which open access future do we want?, tom mowlam
TRANSCRIPT
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Which Open Access Future Do We Want?
Meeting Place Open Access Stockholm, 26 April 2016
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Two possible OA futures
1. The status quo continues
2. The community takes control
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The status quo is good for legacy publishers
• Higher than average profit margins
• Large publishers are getting even larger
• 6% of publishers control 90% of articles
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OA is growing, but on the legacy publishers’ terms
• Avg legacy publisher APC: $2,100 / €1,900
• Too high for most of HSS
• Price is based on what the market will stand, not added value
• Legacy publishers say they are pro-OA, but systematically lobby against it
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Research Works Act (H.R. 3699)
• Massive international outcry, especially from researchers
• Contained provisions to prohibit open-access mandates for federally funded research
• Congress members who introduced the act ‘motivated by large donations by the academic publisher X’
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Amid boycott, X backtracks on research bill Journal publisher still opposes current U.S. rules mandating access to taxpayer-funded research CBC News Posted: Feb 27, 2012 One of the largest academic publishers in the world withdrew its support Monday from a controversial U.S. bill, the Research Works Act, that critics feel would restrict public access to published, publicly-funded research. The change of heart by Dutch publisher X follows a boycott of its journals and publishing ventures by thousands of researchers around the world.
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So not all growth in OA is ideal
Source: http://sciforum.net/statistics/papers-published-per-year
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Why is open access (and open science) important?
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The Social Contract of Science / Research
• Validation
• Dissemination
• Further development
Scientific Malpractice
• Data • Results
• Software • Hardware, wetware…
#@%$#@% #@%$#
Source: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2015
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Source: Washington Post, May 7 2013 / Imgur: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/07/map-more-than-half-of-humanity-lives-within-this-circle/
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Source: Nature News, 20 April 2011, DOI: 10.1038/472276a
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What does the alternative OA future look like?
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This future is not what legacy publishers want it to be
• it’s more than books and journals
• It’s open science
• It’s all forms of communication
• It’s unrestricted and collaborative
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This future is not what legacy publishers want it to be
• It’s truly global, not a north-south hierarchy
• It’s philanthropic, because that’s what science and open access are
• It’s cost-effective and efficient
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Wider research community initiatives
• Content propagation: Scihub
• Publisher evaluation: DOAJ, OASPA, Quality Open Access Market
• Collaborative authoring: Authorea, Overleaf
• Open source publishing platfoms: PKP, Collaborative Knowledge Foundation (CKF)
• Funder mandates: Wellcome Trust, NIH, FP7, Horizon2020, UK Research Councils
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Initiatives UP is involved in
• Rua: open source book management platform
• The Ubiquity Partner Network
• Open Library of the Humanities
• FutureTDM: promoting text and data mining in the EU
• LingOA
• INASP JOLs • University Presses
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Support from over 140 libraries 2015: 7 journals
2016: 11 journals
Cost per institution per article: ~$4
Funding from:
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In summary • OA publishing is currently on the legacy
publishers’ terms, but these terms are not acceptable
• There are a lot of OA and open science initiatives in the research community
• The UPN is an example of pulling a large number of these initiatives together to increase the chances of large scale disruption
• This is working and points the way to a viable alternative, cooperative and fair future
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Thank you! Any questions?
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