Which Open Access Future Do We Want? Ubiquity Press Discusses Alternatives to Legacy Publishers

tom.mowlam@ubiquitypress.com | www.ubiquitypress.com | @ubiquitypress
Which Open Access Future Do We Want?
Meeting Place Open Access Stockholm, 26 April 2016

Two possible OA futures
1. The status quo continues
2. The community takes control

The status quo is good for
legacy publishers
• Higher than average profit margins
• Large publishers are getting even larger
• 6% of publishers control 90% of articles

OA is growing, but on the legacy
publishers’ terms
• Avg legacy publisher APC: $2,100 / €1,900
• Too high for most of HSS
• Price is based on what the market will
stand, not added value
• Legacy publishers say they are pro-OA,
but systematically lobby against it

Research Works Act (H.R. 3699)
• Massive international outcry,
especially from researchers
• 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’

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.

So not all growth in OA is ideal
Source: http://sciforum.net/statistics/papers-published-per-year

Why is open access
(and open science) important?

The Social Contract of
Science / Research
• Validation
• Dissemination
• Further development
Scientific Malpractice
• Data
• Results
• Software
• Hardware, wetware…
#@%$#@
% #@%$#
Source: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2015

Source: Washington Post, May 7 2013 / Imgur: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/07/map-more-
than-half-of-humanity-lives-within-this-circle/

Source: Nature News, 20 April 2011, DOI: 10.1038/472276a

What does the alternative OA
future look like?

This future is not what legacy
publishers want it to be
• it’s more than books and journals
• It’s open science
• It’s all forms of communication
• It’s unrestricted and collaborative

This future is not what legacy
publishers want it to be
• It’s truly global, not a north-south
hierarchy
• It’s philanthropic, because that’s
what science and open access are
• It’s cost-effective and efficient

How do we construct this future?

Wider research community initiatives
• Content propagation: Scihub
• Publisher evaluation: DOAJ, OASPA, Quality
Open Access Market
• Collaborative authoring: Authorea, Overleaf
• Open source publishing platfoms: PKP, Collaborative
Knowledge Foundation (CKF)
• Funder mandates: Wellcome Trust, NIH, FP7,
Horizon2020, UK Research Councils

Initiatives UP is involved in
• Rua: open source book management platform
• The Ubiquity Partner Network
• Open Library of the Humanities
• FutureTDM: promoting text and data mining in the EU
• LingOA
• INASP JOLs
• University Presses

http://www.luminosoa.org

Support from over 140 libraries
2015: 7 journals
2016: 11 journals
Cost per institution per article: ~$4
Funding from:

In summary
• OA publishing is currently on the legacy
publishers’ terms, but these terms are not
acceptable
• There are a lot of OA and open science
initiatives in the research community
• The UPN is an example of pulling a large
number of these initiatives together to
increase the chances of large scale disruption
• This is working and points the way to a viable
alternative, cooperative and fair future

Thank you! Any questions?
Or contact:
tom.mowlam@ubiquitypress.com
Ubiquity Press website: http://www.ubiquitypress.com
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Which Open Access Future Do We Want? Ubiquity Press Discusses Alternatives to Legacy Publishers

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Which Open Access Future Do We Want? Ubiquity Press Discusses Alternatives to Legacy Publishers