What’s New in OA?
Open Access Week 2013 @ Pitt –
Kickoff Event
Lunchtime Talk #4
Office of Scholarly Communication &
Publishing
Today’s agenda
 OA Overview
 OA in the News
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Finch Report
White House Directive on Open Access
University of California System policy
Update: Pitt copyrights policy
“The Sting” operation on OA journals
 OA Week 2013 @ Pitt
Open Access—Defined
 Open Access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of
charge, and free of most copyright and licensing
restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet
and the consent of the author or copyright-holder.
Peter Suber, "Open Access Overview," 2004 (revised 2010)
OA is compatible with . . .
 Copyright
Quality
 Peer review
Career advancement
 Revenue (even
profit)
Indexing
 Print
 Preservation
 Prestige
Other features and
supportive services
associated with
conventional scholarly
literature
Colors of Open Access
OA Gold
– Publish in an OA
Journal
– Immediate OA
OA Green
– Self-archive in a
repository
– Immediate or
delayed OA
Gratis vs. Libre OA
Gratis OA
– AKA “weak OA”
– Removal of price
barriers for access to
journal articles
– (Suber/Harnad,
2008; Suber, 2008)
Libre OA
– AKA “strong OA”
– Removal of price
barriers
– Removal of some
permission barriers
– Reuse and remixing
are encouraged
United Kingdom: Finch Report
 Product of Working Group on Expanding Access to
Published Research Findings
– Chaired by Dame Janet Finch
– June 18, 2012; accepted by UK gov. July 16, 2012
 Policy direction towards support for ‘Gold’ open
access publishing
 Intent:
– Enable more people to read & use publications arising from
research
– Accelerate progress towards fully open access environment
Finch Report: Rebuke
 House of Commons’ Business, Innovation and
Skills Committee
 “The evidence suggests that the cost of unilaterally
adopting Gold open access during a transition
period are much higher than those of Green open
access. At a time when the budgets of universities
are under great pressure, it is unacceptable that the
Government has issued an open access policy that
will require considerable subsidy from research
budgets.” -Adrian Bailey, committee chairman, Sept. 2012
White House Directive
on Open Access
 Memorandum: “Expanding public access to the
results of federally funded research”
 Agencies with >$100 million in R&D expenditures
must develop plans to make published results
freely available w/i 1 year of publication
 Researchers must account for & manage digital
data from federally funded scientific research
 Issued in Feb. by OSTP; plans developed by August
Highlights
 Ensure public can “read, download, and analyze in
digital form final peer-reviewed manuscripts or final
published documents”
 12-month post-publication embargo—or longer if
deemed necessary by agency
 Stakeholder right to petition
 Facilitate easy public search, analysis of, and
access to peer-reviewed scholarly publications
directly arising from federally funded research
Highlights
 Ensure full public access to metadata without
charge; metadata should link to full text when
possible
 Long-term preservation & access to content without
charge (widely available, non-proprietary standards
& formats; ADA-compliant)
 Notify awardees & researchers of obligations
 Measure & enforce compliance
Observations
 OA—but delayed OA for at least 12 months or
longer (PubMed Central-like)
 Copyright? Creative Commons licensing?
 “SHARE” resources among universities?
 A “CHORUS” of publishers?
 How will this affect grant-funded research and
publication?
 To be continued . . .
FASTR, FASTR . . .
 Fair Access to Science & Technology Research Act
 Mandate earlier public release of taxpayer-funded
research
 Federal depts & agencies with research
expenditures of >$100 million must make
manuscripts of journal articles stemming from
research funded publicly available over the internet
Highlights
 Manuscripts to be preserved in a digital archive by
agency or another repository (Green OA)
 Free public access within 6 months after published
in a peer-reviewed journal
 SPARC: Improved access & increased impact
 SPARC: Manuscripts, not publishers’ PDFs (Green
OA)
FASTR vs. FRPAA
 Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) was
the predecessor to FASTR; introduced 3 times to
Congress but never voted upon
 FASTR improvements
– Suber: Burden is on federal agencies to collect and deposit
research papers, not universities
– Suber: Libre OA/open licensing (removal of price and some
permission barriers)
 Whither data sets?
FASTR . . . to somewhere
 Bipartisan (!)
 Introduced February 2013 by
– Senators
 Cornyn (R-TX)
 Wyden (D-OR)
– Representatives
 Doyle (D-PA)
 Lofgren (D-CA)
 Yoder (R-KS)
Computer says no
University of California System
Open Access Policy
 Academic Senate passed OA Policy July 24, 2013
 Future research articles at all 10 campuses made
available to the public at no charge
 Covers more than 8,000 UC faculty & 40,000
publications a year
 CHE: UC researchers get 8% of all US research $ &
produce 2-3% of peer-reviewed scholarly articles
published worldwide every year
UC System policy
 Faculty grant a “nonexclusive, irrevocable,
worldwide license to exercise any and all rights
under copyright relating to each of his or her
scholarly articles, in any medium, and to authorize
others to do the same, for the purpose of making
their articles widely and freely available in an open
access repository”
 Faculty “recognize that . . . they can more easily and
collectively reserve rights that might otherwise be
signed away . . . in agreements with publishers”
UC System policy
 Articles placed in OA repository (Green OA)
 Copyright remains with authors
 Waivers/embargoes option
 Faculty on 3 campuses (UCLA, UCI & UCSF) begin
depositing articles on November 1, 2013
 Other campuses to follow by November 2014
UC System policy:
Something for everyone?
 Articles or manuscripts?
 Research data? Images, etc.?
 Scholarly Kitchen: “This is publisher-influenced”
 CA Digital Library (CHE): “We need to work with
publishers, but this is scholar-driven, not publisherdriven”
Pitt OA/Copyrights policy
 “Sub-institutional” policy, meaning some schools
have approved – not unlike Harvard, etc.
 Working toward a university-wide policy
 Modification of the existing copyright policy
 Affects scholarly *articles* published by Pitt authors
*after* policy is adopted
 Procedure would be carried out by OSCP, creating
metadata, depositing works on behalf of authors
In the news: OA “sting” operation
 Bohannon, J. (2013). Who’s Afraid of Peer Review?
Science 342(6154), 60-65.
– DOI:10.1126/science.342.6154.60
 Author submitted fake/poorly conceived science
manuscripts to 304 OA journals, January-August
2013
 Submitted to OA journals found in DOAJ and Beall’s
list of predatory OA publishers
Results
 157 journals accepted paper; 98 rejected it
 Author states that 60% of decisions to accept/reject
occurred “with no sign of peer review”
 Of 106 journals that performed peer review, 70%
accepted the paper
 Accepted by OA journals in developing world . . .
More results
 . . . But also by OA journals published by Elsevier,
Wolters Kluwer & Sage
 Gunther Eysenbach: Including Journal of
International Medical Research (JIMR/Sage), ranked
#1 by impact factor in its field
 Rejected by Hindawi, PLoS One, others
Criticism
 Did not submit to any non-OA (closed access)
journals
 No control group/not a scientific study
 More a critique of poor-quality peer review in OA
journals
 Poor-quality peer review not limited to OA journals
 Author’s own article was not peer-reviewed
 Science is an expensive, closed access journal
More criticism
 Eysenbach, et al.: Author says he didn’t send to
journals requiring author fees but survey says
otherwise (inconsistent data)
 Spoof paper; ethically questionable study
 Unfair critique of APC model
 “Overarching implied conclusion - that open access
as a business model is flawed, or that OA journals
are of generally lower quality than subscription
journals, is outrageous”
Open Access Week 2013
October 21-27, 2013
 6th Annual International OA Week
 Pitt’s 3rd Annual OA Week
 Promotes Open Access to scholarship and
research
Benefits of OA Week
 Information about copyright, other author rights,
and new scholarly publishing options
 Information on Open Access requirements in grants
and the new White House directive on Open Access
 More knowledge about “scholarly spaces” and how
we can participate
 Don’t forget the OA swag and cookies!
#1 - Copyright and Your Research
 Learn about copyrights, author agreements, and
publishing contracts
 Learn to navigate public access requirements in
federal grants
 Discover new publishing options for Pitt authors
– Speaker: Peter B. Hirtle, Senior Policy Advisor, Cornell
University Library, & Research Fellow, Berkman Center for
Internet Security and Society, Harvard University
– Tuesday, October 22, 4 to 5 pm
– Ballroom A, University Club
#2 – Open Access Policies: Coming
Attractions
 Learn more about the White House directive on
Open Access
 Better understand how scholarly publishing will be
impacted
 Discover the importance of reuse rights for Open
Access works
– Speaker: Michael W. Carroll / Professor of law & Director,
Program on Information Justice & Intellectual Property,
American University's Washington College of Law
– Thursday, October 24, 4 to 5 pm; Ballroom A, University
Club
How you can help
 Colleagues, especially liaisons, are encouraged to
attend
 Share the invitation card with others or make them
aware of these events
 Invite faculty, departments, graduate students, and
others interested
 Even if you just get 1 person to attend, that’s
progress (= An extra cookie for you!)
Invitation card
Open Access and your research
Keep in touch
 Email: oscp@mail.pitt.edu
 Open Access @ Pitt website:
http://openaccess.pitt.edu
 Other OSCP content being integrated into ULS
website