"open access to knowledge: the role of funders in focus" at at the global research council...
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Open access to knowledge: the role of funders in focus
Syun Tu9ya Na9onal Ins9tu9on for Academic Degrees and University Evalua9on
at the Global Research Council Asia-‐Pacific Regional Mee9ng, Sendai
on December 6, 2012
The year 2012 • Ten years aOer BOAI, so the new BOAI10 – Budapest Open Access Ini9a9ve, February 14, 2002 – First defini9ons of the basic no9ons, including green and gold roads to open access
• How far have we come since then? – No prints any more, at least in STM
• Open access is only possible in the Internet environment • Success of big deals and apprehension about future sustainability
– Increased reality of open access • Ins9tu9onal repositories mushrooming all over the world • “Realis9c,” i.e. commercial viability of open access publishing
– Talk of open data, altmetrics, “ar9cle of the future,” open review, etc. • I.e. a completely new phase of scholarly communica9on, but no discussion of that today
A quote from BOAI10, for funders • 1.3. Every research funding agency, public or private, should have a policy
assuring that peer-‐reviewed versions of all future scholarly ar9cles repor9ng funded research are deposited in a suitable repository and made OA as soon as prac9cable. • Deposits should be made as early as possible, ideally at the 9me of
acceptance, and no later than the date of formal publica9on. • When publishers will not allow OA on the funder’s terms, funder policies
should require grantees to seek another publisher. • If funder policies allow embargoes before new work becomes OA, the
embargoes should not exceed six months. Policies should allow no embargoes at all for uncopyrightable work.
• Funders should treat publica9on costs as research costs, and should help grantees pay reasonable publica9on fees at fee-‐based OA journals.
• When possible, funder policies should require libre OA, preferably under a CC-‐BY license or equivalent.
• A repository is suitable for this purpose when it provides OA, supports interoperability with other repositories, and take steps toward long-‐term preserva9on. The funder’s choice should be determined by ongoing research into ques9ons such as which choice best fosters the deposit of covered ar9cles, the u9lity of deposits, the convenience of funders and authors, and incen9ves for the further growth of OA.
But ten years ago,
• No men9on of funding agencies • So what happened? – US NIH Public Access Policy enforced – UK RCs manda9ng green deposit with ins9tu9onal repositories, and then Finch Report
– MPG, which actually is not a funder per se, acted aggressively toward open access
– No effec9ve moves in Asia, but why? • Scholarly informa9on as imported goods • Lack of “interna9onally acclaimed” Asian journals
The case of Japan • Approached by SPARC in 2001 to collaborate in improving scholarly
communica9on • ShiO of SPARC aOer BOAI toward open access • But, in Japan, there was perceived need for the promo9on of subscrip9on
based society journals, which was not successful aOer all. The idea of “ins9tu9onal repositories” were liked
• Japanese funders did not care so much about the accessibility of the results of funded research then
• Now so many ins9tu9onal repository at universi9es, but as is the case everywhere it is not very efficient
• Awareness of the recent “progress” of open access journals, including PLoS ONE, Scien9fic Reports/NPG etc
• A reconsidera9on at the Ministry level, resul9ng in a proposal published in July, 2012, which recommends, backed up by Science and Technology Basic Plan for years 2011 thru 2016, – open access to fruits from research – journals published with open access arrangement – enhancement of ins9tu9onal repositories as essen9al part of the infrastructure for
knowledge society – collabora9on among interested stakeholders, including funding agencies
• Funders, viz JSPS and JST, are being looked at!
Rela9ve success of repositories: Over 1M full texts on over 200 repositories, but …
160,000 green deposits
50% are bulle9n ar9cles
Ins9tu9onal repository has its own ra9onale
• We are proud that librarians on campuses all over the country have collected the ar9cles to this extent, without any mandate anywhere, and we know ins9tu9onal mandate may not work. See the graph.
• But the progress is slow, and the efforts are not reasonably rewarding
• Bulle9n ar9cles, which accounts for almost a half, are now virtually “published” there, hence almost golden open access funded by ins9tu9ons
• Yes, ins9tu9ons need repositories to prove the accountability of higher educa9on ins9tu9ons at any rate, so don’t bother them to operate them and take advantage of their existence – the gist of the MEXT proposal
Even if mandated, deposits are gekng less?
Gold open access is no longer utopean • Success of PLoS ONE, an online megajournal – published almost 14,000 ar9cles in 2011 – s9ll has Journal Impact Factor over 4 – charges $1,350 for an ar9cle published – has saved PLoS ONE from poten9al bankruptcy
• Other commercial publishers have followed with – NPG’s Scien1fic Reports, SpringerOpen, Sage Open,
• The lesson is that now open access publishing is no longer an “ideal” but just a business model, at least for publishers
• I.e., funders must not be naïve talking of open access, given that 12% of journal ar9cles are open access as of now
What must not be forgonen? 1. Open access to research results is good for humankind as
regards advancement of knowledge and welfare 2. So everybody agrees that it must come true 3. As far as publishing of research results in the form of
journal ar9cle is concerned, open access to them is made possible either by self-‐archiving or open access publishing
4. Self-‐archiving is not very efficient, but repositories have ins9tu9onal reason for them to be
5. Although nobody knows the future for sure, open access publishing paid by authors seem to work to a larger extent than we once thought
6. So funders’ role is very important: their decisions may not only change scholarly communica9on but the way science is done as well
7. And there are things to consider before you decide
Some warnings • Assuming that more research will be done with increased
funding on science and technology resul9ng in a lot more ar9cles to be published, a total cost of making them accessible will increase, so we need to consider if any open access model can live with that increase
• Ar9cles are made open access by the authors who pay, more rigorous assurance of quality than by current peer reviewing might be necessary, due to predictable conflicts of interest
• Ar9cles can be only made open access by the authors if they hold copyrights. Think of the case of using CC licenses. Copyright will not go away with open access but rather it will be more important. Plagiarism and duplicate submission must be avoided
• All in all, research integrity will have to be at issue again with the progress of open access environment