OSC

Office of Scholarly Communication

The challenges of Open Access

Working towards an Open Research future - An Institutional Perspective

Dr Danny Kingsley @dannykay68Head, Office of Scholarly CommunicationCambridge University Library

OSCThe OSC has 3 primary responsibilities

1. Meeting funder requirements for Open Access and Research Data Management

2. External outreach focus:– Within the University– Throughout the UK– Internationally (at conferences & workshops)

3. Ensuring the library & research community is up to speed on scholarly communication matters

OSCOpportunities to work collaboratively

OSC

What are the obstacles, annoyances and hazards for institutions in making their research output

openly accessible?

A question

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Getting through to the research community

Challenge 1

OSC Cambridge research

https://www.cam.ac.uk/system/files/research_in_numbers.pdf

OSC This is Cambridge’s structure

OSC One School

There isn’t room on this slide for the three Institutes that are also associated with this School…

OSC And then there is the administration

You Tube Cambridge in Numbers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwZsb2CkMsM

OSC Irony?

Academic independence is sacred at Cambridge

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The open access requirements of the different funders are a dog’s breakfast

Challenge 2

OSC The policy landscape

The MEANS and the TIMING all conflict

RCUK – Green & Gold | HEFCE – Green only | COAF – Gold only

OSC What the researcher hears

From Bill Hubbard Getting the rights right: when policies collidehttp://www.slideshare.net/UKSG/hubbard-uksg-may2015-public

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Some publishers really are not helping

Challenge 3

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• Publishers making life difficult– Press embargoes – a threat from the shadows

https://unlockingresearch.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=653

– Half-life is half the story https://unlockingresearch.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=331

• Payment for hybrid open access– Cambridge expenditure on APCs in 2014

https://unlockingresearch.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=79

OSC Hybrid APCs are very expensive

• The average APC levied by hybrid journals is 64% higher than the average APC charged by a fully OA title

• The Reckoning: An Analysis of Wellcome Trust Open Access Spend 2013 – 14 (3 March 2015)http://blog.wellcome.ac.uk/2015/03/03/the-reckoning-an-analysis-of-wellcome-trust-open-access-spend-2013-14/

• The article processing charges for hybrid Open Access were ‘significantly more expensive’ than fully OA journals, ‘despite the fact that hybrid journals still enjoyed a revenue stream through subscriptions’

• Research Councils UK 2014 Independent Review of Implementation (March 2015) http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/openaccess/2014review/

OSC And guess what?

• ‘The two traditional, subscription-based publishers (Elsevier and Wiley) represent some 40% of our total APC spend’

• The Reckoning: An Analysis of Wellcome Trust Open Access Spend 2013 – 14 (3 March 2015)http://blog.wellcome.ac.uk/2015/03/03/the-reckoning-an-analysis-of-wellcome-trust-open-access-spend-2013-14/

• “Publishers Elsevier and Wiley have each received about £2 million in article processing charges from 55 institutions as a result of RCUK’s open access policy’

• ‘Publishers share £10m in APC payments’, Times Higher Education (16 April 2015)https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/publishers-share-10m-in-apc-payments/2019685.article

OSC

The University is doing everything it can to help researchers

What steps have we taken?

OSC Our solution

OSC We have had about 50% take-up

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• Funders should:– Align their policies– Stop paying for hybrid

• Publishers should:– Stop punishing universities for doing the right thing– Make their workflows more transparent– Stop misleading researchers on licenses and other aspects of open

access– Stop bullying researchers

• The academy should:– Wake up to themselves and take an interest in this– Question how they value and reward their peers

What about other solutions?

OSC

Dr Danny KingsleyHead, Office of Scholarly CommunicationCambridge University Library

t: @dannykay68b: https://unlockingresearch.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/w: http://osc.cam.ac.uk/

Thanks!

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• Reliance on publication in fancy-pants journals– Openness, integrity & supporting

researchers https://unlockingresearch.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=307

–What is ‘research impact’ in an interconnected world? https://unlockingresearch.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=252

Reward system

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• Funder policies are sometimes an issue eg: not reflecting disciplinary differences– Is CC-BY really a problem or are we boxing

shadows? https://unlockingresearch.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=555

– Could the HEFCE policy be a Trojan Horse for Gold OA? https://unlockingresearch.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=488

Policy problems