Open Access
publishing at Pitt:
alignment with local and
global OA policies
Timothy S. Deliyannides
Director, Office of Scholarly Communication and Publishing
University Library System, University of Pittsburgh
Library Publishing Forum 2014
Kansas City, MO, March 6, 2014
Overview
 Open Access program aligned with institutional
mission
 Journal publishing program – central to advocacy
for Open Access
 Challenges:
– Maintaining quality
– Promoting reuse rights
 Intentional alignment with partners whose mission
and policies support our goals
Open Access: key to strategic plan for
Innovation in Scholarly Communication
 Support researchers in
– efficient knowledge production
– rapid dissemination of new research
– open access to scholarly information
 Build collaborative partnerships
around the world
 Improve the production and sharing of scholarly
research
 Support innovative publishing services
 Establish trusted repositories for the research output of
the University
A Comprehensive Program for OA
 Support for Gold Open Access:
– Publishing journals, books and conference proceedings
– Open Access Author Fee Fund; COPE
 Support for Green Open Access:
– 6 global, subject-based repositories
– Local institutional repository and OA Mandate
 Learning and teaching about OA
 Advocacy and support for our OA partners
 Measuring and marking success
Why become a Publisher?
 Incentivize Open Access
 Transform the subscription pricing system that
punishes libraries and scholars
 Provide services that scholars understand, need
and value
 Deepen our understanding of scholarly
communications issues
OA publishing/dissemination activities
 Institutional repository (EPrints)
 6 global subject-based author self-archiving
repositories (EPrints)
 Conference proceedings (PKP OCS)
 Monographs – new, e-only books (PKP OMP)
 OA digital editions of Pitt Press backlist titles
 Pennsylvania Digital Library (PKP Open Harvester)
ULS E-Journal Publishing
http://www.library.pitt.edu/e-journals
 35 scholarly journals published by ULS
 45 additional journals hosted by ULS
(through Scholarly Exchange® hosting service)
 Most are Open Access (standard license: CC BY)
 Based on PKP Open Journal Systems (OJS)
 Editorial teams are located around the world
 Six journals have multilingual content
Base package services
 Production hosting environment with 24/7 support
 ISSN registration
 Assignment of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs)
 Consultation on editorial workflow
 Advice on best practices in e-publishing
 Graphic design services
 Custom article template design
 Web-based training for editorial staff
Base package services (continued)
 Hosting of back issues
 Registration with abstracting
and indexing services
 Web site usage statistics
 Marketing and promotion
 Archiving and preservation (LOCKSS)
 Print on demand (Espresso Book Machine)
 Altmetrics at article level (Plum Analytics)
Journal Publishing Strategies
 Maintain quality and
academic integrity
 Choose partners carefully
 Rely on self-sufficient editors
 Work smart, not hard
 Keep costs low
 Ongoing monitoring/evaluation of academic quality
Ensuring and Maintaining Quality
 Journal Proposal Form
 Selection criteria
 Publications Advisory Board
– Advises on major policy decisions
– Reviews journal proposals
 Periodic audits of journal content
and peer review processes
 Assessment of research impact
Innovation in journal publishing
 Open Peer review
– Dialogic Pedagogy: http://dpj.pitt.edu
– Dual OJS sites
– simultaneous open and traditional peer review
 Harvard Dataverse integration
– Research data deposited along with manuscript submission
– Based on OJS plugin
 Alternative metrics (PlumX)
– Article-level altmetrics on every article abstract page
Measuring success: altmetrics
 Altmetrics pilot
project (PlumX by
Plum Analytics)
 Aggregates dozens of
traditional and new measures
 article-level altmetrics widget
imbedded in OJS journals and
Eprints repositories
Scholarly Exchange®
 http://www.scholarlyexchange.org
 45 additional Open Access journals
 Acquired by the ULS in 2012
 Hosting service only
 ULS is NOT the publisher and does not provide full
publishing services
 Benefits small journals in low-resource settings
 Low-barrier entry to OA publishing
Sustaining our publishing program
 Since 2012, we charge fees for services to
publishing partners
 We incentivize Open Access through subsidies
 We subsidize Pitt publications
 Pitt student publications are still free!
 Partners may charge APCs; no examples yet
Alignments to support OA publishing
 Founding member of Library Publishing Coalition
 Member, Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity
(COPE)
 Major Development Partner for Public Knowledge
Project (PKP)
 Member, Open Access Scholarly Publishers
Association (OASPA)
 Member, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
OASPA’s mission
 Exchange Information
 Set Standards
– uniform definition of OA publishing
– best practices for OA scholarly communications
– ethical standards
 Advance OA business & process models
 Advocate for Gold OA
 Educate the research community and public on OA
 Promote Innovation
How does membership benefit us as a
library publisher?
 STANDARDS help maintain and defend quality
 Provide tools for advocacy and teaching about OA
 Forum for discussion of key issues and trends
 Keeps us connected with current information
 Inspires confidence in potential publishing partners
OASPA Code of Conduct
 Maintain rigorous peer review process for
published content
 Editorial boards with recognized experts
 Transparency for:
– Peer review process and policies
– Author fees and policies (if any)
– Author copyright/licensing policies
– Author submission instructions
OASPA Membership Criteria
 At least one gold OA journal with original research
 Articles must be peer-reviewed
 No reader registration required to access content
 OA policy equivalent to CC BY, however use of the CC
BY-NC license also permitted
 Desirable: DOIs for articles, indexing/discoverability,
COPE membership, archiving policy
 Compliance with OASPA Code of Conduct
Membership led to changes for us
 clarified our policies
 improved our transparency
 improved our Web site
 adopted well-articulated code of conduct
 changed to more open definition of OA,
encouraging downstream reuse
CC BY - our standard license
 Renegotiated with all publishing partners in 2012
 Successfully converted more than half
 20 journals now use CC BY
 Pushback in some disciplines
 All new journals since the change are CC BY
 Our three subscription-based journals
remain at CC BY-NC-ND
Coming soon: DOAJ Seal criteria
 archival arrangement with an external party
 permanent identifiers (handles, DOIs, etc) for articles
 article level metadata provided to DOAJ
 machine-readable licensing information embedded in
article level metadata
 allow reuse and remixing of its content in
accordance with a CC-BY or CC-BY-NC license
 deposit policy registered in a deposit policy directory
(like SHERPA/RoMEO)
http://www.library.pitt.edu/e-journals