Open Access – the big issues

Linda King & Alistair Fitt

Oxford Brookes University

Open Access Event Friday 25th October 2013

OPEN ACCESS IS HERE!

We want to explain to everybody about the open access (OA) debate and its implications

This will have consequences for all researchers – in particular you may have to think in a new way NOW about where to publish your work

A CONTINUING DEBATE:NOTE: we don’t have all the answers and the debate is continuing. It’s not clear where we will end up. Also: – OA is COMPLICATED – there are no quick fixes

WHAT IS OPEN ACCESS?

As you probably know, the basic concepts of the OA principle are very simple, and amount to:

“If you produce a research output of any sort, then it should immediately be available for all the world to see, whenever they wish, absolutely free of charge”

WHY OPEN ACCESS?

Almost all researchers are in favour of OA in principle as it has many advantages, including:

• The public pays for a lot of research, so they should get to see it free• OA allow for quick dissemination, and hence speeds research progress• OA outputs receive greater publicity and more citations• OA “levels the playing field” for researchers in developing countries• We decided to publish it – so why restrict access?

The basic difficulty: this is just not how the system runs at present – and it’s hard to plot a route to an Open Access world that doesn’t disrupt the research ecosystem in damaging ways

JUST PAPERS FOR THE MOMENT

Research outputs come in a huge variety of forms: books, journal papers, monographs, conference proceedings, reports, buildings, sculptures etc.

BUT for reasons that will be explained later for the moment we’ll ONLY discuss journal papers and conference proceedings.

This makes the initial discussion simpler

We will also only talk about the GREEN and GOLD Open Access publication routes (defined next slide)

(YES WE KNOW that all forms of output are equally important!!!)

A FEW SWIFT DEFINITIONS

• PREPRINT: initial article sent to journal to be refereed

• POSTPRINT: final version sent to journal after changes and acceptance

• REPRINT: what finally appeared, with journal branding and livery

• GREEN OA: postprint posted on a repository (maybe after an embargo period has expired)

• GOLD OA: reprint free to everybody, always, everywhere on the web

• APC: “Article Processing Charge” – cash paid to journal to publish gold OA article

• SUBSCRIPTION: annual amount paid to publisher for journal access

• HYBRID: journal that can be bought with subscription but also allows APCs for gold OA papers at authors’ discretion

• ALL-GOLD: journal that ONLY publishes gold OA articles with APCs.

THE CURRENT SYSTEM

At present OA is far away. The traditional journal system largely pertains:

• Papers appear in a Journal published by a publisher

• All of the refereeing and editing is done for free by willing academics

• To get to see the papers you have to have a subscription to the journal

• ..............and journal subscriptions keep going up, so the publishers get rich

• Thus access is not open at all, it’s actually quite limited.

One of the coalition’s key manifesto points is “the public seeing how its money is spent” – and the public largely can’t see the papers at the moment.

RESULT: David Willetts convened the FINCH GROUP (Chair: Dame Janet Finch)

THEIR MISSION: “tell the UK how to transition to an Open Access world”

WHAT DID THE FINCH REPORT (Sept 2012) SAY?

There is often confusion about what it really said, but essentially:

• Publicly-funded research should be made available free to the public

• The UK should start down a route to eventual GOLD open access• …. but this only applies to journal papers, and for books, chapters and

monographs, well……er…….dunno yet• The transition to gold OA should be “properly funded”• The UK should lead the world in “going for gold” • Transition costs could be £60m p/a but this will decrease over time

WHERE ARE WE NOW?

We’re just over a year on, and the Finch group has just met again to review their original findings

During the last 12 months we’ve seen:

• Lots of discussion, arguing and agonising• Lots of existing hybrid journals launching gold OA APC options• Lots of new online “all-gold” OA journals trying to launch• An RCUK OA mandate (and the promise of a HEFCE mandate)• An EU OA mandate• An Obama-mandate for the USA• RCUK setting aside a “block grant” to HEIs for OA• …… the rest of the world looking on to see what happens to us

WHAT ARE THE MAIN PROBLEMS?

We all want OA – science advances faster and is more equitable if all outputs are OA. *BUT*

• The guidance from RCUK has been faltering and badly managed

• There are many conflicts – depending on where you are in the system

• HEFCE guidance has yet to be issued (and will be much more important than RCUK’s pronouncements)

• Books, monographs and book chapters have kind of been ignored

• The hard evidence that “OA produces more citations” is largely missing

• It’s clear that there is not enough funding for the transition period

• It’s also clear that our 1% of people and 6% of world outputs have little clout

• The detailed issues around OA are very complicated and involved. Few understand them all – least of all politicians, or academic colleagues

• The publishers’ rules are so complicated that THEY don’t understand them!

AN EXAMPLE OF COMPLICATIONS (sorry it’s a maths-related one)

IMA Mathematics OUP journals are now all SHERPA FACT-compliant with the RCUK mandate (SHERPA FACT – ROMEO “app” for RCUK)

However they are not quite SHERPA ROMEO-compliant as OUP don’t allow a postprint to be displayed on the institutional repository (IR), but do allow reference to a toll-free link on the OUP web site. They don’t allow the postprint content to be stored on the IR

• What happens if I put a link to the link on our IR?

• What happens if I put a link fulltext of my paper to the preprint of my paper which is stored in the cloud, not the IR?

• What happens if all links point to my personal web page (where linking IS allowed)?

LINKS, CONTENT, FILES ARE ALL THE SAME!

TWO OF THE BIGGEST PROBLEMS

HYBRID JOURNALS• “Double dipping” is a curse. Example from a journal dear to me: (IMA, OUP)

• Annual sub is £950, APC is £1,300 – journal sub reduces 4% (for EVERYBODY) for every APC that I fund

• WHY WOULD I EVER DO THIS?

OA CC-BY LICENCE

• Creative Commons licences are COMPLICATED

• The standard (and Finch-recommended) gold OA licence is CC-BY

• This allows virtually unlimited commercial use

• Most of the existing authors’ rights are completely lost

• It also allows unlimited “hashing and mashing”…………..

Other random OA posers

• If you make more by publishing more, how strict will your refereeing be?

• What happens to Learned/Professional societies that RELY on the

subscription model for their funding?

• How do we choose who gets the Open Access money for their paper?

• How will we afford the gold OA route without going bankrupt?

• What happens to researchers that are NOT from universities?

• What do we do about OA for books and monographs?

• How long will the “glorious route to gold” take to accomplish?

• How come the publishers earn a fortune and we do all the work for free?

• How come our public money is being used to make journals cheaper for the

rest of the world?

What is currently mandated (1)?

RESEARCH COUNCILS:

“If you publish a paper that was from research funded by a research council then you must make it open access EITHER by the gold route or by the green route with an embargo of 6 months (STEM) 12 months (Arts & Humanities)”

BUT: •We won’t check up on this for....hmmm a few years at least•We’ll accept 12/24 month embargoes rather than 6/12...er.....for a bit•We’ll give you some money to fund this (based on your grant income)•Errm it won’t be enough but we’ll see how it goes..........

What is currently mandated (2)?

REF 2014 – nothing need be done

REF2020 – consultation underway. Strong favourites for rules:

• Outputs for REF2020 must be open access at time of publication• ........ but any route (gold/green) will do• This only applies to journal and conference papers. The rest is too hard • This only applies to things published in 2016 or later• Journal embargo periods will be respected for green OA outputs• Will probably be enforced by requiring an overall compliance percentage • If researchers come to the UK from outside our system then their

previous outputs are exempt from OA requirements

What does this mean for me?

If you want your paper to be eligible for REF2020 then you must ensure that it is compliant at time of publication – no retrospective OA allowed

If you publish in a non-compliant journal or don’t lodge your paper in the institutional repository at the right time YOU CAN’T USE IT FOR REF 2020

We pay you a salary and expect you to make sure that your papers can be returned in the REF – so there are vexing questions regarding “academic freedom”. You can’t automatically choose where you publish.

Finally: don’t have nightmares!

WE HAVE TIME TO SORT THIS OUT AND WE CAN HELP YOU