Open Access Publishing: An Author’s PerspectiveLaura Gogia, MDCenter for Teaching Excellence Virginia Commonwealth University

What is open access?

▪ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5rVH1KGBCY&feature=youtu.be

Open Access Publishing: The Budapest Initiative

Permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org

Publisher Open Access Models

Delayed Open Access

Short-term Open Access

Selected Open Access

Hybrid Open Access

Partial Open Access

Total Open Access

Photo: Nick Brandies - Flickr

Two Approaches to OA (for Authors)

Publishing in OA Journals ╉Gold╊

Self-Archiving Your Work╉Green╊

Pictures: http://www.library.ucsf.edu/content/library-launches-pilot-open-access-fund

Open Access is a Spectrum

╉HowOpenIsIt?╊ Open Access Spectrum. (2013). Retrieved from PLOS: http://www.plos.org/wpcontent/uploads/2012/10/OAS_English_web.pdf

What do the numbers look like?

2011 – 340,000 articles published by 6,713 open access journals

17% of the total papers published

Laakso and Björk BMC Medicine 2012 10:124 doi:10.1186/1741-7015-10-124

Where in the world?

Laakso and Björk BMC Medicine 2012 10:124 doi:10.1186/1741-7015-10-124

Which disciplines?

Laakso and Björk BMC Medicine 2012 10:124 doi:10.1186/1741-7015-10-124

Open Access Titles You May Know…

OA Titles with local connections…

Who are OA Publishers?

Laakso and Björk BMC Medicine 2012 10:124 doi:10.1186/1741-7015-10-124

Article Processing Charges (APCs)

▪ Fees paid by authors, institutions, or funders as the main means of financing journal operations.

▪ Public Library of Science (PLoS) and BioMed Central (BMC) were the first (2000)

▪ As of 2011, 1,825 (or 26%) OA journals charged APCs

▪ Typically, fees are waived for special circumstances.

You Want Me to Pay WHAT?

Solomon, D., & Bjork, B. (2012). A study of open access journals using article processing charges. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology. 63, 8: 1485-1495.

You Want Me to Pay WHAT?

Solomon, D., & Bjork, B. (2012). A study of open access journals using article processing charges. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology. 63, 8: 1485-1495.

You Want Me To Pay WHAT?

Solomon, D., & Bjork, B. (2012). A study of open access journals using article processing charges. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology. 63, 8: 1485-1495.

APCs: An Interesting Phenomenon

▪ APCs add a new dimension to decisions on where to attempt to publish

▪ Changes focus of publishers’ marketing efforts

▪ Changes relationship between readers, authors, publishers, and the libraries

Photo: Doug Wheller - Flickr

How does a researcher benefit from OA?

▪ Increases ability to find and use relevant literature

▪ Increases visibility, readership, and impact of your work

▪ Creates new avenues for discovery in a digital environment

▪ Enhances interdisciplinary research

▪ Accelerates pace of research, discovery and innovation

Barriers to publishing in OA journals

▪ Lack of high-profile titles

▪ Lack of funding

▪ Quality

▪ No OA journals in my field

So What About ﾃHigh-Profileﾄ?

▪ Bjork and Solomon (2012) compared citation rates for subscription-based and OA journals

▪ Average citation rates were about 30% higher for subscription-based journals BUT this difference disappeared when controlling for ▪ Discipline (medicine/health versus other)

▪ Age of journal

▪ Location of publisher

So What About Quality?

Research your journal!

Researching Your Journal

▪ Can you find their website?

▪Are the editors and board members recognizable?

Photo: Ciccio Pizzettaro - Flickr

Researching Your Journal

▪ Article quality?

▪ Journal impact factor?– http://thomsonreuters.com/journal-citation-reports/

Researching Your Journal

▪ Listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals?

▪ Member of the Open Access Publishers Association?

▪ ISSN?

Researching Your Journal

Is it too good to be true?▪ Are they promising one week peer reviews?

▪ Are they hopelessly broad and interdisciplinary?

▪ Are they transparent about peer review and fees?

Good resources for further information

▪ SPARC - http://sparc.arl.org/issues/open-access– General resource, including Author’s Rights Page

▪ Public Knowledge Project (PKP) - http://pkp.sfu.ca/– General resource, especially useful for starting a journal

▪ Open Society Foundations -http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/opening-access-research– History and overview of the movement

More Good Resources

▪ Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) – http://www.doaj.org/– Official ╉go-to╊ for identifying open access journals

▪ SHERPA - http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/– RoMEO - Publisher's copyright & archiving policies

– JULIET - Research funders archiving mandates and guidelines

– OpenDOAR worldwide Directory of Open Access Repositories

▪ PLOS - http://www.plos.org/– a publisher and advocacy organization