THE IMPORTANCE OF OA FOR ACADEMIC LIBRARIES

Charles Oppenheim

Visiting Professor at numerous Universities c.oppenheim@btinternet.com

ARLG OA Advocacy Event, Bradford, 25 November 2014

AN EXAMPLE OF THE PROBLEM

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WHAT IS OA?

• The Open Access (OA) movement arose as a result of two developments:

• The “serials crisis”, i.e., research journals increasingly unaffordable, hence inaccessible, to researchers’ institutions, even the richest ones; and

• The advent of online, which made it possible in principle to make all research outputs freely accessible to all online-enabled users.

• The feeling that everyone should be entitled to access the results of publicly-funded and charity-funded research, so they can make informed decisions about their life, e.g., Ebola outbreak, where scholarly publishers’ response has, with some exceptions, been slow and reluctant

• The primary target of OA is refereed research journal articles, though of course it can apply to reports, theses, data collections, etc.

Two questions: Do authors WANT to give

up

all of their rights to their work?

Do authors HAVE to give up

all of their rights to their work?

GREEN AND GOLD

• GOLD = publishing in an OA journal (often, but not invariably, for a publication fee – the so-called Article Processing Charge, or APC)

• It is a common misunderstanding by outsiders that all Gold journals involve APCs.

• GREEN = publishing in a traditional subscription journal and, in addition, self-archiving the (often) final, peer-reviewed draft online.

• The majority of OA to date is Green, and yet third parties commonly think OA refers to Gold only, or, even worse, that OA is just Gold with APCs

• Green does not entail any payment of fees, and the raw material is provided by researchers themselves.

• A confession – I am the Godfather of the two colour terms. It all started with the Romeo Project in 2001-2003. (Now the extremely useful SHERPA/ROMEO service)

• But I have no truck with other colours (white, purple, shocking pink….), or with “free” versus ‘gratis” OA, which only serve to confuse things

Prevalence of Permission?

Among Publishers

SHERPA/RoMEO covers 1696 publishers as of October 2014.

74% allow some form of self-archiving.

For more information:

http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/statistics.php

THE ADVANTAGES OF OA - AND YET!

• Advantages provided by OA – free access for all users, no charges paid by the authors in the case of Green OA, enhanced research uptake and impact, relief from the serials crisis, and the speed and power of online.

• One would expect that researchers would have quickly moved to OA.

• But the growth of OA of both colours has actually been surprisingly slow

• Estimate vary, but it seems between 20% and 30% of current research outputs are in OA form, and of course it is a much lower % for older materials.

PUBLISHERS’ RESPONSE TO OA

• To begin with, they dismissed it as a fad that would never take off

• They then developed a response, i.e., Gold OA with APCs

• The business model is to maintain their current profit margin by offering this alternative, or hybrid journals, all of which you get for a subscription, but some articles, if APCs have been paid, available to all

• Financial analysts at first thought that scholarly publisher profits would fall because of the development of OA, but now seem to think the big publishers in particular have a viable business model with paid for Gold

THE GREEN OA PUZZLE

• Green OA should be especially attractive to Institutions and their employees because there are no APCs to be paid.

• There are many reasons why researchers have been so slow to provide Green OA even though they themselves would be its biggest potential beneficiaries.

• Researchers are unsure whether they have the legal right to self-archive

• They fear that it might put their paper’s acceptance for publication at risk

• They believe that self-archiving may be a lot of work.

• As we shall see, all these concerns are groundless, but it has become clear that merely pointing out how and why they are groundless is not enough to induce authors to self-archive.

• So, researchers’ funders and institutions worldwide are beginning to make OA mandatory for researchers’ publications, not only for the benefit of the researchers, but also their employers, and of course, society as a whole.

THE GROUNDLESS CONCERNS

• Researchers are unsure whether they have the legal right to self-archive – addressed in my slides entitled “Copyright” a bit later

• They fear that it might put their paper’s acceptance for publication at risk – yes, they may be forced to submit the paper to an alternative journal that is more generous in its permissions. Discussed further later.

• They believe that self-archiving may be a lot of work – this is where librarians come in! More on your role to reduce or eliminate this fear later.

SOME OA MANDATE INITIATIVES

• NIH in the US and the Wellcome Trust in the UK, Research Councils UK, the European Commission, and now President Obama’s Directive to all the major US federal funding agencies, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

• Research institutions, including Harvard, MIT, University College London and ETH Zurich require all their journal article output, across all disciplines, funded and unfunded, to be deposited in their institutional OA repositories.

• HEFCE requirement for the next REF, which has huge implications for HEIs that may not have taken OA seriously before.

VARIABLE ACCEPTANCE OF MANDATES

• The mandates differ widely, both in their specific requirements and in their resultant success in generating OA.

• Some mandates generate deposit rates of over 80%, whereas others are doing no better than the global baseline for spontaneous (un-mandated) self-archiving.

• So what are the conditions that are essential to making a mandate effective, i.e., to get the vast majority of outputs into that repository?

COPYRIGHT I

• It will come as no surprise to those who know me that this subject comes up

• Researchers MUST stop routinely signing publishers’ copyright agreements without reading them carefully.

• In general, publishers require assignment of copyright before they will publish the output.

• But this is just a bluff!

• My own experiences with Elsevier

COPYRIGHT II

• Researchers should be offering the publisher a licence to publish – something quite different to assignment.

• What is the difference?• Researchers should ensure that they only go with a

publisher that is willing to agree to this.• It is the librarian’s job to point them in the right

direction.• But what if the publisher/journal is prestigious, and the

researcher insists it is essential that the article appears in that vehicle?

• Controversial as it might appear, the employer should INSIST.

• Is this an infringement of academic freedom?

ACADEMIC FREEDOM

• To me, this means the right to undertake research in, and to publish outputs in, subjects that may be unpopular with some, or many people.

• To me, it does NOT mean the right to publish in a particular journal chosen by the researcher.

• The researcher should accept that there are circumstances when the employer is entitled to insist on particular publications methods.

• Researchers already have to accept limitations on, e.g., the way they submit funding applications, the way they deliver lectures, the way they supervise PhD students, ethical codes of conduct, etc. I don’t see this issue as being significantly different!

COPYRIGHT III

• Once we have it as routine that authors will only grant licences to publishers, then everything is set up for OA because the author retains the right to post it where they like.

• An alternative is to assign copyright to the publisher with the publishers granting back to the author a licence to put on the repository, possibly after an agreed embargo period. This is not perfect, but is better than nothing –and is quite common practice.

• If the researchers goes for Gold, there are numerous respectable OA Gold journals – but also, unfortunately, a lot of really dodgy ones. Researchers must be taught how to identify the good ones.

OVERALLL ON COPYRIGHT

• The bluff depends on publishers convincing the authors that the author needs the publisher more than the publisher needs the output

• But the truth is, both parties need each other

• Yes, an eminent experienced researcher is in a much stronger position than a junior wanting to get their very first publication (see me vs Elsevier) – and that is why employer/supervisor support for the junior researcher, and mandates are so important

• Employer/HEFCE mandates mean the researcher is obliged to say to the publisher “I’m really sorry but my hands are tied on this – I’m not allowed to assign copyright to you”.

• Libraries can play a key role here by teaching ECRs – and more experienced ones – about the issues, and how to approach publishers

• Authors must play their part too, so let’s get onto them…..

Advice to Authors

1. Research any journal/publisher you’re considering.

(Quality? Peer reviewing process? Copyright policy?) Ask for advice

from your librarian!

2. If you have the right to self-archive, exercise that right.

1. If you don’t have the right to self-archive in the agreement you are

asked to sign with the publisher, request it, or rather, REQUIRE IT.

1. Choose the best publishing outlet for you and your career…

2. …but also think about the system you’re contributing to and the

system you want to contribute to.

Know your rights to what you write!

THE ROLE OF EMPLOYERS

• The ideal policy: when it comes to appraisals, promotion panels/decisions on tenure, etc., only outputs in the employer’s repository will be taken into consideration

• Warn staff that signing of a publisher’s form should not be done without reading the small print carefully

• Issue a clear and comprehensive mandate policy

• Introduce for all new staff as a condition of employment that they may only publish journal outputs using OA

• Spend time and money educating researchers, ideally through the library

• Ensure that library staff assist researchers in uploading journal outputs to the repository

• Offer prizes/incentives, e.g., the author of every thousandth item on the repository gets a cash or other reward

THE ROLE OF FUNDERS

• Not just make it a requirement for recipients that they publish outputs from research in OA form

• Also provide the funds to assist where APCs are involved• Don’t give further grants to the individual, or anyone else

from their institution, if a previous recipient has failed to place the outputs in a suitable OA repository

• Just imagine if Wellcome Trust refused to consider ANY application from the University of X until Dr Bloggs, a previous recipient of its funding, hadn’t uploaded their outputs to the repository, or had mistakenly signed a copyright agreement with a publisher that stopped them from doing so. Would you want to be in Dr Bloggs’ shoes?

TO RETURN TO THE ROLE OF LIBRARIES

• OA offers huge potential benefits to the library in terms of reduced costs, increased prestige, getting more involved with your Institution’s research, as well as the broader benefits to society.

• For major long-term projects, a member of library staff should be dedicated to support the team in all sorts of ways, including advice on OA, on copyright issues, and on how to upload materials. If need be, of course, offer to upload the outputs for them.

• If you have success stories, tell others about it, as indeed you will be hearing from the other speakers today

• Pass information about OA around, and explain the permissions licences give researchers to undertake OA.

• Warn staff, research students, etc., about publisher copyright agreements, advise on ways to amend the wording, recommend particular publishers with better agreements

• Correct people who think that “OA” is “Gold journals with APCs”.• Make the business of uploading to the repository trivially simple and/or do it for

them,• Teach researchers on how to identify dodgy Gold journals!

I REST MY CASE M’LUD

• Mike Taylor, an academic paleontologist, summarisedthe message perfectly: “Really, folks, this is super simple. If you want people to read (and cite!) your work, PUT IT IN A JOURNAL THEY CAN READ.”

• For an interesting overview of author attitudes to OA, see the recent Taylor & Francis survey at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/openaccess/opensurvey/2014

• N.B. My moustache – see http://uk.movember.com/mospace/4057341

• Time for questions/discussion!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: The colourful

slides are all from

Jill Cirasella

jcirasella@gc.cuny.edu

The Graduate Center, CUNY

Slides at: http://tinyurl.com/GCauthorsrights