The State of “Open”:Open Access in the U.S.

Heather JosephExecutive Director, SPARC

OpenCon 2014Washington, DC

November 15, 2014

SPARC’s End Goal: Set the Default to “Open”

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“By open access, we mean the free availability of articles on the public

internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print,

search or link to the full text of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software or use them

for any other lawful purpose…” - The Budapest Open Access Initiative – February 14, 2002

Open Access = Access + Full Reuse

Major Enabling Strategies: Journals, Repositories, Policies

So – How’s the U.S. Doing?

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FEDERATION

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FEDERATION

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FEDERATION

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• Over 3 million full text articles• Accessed by over 1 million unique

users each day • ~ 2/3rds of users come from outside

of academy.• Compliance rate is over 80%• Costs 1/100th of 1% of NIH’s overall

operating budget to implement.

All Seems Good….So What’s the Catch?

Of 21 Agencies Required by White House Directive to Release Public Access Policies, Only 1 Currently has Done So.

Of 4,599 Title IV Degree-Granting Institutions in the U.S, 45 Currently Have O.A. Policies.

Of ~1.5 million articles published annually, less than 20% Currently are published in Open Access venues.

Cause for alarm?

No…

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Trend Lines: All Pointing Up

But…A Call for Further Action.

Scientific, technical, medical, legal and business journal publishing is a U.S. $10 billion per year revenue

producing market.

Big Task. But Not Impossible.

We Need Keep Building Creative Strategies and Collective Efforts to

Keep Momentum Building.

That’s Why We’re Here at OpenCon.

Let’s Build the Next Phase of Setting the Default to “Open” Together.