The document summarizes the state of open access in the United States. It notes that while some progress has been made, like over 3 million open access articles on PubMed Central and an 80% compliance rate for articles resulting from NIH funding, more work remains. Specifically, only 1 of 21 required government agencies has released an open access policy, and only 45 of over 4,500 higher education institutions have open access policies. Additionally, less than 20% of over 1.5 million articles published annually are available through open access. However, the trends overall are pointing in a positive direction. Continued collective efforts are needed to further the goal of making open the default setting for scholarly literature.

1. The State of “Open”:
Open Access in the U.S.
Heather Joseph
Executive Director, SPARC
OpenCon 2014
Washington, DC
November 15, 2014

2. SPARC’s End Goal:
Set the Default to “Open”

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“By open access, we mean the free
availability of articles on the public
internet, permitting any users to read,
download, copy, distribute, print,
search or link to the full text of these
articles, crawl them for indexing, pass
them as data to software or use them
for any other lawful purpose…”
- The Budapest Open Access Initiative – February 14, 2002

5. Open Access = Access + Full Reuse

6. Major Enabling Strategies:
Journals, Repositories, Policies

7. So – How’s the U.S. Doing?

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FEDERATION

9. 9
FEDERATION

10. 10
FEDERATION

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14. • Over 3 million full text articles
• Accessed by over 1 million unique
users each day
• ~ 2/3rds of users come from outside
of academy.
• Compliance rate is over 80%
• Costs 1/100th of 1% of NIH’s overall
operating budget to implement.

18. All Seems Good….So What’s the
Catch?

19. Of 21 Agencies Required by White
House Directive to Release Public
Access Policies, Only 1 Currently has
Done So.

20. Of 4,599 Title IV Degree-Granting
Institutions in the U.S, 45 Currently
Have O.A. Policies.

21. Of ~1.5 million articles published
annually, less than 20% Currently are
published in Open Access venues.

22. Cause for alarm?

23. No…

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Trend Lines: All Pointing Up

29. But…A Call for Further Action.

30. Scientific, technical, medical, legal
and business journal publishing is
a U.S. $10 billion per year revenue
producing market.

31. Big Task. But Not Impossible.

32. We Need Keep Building Creative
Strategies and Collective Efforts to
Keep Momentum Building.

33. That’s Why We’re Here at OpenCon.

34. Let’s Build the Next Phase of
Setting the Default to “Open”
Together.