Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
Open Access Policy
2015
Falk Reckling
Strategy – Analysis
(Sources and further information are hyperlinked)
Economics of the academic
publishing system
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But it‘s the economy too, stupid !
researchers produce for
publishers as authors, editors
and reviewers free of charge
taxes and fees fund
researchers
tax payers fund but
have only limited
access to publications
researchers consume
publications they have
produced
publishers produce and
advertise
publishers sell to libraries
3
Dysfunctional Publication Market

every publication is a monopoly and cannot be substituted

the price service relation of publications are not transparent for researchers
which creates a tragedy-of-commons-problem

big publishers sell bundles of journals (big deal) with intransparent pricing (nondisclosure clauses)

dominance of some oligopolists with operating profits from 35% to 42%
(revenue of ~ Ø $ 4-5.000 per article)

publishers hold copyright which are the basis for high profitable value added
services (e.g. bibliometric and bibliographic databases)  new information
giants in science arise

Luxury Journal Effect: research careers are often determinated by the branding
of the publication venue and not by the publication  but see counter
movements as the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment
(signed by the FWF)
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Price factors of commercial vs. non-commercial academic journals
per citation (Source: http://www.journalprices.com/)
All
4.75
Social Science
3.33
Psychology
3.01
Physics
5.17
Medicine
Mathematics
8.06
2.86
Humanities
History
Law: 17,55
3.96
2.72
Geology
6.04
Engineering
3.10
Education
4.68
Economics
Computer Science
3.36
2.52
Chemistry
Business
4.34
3.21
Biology
Agriculture
4.62
3.32
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What is Open Access?
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What is Open Access?
Main Principle  free access to scholarly publications and research
data via the Internet
Author rights  Authors hold the copyright and may post any version
to any repository or website
Reuse  all publications shall be published under an open licence,
preferably the Creative Commons Attribution CC BY . In any case,
the licence applied should fulfill the requirements defined by the
Berlin Declaration.
Machine Readiblity  Publication full text, metadata, supporting data,
citations and the status of the publication as Open Access have to
be made available in a machine-readable form via open standards.
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Why Open Access ?*
Technical
 the digitalisation and the Internet offer new publication formats
 new potentials for searching, cross-linking and filtering of knowledge (e.g.
text and data mining)
Scholarly
 improvement of knowledge exchange and higher citation rates
 better reproducibility of research results
 reduction of research costs through Open Access
Societal
 economic and moral claim of tax payers
 new transfer of knowledge into society (e.g. doctors, teachers, SME,
journalists, public administration, interested laymen)
* see  testimonials more than 40 outstanding researchers
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FWF Scientists Survey 2013
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State of the Art
The two biggest funding agencies in basic research for the
Austrian research institutions, the EU (Horizon 2020 +
ERC) and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), require and
support all project leaders and project staff members to
make their peer-reviewed research results freely available
through the Internet.
Open Access to research data is recommended but not
yet mandated.
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Carlos Moedas
EU Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation
“Public investment in research and innovation should have
the greatest social and economic benefits possible: improving
the public relationship with our science systems and opening
research results to new innovation and business
opportunities … Expensive fees for publically funded
research results, that could be of benefit to citizens, must
end, and new business models put in place … “
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International Developments
European Commission (July 2012)

Recommendation to member states: 60% Open Access in 2016
Danemark (July 2014)

80% Open Access in 2017 and 100% in 2022
Germany (July 2014)

the government plans a comprehensive strategy for Open Access and Open Data
Sweden (February 2015)

100% Open Access in 2025
UK (March 2014)

from 2016 the Research Excellence Framework accepts Open Access
publications only + offsetting deals with publishers
Netherlands (December 2014)

60% Open Access in 2016 and 100% in 2024 + full OA deals with publishers
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Open Access Policy and Funding
of the FWF
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Option I: Green Open Access
FWF Policy = self-deposition of the author’s accepted manuscript (after peer-review
but prior to publishers copy editing and production) in any sustainable subject or
institutional repository after a period of no longer than 12 months.

almost 700 institutions recommend/require to make publications OA in nearly
4000 repositories

more than 1200 publishers allow OA self-archiving of articles published in
subscription journals
Caveats !

preprints or working papers are not Open Access, only peer-reviewed versions

in most cases not the orginial version of record but only the accepted manuscript
can be archived

different embargo policies (0 to 48 months) with the tendency of extension (see
Elsevier)

rights for authors and users are still very restricted

no influence on publishers pricing policies so far
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Option II: Gold Open Access
FWF Policy = publication in an Open Access venue using the Creative Commons
Attribution (CC-BY). Costs are additionally covered by the FWF via the programme
Peer-Reviewed Publications up to three years after the end of the project.
 out of 10.000 OA journals 3.000 are indexed in bibliometric databases + some
models for books

~ 65% of OA journals work without author fees. If author fees are requested, Ø
€ 800 per article but high variance: € 100 - € 4.000

~ 20% of all indexed articles are Gold Open Access
Caveats !

Since most OA journals are very young, they still lack reputation and therefore
are unattractive for younger researchers

high disciplinary variance of renowned OA journals

lack of funding for author fees

Discredits by faux journals or predatory publisher
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20 most used OA journals of FWF funded authors
1.
PLOS ONE
11.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
2.
NEW JOURNAL OF PHYSICS
12.
3.
OPTICS EXPRESS
13.
ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY AND
PHYSICS
BIOGEOSCIENCES
4.
NUCLEIC ACIDS RESEARCH
14.
BIOMEDICAL OPTICS EXPRESS
5.
PLOS GENETICS
15.
6.
PLOS PATHOGENS
16.
7.
ANNALES GEOPHYSICAE
17.
FRONTIERS IN HUMAN
NEUROSCIENCE
HYDROLOGY AND EARTH SYSTEM
SCIENCES
MICROBIAL CELL FACTORIES
8.
BMC GENOMICS
18.
ACTA CRYSTALLOGRAPHICA E
9.
BMC EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY 19.
10. ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF
COMBINATORICS
20.
ACTA PROTOZOOLOGICA
NATURE COMMUNICATION
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Option III: Hybrid Open Access
FWF Policy = payment for OA of a single article in a subscription venue using the
Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY). Costs are additionally covered by the
FWF via the programme Peer-Reviewed Publications up to three years after the
end of the project.

prices per article vary enormously € 900 to € 4.000

Hybrid OA offers publishers a possibility of switching journals from subscription
to Open Access
Caveats !

„Double Dipping“  despite of official communiques publishers pocket often
twice

only 2% to 3% of all articles are Hybrid Open Access,

only few real transition models from subscription to Open Access exist
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FWF OA funding in a nutshell

2001: coverage of OA author fees via Peer-Reviewed Publication

OA Policy: recommendation since 2004, mandate since 2008

2009: one of the first OA book funding programmes (~ € 1 Mio./year)  FWF EBook Library (now 280 OA Books)

2010: funder of Europe PubMedCentral

2013: initiator of the Open Access Network Austria (OANA)

2013: funder of arXiv

2013: co-funder of the Austrian share for SCOAP³

2013: initial funding of eight journals from social science and humanities

2013: ~ € 3,0 Mio (1.5% of the overall budget)

2014: study Developing an Effective Market for Open Access Article Processing
Charges together with Wellcome Trust, Research Councils and others published)

2014: together with the Austrian Library Consortium first offsetting models with
IOP Publishing, RCS, Taylor & Francis
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News in 2015
Publication Costs

price caps (Gold Open Access fees = € 2,500 per article, Hybrid Open Access
fees = € 1,500 per article)

ceases to make additional payments for any publication costs for subscription
journals (e.g. colour figures, page charges and submission fees)

Offsetting deal for Hybrid Open Access with publisher Taylor & Francis
Stand-Alone Publications

extension to new digital Open Access publication formats (e.g. apps, wikis,
software, databases, audio, video, animation), funding up to € 18,000
Open Research Data
 Applicants for research grants are explicitly asked to budget funds for processing,
archiving and re-using open research data (see 2.6. “Other Costs”)
Compliance
 From 2016 onwards, final reports require that all publications are OA
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For more informations
FWF Open Access Policy
FWF Open Access News
FWF Open Access on Twitter
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