a look at OAJs, DOAJs, and ACRL-LA’s OAJ Codex

Megan Lowe, Codex EditorReference Librarian/Associate Professor

University of Louisiana at Monroe

I first came into contact with open access journals (also called OAJs) in 2009, when ACRL-LA was selected as one of five sites to host the ACRL Scholarly Communication 101 Road Show

The program, “Scholarly Communication 101: Starting with Basics,” addressed several issues of growing interest to libraries, with hands-on applications and activities

The workshop, held in Baton Rouge, covered:

new methods of scholarly publishing and communication

copyright and intellectual property economics open access and openness as a principle

These issues are inter-related in profound ways that can impact libraries in positive ways.

Open access publishing functions as a response to all of these issues

OAJs represent a new method of scholarly publishing and communication Before open access publishing, authors

published primarily in journals, which often meant that authors surrendered their copyrights of their work to the journal

This meant that though an author may have done the actual work and writing to produce an article, they did not retain the rights to publish it again anywhere else, even on their own web space

It also meant that an author’s work was reaching a limited audience – an audience that could afford access to that journal

With the advent of OAJs, an author could retain most of their rights to their own

work; with most OAJs, authors surrender “first rights” only – that is, authors grant the publisher the right to be the first publication to publish the material once ▪ In North America, this is called First North

American Serial Rights, or FNASR▪ authors can republish that article anywhere else,

as long as they acknowledge the publication that first published the article

and because most OAJs are freely available, an author’s work can reach a much wider audience

OAJs also represent a movement towards protecting the copyrights and intellectual property of authors Most OAJs use Creative Commons licenses to

protect both their interests and the interests of their authors

Creative Commons (CC) licenses allow authors of original works certain rights, even after publication To copy, distribute, and transmit the work To adapt the work

Traditional publishers often retained all rights of an author’s work; CC gives those rights back to the author

OAJs also make good money sense, too: most OAJs DO NOT CHARGE for access – there are no pricey subscriptions!

Traditional publishing means that the publishers make BIG BUCKS from subscriptions…

…while libraries often struggle to provide access (budget cuts, anyone?) due to the prohibitive costs of journals and databases

And to add insult to injury: even when libraries can get access, they aren’t guaranteed FULL access – publishers can impose embargoes and pull titles without notice

The only money that is often exchanged with regard to OAJs usually comes from authors: some OAJs charge authors publication fees

Most people assume that everything on the Internet is free, and that what they find there is quality, but as librarians, we know better…

But the concept of freely available, quality information is thrilling – how better to encourage scholars than by removing restrictions to research?

Locking away information in pricey databases and restricting access limit researchers’ ability to produce timely, relevant, thorough work

Openness means eliminating or diminishing those restrictions, allowing researchers to focus on their research, rather than struggling to obtain access to materials

There are two types of open access (OA) publishing, green and gold

Green OA means that authors can publish in any journal (not necessarily an OAJ) and then self-archive – that is, post their postprint work other places, such as institutional repositories or on their own website

Gold OA is actual electronic publication – an article is published in an OAJ

In Gold OA there varying degrees of access – most OAJs make their content completely available, without restrictions; others require the user to create an account (usually free) before granting them access

There are some Gold OA models that do require some money to exchange hands; that money is often a publication fee, sometimes paid by the author of an article, or a sponsor, like an academic institution

In those models, the author isn’t simply paying to publish; the author’s work must be peer-reviewed and accepted, then the fee is charged – a lot of OAJs will waive these fees in the case of economic hardship

The green and gold distinctions apply primarily to the media in which the content appears

Green applies to venues in which no actual publishing occurs, like repositories

Gold applies to venues in which publishing occurs, like OAJs – gold most often includes peer-review, which green would not

Gratis OA, in the words of Peter Suber (who has written extensively on OA), is OA that removes price barriers – that is, it is free in the sense that it costs nothing

Libre OA – again, in the words of Peter Suber – is OA that removes price barriers and some permission barriers - this primarily refers to restrictions (like copyright)

The gratis vs. libre aspect of OA is about user freedoms and rights, and access

“In short,” according to Suber, “gratis OA alone allows no uses beyond fair use, and libre OA allows one or more uses beyond fair use”

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) describes itself as being “a one stop shop for users to Open Access Journals”

It is a “service [covering] free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals”

Its definition of OAJs are “journals that use a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access”

OAJs must be quality controlled (peer-reviewed), research-oriented periodicals (must have an ISSN) in order to be included in the DOAJ, and it aims to cover “all subjects and all languages” (and it’s doing a pretty good job of that)

Currently, it boasts 6271 journals, with 2721 of those being searchable at the article level; as of March 15, 2011, there are 534,261articles in the directory

Additional criteria for inclusion into the DOAJ All content must be freely available If a journal requires registration, it must be free and

online (this is often done in order to track user statistics and allow users to make comments)

No embargoes are allowed

Most OAJs in the Directory utilize CC licenses

OAJs must also allow users to “read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles" (which would be libre)

The idea for the Directory first emerged in 2002 at the First Nordic Conference on Scholarly Communication in Lund/Copenhagen; during the discussion about the idea, it was determined that such a resource would be invaluable for “the global research and education community”

Initial work on the Directory was supported by the Open Society Institute (OSI)

OSI’s motto is “building vibrant and tolerant democracies”

Currently, the minds behind the DOAJ are working on long-term preservation of OAJs, in conjunction with the e-Depot of the National Library of the Netherlands and the Swedish Library Association

Their goal is to ensure “long-time access to digital objects which would otherwise be threatened by rapidly evolving software and hardware platforms as well as media decay”

In 2010, Nicholls State University and the University of Louisiana at Monroe partnered to determine a way to cull the data available on the DOAJ so DOAJ titles could essentially be cataloged and included in LOUIS libraries’ catalogs

Happily, Nicholls’ own Jeremy Landry was able to develop just such a program. ULM’s Chuck Hughes tested it, and now DOAJ titles are included in LOUIS holdings!

After attending the ACRL Road Show in 2009, I got fired up about open access and OAJs

Mike Matthews, who was President of ACRL-LA at the time, and I discussed the viability of starting our very own OAJ, which would focus on academic librarianship in Louisiana

We realized that such a publication would benefit from having an organization behind it, and our choice was clear: ACRL-LA!

With regard to copyright, Codex requires authors to agree to a Creative Commons Attribution License

This gives Codex first publication rights (FNASR), while allowing authors to retain the rest of the copyrights to their work

This means others can share the work as long as the author, as well as the work’s initial publication in Codex, are acknowledged

Codex is a gold OA that is essentially libre

It encourages green OA as well

It utilizes Open Journal Systems, an open-source “journal management and publishing system,” developed by the Public Knowledge Project, that is also supports

the principles of open access

It is peer-reviewed – Codex currently has about 40 peer reviewers that review articles

We also have our very own ISSN!

Currently, Codex is not in the DOAJ, but we’ve submitted an application to be added

We will, however, be included in Ebscohost, like several other OAJs, and we’re listed in Oxbridge Communications’ Standard Periodical Directory

Speaking of Ebscohost – when Codex was first contacted by Ebscohost about being included in its products, there was some concern about protecting the rights of the journal and the authors, despite the excitement of being associated with a big name publisher and reaching a wider audience. They sent us a contract…

…which was dutifully reviewed by several members of ACRL-LA.

It was determined that the language of the contract put the rights of the journal and the authors in danger. This was unacceptable, and we rejected Ebscohost’s offer with an explanation regarding our concerns.

Ebscohost contacted us again some months later, at which time I reiterated the concerns regarding the journal’s rights and the authors’ rights.

This time I was assured that a new contract would be drawn up which would address these issues and guarantee that Codex’s copyright policies would be maintained, and everybody’s rights protected.

Sure enough, a new contract was sent, and again it was reviewed by several members of ACRL-LA.

This time, the contract was deemed acceptable. The language had been changed to guarantee that everybody’s interests would be protected.

There have been two other cases of note with regard to copyright issues for Codex. One involved Josh Finnell, whom some of you may know, and who has granted permission for me to share this.

Josh submitted an article for publication in the third issue of the journal. It had already gone through peer review and was going to be accepted for publication.

Before I could notify Josh that his article was going to be accepted, he emailed me and regretfully withdrew his article for consideration, telling me the article had already been published, which meant it could not be published in Codex. (FNAR, remember?)

He told me that the article in question had been submitted to another journal a year prior to its submission to Codex.

However, he’d never heard a thing, so he assumed the article had been rejected. Then, in January 2011, a year after he’d submitted the article to this other journal, the editor of the journal suddenly emailed him and told him the article was going to be published in the issue that was about to come out.

This was frustrating, of course, for both of us, and he shared that he’d other experiences where he felt his rights had been infringed.

“One of the first articles I ever wrote was just published two months ago in [title of journal redacted]. Odd, since I wrote this article in 2007. I have a list of correspondence with the editor about when I would receive feedback about my submission (nothing for two years!). I sent an email rescinding my submission and published it in NMRT Footnotes just to get it off my place.” {continue}

“What should appear two months ago time-stamped as 2008!??? Both are such minor publications, and arguably one is a newsletter, so I let the matter go.”

Clearly, Josh’s rights were not protected, or even respected, in this case. It’s worth noting that the second journal with which Josh had issues has freely accessible content on its site, as well as NMRT Footnotes (an ALA publication!).

The other case concerned Benjamin Keele, a library science graduate student who submitted an article on DOIs in law journals. His article was subsequently rejected because the peer reviewers determined that it was beyond the scope of Codex, but before their reviews came in, two events took place that demonstrated the benefits of open access. Ben agreed to let me share his story with you as well.

The first was that Ben told me that preprint (essentially, a draft) of the article had already been posted on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), and he was concerned that this might conflict with Codex’s non-competitive policy.

However, since what he posted was a preprint, it was determined that this was acceptable. SSRN is both a green OA and gold OA, as it publishes through its own journals and partner journals.

The other issue concerned Ben’s being named a winner in the American Association of Law Libraries/LexisNexis Call for Papers Competition (Student Division) with the DOIs article. Winning meant the article would be published in the Law Library Journal. This caused some concern (again), considering that LLJ is a traditional journal, not OA.

However, Ben discussed the matter with the editor of LLJ. LLJ was NOT going to ask for the rights like most traditional journals; it was actually going to grant him a CC license.

This meant, since Codex was going to “press” first, that it would receive FNASR rights, and Ben could still publish it in LLJ.

Ultimately, open access is about two things:

1. Providing free access to scholarly research to anybody with as few restrictions as possible

2. Protecting the rights of the authors, the publications, and the users as well

Open access is still developing and changing, but it’s gained a lot of ground, and scholars and librarians are still working towards spreading the principles of OA

Budapest Open Access Initiative. (2011, February 13). Budapest Open Access Initiative: Frequently asked questions. Retrieved from http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.html

Creative Commons. (n.d.). Licenses. Retrieved from http://www.creativecommons.org/licences/

DOAJ – Directory of Open Access Journals. (2011). Directory of open access journals. Retrieved from http://www.doaj.org

Gilks, M. (2000). Rights: What they mean and why they’re important. Retrieved from http://www.writing-world.com/rights/rights.shtml

Open Society Foundations. (2011). Initiatives. Retrieved from http://www.soros.org/initiatives

Public Knowledge Project. (n.d.) Open journal systems. Retrieved from http://www.pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs

Suber, P. (n.d.). Peter Suber. Retrieved from http:///www.earlham.edu/~peters/hometoc.htm

Presentation URL http://www.ulm.edu/~lowe/openaccesslla2011.ppt

Codex Homepage http://codex.acrlla.org ACRL-LA Homepage http://www.acrlla.org

My Contact Info lowe@ulm.edu http://www.ulm.edu/~lowe

If you have questions, don’t hesitate to contact me!

Megan Lowe, Codex EditorReference Librarian/Associate Professor

University of Louisiana at Monroe