The Beginning of an Open
Rewards ERA?
Improving Access to Australian Research
1 Open Access and Innovation
2 Open Access Monographs
Colin Steele, Emeritus Fellow, ANU
National Issues for Open Innovation
 “Maintaining Open Access is a key part of
ensuring maximum benefit from both
predictable and unpredictable advances in
knowledge”
 “Universities “seeking iron clad protection for
IP is yielding diminishing returns” (Professor Alan
Hughes, Margaret Thatcher Professor of Centre for Business
Research, Cambridge University, ANU Lecture 14 Aug 2008)
 Australian Innovation Report to Kim Carr
recommends Open Access to research outputs
Cutler Report Recommendations
 In general terms, the review panel
recommends making “material” available to
society under a creative commons licence.
 “Utilising machine searchable repositories,
especially for scientific papers and data and
the internet, where it would be freely
available to the world”
Cutler 2
 Recommendation 7.7: Australia should establish a
National Information Strategy to optimise the flow of
information in the Australian economy.
 The fundamental aim of a National Information Strategy
should be to:
 utilise the principles of targeted transparency and the
development of auditable standards to maximise the
flow of information in private markets about product
quality;
 and ·maximise the flow of government generated
information, research, and content for the benefit of
users (including private sector resellers of information).
Cutler 3
 Recommendation 7.8: Australian governments should
adopt international standards of open publishing as
far as possible. Material released for public
information by Australian governments should be
released under a creative commons licence.
 Recommendation 7.9: Funding models and
institutional mandates should recognise the research
and innovation role and contributions of cultural
agencies and institutions responsible for information
repositories, physical collections or creative content
and fund them accordingly.
Cutler 4
 Recommendation 7.10: A specific strategy for ensuring the
scientific knowledge produced in Australia is placed in
machine searchable repositories be developed and
implemented using public funding agencies and
universities as drivers.
 Recommendation 7.14: To the maximum extent
practicable, information, research and content funded by
Australian governments including national collections
should be made freely available over the internet as part of
the global public commons. This should be done whilst the
Australian Government encourages other countries to
reciprocate by making their own contributions to the
global digital pubic commons.
How to Implement
 The National Academies Forum meeting in
Canberra two weeks ago endorsed the Cutler
OA recommendations above BUT
 The crucial issue, as ever, is to implement
such recommendations in the context of
local institutional action.
 Need to address the whole system
holistically in the context of scholarly
communication
Annual Costs - Global Scholarly
Communications Process - UK RIN
200
180
160
33.9
£ billion
140
120
6.4
2.1
16.4
100
174.7
80
60
115.8
40
20
0
Research
production*
*
Publishing &
Distribution
incl. cost for research and writing of article
Access
provision
User search
and print cost
Reading
Total cost
Total Publishing & Distribution Cost Global SC Process – UK RIN
7,000
820
6,000
955
£ million
5,000
965
4,000
6,438
3,000
1,803
2,000
1,000
3,698
1,895
0
Non-cash
peer review
Direct fixed
cost
First copy
cost
Variable
cost
Indirect cost
Surplus
Total cost
Key Players and Issues
• Researchers and their employing institutions
• Research funders - public and commercial
sectors
• Publishers and other information providers
• Tensions between public good, economic
benefits, and various reward systems
• How do price and other signals, such as OA
reach academics?
• The academic ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ system
Bibliometrics and ERA
 Need to be very careful in bibliometrics and the
final outcomes of ERA and funding models. At the
moment, “anything is possible” given no
finalisations but can all disciplines come up with
appropriate metrics?
 Potential behavioural effects of using bibliometrics
may not be picked up for some years.
 UK HEFCE/Leiden reports – September 2008
important in this respect.
New Metrics
 Current disconnect between web 2.0 scholarly
activities and measurements for reward systems
 The new metrics of scholarly authority?
 Use Google Scholar, Citeseer, H-index, Harzing’s
Publish or Perish
 Usage based metrics such as downloads cf Project
MESUR – Metric from Scholarly Usage of
Resources http://www.mesur.org/MESUR.html
Librarians Can Help
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455596/
ANU E (OA) Press
ANU Downloads
 In 2007 1.16 million complete downloads (robots
and spider figures removed)
 Web downloads January to June 2008: 740,727
with 3,441 print on demand (POD) sales
 Top 5 ebooks (whole book) downloaded for 2007
in a bewildering variety of countries which ANU
print distribution would not have reached.
-
El Lago Espanol (62,408)
Ethics and Auditing (44,204)
The Islamic Traditions of Cirebon (23,507)
Indigenous People and the Pilbara Mining Boom (20,227)
Information Systems Foundations (18,473)
http://epress.anu.edu.au/
Look for an eScholarship Model
 California eScholarship repository includes:
journals and peer-reviewed series, seminar
series and postprints.
 Last week...
26,018 full-text downloads of repository content
 To date...
7,043,025 full-text downloads
• 95% of download traffic from outside UC IPs
• 80% of download traffic referred by Google
• Top download locations are UK, Canada, India, Mexico,
Germany
Back to the Future with Institutional
Publishing
 See my article in JEP. Universities such as
Oxford, Manchester and California, when they
founded their presses from the 17th century
onwards began with their own scholars output.
 Now with most publishers reluctant to take
academic titles unless “crossover” or trade titles,
new models are required in a digital era.
 The old models even when an author gets
published are out moded. British Academy 2005
report indicates average University Press global
printing 500 copies – 300 sold – 200 remaindered!
Relevant Recent Reports
 Ithaka Report University Publishing In A Digital Age
http://www.ithaka.org/strategic-services/universitypublishing
 Research Library Publishing Services. New Options for
University Publishing. By Karla L. Hahn, ARL
http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/research-library-publishing-services.pdf
 Ross Coleman. Sydney University Press-publication,
business and the digital library.
http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/1426
 Open Access to Knowledge. (Oak Law Project). Reports
at: http://www.oaklaw.qut.edu.au
Bloomsbury Publishing OA
Monograph Initiative Very Important
 Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) launching a new imprint:
Bloomsbury Academic which initially plans to publish in
the humanities and social sciences with thematic lists on
pressing global issues. Plans to have circa 50 new titles
online and in print by the end of 2009.
 These titles will all be published online under an openaccess models. Free downloads, for non-commercial
purposes, will be available immediately upon publication,
using Creative Commons licences. The works will also be
sold as books, using short-run technologies or Print on
Demand (POD).
Bloomsbury 2
 Bloomsbury say this represents “new thinking,
new technology and new directions in academic
publishing. We're making a major commitment to
spreading knowledge more easily throughout the
world – with a sustainable business model”
 The platform will also be available to showcase
and promote other publishers' titles. The initiative
is not exclusively in the English language, says
the company. Bloomsbury’s German partner,
Berlin Verlag, will be participating actively in the
venture.
Familiar Text, New Chapter?
 Textbooks have been the sector least affected by the
digital revolution
 Growing dissatisfaction in the US for high cost of
textbooks
 New Open Source Open Access textbooks
 E-books will come for the Net generation, but costs,
downloads, copyright and seamless technologies
required like music frameworks
 Transformation/morphing of campus bookshops into
digital centres long overdue- browse an Espresso!
Conclusion - Need Linked Up
National and Local Approaches
 Link Research creation to research dissemination
and open innovation and the benefits (eg
Houghton DEST 2006 and JISC 2008 reports)
 Institutions need to involve academics, faculties,
research offices and libraries in holistic
approaches linked to personal web pages /
institutional repositories / new research metrics
 Institutional and Australian Research
dissemination benefits through Open Access
 What will be your Cat(alyst)?
Conclusion: Cat(alyst) -Think Outside the
Box for OA Institutional Change!