ISSUES & CHALLENGES OF OPEN ACCESSChoy Fatt CheongUniversity Librarian

Presentation at the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) Centenary Conference, “Pushing the Research Frontier : Long Term Vision of Research Policy” held at Nanyang Executive Centre , Singapore, 14-15 Mar 2013

To make all scholarly articles freely available online

GOAL OF OPEN ACCESS

Libraries

Universities & Institutions

Scholars

Free

Provide access

OPEN ACCESS

ARCHIVES

GREEN ROUTE

Articles freely available in > 2,200 repositories – discoverable on the Internet

Inelastic supplyIncrease disciplines & therefore titles –small baseProfiteering?

DUE TO :

NTU LIBRARY – 2 Jun 2008 Rev 12 Apr 2013

SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION CRISIS OPEN ACCESS

Articles freely available in 8,622 peer review journals

OPEN ACCESS

JOURNALS

GOLD ROUTE

Publishers

Sign over copyright

Peer review

GOLD GREEN

Remove ACCESS / PRICE barrier

Delivered by journals Delivered by repositories hosted by institutions

Free access to articles in journals

Free access to articles in repositories – discoverable through Internet

Cost of publishing covered by authors, subsidies, etc.

Availability of articles depends on self-archiving policies of publishers

GRATIS LIBRE

Remove PERMISSION barrier

FREE TO ACCESS & FREE OF SOME OR ALL COPYRIGHT & LICENSING

RESTRICTIONS

CC-0

CC-BY

CC-BY-NC

CC-BY-SA

etc.

FREE BUT ONLY PERMIT

Online access, Reading, Linking, Downloading,

Printing, Storing, Harvesting, Indexing

Credit source

!

GOLD ROUTE

Advantages

Free access to articles published in journals that are funded by author fees, subsidies and other means

Examples:BioMed Central (commercial), Public Library of Science PLOS (not-for-profit), IOP (mix of pure & hybrid, CC-BY)

Free access by readers immediately upon publication – no embargo

No additional effort needed by authors in archiving

Allow for libre OA

GOLD ROUTEChallenges

Cost to institutions

Cost to researcher- APC (Article processing charges) Range $8 – $3,900 USD

Average $904 USD

(Solomon & Bjork, 2010)

Paid out of research fundsPaid out of university allocated funds Introduce new layer of

decision making

Discounts and waivers 10% in PLOS (Patterson, 2011)

Funds cannot be diverted from library budgets – subscriptions still need to fulfill most info needsIn the long run, publishers will also seek to maintain profitability

- Extra funding required (longer than short term)

GOLD ROUTE

Growth of predatory OA publishers

Limit publishing for some authors

Challenges

Researchers in less well-off institutions not able to publish at their optimal ability levelSimilarly for researchers in some disciplines that are not traditionally well fundedFuture publications dominated by well-funded researchers & certain disciplines?

Most prestigious journals are subscription base

OA journals of dubious quality set up with the sole intention to collect APC (225 in Jeffrey Beall’s list – Dec 2012)

GREEN ROUTE

Permission for archiving in repositories

Peer reviewed postprints deposited in open repositories for access there or via Internet

Types of repositoriesInstitution based – usually university libraries – may contain other materials e.g. theses, data files, audio & video files, etcDiscipline based – e.g. DRYAD (Bioscience). PUBMED

Publishers’ self-archiving policiesAuthor specify to publisher the retention of their rights on self-archiving (e.g. through author addenda)

Funder’s mandate requirements

GREEN ROUTEAdvantages

Challenges

Repositories relatively inexpensive to build and maintain, therefore sustainable

Repositories using OAI protocol make their content easily discoverable via Internet

Content include those from prestigious journals

Articles in repository is not the actual published version – content same, format different (accepted version)

Embargoes imposed by publisher – prevent immediate use

GREEN ROUTE

Difficult to implement Libre OA

Challenges

Low deposit rates

Little incentive for researchers to submitInconvenience – finding accepted version and submittingConcern that mandate may adversely impact on researchers’ ability to published in preferred journalsLow awareness

Dependent on current subscription model of journal provision (to feed the repositories)

OA MANDATESA policy by institutions and funding agencies that requires researchers to make available their publications for open access

NTU Open Access Mandate (2011)

Institutional mandates – 204Thesis mandates – 98Funder mandates – 80

ROARMAP – 2013 Mar 13

OA MANDATESADVANTAGES

Some interesting milestones

Provide strong incentive for researchers to make their publications open access

National Institute of Health (2007) mandateFirst mandate from major US funding agency - Deposit to PUBMED Central - 12 months embargo - 75% compliance (2012, Poynder)

Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences (2008) mandateResearch grant the university non-exclusive copyright license & distribute – led to 8 fold increase in number of mandates

Finch Report (2012)Favours gold route

Research Council UK (RCUK)(2012)Accept both Gold and Green routes – 6 months embargo

Recent developments

FASTR (Fair Access to Science and Technology Research) bill introduced in both houses of Congress (Feb 2013)

OA MANDATES

Directive from OSTP (White House) to develop OA mandates within 6 months (Feb 2013)

FASTR OSTPGreen route, silent on Gold Green route, silent on Gold

Require libre OA Require libre OA

Embargo period – 6 months Embargo period – 12 months

Silent on OA for data Require OA for data & metadata

Legislation long term Directive immediate

MOVING OPEN ACCESS FORWARD

Not-for-profit publishers needs funding to develop and sustain Gold OA journals

Mandates from funding agencies necessary for strong impact in OA – both green and gold routes

Need to create greater awareness among researchers on Open Access movement

Retain rights on self-archiving when transferring copyright to publishersIncrease rate of submission to repositories – to increase its collective value

THANK YOUfcchoy@ntu.edu.sg