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8 thingsmany grad students 

(and profs!)don’t know about 

open access

Heather Piwowar

Department of Biomedical InformaticsUniversity of Pittsburgh 

They don’t know how many people can’t read subscription journals

• small schools, govn’ts, companies

• developing countries

• big schools! prestigious schools! without that domain focus

• big schools! prestigious schools! with that domain focus

• their future selves

They don’t know there are high quality open access journals

• spectrum, just like subscription

• increasingly more high-impact options

• increasing ways to represent article-level impact rather than journal impact

important

They don’t know that publishing open access has personal advantages

• more visibility

• more citation, reuse?

• shows they are willing to take risks, break new ground

• often more cutting edge, web 2.0

• being part of the solution feels good

They don’t know that publishing open access may help their libraries

• idea that subscription rates, in theory, are lowered to reflect author-pays income

They don’t know they can afford it

• many open access journals are free

• many offer discounts or waivers

• ask twice!

• many grants, departments, or institutions have money available

• institutional repositories are free

They don’t know there are many kinds of “open access”

• OA gold journals

• OA options in traditional journals

• “OA options” in traditional journals

• institutional repositories

• lab or personal websites

• preprint servers like Nature Precedings

They don’t know that all kinds of open access are not equal

• definitive version

• discoverability

• convenient access

• long term preservation

• openness for commercial uses

• openness for reuse

They don’t know how to initiate the conversation with collaborators

• props as conversation starts

• department sponsored seminars

• success stories

They don’t know how to help advocate

• offer learning lunches for dept

• contribute to online catalogs of journal policies

• organize/participate in OA week

• liaison for institutional IRs?

• help with OA policies in institutions?

important

What can we do?

• education• before first paper written• during first paper decision-making• after first paper published

• expertise

• direction for enthusiasm

Scholarly publication is changing. Options, policies, tools, opportunities, evidence are changing. Many scholars aren’t keeping up.

One way to address this is to educate our grad students. If they know the latest and greatest, then they can bring these voices into collaborations.

Unfortunately, I think training programs don’t know where to add formal coverage of these issues, and don’t know feel they have the expertise.

We in this room can help.

Hi everyone. Today I’m going to make some brief comments about open access by thinking about grad students. I think if we want open access to continue growing as an idea and a practice, if we want it to continue gaining traction, one approach is to focus on grad students.

Why grad students? Because there are so many of them! They are everywhere!

They are supposed to be trumpeting weird and threatening ideas

They get excited and passionate

While they may not be the decision makers on most publication decisions today, they will be the decision makers ten years from now.

And if we keep our OA education of grad students up to date, in the techtonic, plate shifting reality that is OA, the new ideas will keep seeping in to collaborations.

Finally, They aren’t supposed to know everything yet. They are willing to admit they don’t know everything yet, and they are willing to learn.

In that vein, I think they also serve as a useful foil for others in out institutions and disciplines and domains who are less willing to admit they don’t know things, and haven’t been keeping up.

So let’t do a quick runthrough of