Resources for Gold Open Access for Learned Societies

From Poynder's introduction: 'Suber's answers to my ten questions are published below. Personally, what I found noteworthy about them is that - along with most of the interviewees in this series so far - Suber singles out for censure both the Finch Report and the subsequent Research Councils UK (RCUK) OA policy, in which researchers are exhorted to favour gold OA over green OA, and permitted to opt for hybrid OA. Like many OA advocates, Suber also argues that green OA is a more effective and efficient strategy for achieving Open Access than gold OA in the short term. As he puts it, "[I]t's still the case that green scales up faster and less expensively than gold. I want us to work on scaling up gold, developing first-rate OA journals in every field and sustainable ways to pay for them. But that's a long-term project, and we needn't finish it, or even wait another day, before we take the sensible, inexpensive, and overdue step of adopting policies to make our entire research output green OA." He adds, "I still believe that green and gold are complementary, and that in the name of good strategy we should take full advantage of each. From this perspective, my chief disappointment with the RCUK policy is that it doesn't come close to taking full advantage of green."'

Article by John Casey which also appeared in the Arts Libraries Journal vol. 37 No..2 201. Abstract: "This article provides an introduction to the use of the Creative Commons licence system and sets it in a historical, economic and political context. It is written from the perspective of involvement in open educational projects in an Arts university that has used the licences. A description of the fundamental features of the licences and their uses is given together with an outline of how the Creative Commons organisation works and its strategic aims. An assessment of the usefulness of the licences is provided together with a description of the challenges faced in dealing with low levels of legal awareness amongst academics. Practical advice and sources of further information and guidance are offered to help readers implement the licences locally."

"It is a costly process, and the leading journals can be quite expensive for libraries to buy, but at least the research that does get published is reasonably reliable." writes Eamonn Butler, Director of the Adam Smith Institute, in this critique of Government policy on OA, ignoring, it seems to me, the extent of market failure in scholarly publishing.

4 page PDF - April 2013 - from Science Europe, a Brussels-based association of 51 European national research organisations. A key clause is "the hybrid model, as currently defined and implemented by publishers, is not a working and viable pathway to Open Access. Any model for transition to Open Access supported by Science Europe Member Organisations must prevent 'double dipping' and increase cost transparency".

"Pre-print" of forthcoming PLoS article by Mike Thelwall, Stefanie Haustein, Vincent Larivière, and Cassidy R. Sugimoto concludes that there is strong evidence that six of the eleven altmetrics (tweets, Facebook wall posts, research highlights, blog mentions, mainstream media mentions and forum posts) associate with citation counts.

Ann McKechin MP is a member of the House of Commons Business, Innovation and Skills Committee. Here she writes about the committee's Inquiry into Open Access, drawing on the committee's evidence session on 16 April.

Q&A session between Jessica Bland and David Willetts on which a range of people comment. The Government's need to keep the UK's 'world class' publishing industry onside shines through in Willetts's responses and is questioned by some of those commenting.

Descriptive, interesting, but ultimately rather inconclusive editorial about alt metrics by Richard Smith in ecancerMedicaScience, the open access cancer journal from the European Institute of Oncology and the OECI.

Lord Krebs's follow-up letter raising 3 sharp points with RCUK about the revised #OpenAccess policy and guidance [PDF]

Suber highlights the many misconceptions about Gold OA and APCs. Excerpt: "The survey definition of gold OA leaves two false and harmful impressions: first that all (or even most) OA journals charge APCs, and second, that all (or even most) APCs are paid by authors. But most OA journals charge no APCs, and most authors even at those APC-charging journals don't pay them. In fact, only 3.7% of authors who publish in OA journals overall (12% of 31%) pay APCs. I've been complaining since 2006 about interviews and surveys that misinform their subjects, on just this point, before questioning them. http://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/4391309 In my book (Open Access, MIT Press, 2012, p. 140) I put it this way: "The false belief that most OA journals charge author-side fees also infects studies in which authors misinform survey subjects before surveying them. In effect: 'At OA journals, authors pay to be published; now let me ask you a series of questions about your attitude toward OA journals.'" http://bit.ly/oa-book "

Summative and optimistic overview from Tony Hey (now with Microsoft, but previously a key player in Jisc and an academic at the University of Southampton), singling out Stevan Harnad for special praise, and pointing forward to the may 2013 meeting of the Global Research Council: "The second summit meeting of the GRC will take place in Berlin from 27 to 29 May 2013, hosted by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Brazilian CNPq agency. The main goal of this summit will be to 'agree on an action plan for implementing Open Access to Publications as the main paradigm of scientific communication in the following years'. Such unanimity on Open Access between the major global research funding organizations will surely bring about both a more sustainable model of scholarly communication and a more efficient research process for solving some of the major scientific challenges facing the world."

March 27 2013 piece by Jisc's Neil Jacobs summarising the changes that are afoot from 1 April 2013, and highlighting some of the complexities. Concluding paragraph: "Those involved in OA for some time see 2013 as a watershed moment in the UK. However, in reality, this is just the start of a long journey. When I first became involved in OA some 10 years ago, I thought the transition would take 20 years. I still think so."

Constructive coverage by the American Historical Association of Open Library of the Humanities initiative.

Open letter from the editors of over 110 French language journals in the humanities and social sciences to the Minister of Higher Education and Research, the Minister of Culture and Communication, the presidents of universities and grandes écoles, and heads of major research institutions. Opening and closing paras: "We are calling for the urgent opening of dialogue on the issues associated with open access in the humanities and the social sciences. The definition of sufficiently long periods of embargo, allowing journals to choose their economic model (balancing what they offer for free and what they offer for payment), is the only way to guarantee diversity and independence in academic research and public debate." "Consequently, we urgently call for an independent impact assessment to be carried out on these matters. This study should take into account the specificities of the humanities and social sciences and of publications in French. We also expect without delay the opening of a genuine dialogue on these issues between the above-mentioned state actors, researcher organizations, scholarly organizations, the heads of journals in the humanities and social sciences, and editors."

Paul Jump writes in the 14 March THE about the continuing confusion as to the meaning RCUK's revised open-access guidance, indicating that the publishers remain unhappy. Stevan Harnad, Charles Oppenheim, and Mike Taylor are three of the four commenters.

Abstract of the Abstract of this research paper:  This study focuses on summarizing and extending upon current knowledge about green Open Access (OA). It synthesises previous studies of green OA and covers issues of publishers rights, long-term preservation and the technical foundation for green OA. It concludes that the number of articles within the scope of OA mandates, which strongly influence the selfarchival rate of articles, is nevertheless still low.

An attack on what the author sees as a ham-fisted ad-hoc bit of policy-making and policy-adjustment. Excerpt: "... unilateral gold open access is the knowledge economy equivalent of saying: "We will build a high-speed rail network across the country but only use the existing horse and cart owners to provide services"; it simply reproduces the model of commercial print journals in another medium." "A true investment in openness as a defining principle of the advancement of knowledge requires us to think in a completely different way about a new Enlightenment, illuminated by the possibilities of digital technology, rather than reinscribing the rights of vested interests."

In 2012 over 80,000 articles were published by OASPA members under CC-BY licenses, more than double the number in 2010.

Two key paras: "7. Moreover, our modelling shows that Green OA is cheaper. When the UK, or any individual country, individual university or research funder seek to make their research freely accessible and usable they must face the cost of doing so, and cannot reap the benefits of free access until others also move to Open Access. With article publishing charges at £1500, adopting Gold OA would cost the UK universities we studied in our "Going for Gold?" report 12 times the cost of adopting Green OA, and for the more research intensive universities going for Gold could cost 25 times as much as going Green. As article processing fees rise, these multiples rise too. 8. The BIS innovation agenda is best served by Green Open Access, which is affordable now. The Finch study lost focus on this because the composition of the Group meant there was a focus on the needs of the academic world and the publishers that serve that constituency. The expensive 'solution' proposed by Finch does virtually nothing for the innovative business sector."