Resources for Gold Open Access for Learned Societies

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

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."

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."

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 "

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

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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".

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."

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."'

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.

Executive Summary: "We support the introduction of Open Access to publicly-funded research in a form that will protect and enhance academic freedom and quality in the humanities and social sciences, as well as in the STEM subjects. We consider that this is best achieved by a system which: * accepts as equals a Gold route (likely to be taken by many if not most STEM journals) a and a Green route (likely to be taken by many if not most HSS journals); * through planning and consultation develops terms for the Green route which will sustain moderately-costed, high-quality HSS journals, i.e. through differential embargo periods and licenses which permit educational but not derivative or commercial use; * permits UK academics to publish anywhere in the world by allowing for cases where international policies do not follow UK government mandates."

Conclusions: * RCUK must clarify its policy guidance to reflect its incremental approach to compliance in the initial five-year implementation phase of its open access policy; * RCUK must monitor the effects of its open access policy and its Autumn 2014 review of the policy should consider 6 key points relating to embargo periods, the case for gold; APCs and their impact; impact on Q of peer review; impact on R collaboration; impact on learned societies. * The Government should conduct a full cost-benefit analysis of the policy, in view of their stated preference for gold open access; and * The Government should review the effectiveness of RCUK's consultation regarding this significant change in policy. (RCUK holding response: http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/media/news/2013news/Pages/130222.aspx indicates that RCUK will shortly be issuing revised guidance on its policy.)

Blog post by Peter Murray Rust examining the extent to which resetting and reformatting by publishers adds or removes value.

Blog post by Mike Taylor charting what he sees as a gradual weakening of the RCUK OA policy since RCUK published its March 2012 draft. He concludes: "Can anyone doubt that the nobbling of a truly progressive policy was the result of lobbying by a truly regressive publishing industry? It's been a tragedy to watch this policy erode away from something dramatic to almost nothing. Once more, it's publishers versus everyone else. Again, I have to ask this very simple question: why do we tolerate the obvious conflict of interest in allowing publishers to have any say at all in deciding how our government spends public money on publication services?"

Long and comprehensive piece by Richard Poynder examining the schism between those who recommend Gold and those who recommend Green.