This document discusses open access in scholarly publishing. It notes that while researchers do much of the work in publishing (e.g. peer review), large publishers then take control of the copyright and charge high fees to access the work. This limits accessibility and costs libraries large sums. Open access aims to make research freely available online without paywalls or strict copyright limits on use. However, scholars face pressure to publish in high prestige journals, even if they are not open access. Metrics like impact factor are flawed but still influence careers. The document argues for open access on ethical grounds to make knowledge widely available, and notes it does not necessarily mean lower quality.

1. Open Access:
Opportunities and Risks
Demmy Verbeke

2.  the problem with scholarly publishing
 what is open access?
 copyright
 the importance of prestige in scholarly publishing
 why would you care about OA?
 how can you make your own work OA?
• Green OA
• for-profit Gold OA
• non-profit Gold OA
 coda: not just words
Content
2

3.  Open Access equals low quality
 Open Access equals allowing others to steal my work
 Open Access equals very expensive
Content
3

4. The problem with scholarly
publishing
4

5.  researchers typically paid with tax money
 researchers produce manuscripts (without extra payment)
 researchers do the editorial work (typically without extra payment): recruiting
authors, filtering manuscripts, textual editing, peer review, correct proofs, …
 publishers (sometimes) provide support for this editorial work, and handle the
operational aspects of publication and distribution (although they often also
enlist researchers to play a role in the distribution and pr)
The problem with scholarly publishing
5

6. however: large parts of the copyright are typically signed over to the publisher,
esp. the right to make money on the finished product
 what was produced (by researchers) using tax money, consequently needs to bought
back with tax money (by libraries or individual researchers)
 research results are closed off behind paywalls and thus only accessible for the selected
few
 publishing companies have co-opted “give-away” research and left academia with two
major problems: cost and accessibility
 example of things going wrong (unfortunately not rare): a researcher needs to pay in
order to access the end result of his/her own efforts
The problem with scholarly publishing
6 Robert T. Thibault et al. (2018), ‘The Rent’s too High: Self-Archive for Fair Online Publication Costs’, arXiv:1808.06130

7. The problem with scholarly publishing
7

8. • five companies control more than half of academic publishing:
1. Reed-Elsevier
2. Springer-Nature
3. Taylor & Francis
4. Wiley-Blackwell
5. Sage
• due to this oligopolistic position of large publishers, the market has
evolved into one in which the publisher prices subscriptions according to
each client’s ability and willingness to pay, not according to average cost
for the publisher
8
The problem with scholarly publishing
Vincent Larivière et al, (2015), ‘The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era’, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0127502
Julie Baldwin – Stephen Pinfield (2018), ‘The UK Scholarly Communication Licence: Attempting to Cut through the Gordian Knot of the Complexities of
Funder Mandates, Publisher Embargoes and Researcher Caution in Achieving Open Access’, doi: 10.3390/publications6030031

9. The problem with scholarly publishing
commercial goals do not align with scholarly goals
e.g.
monograph sold for 50€ and thus affordable for 100 libraries => available in
100 libraries, publisher earned 5.000€
same monograph sold for 100€ and therefore only affordable for 60
libraries => publisher earned 6.000€, but the monograph is only available in
60 libraries instead of 100
9

10. The problem with scholarly publishing
fantastic business model, so
unusually high profit margins:
 production costs paid in
advance
 low production costs (even
lower in the digital age vs the
paper age)
 sky is the limit for the selling
price (because almost always
exclusive rights on what is sold)
Alex Holcombe (2015), ‘Scholarly publisher update’, https://alexholcombe.wordpress.com/2015/05/21/scholarly-publisher-profit-update10

11. 11
Three chief executives of book industry
conglomerates had compensation packages which
exceeded the equivalent of $10m last year, putting
them in the upper echelon of the c.e.o.
remuneration league for all industries, not just
publishing and bookselling.
Tom Tivnan (2017), ‘RELX's Engstrom tops industry 'rich list'’, https://www.thebookseller.com/news/relxs-engstrom-tops-industry-rich-list-
653371

12. 12

13. Paywall: The Business of Scholarship
13
https://paywallthemovie.com

14. Scholarly publishing is ripe for change and (we who are)
involved – authors, reviewers, editors, publishers,
librarians, and readers – owe it to our future selves to
start challenging legacy processes. We built the
scholarly publishing system because research deserves
to be shared, but that intention has been lost in favor of
financial and status motives.
Amy Buckland (2013), ‘On the Mark? Responses to a Sting’, doi:
10.7710/2162-3309.1116
The problem with scholarly publishing
14

15. Why have we not seen more disruption yet?
cognitive dissonance: everybody agrees, hardly anybody acts
one explanation: researchers do not pay themselves, so are not aware of
(or do not particularly care about) the cost of scholarly publication
difference with music: consumer pays, so has forced the market to change
we have allowed an almost monopoly to develop and the legacy publishers
will not abandon this monopoly without a fight
15
The problem with scholarly publishing

16. difference between
 commercial scientific publishers (e.g. the Big 5)
aim to maximize profit (at the expense of scholars and scholarship)
 fake publishers
aim to defraud scholars
 non-commercial scientific publishers
aim to be sustainable whilst serving scholarship
e.g. most university presses, scholar-led and/or library-based
publishers
The problem with scholarly publishing
16

17. What is Open Access?
17

18. 18
distributing the results of scholarly research online
with the aim to make them as widely available as possible
- free of all restrictions on access (e.g. no paywalls)
- free of many restrictions on use (e.g. CC license instead of
traditional copyright)
digital, online, free of charge, free of most copyright
and licensing restrictions
Peter Suber (2012), Open Access, https://cyber.harvard.edu/hoap/Open_Access_(the_book)
Martin Paul Eve (2014), Open Access and the Humanities, Contexts, Controversies and the Future, doi: 10.1017/CBO9781316161012
Open Access

19. making research results available to everyone for free
≠ without restrictions (e.g. plagiarism, maybe some copyright
restrictions)
≠ not always immediately (e.g. embargo)
≠ not always identical to the commercial version (e.g. accepted
manuscript instead of version of record)
19
Open Access

20. Copyright
20

21. right of the author/maker (or the potential beneficiaries, e.g. publisher
or the heirs of the author/maker) to determine how, where and when a
work of literature, science or art is made public or reproduced
Copyright
21

22. Copyright
1. Economic rights:
give holders of copyright the right to earn money on the reproduction and
dissemination of the work
transferrable (publishing companies, heirs)
2. Moral rights:
confirm the bond between the maker and the creation; e.g. right to author
attribution (paternity right), right to object to derogatory treatment of work
(integrity right)
non-transferrable (always stays with the author/artist)
22

23. Copyright – a very short history
1557: Royal Charter of the Stationer’s Company
 first initiatives concerning copyright not for the benefit of authors or the
general public, but for censorship
1710: Statute of Anne: copyright for 14 years, could be prolonged with 1
additional period of another 14 years
copyright to protect interests of publishers
model for copyright law in USA (Copyright Act, 1790)
23

24. Copyright – a very short history
• 14 + 14 years
• 28 + 14 years
• 28 + 28 years
• copyright Act 1976
50 years after demise of author
• copyright Term Extension Act
1998
works published before 1978: 95
years after first publication
works published after 1977: 70
years after demise of author
24 CC BY-SA 3.0 Tony Bell

25. Copyright
to protect the interests of the state, of the publishers and of the
authors/artists
in reality:
• economic rights mostly owned by publishers
• most authors/artists do not profit from economic rights, because they sign
(most of) them away at time of publication
• so copyright (economic rights) mostly benefits publishers
25

26. Copyright
current copyright laws (esp. economic rights) largely unsuited for
scholarly research
research results are not disseminated for profit (income of researchers is
secured in a different way)
economic rights not owned by academic authors (but by the publishers)
preventing the dissemination of research results is detrimental to the
advancement of science
preventing the dissemination of research results is unethical (tax payers pay
for research, so should also get access to the results of that research)
26

27. tension between
“copyright culture”: the range of copyright legislation, licenses, policies and practices that impact on
scholarly activity
“scholarly culture”: prioritizes dissemination of works as long as moral rights of the author are respected
“Academics believe there is greater overlap between copyright
culture and scholarly culture than there actually is”
Black OA : academics’ scholarly practices are not in line with publishers’ copyright policies
e.g. scholars make their work available on Researchgate or Academia.edu
27
Copyright
Elizabeth Gadd (2017), ‘Academics and Copyright Ownership: Ignorant, Confused or Misled?’,
https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2017/10/31/guest-post-academics-copyright-ownership-ignorant-confused-misled/

28. be very careful when you sign an author’s contract (in
other words READ THE CONTRACT)
most times you are asked to sign away a large part of
your copyright to the publisher, which means that you
are NO LONGER IN CHARGE of the dissemination
of your own research results and are NO LONGER
FREE to share your own work as you may like
Copyright
28

29. Open content
 initiatives to make knowledge, information or art more freely
available than what would be the case according to traditional
copyright
 e.g. Creative Commons: maker decides which type of license
he/she gives
29

30. Attribution (by)
Others who use your work in any way must give you credit the way you request, but not in a way
that suggests you endorse them or their use. If they want to use your work without giving you
credit or for endorsement purposes, they must get your permission first.
NonCommercial (nc)
Others may copy, distribute, display, perform, and (unless you have chosen
NoDerivatives) modify and use your work for any purpose other than commercially
unless they get your permission first.
Creative Commons
30

31. NoDerivatives (nd)
Others may copy, distribute, display and perform only original copies of your work. If
they want to modify your work, they must get your permission first.
ShareAlike (sa)
Others may copy, distribute, display, perform, and modify your work, as long as they
distribute any modified work on the same terms. If they want to distribute modified
works under other terms, they must get your permission first.
Creative Commons
31

32. Creative
Commons
32

33. Aaron Swartz (1986-2013)
• internet and copyright
activist
• action for disclosing
academic articles (e.g.
download of more than
4 mlj articles from
JSTOR)
33 Justin Peters (2016), The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet

34. The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron
Swartz
EBMYouTube
34

35. The importance of prestige in
academic publishing
35

36. most researchers publish for prestige, not for income
prestige in scholarly publishing: high profile legacy publishers and high impact
factor journals
but what if these publishers and journals abuse copyright laws to
maximize profits at the expense of scholars and scholarship?
… the scholarly reward system continues to mean that academics trade their
copyright to publish in their preferred journals, which has thus far been seen as
more advantageous to them compared with any benefits they could gain from
retaining their copyright. It has been shown that many academics believe that
publishing in traditional journals is most likely to contribute to promotions and pay
rises, rather than making their work available in an OA form
Prestige
36
Julie Baldwin – Stephen Pinfield (2018), ‘The UK Scholarly Communication Licence: Attempting to Cut through the Gordian Knot of the
Complexities of Funder Mandates, Publisher Embargoes and Researcher Caution in Achieving Open Access’, doi: 10.3390/publications6030031

37. Prestige: impact factor
quest for a metric quantifying the quality of an article (and thus of the
researcher who wrote it)
 citations (in itself a questionable and purely quantitative metric)
problem: in order to automate counting quotations, both publication A and
publications B/C/D/… (which quote A) need to be in a bibliographic database
thus works – to a certain extent – for research fields with representative
bibliographic databases but does not work at all for research fields without
representative databases
37

38. Prestige: impact factor
listing quotations to individual articles is cumbersome so (bad, BAD idea)
they started to use the Journal Impact Factor
JIF is meant to indicate the yearly average number of citations to recent
articles published in that journal
JIF = number of citations, received in that year, of articles published in that
journal during the two preceding years, divided by the total number of
articles published in that journal during the two preceding years
38
JIF y = Citations y-1 + Citations y-2
Articles y-1 + Articles y-2

39. Prestige: impact factor
BUT:
“The Journal Impact Factor … was originally created as a tool
to help librarians identify journals to purchase, not as a
measure of the scientific quality of research in an article. With
that in mind, it is critical to understand that the Journal Impact
Factor has a number of well-documented deficiencies as a tool
for research assessment.”
San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (2012)
39

40. Prestige: impact factor
“The co-option of JIFs as a tool for
assessing individual articles and their
authors, a task for which they were
never intended, is a deeply embedded
problem within academia.”
V. Larivière et al. (2016), ‘A simple proposal for the
publication of journal citation distributions’, doi:
10.1101/062109
40
P.O. Seglen (1997), ‘Why the impact factor of journals should not be used for evaluating research’, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2126010
Björn Brembs et al. (2013), ‘Deep Impact: Unintended Con-sequences of Journal Rank’, doi:10.3389/fnhum.2013.00291

41. Prestige: impact factor
San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (2012)
• the need to eliminate the use of journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact
Factors, in funding, appointment, and promotion considerations
• the need to assess research on its own merits rather than on the basis of the
journal in which the research is published
• the need to capitalize on the opportunities provided by online publication (such
as relaxing unnecessary limits on the number of words, figures, and references
in articles, and exploring new indicators of significance and impact)
41

42. OA does NOT imply inferior quality
prestige of a journal does not stem from the
publisher, it stems from the editorial board
good publishers can publish bad work and bad
publishers can publish good work
it is our job to make people able to read critically, to
find ways of evaluating truth wherever it is found or
published; not because it appeared in a glamorous
academic journal
Prestige
42 Martin Paul Eve – Ernesto Priego (2017), ‘Who is Actually Harmed by Predatory Publishers?’, doi: https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v15i2.867

43. Prestige : impact factor
… and for those who want to keep using the impact factor as an
indicator for prestige
an increasing number of fully OA journals are attaining higher
impact factors at faster rates than their subscription and hybrid
counterparts
43
‘News & Views: Evaluating Quality in Open Access Journals’ (2018), https://deltathink.com/news-views-evaluating-quality-in-open-access-
journals/

44. Why would you care about
Open Access?
44

45. Why care?
1. ethical reasons
 results of scholarly research available to general public
 results of scholarly research available for scholars all over the world
regardless of whether they are affiliated with a university or not
regardless of whether they are affiliated with an institution which can afford to buy a lot of
academic publications or not
45
Stephen Curry (2018), ‘Open access: the beast that no-on could - or should - control?’, in Nerlich et al., eds., Science and the politics of openness
– Here be monsters (Manchester UP), pp. 33-53

46. Why care?
2. financial reasons
cost of academic publishing
focus mostly on subscription cost (“serials crisis”)
rise in cost of monographs considered less problematic (but of course: if subscription costs
rise, there is no budget for monographs)
46

47. Why care?
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmbis/99/9905.htm47
The amount of
money paid by UK
universities to
subscribe to some
large publishers’
journals has risen
by almost 50 per
cent since 2010

48. Why care?
48
Arts Faculty library
of KU Leuven
€ 0.00
€ 50,000.00
€ 100,000.00
€ 150,000.00
€ 200,000.00
€ 250,000.00
€ 300,000.00
€ 350,000.00
2004 2005 2006 2007 2009 2010 2011 2012
Budget vs. Subscription Cost
Budget
Subscription Cost

49. Why care?
3. academic reasons
 better for scholarship, better for the scholar
 proven increase in visibility and use
 proven positive effect on citations
 proven positive effect on impact: research picked up easier by journalists,
companies & policy-makers
49

50. Why care?
ECRs are often pressured into publishing against their ethics
through threats that they would not get a job/grant unless they
publish in particular journals
usually these journals have a high impact factor, are not 100% OA and are
published according to a commercial logic
these out of date practices and ideas hinder ECRs rather than help
them: evidence shows that publishing open access results in
increased citations, media attention, and job/funding opportunities
50 http://bulliedintobadscience.org/

51. Why care?
4. you will have to
 OA mandates from funders/governments
 European guidelines for the dissemination of all results of research funded
with European money in OA by 2020
51

52. Why care? Plan S
• European initiative of cOALition S which attacks the business model
of for-profit scholarly publishers – these publishers will either have to
change their business model, or will not longer be eligible to publish
the work of reserachers who need to adhere to the rules of Plan S
• valid from 2020
• still many uncertainties
52 https://www.scienceeurope.org/coalition-s/

53. Why care? Plan S
(for the time being) signed by:
• Austrian Science Fund
• French National Research Agency
• Science Foundation Ireland
• National Institute for Nuclear Physics Italy
• National Research Fund Luxembourg
• Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research
• Research Council of Norway
• National Science Centre Poland
• Slovenian Research Agency
• Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development
• UK Research and Innovation
53 https://www.scienceeurope.org/coalition-s/

54. Why care? Plan S
publications which do not fulfill the conditions of Plan S:
• publications which only appear behind a paywall (no OA)
• hybrid OA (OA article in journal behind paywall)
• Green OA with embargo
• Green OA of pre- or post-print – it must be the version of record
• publications with publication fees exceeding the cap (tbd)
54 https://www.scienceeurope.org/coalition-s/

55. Why care? Plan S
publications which do fulfill the conditions of Plan S:
• Green OA of version of record without embargo
• Full Gold OA in publications without publication fees (e.g. no-APC journals)
• Full Gold OA in publications with publication fees lower than the cap
SO: Plan S does not mean a necessary switch to APCs/BPCs, but it is a risk
(and potentially very expensive for research intensive institutions if the cap is
not low enough)
55 https://www.scienceeurope.org/coalition-s/

56. How can you make your work
Open Access?
56

57. Green OA
deposit full-text version in a digital archive (‘repository’)
Green OA version is usually an alternative version, next to the commercial one
 find a suitable repository for your work (most institutions have one)
 if there isn't an OA repository in your institution or field, consider a universal
repository such as Zenodo, OpenDepot, or GitHub
 often you may lawfully make your publication OA through a repository even if
you published it with a non-OA publisher (either because the publisher allows
it or because there is a law that allows you to do this or even forces you to do
this)
57
How to make your own work OA?
Peter Suber, ‘How to make your own work open access’, https://cyber.harvard.edu/hoap/How_to_make_your_own_work_open_access

58. Gold OA
publish in immediate OA
 find a suitable OA journal or book publisher (search the Directory of Open Access Journals -
DOAJ or Directory of Open Access Book Publishers - DOAB)
 sometimes, the best journal or publisher for your purposes charges a publication fee, see
whether your funder or employer will pay it
 check whether you can already prepare for these costs at the time when you apply for
project funding
 if you found a promising OA journal or publisher, but have never heard of it, investigate it
 when you find a suitable OA journal or publisher, then submit your manuscript, just as you
would to a conventional journal
 if you don't find a suitable OA journal or publisher, check again when you publish your next
paper (things are changing fast) and make sure to at least make a copy available in Green
OA
58
How to make your own work OA?
Peter Suber, ‘How to make your own work open access’, https://cyber.harvard.edu/hoap/How_to_make_your_own_work_open_access

59. Green OA
solution for some, but not all problems
59

60. Green OA
60
author him/herself deposits version in a digital archive
(“repository”)
often: embargo (Green OA version is made available later than commercial
version)
often: Green OA version is inferior to the commercial one (pre- or post-print)

61. 61 https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/library/openaccess

62. problem of Green OA
no “game-changer”:
solves a couple of problems, but not all (often
embargo, often an inferior version)
in essence an alternative publication model next to
the traditional publication model
62
Green OA

63. Green OA
63
high hopes, e.g. Stevan Harnad: “the inevitable success of transitional Green
OA”
when no-embargo Green OA is universally mandated and provided, there will be a transition to
Fair Gold OA, with peer-review being the only remaining service provided by publishers, and
paid for by institutions out of a fraction of their subscription cancellation savings
but also criticism, e.g. Michael Eisen: “the inevitable failure of parasitic Green
OA”
fundamental logical flaw: subscription publishers only give their blessing to Green OA so long
as they don’t see it as a threat; proof: subscription publishers limit author self-archiving much
more than they used to do, for instance by lengthening embargo periods
in any case: high hopes not (yet) fulfilled, Green OA is no game-changer but
in most cases an alternative next to the traditional publication model
for Harnad vs. Eisen see Mike Taylor (2015), ‘Green and Gold: the possible futures of Open Access’, https://svpow.com/2015/05/26/green-and-gold-the-possible-futures-of-open-
access
Bo-Christer Björk – David Salomon (2014), Developing an Effective Market for Open Access Article Processing Charges, https://wellcome.ac.uk/sites/default/files/developing-
effective-market-for-open-access-article-processing-charges-mar14.pdf

64. Green OA
64
ethical reasons for OA
Green OA provides solution
financial reasons for OA
oGreen OA does not provide a solution
academic reasons for OA
Green OA provides partial solution
Photo: Howard Ignatius

65. For-profit Gold OA
65

66. Gold OA
Gold Hybrid
(i.e. subscription/acquisition + APC/BPC;
so both author and reader pay)
Gold APC/BPC
(i.e. author fees)
for-profit
(APC/BPC profitable)
non-profit
(APC/BPC breakeven)
Gold no-APC/BPC
(i.e. neither author nor reader pay, but a
third party)
for-profit
(profitable)
non-profit
(breakeven)
always for profit
* This taxonomy is based on the terminology used in Rob Johnson et al, (2017), Towards A Competitive And Sustainable OA Market In Europe – A Study Of The Open Access Market And Policy
Environment, doi:10.5281/zenodo.401029, pp. 20-23
66

67. For-profit Gold OA
67
author immediately publishes in OA
Gold OA version is the final version, no reason to distribute inferior versions
profitable publication fees paid by author (sometimes in combination with payment by reader)
1. Gold Hybrid
fee for OA article in a subscription-based journal or OA chapter in a commercial book
“double dipping”: reader and author pay
“the hybrid model, as currently defined and implemented by publishers, is not a working and
viable pathway to OA”
Gold Hybrid was explained away as a “transitional model” but don’t believe everything they
tell you
2. Gold APC/BPC
only author pays
Science Europe: Principles to Open Access to Research Publications (2015), http://www.scienceeurope.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/SE_POA_Pos_Statement _WEB_
FINAL_20150617.pdf
Bo-Christer Björk (2017), ’Growth of hybrid open access, 2009–2016’, doi: 10.7717/peerj.3878

68. dangers of Gold OA
in the hands of commercial publishers, this is just another way to make profit
• “double dipping” (Hybrid OA)
• excessive APCs or BPCs
especially a problem for research-intensive institutions
obligation by funders/governments to publish (Gold) OA without providing a
non-profit infrastructure plays into the hands of commercial publishers
68
For-profit Gold OA

69. 69
do not expect a for-profit market for
academic publishing funded by APCs/BPCs
to be better than a for-profit market funded
by subscriptions/book sales
For-profit Gold OA
Bo-Christer Björk – David Salomon (2014), Developing an Effective Market for Open Access Article Processing Charges,
https://wellcome.ac.uk/sites/default/files/developing-effective-market-for-open-access-article-processing-charges-mar14.pdf
Photo: The Waving Cat

70. For-profit Gold OA
70
academics are driven to for-profit Gold OA by OA mandates at great cost
Example:
state of OA publishing in the UK after “the spectacularly bad Finch report”
“a clear policy direction towards support for publication in open access or hybrid
journals, funded by APCs, as the main vehicle for the publication of research,
especially when it is publicly funded”
Green OA is permissible if the embargo period is <6 months for STEM and <12 months
for HASS; otherwise funds are provided to pay for Gold OA
Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: how to expand access to research publications: publications (2012), https://www.acu.ac.uk/research-information-network/finch-report-final
Danny Kinsley (2017), ‘So did it work? Considering the impact of Finch 5 years on’, https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/269913
Gavia Libraria (2016), ‘Finland joins the fray’, https://gavialib.com/2016/12/finland-joins-the-fray

71. For-profit Gold OA
Sounds good at first, but:
more Gold Hybrid compared to the rest of the world
80% of the spend is on Gold Hybrid; the “flipping” plan has failed
“publishers adapt their policies to maximise the ability of their
journals to capture the additional funds being injected into open
access, by either imposing non-compliant embargo periods or
charging more for mandated licences”
centrally-managed APC expenditure has continued to rise steeply
(555% since 2012), 2017-18 RCUK block grant allocations to
support the RCUK Policy on OA add up to more than £8 million
largest number of payments was made … to commercial
publishers; Elsevier and Wiley, i.e. two traditional subscription-
based publishers, represent 40% of the total APC spend
university libraries act as the middle men transferring government
funds to commercial publishers – similar to the subscription model,
but this time around it concerns even more money and they have
more administration costs themselves
71
Monitoring the transition to Open Access (2015), https://www.acu.ac.uk/research-information-network/monitoring-transition-to-open-accessl
Danny Kinsley (2017), ‘So did it work? Considering the impact of Finch 5 years on’, https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/269913
André Sartori – Danny Kinsley (2017), ‘Flipping journals or filling pockets? Publisher manipulation of OA policies’, https://unlockingresearch-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=1726

72. 72 B. Björk (2017), ’Growth of hybrid open access, 2009–2016’, doi: https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3878
For-profit Gold OA: Hybrid

73. For-profit Gold OA: fake journals
publication fee, but:
• no proper peer review
• no professional archiving
• no professional distribution
in most evaluation systems, publications in these journals will not be taken
into account
73

74. For-profit Gold OA: fake journals
how to spot a fake journal?
• be critical if you get invited to contribute : how is the invitation phrased?
• be weary if the invitation is in bad English
• be weary if the acceptance is super quick (you cannot do proper peer review in less
than 24 hours)
• always look up an unfamiliar publisher/journal
• be critical: scrutinize a publisher’s website (location of head quarters, URL, editorial
boards, information on peer review, …)
• check DOAJ, Web of Science and VABB-SW (https://www.ecoom.be/en/vabb)
74

75. For-profit Gold OA: fake journals
how big is the problem?
e.g. Flanders: 190.000 peer reviewed publications vs. 295 articles in fake journals =>
0,15%
in other words: fake journals are a non-issue
who are the real predators?
• fake journals abuse the system of scholarly publication to earn thousands of euros
at the expense of scholars and scholarship
• commercial legacy publishers abuse the system of scholarly publication to earn
millions of euros at the expense of scholars and scholarship, not hesitating to
charge twice for the same product
• commercial legacy publishers (e.g. Elsevier, OUP) are proven to charge for OA
without providing OA
75
Martin Paul Eve – Ernesto Priego (2017), ‘Who is Actually Harmed by Predatory Publishers?’, doi: https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v15i2.867
Ross Mounce (2017), ‘Hybrid open access is unreliable’, http://rossmounce.co.uk/2017/02/20/hybrid-open-access-is-unreliable/
Ross Mounce (2017), ‘Remarkable ongoing chaos at OUP’, http://rossmounce.co.uk/2017/02/21/remarkable-ongoing-chaos-at-oup/

76. For-profit Gold OA
76
ethical reasons for OA
for-profit Gold OA provides solution (possibly at
great cost)
financial reasons for OA
o unregulated for-profit Gold OA will not provide a
solution (quite the opposite)
academic reasons for OA
for-profit Gold OA provides solution (possibly at
great cost)
Photo: Howard Ignatius

77. Non-profit OA
77

78. Non-profit OA
78
illegal distribution of scholarly publications
Guerilla OA
e.g. Library Genesis or Sci-Hub: “the first pirate website in the world to provide mass and
public access to tens of millions of research papers”, willful copyright infringement, Sci-Hub
provides access to scholarly literature via full text PDF downloads, coverage in some
disciplines >90%
history teaches us that copyright infringements (made possible thanks to the disruptive
power of the digital) force businesses to change
e.g. the disruptive power of the digital in music: Napster stimulated digital distribution of
music, led to the legal alternative Spotify
D.S. Himmelstein et al. (2018), ‘Sci-Hub provides access to nearly all scholarly literature’, https://elifesciences.org/articles/32822

79. Non-profit OA
79
perhaps things are starting to change?
• illegal distribution of scholarly publications
• services to track legal OA version of articles when search online: Unpaywall and OA
Button
browser extensions which search thousands of OA repositories and publisher sites to
find OA versions of papers
D.S. Himmelstein et al. (2018), ‘Sci-Hub provides access to nearly all scholarly literature’, https://elifesciences.org/articles/32822

80. Non-profit OA
80
 illegal distribution of scholarly publications
 abandon academic publishing as we know it
e.g. Herbert Van de Sompel’s researcher’s pods: contributor-centric
instead of document-centric
 non-profit Gold OA (typically: Fair Gold OA)
author immediately publishes in OA
Gold OA version is the final version, no reason to distribute inferior versions
either cost-effective publication fees or third party pays for (real) cost of
publishing
Herbert Van de Sompel (2017), ‘Scholarly Communication: Deconstruct and Decentralize?, https://youtu.be/o4nUe-6Ln-8

81. Gold OA
Gold Hybrid
(i.e. subscription/acquisition + APC/BPC;
so both author and reader pay)
Gold APC/BPC
(i.e. author fees)
for-profit
(APC/BPC profitable)
non-profit
(APC/BPC breakeven)
Gold no-APC/BPC
(i.e. neither author nor reader pay, but a
third party)
for-profit
(profitable)
non-profit
(breakeven)
always for profit
* This taxonomy is based on the terminology used in Rob Johnson et al, (2017), Towards A Competitive And Sustainable OA Market In Europe – A Study Of The Open Access Market And Policy
Environment, doi:10.5281/zenodo.401029, pp. 20-23
81

82. Non-profit Gold OA
• non-profit Gold OA with publication fees (APCs/BPCs)
publications fees are breakeven, not profitable
APC should be around 650€, BPC around 6.500€
transparency about costs
• non-profit Gold OA without publication fees
cost of publishing typically paid by a consortium of academic institutions
so OA publishing without any costs for the reader and without any costs for
the author
82
Martin Paul Eve et al. (2017), ‘The Transition to Open Access: The State of the Market, Offsetting Deals, and a Demonstrated Model for
Fair Open Access with the Open Library of Humanities’, doi: 10.3233/978-1-61499-769-6-118

83. Non-profit Gold OA
non-profit Gold OA without publication fees
example: Open Library of Humanities
24 journals
supported by more than 200 libraries worldwide
83 Martin Paul Eve (2015), ‘Co-operating for gold open access without APCs’, doi: 10.1629/uksg.166

84. Fair Gold OA (always non-profit)
strict conditions preventing commercial exploitation of the
publication of research results and ensuring that researchers
remain in full and total control of the dissemination of the results of
their research
• the title is owned by the author, editorial board or by a learned society
• authors retain copyright and a CC-BY license applies
• all articles/books are published in Full OA (no costs on the side of the
reader, no subscriptions, no “double dipping”)
• publishing costs are low, transparent, and in proportion to the value
added by the publisher
84 https://www.fairopenaccess.org/

85. Fair Gold OA
85 Martin Paul Eve et al, (2017), ‘The Transition to Open Access: The State of the Market, Offsetting Deals, and a Demonstrated Model for Fair
Open Access with the Open Library of Humanities’, doi: 10.3233/978-1-61499-769-6-118

86. Fair Gold OA
why would it be cheaper to produce a Fair OA publication?
exactly the same attention to quality control: same efforts in organising peer
review, in providing professional lay-out, professional archiving, professional
distribution, etc.
but intention is not to make (as much as possible) profit, but to work cost-effectively
but you save money on subscription management, digital rights management, legal
fees for licensing, marketing
86

87. Fair Gold OA
why wait for the commercial publishers?
they would be fools to work against their own interests and walk away from so much
profit
opportunity for the humanities to lead the way
monopoly of the Big5 is not as absolute in the humanities
“the humanities have remained relatively independent (20% from top five
publishers)”
87 Vincent Larivière et al, (2015), ‘The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era’, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0127502

88. Coda
not only words
88

89. OA at KU Leuven
officially (until 2018):
- investment in Green OA: both infrastructure (Lirias) and staff (OA support
desk and student workers in KU Leuven Libraries)
- very moderate support for Fair Gold OA (no APC/BPC): e.g. Open Library of
Humanities
- no support for for-profit Gold OA
89

90. OA at KU Leuven
in reality:
yearly spend on for-profit Gold OA (mostly APCs) estimated at at least
€380.000
NB on top of (no OA) collection budget spent by KU Leuven Libraries – c.
€8.000.000/year
90 Photo: Alex Proimos

91. OA at KU Leuven
KU Leuven Fund for Fair OA (since March 2018)
BPCs for Fair Gold OA monographs published by Leuven University
Press
APCs for Fair Gold OA journal articles (regardless of publisher)
support for other Fair Gold OA (no APC/BPC) initiatives
91 https://bib.kuleuven.be/onderzoek/open-access/kulfondsfairoa

92. BPC of c. €6.500, representing real cost of publishing
scientific value guaranteed: assessment for OA support completely
separated from peer review assessment of manuscript
open to all (not only authors from KU Leuven):
KU Leuven-affiliation: 1/3 own means* + 2/3 from fund
no KU Leuven-affiliation: 1/3 from fund + 2/3 own means
* fee waiver possibility
92
KU Leuven Fund for Fair OA
https://bib.kuleuven.be/onderzoek/open-access/kulfondsfairoa

93. APCs based on real publishing cost (typically less than €1.000)
publication in full OA (no hybrid, no geo-blocking)
copyright remains with author
scientific value needs to be guaranteed (DOAJ, WoS/VABB-SHW)
only open to authors from KU Leuven
93 https://bib.kuleuven.be/onderzoek/open-access/kulfondsfairoa
KU Leuven Fund for Fair OA

94. Further reading or viewing
94
• Peter Suber, Open Access (MIT Press, 2012)
• Martin Paul Eve, Open Access and the Humanities (Cambridge
UP, 2014)
• presentation about OA and OLH by Caroline Edwards
• documentary Paywall: The Business of Scholarship
• Open Access Explained (PhD Comics)

95. 95
demmy.verbeke@kuleuven.be
@viroviacum

96. • 250 € to help pay for APC, BPC or OA initiative
• only for Fair OA
• send your proposal (abstract / article / details of how you want to spend the prize)
to demmy.verbeke@kuleuven.be
• deadline: 15 February 2019
96
OA award