Open Access: Where Are We
Now and How Did We Get
Here?
Tom Reinsfelder – Penn State Mont Alto
John Barnett – University of Pittsburgh
PaLA – College & Research Division Spring Program
May 30, 2014
Journal Prestige & Tenure
Growth in Scholarly
Publishing
• ≈50 million research articles published
1665-2009
• ≈1.35 million journal articles published
per year (2006 est.)
Sources: Jinha, (2010), Bjork, et al. (2009)
Beginnings of Electronic
Scholarly Communication
1945 – Vannevar Bush in the Atlantic Monthly. described a
device “in which an individual stores all his books, records,
and communications, and which is mechanized so that it
may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility”
1977 – John Senders described a typewriter connected to a
television screen that would allow researchers to connect
with one another.
1979 – American Council of Learned Societies;
“a scholar may turn to a console in the corner of the office and
summon up through a national network the images of the pages
that are of greatest interest”
1989 – First refereed electronic journal, Psycoloquy
American Psychological Association / S. Harnad.
Distributed by Email & Usenet. (Harnad, 1992)
1991 – 6 peer-reviewed scholarly e-journals.
1994 – 73 peer-reviewed scholarly e-journals.
(Wilson, 1991)
(Mogge, 1998)
1997 – 1,049 peer-reviewed scholarly e-journals. (Mogge, 1998)
2014 – Nearly all peer-reviewed scholarly journals are
available as e-journals. Some free; Some $$
Traditional Academic Publishing System
Author
Universities
Publisher
Editor
PeerReviewers
Traditional Academic Publishing System
Author
Universities
Publisher
Editor
PeerReviewers
What is Open Access?
Open access literature is digital, online, free of
charge, and free of most copyright and licensing
restrictions.
Peter Suber, Open Access. MIT Press. 2012
Open Access is Compatible with…
•
•
•
•
•
Peer review
Promotion and tenure criteria
Copyright law
Revenue and profits
Any genre or format
Open Access does not …



Mean low quality
Violate copyright
Reduce author choice or academic freedom
10
Two Paths to Open Access
• Gold OA
Open Access Journals
• Green OA
Online Databases / Repositories
Gold OA
doaj.org
Income Models for OA Journals
Funded primarily by producers
Funded primarily by consumers
•Article Processing Fees
•Advertising
•Sponsorships
•Internal Subsidies
•External Subsidies
•Donations & Fundraising
•Endowments
•In-Kind Support
•Partnerships
•Use-Triggered Fees
•Convenience-Format License
•Value Added Fee-Based Services
•Contextual E-Commerce
SPARC®, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
http://www.sparc.arl.org/resources/papers-guides/oa-income-models
Green OA
Repositories/Databases
Faculty Adopted Open
Access Policies
Institution-wide polices
Amherst College
Bryn Mawr College
Bucknell University
California State Northridge
Duke University
Emory University
Lafayette College
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Oberlin College
Oregon State
Princeton University
Rollins College
Rutgers University
Trinity University
University of California, ALL CAMPUSES
University of Kansas
University of North Texas
Utah State University
Wellesley College
College/departmental policies
Arizona State University Libraries
Brigham Young: Department of Instructional Psychology
& Technology; University Library
Columbia University: Lamont -Doherty Earth Observatory;
University Libraries
Gustavus Adolphus College Library
Harvard University: Business School, Divinity School,
Law School, Graduate School of Design,
Graduate School of Education, Faculty of Arts
and Sciences, John F. Kennedy School of
Government, Public Health
Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis Library
Miami University of Ohio, Libraries
Stanford University: School of Education
University of Northern Colorado Library Faculty
University of Oregon: Department of Romance
Languages; Library Faculty
Virginia Tech, Libraries
Wake Forest University: Z. Smith Reynolds Library Faculty
Source: Registry of Open Access Repositories/Mandatory Access Policies
roarmap.eprints.org
Typical Faculty OA Policy
Features
• University is granted non-exclusive right to post online
scholarly work written by the researcher.
• Faculty members retain the copyright to these articles
and can turn copyright over to a third party, such as a
publisher.
• Faculty are strongly discouraged from signing publishing
contracts that forbid open access posting but usually
receive an exception from the policy if needed.
• A single institutional repository service is designated as
the official distribution site for the faculty works.
Some OA Perspectives of…
• Faculty Authors
• Librarians
• Publishers
• University Administrators
see Reinsfelder (2012). Open access publishing practices in a complex environment: Conditions,
barriers & bases of power. Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, 1(1). jlsc-pub.org
Now: Open Repositories
Growth in repositories
134
Articles
9,772
Countries
Journals
Now: Open Journals
1,646,119
Top 10 Countries
for OA Journals
•
•
•
•
•
Brazil
United Kingdom
United States
Spain
India
•
•
•
•
•
Egypt
Germany
Switzerland
Colombia
Chile
Now: Open Books, Data,
& Education
• Open Access Books – e.g., OAPEN and Knowledge
Unlatched
• Open Data = Research data that can be freely
used, reused, and redistributed by anyone
• Open Educational Resources (OERs) = Teaching,
learning, and research resources released under an
open license that permits free use and repurposing
by others
Why?
• Over the past few decades, the market for
monographs has shrunk by @ 90% (1)
• College textbook prices rose 82% between 2003
and 2013 (2)
• 65% of students report not purchasing a textbook
because of its high price (3)
Open Access Mandates
Institutional
State
National
International
State Legislation: Illinois
• Open Access to Articles Act
o Passed August 9, 2013
o Public universities to establish Open Access to
Research Task Force by January 1, 2014
o Review current practices and design a policy for
open access to research articles
o Findings and recommendations of task forces by
January 1, 2015
o Policy and implementation plan
32
State Legislation:
New York
• NY State Taxpayer Access to Publicly Funded
Research Act
o Introduced to State Assembly, January 2013
o Introduced to State Legislature, March 2013
o Action expected 2014
• Requires any NY State executive branch agency,
commission, or authority that funds direct research
to establish a public access policy that would
provide access to articles reporting on research
funded by the state
State Legislation:
California
• California Taxpayer Access to Publicly Funded
Research Act
o Introduced into the state legislature, April 2013
o Passed May 2013
o Heard in the CA State Senate Committee on Governmental Organization
but failed to move out of committee
o Expected to be reconsider in 2014
• Researchers receiving a state-funding grant required
to submit an electronic copy of articles to a publicly
accessible online database
• No later than 6 months after publication
• Available through the California State Library
Federal Policies & Laws
• National Institutes of Health Public Access
Policy (2008)
• “All investigators funded by the NIH submit ...to the
National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central an
electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed
manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to
be made publicly available no later than 12 months
after the official date of publication”
35
FASTR
• Fair Access to Science & Technology Research Act
- H.R. 708 (Introduced Feb. 2013)
o Rep. Doyle (D-PA), et al.
• Being considered by the U.S. House and Senate
• Support by higher education leaders, university
provosts, White House, library and information
advocacy organizations
White House Directive
Mandating OA – Feb 22, 2013
•
•
•
Directs federal agencies to develop OA policies within the next 6
months
Covers the same agencies covered in FASTR plus @ a dozen more
Takes effect immediately
37
Around the world
•
•
•
•
UK: Finch Report and RCUK
Canada: CIHR (2013); draft Tri-Agency policy
Australia: ARC Open Access Policy (2013)
EU: Ongoing reports/policies (2006-)
• There’s also PubMed Central US,
PubMed Central Canada,
and Europe PubMed Central
OA Challenges
• Copyright and OA
publishing
• Funding OA
publishing
o Self-publishing/vanity
publishing
• Quality and OA
publishing
o Predatory publishers
o Peer review
• Tenure and OA
publishing
o Impact factor of OA
journals
In the news:
Bohannon “sting”
• October 2013: Writer John Bohannon publishes
“Who’s Afraid of Peer Review?” (Science)
• Bohannon submitted a spoof research article to 304
OA journals listed in DOAJ and in Beall’s List of
predatory OA publishers
• 157 journals accepted the article with scant to no
evidence of peer review/poor peer review
Analysis
• Article accepted for publication by journals in the
developing world . . .
• But also by OA journals published by Elsevier,
Wolters Kluwer, and Sage
• Reputable OA publishers (Hindawi, PLoS One)
rejected the article
In the news:
Elsevier take-down notices
• December 2013: Elsevier demands that copies of
their works be removed from Academia.edu and
other websites used by scholars to share, store, and
promote work
o IRs at several universities also notified
• Authors violated their agreements with Elsevier,
posting the published version (publisher PDF) of their
works to the sites
Analysis
• Elsevier wasn’t technically or legally doing anything
wrong
o Authors had signed publisher agreements that transferred rights
to Elsevier
• Often Elsevier allows authors to post a copy of a
published article on a personal or institutional
website
o But this must be the author’s version (pre-print or post-print)
Copyright Awareness
• SPARC Author Addendum
o Allows authors to modify copyright transfer agreements
with non-OA journals
• Creative Commons licenses
o Allows control and
sharing depending on
author choice
• Sherpa/RoMEO
Funding OA
• Knowledge Unlatched (libraries sharing costs)
• Organizational support
o e.g., Pennsylvania Libraries: Research & Practice
• Author fee funds
o Libraries/institutions pay article processing charges for eligible peerreviewed OA journals
• Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity (COPE)
o Universities already subsidize scholarly journal publishing through
subscriptions
o They should also create “mechanisms for underwriting reasonable
publication charges for articles written by its faculty and published in feebased open –access journals …”
OA Funds for Researchers
University of Calgary
University of California,
Berkeley
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth University
Duke University
University of Florida
Grand Valley State University
Harvard University
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
Memorial Sloan-Kettering
Cancer Center
Michigan State University
University of Michigan
University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill
Ontario Genomics Institute
University of Oregon
University of Ottawa
Simon Fraser University
University of Pittsburgh
University of Tennessee,
Knoxville
Texas A&M University
University of Toronto
Tufts University
University of Utah
Wake Forest University
University of Wisconsin
Quality Assurance
• Beall’s List: Potential, Possible, or Probably Predatory
Scholarly Open-Access Publishers
o Analyzes journals and publishers for questionable practices
• Caveat: Sometimes tars with a broad brush
• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
o Previous incarnation: List of registered OA journals from
around the world
o Post-Bohannon sting: Journals must meet criteria to be
included in the list
Quality Assurance
• Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association
(OASPA)
o Represents OA journal and book publishers
o Code of conduct: Standards, practices, ethics for OA scholarly
communications
o Advance OA business and publishing models
• Library Publishing Coalition (LPC)
o 2-year, library-led initiative to advance the field of library
publishing
o Foster collaboration, share knowledge, and develop common
practices for publishing and distributing academic and scholarly
works
Prestige, Tenure, and
Impact Factor
• San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment
(DORA) (2012)
o Initiated by the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) +
editors and publishers of scholarly journals
o “Improve the ways in which the outputs of scientific
research are evaluated”
o 1 general recommendation:
“Do not use journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact
Factors, as surrogate measures of the quality of individual
research articles, to assess an individual scientist’s
contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions”
Prestige, Tenure, and
Impact Factor
• Altmetrics = Alternative ways of measuring the use
and impact of scholarship
• “Altmetrics are measures of scholarly impact mined
from activity in online tools and environments”
(Jason Priem)
• Altmetrics combines traditional impact measures
(citation counts) with non-traditional measures
• Altmetrics = ALL METRICS
Prestige, Tenure, and
Impact Factor
• Altmetrics services and tools
o
o
o
o
Impact Story
Altmetric
PLoS article-level metrics
Plum Analytics/PlumX
Steps Each of Us Can Take
• Read & Support OA Journals
• Serve as a Reviewer/Editor for OA Journals
• Read your publication agreements and ask
questions
• Become aware of our publisher policies
• Discuss these issues with colleagues and
students
• Place your work in your institution’s repository or
another open access database
• Learn more about OA publications
• Help start an OA publication
Recommended
Reading
“Open Access should be required
reading for everyone involved in
the publishing cycle – from
authors to publishers…and
general readers.
Everyone who reads this volume
will gain a better understanding
and appreciation of OA”
(Choice Reviews, Feb 2013)