Open Access Using OJS - how fast?

How fast can a journal issue be published using Open Journal Systems (OJS)?

Based on a special issue of Topics in Scholarly Communications I created this afternoon for an upcoming presentation, it appears - pretty darn fast!

Altogether, this special one-article issue took me a total of four and a half hours - mind you, that includes writing and revising that one article and creating the 52-slide presentation complete with pictures and detailed notes - not to mention doing the laundry, feeding the cat, and keeping up with Open Access News.

Subtracting all these extras, the actual software time for this issue, for all roles from author to section editor, layout, and publishing the issue, could not have taken more than an hour, at the very most.

If the presentation is of interest, watch for a copy in E-LIS later this week.

Free to read: great for business!

There are many flavors of open access; green, gold, public access, free to read, free to write. One thing that every aspect of open access has it common, is that it brings many benefits throughout our society, what the Budapest Open Access Initiative called "an unprecedented public good".

Consider how making research articles free to read for anyone with an internet connection, opens up new possibilities for the business community. The wealth of knowledge developed by our universities and researchers becomes freely available to everyone from the large corporation, to the budding entrepreneur. And why not? One of the arguments for open access is that taxpayers should have access to the results of research that they have funded. Businesses are taxpayers, too!

There are many ways in which we can all benefit from business access to research. First, of course, is the economic benefits when the commercial sector flourishes. Then, too, there are many ways that business can benefit from our collective knowledge to the advantage of all; consider, for example, how many companies would really like to be environmentally friendly. Why not help them out, and share what we know?

For more on this topic, please see my blogpost, Open Access: Good for Business!

Jim Till on the IRCSET policy

Jim Till has posted a comment on the IRCSET policy.

Peter Suber and I have speculated that the IRCSET policy might be the best model so far, however Jim points out that the combination of the first key principle: 1. This publication policy confirms the freedom of researchers to publish first wherever they feel is the most appropriate, and the stipulation "should adhere", might constitute a loophole which would render this policy ineffective.

Good points, Jim!

Jim Till, author of Be Openly Accessible or Be Obscure, is one of the reasons we have Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement.

40 new PubMedCentral journals in last 60 days!

40 more journals have begun adding content to PubMedCentral in the last 60 days! To view the list, go to PMC Journal List - New.

Of these, 22 or more than half make content available immediately! An additional 6 make content available within 12 months or less, indicating that articles published in these journals clearly fit the NIH Public Access policy. In other words, 70% of these new PMC journals clearly facilitate compliance with the NIH policy.

Kudos to every one of these journals, and to PMC for creating this list.

Librarians - to support the transition to OA, why not prioritize subscribing to OA policy-friendly journals? Journals could qualify by being fully open access, actively contributing content to PubMedCentral within the NIH acceptable embargo period, or having author-self-archiving policies that fit with OA policy compliance.

Aggregators - why not develop convenient lists, to make it easy for libraries to consider these factors in subscription decisions?

This post is part of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access Series.

Open Access: to research, or to implement

Peter Suber, in the May 2008 SPARC Open Access Newsletter, presents an extensive list of questions, highly recommended for anyone interested in research open access!

Librarians - here is another perspective. All we need to do is to rethink, just a little, what a library collection is in an open access age. The moment we understand that a library can build a collection, and that the concept of purchase need never enter the equation, then we can begin to shift those collection dollars from purchase to creating open access, working creatively and cooperatively in partnership with our faculty and scholarly publishers.

This shift - which is already happening, with so many libraries involved in digitizing collections for open access, publishing, institutional repositories, and the SCOAP3 Consortium - would change the answers to many of the fine questions Peter asks; indeed, it would make many of these questions moot!

Amazing OA Progress in April 2008

Peter Suber just released the May 2008 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. Peter's feature article this month is "What we don't know about open access: research questions in need of researchers".

Also worth highlighting: the absolutely amazing progress towards open access reflected in Peter's Roundup Section. There are 10 items reporting open access mandate news, all very good news and including 5 new university open access policies, by the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET), Stirling University, Southampton University, Queen Margaret University, Sweden's University College of Borås, with more in the works. Wow!

Details:

The Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET) adopted its long-awaited OA mandate.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/ircset-adopts-oa-mandate.html

The new OA mandate at the NIH took effect for the majority of NIH grantees.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/day-worth-celebrating.html


The UK Medical Research Council revised its OA mandate. When the MRC pays for a gold OA article, then it will demand the removal of key permission barriers, not merely the removal of price barriers.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/revision-to-oa-mandate-at-mrc.html


The European Commission recommended OA for publicly-funded research in its April 10 report on tech transfer.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/ec-recommends-oa-for-publicly-funded.html

Stirling University adopted an OA mandate (on March 5, announced April 9), the first university-wide mandate in the UK the second (after Harvard's) to be adopted by faculty rather than administrators.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/stirling-u-adopts-oa-mandate.html


The University of Southampton adopted a university-wide OA mandate (announced April 4). Its School of Electronics and Computer Science has had a departmental mandate since 2001.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/university-wide-oa-mandate-at.html


Scotland's Queen Margaret University adopted an OA mandate (on February 19).
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/queen-margaret-university-adopts-oa.html

Sweden's University College of Borås adopted an OA policy encouraging faculty to deposit their journal articles in the institutional repository.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/oa-policy-at-sweden-university-college.html

The European University Association (EUA) released an updated version of its OA recommendations. The EUA calls on universities to mandate OA to their research output and to support OA mandates for publicly-funded research. The EUA has 791 institutional members in 46 countries.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/eua-updates-its-oa-recommendations.html


The Open University is considering an "immediate deposit / optional access" OA mandate.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/richard-poynder-interviews-bill.html

Open Access to Knowledge and Information: Scholarly Literature and Digital Library Initiatives – the South Asian Scenario

Wonderful newopen access book on open access from UNESCO! by Anup Kumar Das.

Thanks to Moninder Buber.

Best open access funder mandate anywhere?

Working on an open access policy for your funding agency or university? Here is potential model to point people to! The recently announced policy of the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering, and Technology is described by Peter Suber as possibly the best funder mandate anywhere on Open Access News.

From the IRCSET Press Release: The Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering & Technology (IRCSET) has taken moves today to ensure that research papers published by its funding recipients will be made available in an open access repository, within six months of their first publication. The new development is in line with best international practice and is designed to enhance the public accessibility of State funded research.

From the Policy:
Conditions to which IRCSET funded Award Recipients
should adhere:

1. All researchers must lodge their publications resulting in whole or in part from IRCSET-funded research in an open access repository as soon as is practical, but within six calendar months at the latest.

2. The repository should ideally be a local institutional repository to which the appropriate rights must be granted to replicate to other repositories.

3. Authors should deposit post-prints (or publisher’s version if permitted) plus metadata of articles accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journals and international conference proceedings;

4. Deposit should be made upon acceptance by the journal/conference. Repositories should release the metadata immediately, with access restrictions to full text article to be applied as required. Open access should be available as soon as practicable after the author-requested embargo, or six month, whichever comes first;

5. Suitable repositories should make provision for long-term preservation of, and free public access to, published research findings.

6. IRCSET may augment or amend the above requirements wherever necessary to ensure best practice in Open Access.

Comment: as Peter Suber points out, strengths of this policy are that it is a requirement, "part of IRCSET’s terms and conditions in offering and providing funding to researchers", the maximum 6-month deposit, the requirement for immediate deposit even when access is delayed (very important to fit in with the workflow of the busy researcher). Congratulations to IRCSET!

The full Press Release and Policy are very much worth reading.

Creative Commons licenses for open access

Creative Commons provides an easy way for creators to obtain licenses indicating how their work may be used. CC licenses are readable by machines as well as by humans. CC can simplify the process of relating and understanding permissions, for authors, publishers, and readers alike.

There are many CC licenses. Here are some options that are most likely to be useful for open access authors and publishers:

attribution-noncommercial-sharealike: this allows others to reuse your work, as long as you are appropriately attributed, but not to sell the work for a profit. Derivatives of your work are allowed, as long as the person making the derivative shares the work with others as you have with them. Rockefeller University Press just implemented this CC license (thanks to Peter Suber on
Open Access News).

attribution-sharealike: as above, but allows for commercial uses as well.

While I recommend the use of Sharealike to facilitate further dissemination of a work as open access, this element is not absolutely necessary for a creative commons open access license. attribution-noncommercial and just plain attribution are perfectly suitable as open access licenses, too.

There are other CC licenses that are perfectly compatible with open access, such as public domain, or that may be of interest, such as the GNU GPL (open source) license.

Many open access authors and publishers are beginning to use Creative Commons licenses. CC licenses cover a great many of the situations creators would like to cover - but not all. For example, the Sharealike element applies to derivatives; some creators (myself included) might like to see Sharealike applied to exact copies of the original, too. If CC does not quite fit, no worries - you can choose the closest license, or not use CC at all. What is important is making your work open access.

Open Doors and Open Minds

SPARC and Science Commons have just released a White Paper outlining the Harvard faculty open access policy, and steps that others can take to implement such a policy at their own institution, beautifully named OPEN DOORS AND OPEN MINDS: What faculty authors can do to ensure open access to their work through their institution.

Highly recommended! Thanks to Ray English on SCHOLCOMM.