Challenges and Opportunities of Open
Access
North Carolina Serials Conference
David Crotty
Senior Editor, Oxford University Press
david.crotty@oup.com
March 14, 2014
Open Access: Going from this…
…to this
BOAI (2001) Definition of Open Access
By “open access” to [peer-reviewed research
literature], we mean its free availability on the public
internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy,
distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these
articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to
software, or use them for any other lawful purpose,
without financial, legal, or technical barriers other
than those inseparable from gaining access to the
internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and
distribution, and the only role for copyright in this
domain, should be to give authors control over the
integrity of their work and the right to be properly
acknowledged and cited.
Finch Report
“the principle that results of
research that has been publicly
funded should be freely
available in the public domain
is a compelling one, and
fundamentally unanswerable”
False Equivalencies
Economic benefits of the Human Genome
Project
The Sequence of the Human Genome
J. Craig Venter et al.
Copyright 2001 by the American Association for the
Advancement of Science; all rights reserved.
Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome
International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium
Copyright 2001 Macmillan Magazines Ltd
Funding agency IP policies
• RCUK: “the ownership of intellectual property (IP), and
responsibility for its exploitation, rests with the
organisation carrying out the research.”
• Wellcome: “support the protection of research findings
that meet the legal criteria for the filing of patents.”
• US Government (Bayh-Dole Act): “Each [person, small
business, non-profit organization or university]
may…elect to retain title to any subject invention”
Success of the Bayh-Dole Act
• “Possibly the most inspired piece of legislation to be enacted in America over
the past half-century was the Bayh-Dole act of 1980... More than anything,
this single policy measure helped reverse America’s precipitous slide into
industrial irrelevance.” Economist Technology Quarterly
• Since enactment, more than 5,000 new companies have been formed around
university research results
• University technology transfer creates billions of dollars of direct benefits to
the U.S. economy every year.
• According to the former President of the NASDAQ Stock Market, an
estimated 30% of its value is rooted in university-based, federally-funded
research results,
Technology Transfer Brings in Funds
$14 Million per annum
$100+ Million per annum
How do we protect the IP of the Humanities
researcher?
Who pays the bills at the university?
Who pays the bills at the university?
Understanding the High Cost of Success in University
Research
Holbrook and Sanberg
“The level of investment in research by a university has to be
a conscious decision and one that is reaffirmed continuously,
as the cost clearly outweighs the revenue that is brought into
the university to support research.”
http://dx.doi.org/10.3727/194982413X13790020922068
Who pays the bills at the university?
Bottom line shows humanities really do make money
Robert Watson, UCLA
http://www.today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/bottom-line-showshumanities-really-155771.aspx
• UCLA: Humanities runs at a profit, Physical Sciences a
deficit
• University of Washington: Humanities and (some) Social
Sciences only departments to spend less than they bring in.
• University of Illinois report, Delaware Study of Instructional
Costs and Productivity shows same pattern.
• Duke University: Student tuition subsidizes faculty research
(http://n.pr/1mDm9lw)
Diversity and adaptability = health