recent policies from organizations like RCUK that mandate open access for publicly funded research are discussed. The challenges of open access for different stakeholders and various open access journal models and futures are considered.
Teaching Educational Research Methods: Making it Real & Relevant for Students
Understanding Open Access in the Humanities and Social Sciences
1. Open Access in the Humanities and
Social Sciences
Louise Skelding
Senior Publishing Editor, SAGE
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Singapore | Washington DC
2. What is Open Access?
● Green;
● Delayed Open Access;
● Gold;
● Gratis or Libre?;
● Licences: CC-BY-WTF?
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3. Open Access movement
● Rapid growth of the internet and internet access;
● Print journals are becoming obsolete;
● Internet provides new ways of communicating
research (and not just through peer-reviewed
publication);
● Rising cost of journals;
● Tax payers should be able to access results of
government-funded research.
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4. Moving faster toward OA
● “Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a
socialist.” (August 2011);
● Cost of Knowledge (January 2012);
● Report of the Working Group on Expanding Access to
Published Research Findings (June 2012);
● Announcements from RCUK, HEFCE, European
Commission (July 2012).
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5. RCUK
● Accessibility to publicly-funded research;
Ideas and knowledge derived from publicly-funded research must
be made available and accessible for public use, interrogation and
scrutiny, as widely, rapidly and effectively as practicable.
● Rigorous quality assurance;
Published research outputs must be subject to rigorous quality
assurance, through effective peer review mechanisms.
● Efficient and cost-effective access mechanisms;
● Long-term preservation and accessibility of outputs.
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6. RCUK compliance
● Gold with CC-BY
Or if the publisher will not offer Gold CC-BY then they
must offer:
● Green
(at least post print) with a maximum embargo period of
12 months (6 for STM journals), and CC-BY-NC.
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7. Challenges
For institutions and libraries
● Who will administer OA grants?;
● What about non-UK based journals?
For authors and journals
● A lot of research undertaken in HSS doesn’t come with
funding grants;
● Will author-pays OA curtail academic freedom?;
● What about independent researchers and those from
poorer institutions? Los Angeles | London | New Delhi
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8. Pure Open Access journals in HSS
Directory of Open Access Journals: www.doaj.org
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9. Los Angeles | London | New Delhi
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10. But beware!
“Potential, possible or probable predatory OA
publishers”: http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/
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11. Hybrid Open Access
● Gold open access within a traditional subscription-
based journal e.g.
SAGE Choice;
Wiley OnlineOpen;
Springer Open Choice;
Taylor & Francis Open Select;
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12. The future? (I)
What about current model is worth preserving?
• Revenue – few journals operate entirely on subs cash; few
would exist without it;
• Publishers undertake digital preservation;
• Neutral in regards to disciplines/funding levels, funders and
universities;
• Ordering through pre-publication sifting and journal branding,
backed up by hosting/search infrastructure;
• Day to day work and investment in publishing technologies
done by third party, not academics or university;
• No barriers to entry for authors.
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13. The future (II)
Alternatives
• New university presses?
• Self-organisation (Open Journals Systems)
• Super-repositories (publish then sift – places
burden on reader)
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14. The future (III)
● Way forward:
• Depends on collective action; HSS needs to develop position
and voice
• Greater engagement from key UK players – note STM focus of
RCUK, government
• Integrate with international developments – what happens in
EU, US, etc
• All parties likely to undergo change:
• Societies weaned off journal revenue
• Leaner publishers (service providers)
• Journals will die/new OA journals will start up
• Lengthy transition likely for HSS
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15. That’s all folks!
Email any tricky questions to:
Louise Skelding
louise.skelding@sagepub.co.uk
Los Angeles | London | New Delhi
Singapore | Washington DC
Editor's Notes
Different degrees of OA, and different terms in use to denote how Open the OA actually is. Green = publishing in a traditional journal but making the post print version of your paper available through an institutional or subject repository immediately on publication. Delayed open access = as above, but observing an embargo period as set by the publisher. Many major commercial publishers apply an embargo period of 12 months in HSS to protect subscription sales. Gold = publishing in a journal that provides immediate OA to the final version of the paper on the publisher’s website. This is funded by the author on payment of an article processing charge. You might also have heard the terms Gratis OA and Libre OA: Gratis is providing free access to papers online; Libre is free access plus additional rights. It’s not synonymous with the Green/Gold distinction as it’s about what users can do with the article. This is determined by by what licence is being used. Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence means that users can do whatever they like with the article i.e. distribute, copy, make derivative works from it, as long as proper attribution is given. Creative Commons Attribution (non-commercial) (CC-BY-NC): as before, but not for commercial purposes.
Various factors have led us to where we are today. Government funding and library budgets continue to shrink, and libraries are having to spend more and more on the “big deal” with the mega-publishers. There must be a better way! The OA movement has caught the media’s attention and has been covered by the major national broadsheets. Also, conversation in the blogosphere is intense.
“ Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist.” George Monbiot writing in the Guardian last year. Public reaction against perceived profiteering of publishers (Elsevier made a profit margin of 36% in 2010). The Cost of Knowledge is a protest by academics against Elsevier’s high journal prices and restricted subscription options that “force” libraries to buy the big deal. Call for lower prices for journals and promotion of increased OA to information. Researchers are asked to sign a statement committing not to support Elsevier journals by publishing, reviewing or providing editorial board services. Chaired by Dame Janet Finch, group was made up of individuals drawn from academia, research funders and publishing. They were tasked with recommending how to develop a model, which would be both effective and sustainable over time, for expanding access to the published findings of research. Quickly followed up with announcements by funding bodies.
The RCUK has come out in favour of Gold OA over Green. This is RCUK’s position statement, from 2005. They favour Gold because it fulfils the first two requirements: immediate OA (no need to wait for an embargo period to elapse) and the lay reader has the assurance of the publisher’s brand (i.e. a kitemark) to know they are reading the final version of the paper.
During the transition period (not yet defined), in recognition that they will need more time to adjust to OA, HSS journals with a 12 month embargo will comply, but this will be reduced to 6 months eventually. Some discussion around whether publishers will raise embargo periods to force authors to choose the Gold option. RCUK said they have written to the top 60 publishers of RCUK-funded research about how they will comply and had had a positive response so far. With Gold, RCUK wants to create a market for APCs. Will make data on what institutions are spending on APCs so libraries can negotiate with publishers on subscription price.
Institution must administer funds. Will they try to influence what journals authors are publishing in i.e. Preference for cheaper ones? What happens when the funds are all spent? Plus libraries are still going to have to pay for international journals. OA will only really work if it is global in scale. See http://www.socialsciencespace.com/2012/09/open-access-publishing-a-personal-view/ and http://sageconnection.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/responding-to-the-impact-of-open-access-in-the-humanities-and-social-sciences/.
How to find pure OA journals? More than 1600 are listed in the DOAJ in social sciences, history and archaeology, arts and architecture, languages and literature, philosophy and religion.
Pure OA journals common in STM e.g. PLoS titles. As major HSS publisher, SAGE launched SAGE Open in January 2011. Mirrors PLoS model: - First broad-scale OA product tailored to the social sciences, behavioral sciences, and humanities - Constructive, methodology-based peer-review and continuous, rapid publication New features enable the community to extend peer-review beyond acceptance APC is currently at special rate of $395 (regular fee: $695) for each published article. Authors who do not have the means to cover the publication fee may request a waiver after acceptance.
Lots of new OA journals are springing up, including some with less than honourable intentions. Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado Denver publishes a list of potentially unscrupulous OA publishers. He has a long list of criteria that includes whether publishers: - Comply with various ethical standards: Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) Code of Conduct, Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers - Re-publish papers or publish papers that contain plagiarism - Use spam email to solicit manuscripts or editorial board memberships, or review requests - Have no policies or practices that relate to digital preservation - Focus on authors (not readers) and on getting their fees at the expense of readers, and offers few or no value adds to readers such as RSS feeds, hotlinked references, etc.
Alternative is to publish in a hybrid journal. This option has been available at SAGE for a number of years on out STM journals, plus a handful of HSS journals. So that authors can comply with funding requirements and still publish in their chosen journal, publishers have been rolling out their optional OA programme across their whole list. SAGE Choice is now $1500 for HSS journals. Take up has been very low at SAGE: less than 1% of papers published in participated journals have elected to be published as SAGE Choice. I found a similar figure reported by Elsevier on their website.