Group items tagged

"Now before both the House of Representatives and the Senate, FASTR would require those agencies with annual extramural research budgets of $100 million or more to provide the public with online access to research manuscripts stemming from such funding no later than six months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal. The bill gives individual agencies flexibility in choosing the location of the digital repository to house this content, as long as the repositories meet conditions for public accessibility and productive reuse of digital articles, and have provisions for interoperability and long-term archiving. The bill specifically covers unclassified research funded by agencies including: Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, Department of Defense, Department of Education, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Science Foundation. FASTR reflects the growing trend among funding agencies - and college and university campuses - to leverage their investment in the conduct of research by maximizing the dissemination of results. It follows the successful path forged by the NIH's Public Access Policy, as well as the growing trend in adoption of similar policies by international funders such as the Research Councils United Kingdom (RCUK), private funders such as the Wellcome Trust, dozens of U.S. Institutions, such as Harvard, MIT, and the University of Kansas."

"Research results published through Open Access on the Internet are available for anyone to read and download. Researchers who receive funding from Formas from 2010 and onwards must guarantee that their research findings will be available through Open Access within six months of publication. Researchers may either publish in journals with an Open Access practice or those that archive published articles in large public access databases. The Open Access regulations currently only apply to scientifically peer-reviewed text published in scientific journals and conference reports. The regulations do not currently apply to monographs or book chapters. Funding to cover publication costs in Open Access journals can be included in research project applications as a direct cost."

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."

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."

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."

Yesterday, Research Councils UK confirmed it would back down to the government's view, at least for the next half-decade. Although its policy - to go into effect from 1 April - says 6 and 12 months, in practice RCUK (the umbrella body for the UK's seven funding agencies) would not enforce those embargoes, and would permit 12 and 24 month delays - so long as publishers also offered researchers the option of paying up-front to make their work free immediately, an alternative open-access model ....... In the end, it will be the level of enforcement - rather than the policies themselves - that will drive an open access shift.

Key points: * OASPA recognizes the interests of funders in seeking to maximize access to the results of research funded under their programmes. * OASPA supports the RCUK policy support for gold open access as the preferred model, with additional funds being made available. * OASPA supports the RCUK policy requirement for a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) Licence to be used where Research Council funds are used to meet a gold open access fee. * The APC levels per article that are assumed by the RCUK policy following the Report by the National Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings, are reasonable and in line with the experiences of open access publishers. * Infrastructural challenges exist (e.g. payment mechanisms), and are being addressed by the necessary stakeholders. OASPA is committed to engaging actively with stakeholders to resolve these.

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."'

The ARC has introduced a new open access policy for ARC funded research which takes effect from 1 January 2013. ARC requires that any publications arising from an ARC supported research project must be deposited into an open access institutional repository within a twelve (12) month period from the date of publication.

New (January 2013, but undated) policy from the MS Society is an interesting variation on the central theme. Excerpts: 3.1. It is a condition of grant award that peer reviewed research papers resulting from research funded, in whole or in part, by the MS Society are published in an Open Access environment and made available through Europe PMC. 3.2. Such papers must become Open Access as soon as possible following publication, and in all cases within 6 months of the publication date. 3.3. Where authors are required to pay an open access fee, the MS Society regretfully cannot cover these costs. == 4.2. In order to self-archive authors must ensure certain rights are reserved in any agreement with the publisher. Specifically, authors will need the right to deposit peer-reviewed manuscripts in Europe PMC immediately upon its acceptance for publication and to make it publicly available within 6 months after publication. == 5.1. In exceptional circumstances authors can publish in journals that are noncompliant with the MS Society's open access policy if it is considered to be the most appropriate journal to publish in. 5.2. In the event that authors decide to publish in a journal that is not compliant with MS Society's open access policy, authors should notify the MS Society of this when a manuscript is submitted, providing justification for the decision.

The session starts at 11.40 and lasts for just under 1 hour. In his introduction, the Chair John Krebs says "We are not here to question the whole Open Access agenda. We take that as a given. We are not questioning the recommendations of the report. We are very much focused on the current plans for implementation and on the concerns that have been raised with us by various stake-holders which allude to in your written evidence." During the session 4 or 5 peers spoke in addition to Krebs - Rees, Sharpe, Broers, and Winston. All seemed variously well informed, not least Rees who looks to be aware of the concerns of Humanities and Social Sciences societies. Finch gave a confident and calm account of herself and in some ways this 1 hour session in which the ideas of a clever, knowledgeable and research-experienced person are developed under questioning by other clever, knowledgeable and research-experienced people. The full session on 29 January (when RCUK, HEFCE, and David Willetts will give evidence) will be interesting.

Abstract: The economic modelling work we have carried out over the past few years has been referred to and cited a number of times in the discussions of the Finch Report and subsequent policy developments in the UK. We are concerned that there may be some misinterpretation of this work. This short paper sets out the main conclusions of our work, which was designed to explore the overall costs and benefits of Open Access (OA), as well as identify the most cost-effective policy basis for transitioning to OA at national and institutional levels. The main findings are that disseminating research results via OA would be more cost-effective than subscription publishing. If OA were adopted worldwide, the net benefits of Gold OA would exceed those of Green OA. However, we are not yet anywhere near having reached an OA world. At the institutional level, during a transitional period when subscriptions are maintained, the cost of unilaterally adopting Green OA is much lower than the cost of unilaterally adopting Gold OA - with Green OA self-archiving costing average institutions sampled around one-fifth the amount that Gold OA might cost, and as little as one-tenth as much for the most research intensive university. Hence, we conclude that the most affordable and cost-effective means of moving towards OA is through Green OA, which can be adopted unilaterally at the funder, institutional, sectoral and national levels at relatively little cost.

Google's VP of Research and Special Initiatives Alfred Spector applauds the Obama Administration's directive to the > $100m federal research funders to require Green OA on outputs from work they fund.

Abstract of 'field report' in the LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog : "The Open Library of Humanities is a newly-launched project aiming to provide an ethically sound and sustainable open access model for humanities research. By coordinating the discussion and implementation of a community-grounded approach to academic publishing, OLH aims to create an outlet better able to serve academics, libraries, and the wider research community. Co-founder Martin Eve describes the current "ideas phase" of the project and outlines his vision of where it will go from here."

Editorial in the Journal of Hymenoptera Research charting progress over the two years since JHR switched to Gold OA supported by modest APCs (Open Access Publication Fee (per page): EURO 15.00 (for members of the International Society of Hymenopterists); EURO 22.00 (for non-members), with a minimum fee of EURO 150 (EURO 220 for non-members) for papers smaller than 10 printed pages. Larger papers will be charged according to the following rates: 1-10 printed pages - EUR 150 (220 for non-members of ISH) 11-100 printed pages - EUR 150 (220 for non-members of ISH) + EUR 15 (22 for non-members of ISH) per page for the number of pages above 10.

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".

Extract. Applicable across all fields: "The project leader must guarantee that the research findings are accessible to everyone (Open Access) within six months of publication. In cases where publishing involves parallel publication in open institutional archives, arrangements should be made at the time of publication for open accessibility within six months. The Council may prolong the allowed time period until Open Access or parallel publishing up to 12 months, provided that the project leader can present a clear documentation stating that all possible effort has been made to reach the six-month limit. Until further notice, the Open Access rules apply only to peer-reviewed texts in journals and conference reports, not to monographs and book chapters."

Scroll down to get to this letter (it is #4) from several heavyweight academics all or all but one of whom are very heavyweight historians including the current and past presidents of the Royal Historical Society. Starts and ends with statements in favour of Open Access. Three features of the Finch recommendations as acted on by the Government are summarised: 1. inadequate monies for APCs leading to administrators having to create rationing systems; 2. researchers publishing in non-compliant international journals being excluded from REF 2020; 3. short para asserting that CC-BY would seriously undermine the integrity of the work scholars produce.

Interesting blog post by Stephen Curry from the 25/2/2013 Royal Society's conference "Open access in the UK and what it means for scientific research". Excerpt (but the post has a broader focus than this): " I would like to hear more from advocates of a transition based only on green OA mandates on exactly how the ultimate switch to gold OA can be made from the melee of subscription cancellations that they reckon will be the inevitable consequence of the success of their approach, particularly since green OA depends on compliance from the companies and learned societies that will suffer short-term financial losses. The transition problem, whatever the route plotted through it, remains a tough nut to crack. No-one I spoke to at Monday's meeting had a clear idea of how it would occur. We are on an experimental journey feeling our way more or less blindly - a source of occasional but considerable frustration. "

Here is the full transcript of an unprecedentedly speedily convened 28 February 2014 debate on the report of the House of Lords S&T Committee's Inquiry, with several of the members of the committee speaking. A key exchange takes place towards the end when Lord Krebs questions the Government Minister on what he sees as a key issue: Lord Krebs "My Lords, I thank the Minister for his very helpful response. However, will he confirm that RCUK will revise its policy and guidance statement to reflect what he has just said-namely that the research councils will follow the decision tree which has been adopted by BIS and was produced originally by the Publishers Association? The Minister said that that was the Government's position but I want to be clear that RCUK is following that and is revising its guidelines and policy statement." Lord Popat (Conservative - responding on behalf of the Government) "I thank the noble Lord for that question. To the best of the Government's knowledge, RCUK has accepted the decision tree. However, I will write to the noble Lord once we have the paperwork on the implementation, which I believe will be by the end of this month." [http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201213/ldselect/ldsctech/122/12206.htm#a6 points to the diagram mentioned]