open access - why should you care? (europic 2014)
DESCRIPTION
Slides from a presentation on open access given at Europic 2014 (the 18th International Picornavirus Meeting). Will hopefully provide further stimulus to the conversation on this important topic.TRANSCRIPT
Why should you care?
Stephen Curry Europic 2014
Blankenberge, Belgium
Academic Journals were a great idea…
…but the web changes everything
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What is Open Access?
Budapest Declara5on, 2002 “free availability on the public internet, permiHng any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these arJcles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to soKware…”
hMp://www.opensocietyfoundaJons.org/openaccess/
Gold OA: Immediate availability via the journal (OA or 'hybrid') May require an arJcle processing charge (APC) !Green OA: Available via a repository (insJtuJon or subject-‐based) Author's peer-‐reviewed version (or pre-‐print) May require a delay (embargo period)
Gra5s OA: Free online access !!Libre OA: Free online access with some addiJonal usage rights (e.g. reproducJon, text mining — license-‐dependent)
Open Access is: ‣ a natural consequence of the internet ‣ good for research
faster exchange of ideas fosters inter-‐disciplinarity enables text mining stronger sense of community ownership
‣ good for the taxpayer beMer cost control (eventually) access to the research they paid for changes dynamic of public engagement
‣ affecJng & affected by many aspects of academic life…
Open Access is not: ‣ free (or the same as ‘file-‐sharing’) ‣ the end of peer review or synonymous with low quality ‣ easy to implement
Why are we not there yet?
Funder & Govt Policies have been too meek
‣ New (revised) RCUK policy (April 1st, 2013): ‣ Prefers gold (and CC-‐BY) but allows green ‣ Block grant funding ‣ 5 yr roll-‐out to include review & flexibility: a ‘journey'
‣ HEFCE: immediate OA deposit will be required for next REF
‣ Changes happening in US & EU…
hMp://blogs.rcuk.ac.uk/2012/09/28/rcuk-‐open-‐access-‐policy-‐when-‐to-‐go-‐green-‐and-‐when-‐to-‐go-‐gold/
OpposiJon of some publishers ‣worried about ‘sustainability’ (aka profits*) ‣ Elsevier: 36% (£724m/£2,000m)
‣ Springer: 34% (£294m/£866m)
‣ John Wiley & Sons: 42% ($106m/$253m)
‣ Informa plc: 32% (£47m/£145m)
‣NB: Hindawi: 52%** ($3.3m/$6.3m)
‣Are these reasonable given the input from researchers?
Why are we not there yet?
*Figures for 2010. Source — hPp://poe5ceconomics.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/enormous-‐profits-‐of-‐stm-‐scholarly.html **hPp://scholarlyoa.com/2013/04/04/hindawis-‐profits-‐are-‐larger-‐than-‐elseviers/
Researchers are ill-‐informed and conservaJve
‣too few aware of how publishing works ‣concerns of learned socieJes
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Why are we not there yet?
hMp://blogs.law.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2013/01/29/why-‐open-‐access-‐is-‐beMer-‐for-‐scholarly-‐socieJes/
Stuart Shieber
We fear damage to established models ‣addicted to impact factors —> mistrust of new journals
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Why are we not there yet?
"when assessing proposals for research funding RCUK considers that it is the quality of the research proposed and not where an author has published… that is of paramount importance."
hMp://occamstypewriter.org/scurry/category/open-‐access-‐2/
To realise the vision of OA, we need to replace the apparatus of the Impact factor
Vale, R. D. (2012) Mol Biol Cell 23, 3285–3289.
Lawrence, P. A. (2007) Curr. Biol. 17, R583–5.
hMp://am.ascb.org/dora/
Remaining Challenges and QuesJons
‣ Convincing academics & learned socieJes of the merits of OA ‣ APC payment mechanisms that are fair & visible to researchers ‣ Withdraw support for hybrid OA?
‣ Compliance enforcement from funders and insJtuJons ‣ Disavowal of Impact Factors ‣ Market innova5ons from publishers — level playing field for new OA journals ‣ DuraJon & cost of transiJon? (When will subs money be released?)
Thanks for listening