Dramatic Growth December 2006 & Predictions for 2007

Synopsis

The dramatic growth of open access, both publishing and self-archiving, continued in the final quarter of 2006. The Directory of Open Access Journals passed a significant milestone in December, exceeding 2,500 journals; about 10% of the world's peer-reviewed journals are now fully open access. When new journals are created, there is evidence that they are at least 30% likely to be fully open access. This trend is likely to accelerate as more journals become knowledgeable about new, efficienct, freely available open source software such as Open Journal Systems, which greatly facilitates online and open access publishing.

Strong growth continues in open access archiving, with more archives and more full-text documents; all archives tracked showed very strong growth in 2006.

There are signs of an open access movement that is on the verge of emerging from the innovative edge into the mainstream. Open access has become an academic area unto itself, and a challenge to study, as those who have read even a portion of Peter Suber's more than 10,000 well-selected, thoughtful blogposts can attest. Open access education, however, is just beginning. PhD students in librarianship, for example, are finding open access and related topics an interesting field of study. Students are beginning to hear about open access in their courses, but soon they will be taught by teachers for whom this is their area of expertise.

My predictions for 2007 are continued, and accelerating, growth in open access. The most important trends I see for 2007, however, are less tangible in nature; a shift in focus from debate on the pros, cons, and feasibility of open access, to more solid work on the details of implementation. For librarians, a key will be a shift in perspective on collections, from the idea of purchasing or leasing what our users need, to building and preserving the collections our researchers and others produce. I see this trend as beginning in 2007.

September - December 2006

The final quarter of 2006 showed continuing strongth growth in open access in all measures tracked, with the equivalent of annual growth rates ranging from 19% (for DOAJ) and up. Particularly strong growth is noteworthy for E-LIS, with a growth rate equivalent to 55% annually (586 documents added), and PubMedCentral, with an annual equivalent of 40% (69,884).

Comments: strong growth in both E-LIS and PubMedCentral illustrates that different approaches to implementing open access can be highly successful. E-LIS, the Open Archive for Library and Information Studies, is a highly distributed and volunteer-based organization, with volunteer Editors around the world and a very small central staff in Italy. PubMedCentral is a project of the U.S.' National Institutes of Health, and is a highly centralized organization with paid staff.

Overview

Strong growth in open access, fairly steady with some seasonable variations or local factors affecting rate of change for particular initiatives, is now confirmed, for open access publishing and archiving, throughout 2006.

The Directory of Open Access Journals exceeded 2,500 journals this December; for details, see their Dec. 15 Press Release 2,500 journals in the DOAJ. It is estimated that there are about 25,000 peer-reviewed journals in the world; if this estimate is correct, then now 10% of peer-reviewed journals are now fully open access.

While the growth in open access journals is coming from both conversions of existing journals and development of new journals as open access, there is evidence of a increasing tendency for new journals to start up as open access, as discussed in my blogpost of yesterday, The Newer the Journal, the More Likely it is Open Access. According to Ulrich's, journals with start years from the previous century are less than 10% likely to be open access, while journals started in the new millenium are about 30% likely to be open access. There are definite limitations to Ulrich's data on open access journals, particularly evidence of understatement of open access journals.

One new measure added to this quarter's Dramatic Growth update is the estimate of 800 journals now using Open Journal Systems, in 10 languages. While the precise number at different points in time is not known for this free, open source software, this is remarkable usage and development for a software just released in 2003. This is significant because the efficiences of this new breed of software, and the free availability, is an important support for open access publishing. [Disclosure: I am on the planning committee for the First International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference].

There were many indications in 2006 of an open access movement that is on the verge of emerging from the innovative edge into the mainstream; most notably the open access policies either developed (e.g. RCUK), coming into effect (Wellcome Trust), or begun this year (e.g. FRPAA, the Australian Research Council, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research).

The phenomenon of open access is already well established as an area of scholarly study in its own right, as readers of Peter Suber's wonderful Open Access News blog, which exceeded 10,000 well-selected, informative and interesting posts in December; and the monthly SPARC Open Access Newsletter,which passed the 100 mark earlier in the year.

Despite these signs of maturity, implementation of open access is still in the very early stages, which will make the next few years most interesting indeed.

One illustration of the coming explosion in growth of open access relates to the beginnings of broad-based education on open access per se. While Peter Suber and other early leaders have been teaching those who chose to learn for many years, others are still preparing to teach. In May of 2007, the University of British Columbia's School of Library and Information Studies (SLAIS) will be offering a course on open access for the first time, which I will be teaching.

Students are already hearing about open access in many of their classes. Like many other academic disciplines, librarianship will soon be looking for a new generation of teachers with many retirements of library school faculty anticipated in the next few years. Open access and related topics are popular research areas for today's PhD students; within the next few years, many a library school will have one or more faculty members with expertise in this area.

Speaking of PhD students, one of the early areas of rapid growth in open access has been OA archiving of theses. One of the results of this will be graduates - new faculty members, new professionals and businesspeople - who are knowledgeable about open access, a whole new group likely to produce more than its fair share of advocates and OA supporters.

My prediction is that researchers will begin to prioritize learning about open access in response to mandates from funding agencies, and the more they learn about open access and related initiatives such as open data, the more they will embrace and support it. Educational efforts by librarians and others will be a very helpful factor along the way; the policy mandates will provide the incentives, and librarians will be increasing ready to help provide the information and needed support.

The most important thing I see happening in 2007, however, is less tangible in nature, but rather a shift in perspective; from debating the pros, cons, and possibilities of open access, to a focus on how to implement. For librarians, the key trend I predict for 2007 is a shift in perspective on library collections, from a focus on collections as purchase or lease, to one of building and preserving collections. This is a subtle shift, and arguably one that reflects a return to more traditional values, which is nevertheless key to the transition. Once we understand that building and preserving collections of the work of our researchers for everyone to share is the very essence of librarianship, everything else will fall into place, in my view.

Data

Early figures are from my preprint, The Dramatic Growth of Open Access: Implications and Opportunities for Resource Sharing, Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Electronic Reserve, 16, 3 (2006), and my updates:
Dec. 31, 2005 Update and 2006 Predictions
March 31, 2006 Update.
June 30, 2006 Update.
September 2006 Update.

Directory of Open Access Journals:
December 31, 2006: 2,514 journals (34 titles added in the last 30 days)
September 30, 2006: 2,401 journals (45 titles added in the last 30 days)
June 30, 2006: 2,292 journals (38 titles added in the last 30 days)
March 31, 2006: 2,158 journals (78 titles added in the last 30 days)
Dec. 31, 2005: 1,988 titles
February 2005 - over 1,400 titles
This is an increase of 113 titles from September - December 2006, a 4.7% growth rate or the equivalent of 19% annually.
The total title increase in 2006 was 526, a 26% increase over the year, or an average increase of almost one and a half titles per calendar day. Please note that this figure likely underestimates actual growth, as it reflects a thorough weeding project early in 2006.


December 31, 2006: 747 journals searchable at article level - 124,033 articles in DOAJ total
September 30, 2006: 697 journals searchable at article level - 109,840 articles in DOAJ total
June 30, 2006: 653 journals searchable at article level -- 101,434 articles in DOAJ total
March 31, 2006: 594 journals searchable at article level -- 92,751 articles in DOAJ total
Dec. 31, 2004: 492 journals searchable at article level - 83,235
This is an increase of 50 journal titles during September - December, 2006; a 7% growth rate, or equivalent of an annual 28% growth rate.

Note that the DOAJ list does not represent all open access journals, only the ones that have met DOAJ standards, and have gone through the DOAJ vetting process. Jan Szczepanski's list is much longer: over 4,705 titles total as of early December 2005.

Open Journal Systems
800 titles using OJS (as of June 2006) in ten languages

OAIster
December 21, 2006: 9,931,910 records from 726 institutions
September 27, 2006: 9,417,772 records from 680 institutions
June 30, 2006: 7,605,729 records from 647 institutions
March 22, 2006: 7,040,586 records from 610 institutions
Dec. 22, 2005: 6,255,599 records from 578 institutions
February 2005: over 5 million records, 405 institutions
This is an increase of 514,138 records in a quarter, or an equivalent of over 2 million records annually. By percentage, this is an 5% increase in this quarter, or an equivalent of about 20% annually (a much lower increase than the previous quarter). The number of institutions has increased by 46, 7%, or the equivalent of 28% annually.
For all of 2006 (Dec. 22, 2005 - Dec. 21, 2006), OAIster increased by 3,676,311 records, a 59% increase in records; and 148 institutions, a 26% increase.

The Registry of Open Access Repositories lists 792 archives as of December 31, 2006, up from 746 on September 30, 2006, an increase of 46 or 6%, equivalent of 24% annual increase.

Highwire Press Free Online Fulltext Articles
December 31, 2006: 1,552,467 free full-text articles
September 30, 2006: 1,435,924 free full-text article
June 30, 2006: 1,354,559 free full-text articles
March 31, 2006: 1,335,546 free articles
Dec. 31, 2005: 1,131,135 free articles
early January 2005: over 800,000 free articles
This is an increase of 116,543 articles, or a 8% increase (equivalent to 32% annually).
For all of 2006, this is an increase of 421,332 articles, or a 37% annual increase.

PubMedCentral
December 31, 2006: 766,387 OAI records, 100% freely available
September 30, 2006: 696,503 OAI records, 100% freely accessible (data from the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) by Dr. Tim Brody. The ROAR site shows the impressive, if only beginning, growth curve of PMC.
This is an increase of 69,884 records in a quarter, a 10% increase or equivalent of 40% annual growth.

arXiv
December 31, 2006: 400,814 e-prints
September 30, 2006: 386,716 e-prints
June 30, 2006: 374,166 e-prints
March 31, 2006: 362,334 e-prints
Dec. 31, 2005: Open access to 350,745 e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science and Quantitative Biology.
This is an increase of 14,098 e-prints in this quarter, a 3.6% increase in this quarter, or the equivalent of 15% annually.
For all of 2006, this is an increase of 50,069 e-prints, a 14% increase.

RePEC: Research Papers in Economics
December 31, 2006: over 451,000 items of interest, over 343,000 of which are available online:
September 30, 2006: over 428,000 items of interest, over 321,000 of which are available online
June 30, 2006: over 385,000 items of interest, over 282,000 of which are available online
March 31, 2006: over 367,000 items of interest, over 266,000 of which are available online
Dec. 31, 2005: over 350,000 items of interest, over 250,000 of which are available online.
February 2005: over 200,000 freely available items.
This is an increase of 23,000 items available online, a 5% increase, or the equivalent of a 20% annual increase.
For all of 2006, this is an increase of 101,000 items of interest, a 29% increase.

E-LIS
December 31, 2006: 4,871 documents
September 30, 2006: 4,285 documents
June 30, 2006: 3,885 documents
March 31, 2006: 3,539 documents
Dec. 31, 2005: 3,095 documents
This is an increase of 586 documents, 14% or the equivalent of a 55% annual increase.
For all of 2006, this is an increase of 1,776 documents, a 57% increase.

Canadian Association of Research Libraries : Metadata Harvester
December 31, 2006: 25,080 items from 12 archives
September 30, 2006: 24,370 items from 12 archives
June 30, 2006: 22,819 items from 12 archives
March 31, 2006: 22,566 records from 12 archives
Dec. 31, 2005: 21,922 records from 11 archives.
This is an increase of 710 items, or a 2.9% increase (equivalent of 12% annually), significantly lower than the apparent growth of last quarter but significantly more than the growth of the second quarter of the year. The increase from the equivalent of a 4% annual growth rate to a 12% annual growth is likely more realistic; the third quarter includes metadata-only records added in error by one of the archives, which have subsequently been removed.
For all of 2006, this is an increase of 3,158 records, or a 14% increase.

Other excellent sources of data for illustrating the Dramatic Growth of Open Access: the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) , by Dr. Tim Brody, which provides the number of OAI records for 746 archives, an estimated percentage that are fulltext, and charts illustrating the growth of each archive. The University of Michigan Digital Library Production Service's OAIster now also features growth charts for archives and records harvested.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

The newer the journal, the more likely it is open access

Data derived from Ulrich's Periodicals Directory illustrates a strong and positive correlation between the recency of a journal's start date and open access: the more recent the start, the more likely the journal is open access. None of the titles started in the 1700's that are still active are open access. The percentage of titles started from the early 1800's to the end of 1999 never rises to the double digits. The number of titles started in 2000 rises to 19%, while the percentage of new journals classified as open access by Ulrich's is about 30% in this millenium.

It should be noted that the accuracy of Ulrich's classification of journals as open access is limited; open access journals are likely understated. It may be of interest that, according to Ulrich's, new journals have been created in 2006 which are not even online, never mind open access.

Open data and a detailed explanation of the limitations of the data are available at:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pqCs8wrw32HE0P95TKgSsfQ&output=html

Basic data in spreadsheet and chart form follows.





This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Ulrich's and DOAJ: an idea

To its credit, Cambridge Scientific Abstracts' for-profit Ulrich's Periodicals Directory, long considered an authoritative service on periodicals information by libraries, publishers, and others, is including open access journals. The Directory of Open Access Journals provides the highly valuable service of vetting journals both for appropriate scholarly quality controls, and open access status. Surely a business relationship would make sense here? The benefits would be consistent, quality information on open access journals for Ulrich's, saving Ulrich's staff time on the vetting process; and, funds for DOAJ, to help establish a sustainable business model for this essential service. This makes so much sense for us librarians ~ perhaps we should call our CSA rep with this suggestion?

Here is a bit of background explaining how I came up with this idea.

Ulrich's does not post their definition of open access on their web site. However, based on a bit of research, my best guess is that Urlich's practical definition of open access would appear to be "included in the Directory of Open Access Journals". For example, a Dec. 30, 2006 search of Academic / Scholarly, Online, Refereed, Open Access Journals with a start date of 2006, yields a list of 36 titles. All 36 titles are found in the Directory of Open Access Journals.

This is an excellent approach, as DOAJ is indeed considered an authority on open access, peer reviewed journals, as all titles are vetted for both criteria by a professional librarian before being added to DOAJ.

However, Ulrich's approach seems to be somewhat inconsistent. While DOAJ includes 2,514 titles as of December 30, 2006, an Ulrich search for Academic / Scholarly, Online, Refereed, Open Access titles, includes only 1,482 titles. There are indications that some of these titles are actually in Ulrich's, but the open access designation has been missed. For example, BioMed Central's new title, Chinese Medicine, is listed in Ulrich's, but does not appear on the 2006 start date / open access list. Another example: a search for "Hindawi" as publisher yields 51 titles, but a search for ""Hindawi" as publisher and open access" yields only 26 titles (Hindawi currently has 50 open access titles). Also, a search for "Public Library of Science" as publisher yields 8 titles; a search for "Public Library of Science and open access" yields only 6 titles.

So, here is the suggestion. Obviously, it benefits both Ulrich's and its customers to include open access titles. Since DOAJ is already doing the work of vetting titles both for scholarly quality control and for full open access, would it not benefit Ulrich's to contract with DOAJ to receive the DOAJ title lists on a regular basis? This would provide Ulrich's with quality, consistent information for open access titles - and, such a business arrangement should be helpful to DOAJ to establish a sustainable funding structure.

Considering the benefits of having this kind of consistent quality for open access titles in Ulrich's - shouldn't we librarians be asking our Ulrich's reps to make this happen?

This post is the sixth in the Transitioning to Open Access Series.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Transitioning to open access: beyond fear of change

Some of the opposition to open access appears to stem simply from a very human, and very natural, fear of change.

In a recent very well-written post to Liblicense, Sandy Thatcher, Director of Penn State University Press, expresses the viewpoint that a critical mass of self-archived articles will cause sudden, nonlinear change, "a point at which major disruption to the system could occur, with at least very harmful short-term consequences". Sandy is concerned about the possibility of "a real "tipping point," which would lead some major publishers to abandon the field of STM journal publishing in the belief (however erroneous) that they could not sustain their expected profit margins under the new regime thus legislated".

Sandy goes on to point out that an exodus of a few major publishers from the system, due to perhaps erroneous beliefs about cancellations, would cause major disruption in the scholarly communications system. Sandy worries that journals would not be able to find new homes, because "smaller publishers, especially university presses, simply do not have the capital to launch the kinds of sophisticated systems that these major players can provide..."

What Sandy is overlooking is the fact that if a few large, highly profitable publishers were to suddenly decide to go into other businesses - there would suddenly be large amounts of capital available from library budgets, to support university presses such as Penn State. So if, in such a scenario, there are "plenty of professors, administrators, and librarians appealing to us to expand our journals program", as Sandy predicts - no worries, they will have lots of cash!

Then again, it is always possible that the publishers who are making hefty profits from scholarly publishing will stay in the business after all.

Many thanks to Sandy for openly sharing this viewpoint. This kind of honest discourse will help us all to find the smoothest possible road through the transitional process.

This post is the fifth in the series Transitioning to Open Access.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Linda Hutcheon: A democratized diffusion of knowledge

The University of Toronto's Linda Hutcheon is one of Canada's more modest leaders of the open access movement. Here are some of Linda's words of wisdom, from a SPARC Scholars Speak interview: "Open access removes barriers. I find this very politically attractive. The sharing of knowledge helps us get at economic inequities – experienced both by smaller academic institutions and, of course, by developing countries. Everybody wins. More access and resource sharing lead to a democratized diffusion of knowledge".

Linda also points out that the biggest barrier to change is simply time; people are just busy to learn and implement change. The good news here: in the medium to long term - this is no barrier at all.

Another topic Linda brings up that we don't hear about as often is the monographs crisis. As library budgets have been diverted from the purchase of monographs to meet the ever-increasing serials prices, fewere monographs have been purchased - and now, fewer are being published, even though this form remains critical in the humanities.

One of Linda's solutions: rethinking university presses, with more support from universities so that they do not need to compete with commercial companies, but rather focus on academic work.

Well said, Linda.

Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.

This post is the third in the series Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement.

John Willinsky and the Public Knowledge Project

The University of British Columbia's Dr. John Willinsky, founder of the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), is - most remarkably - world-renowned for both theoretical and practical contributions to the open access movement. The idea of public knowledge embraces open access, but goes beyond to encompass the transformative potential of open access for society as a whole, while the free, open source Open Journal Systems has greatly facilitated the development of open access publishing.

While some open access leaders focus exclusively on increasing access for researchers, the public knowledge approach is broader. John talks about access to knowledge as transformative for society as a whole. Historically, it was an increase in access to knowledge that made public libraries, and subsequently public schools, possible. The transformative potential for our society with open access to our scholarly research is as difficult for us to imagine, as public universities might have been in the days before the printing press.

John Willinsky's outstanding theoretical contributions have been recognized by the American Library Association, who awarded the 2006 Blackwell Scholarship Award for John's book The Access Principle (also available in DLIST. Links to more of John's works can be found from the PKP Publications page.

The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) is best known for its open source software - particularly Open Journal Systems (OJS) , a free, open source journal publishing software platform. Since its release on November 8, 2002, an event noted on Peter Suber's Open Access Timeline, OJS has become the publishing platform for over 800 journals, in 10 languages, around the world, greatly facilitating open access publishing. Examples of projects and journals using OJS: AJOL, African Journals Online, Revista Brasileira de Entomologia.

OJS is used not only around the globe, but also right here in Canada - for example, by Theoretical Economics, hosted by the University of Toronto. OJS is the platform of choice for another Canadian open access leadership initiative, the International Coalition for the Advancement of Academic Publication at Athabasca University. OJS is also in use at the University of Alberta Libraries, publisher of Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, and the University of Guelph Library, host of Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, both new open access journals.

PKP also produces the open source Open Conference Systems and Open Archives Harvester.

Initially developed at the University of British Columbia, in 2005 PKP became a joint project of the UBC Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University Library, and the Canadian Center for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University.

Recently, PKP was the sole Canadian winner of the first annual Mellon Awards for Technology Collaboration.

PKP is a partner of, and endorsed by, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition.

To learn more about PKP, meet the PKP team and other open access leaders (myself included!) plan to attend the First Annual PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference July 11 - 13, 2007, in Vancouver, British Columbia - one of the three best cities in the world to visit or live, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. There's still plenty of time to submit a proposal to the Call for Papers.

Disclosures: while I do not work for the PKP Project, I do work (indirectly) for one of the partners of the project - SFU Library, and I am on the planning committee for the PKP Scholarly Publishing conference.

This post is the second in the series Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement.

Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement: Budapest

There have been several defining moments in the open access movement. The first of these was the Budapest Open Access Initiative, "a small but lively meeting convened in Budapest by the Open Society Institute (OSI) on December 1-2, 2001. The purpose of the meeting was to accelerate progress in the international effort to make research articles in all academic fields freely available on the internet".

3 of the 16 original signatories to the Budapest Declaration are Canadian: Leslie Chan, Program Supervisor for the International Studies program and the Supervisor of Studies for the Joint Program in New Media Studies at the University of Toronto, Jean-Claude Guédon, Professor of Comparative Literature at the Université de Montréal, and Stevan Harnad, Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Science, Université du Québec à Montréal.

Canada’s involvement in open access advocacy can be traced back to the early 1990’s. In 1991, Jean-Claude Guédon founded Surfaces, the first Canadian electronic scholarly publication. According to Guédon, "[I] began advocating open access as soon as I got involved with electronic publishing and this was because I came to realize that many academic journals were subsidized to the tune of 60-70% of their costs … you can argue that the money to support open access journals was present from the beginning”. What Jean-Claude is referring to is the fact that the majority of the work involved in producing the scholarly literature is contributed by academics and their institutions without financial compensation, particularly the writing of the article in the first place, and providing peer review.

More recently, Guédon has been very active with the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and with the Open Society Institute, and gives about 25 – 30 conference presentations every year, worldwide. Guédon's In Oldenburg’s Long Shadow: Librarians, Research Scientists, Publishers, and the Control of Scientific Publishing, a detailed, thoughtful analysis on the history of scholarly communications, has been translated into 5 languages. A few of Jean Claude's other works can be found in E-LIS. Here, you can find The green and the gold: the case for mixing and matching, from Serials Review. This is a profound work, which talks about the two major approaches to open access - the "green" approach, or self-archiving, and the "gold" approach, or open access publishing - and makes a strong case for simultaneously pursuing both roads.

The other two Canadian leaders at that Budapest meeting happen to be world leaders on each of these roads to open access.

The work of the University of Toronto's Leslie Chan illustrates Canadian leadership in the global arena on the "gold" road to open access. Leslie is Associate Director of Bioline International, a not-for-profit electronic publishing service committed to providing open access to quality research journals published in developing countries; helping us to reduce the "south to north" knowledge gap. Leslie is also on the Executive of Project Open Source|Open Access. The object of Project Open Source|Open Access is to promote open access as a form of collaborative peer production. Some of Leslie's works can be found in E-LIS; for more recent works not yet in E-LIS, see the University of Toronto T-Space.

The Journal of Postgraduate Medicine, one of the oldest medical journals from India and now open access online, illustrates both the high quality of the work of Bioline International, and two of the benefits of open access. The author benefits from the greatly expanded access for readers, not only because the article is openly accessible, but also because the Bioline journals are included in key subject indexes. For all of the rest of the world, we have ready access to a valuable journal that we otherwise quite likely could not afford to subscribe to.

The Université du Québec à Montréal’s Stevan Harnad is among the world’s earliest and most vocal advocates of open access, the author of the Subversive Proposal of 1994, moderator of the American Scientist Open Access Forum, and author of the scholarly blog Open Access Archivangelism. While Harnad supports both the green and gold roads to open access, he is particularly known for reminding us that the faster road to open access is green. As Stevan would say, 92% of the world’s publishers have given the “green light” to self-archiving, so there is no need to wait. By doing so, authors will enhance their own research/impact. By making it easier for everyone to access and read your articles, your work is more likely to be read and cited. To find out if a particular publisher permits self-archiving, go to the Sherpa Romeo Publisher Copyright Policies & Self-Archiving.

This post is based on private correspondence with each of the leaders named, mainly from about two years ago. My apologies if not all details are up to date.

This small indication of Canada's early leadership in the open access arena is just the beginning! This is the first post in a series, Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement

Updated December 4, 2006

That day has arrived, and Canada must seize it (more on CIHR)

Another thought on the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Consultation on their Draft Policy on Access to Research Outputs (comments due November 24, 2006).

This policy is leading-edge in the area of open data. But, does it go far enough?

The Final Report of the National Consultation on Access to Scientific Research Data recommends a much stronger leadership role for Canada. Two paragraphs from this Report explain beautifully why open data is so important:

Complex and rich arrays of scientific databases are changing how research is done, speeding discovery and creating new concepts. Increased access will accelerate these changes, creating a new world of research and a whole new world. When these databases are combined within and between disciplines and countries, fundamental leaps in knowledge can occur that transform our understanding of life, the world and the universe.

For example, in the analysis of human genetics, the technology to capture enormous amounts of data and to mine them for new information is already showing the genetic make-up of life and the understanding of numerous diseases and syndromes. We will soon be able to analyze such complexities as the pre-disposition to disease in animal and plant populations based on genetics, social and environmental conditions, and demographics, so that all these factors can become part of new disease prevention strategies. With the ability to access and integrate data compiled in different fields, totally new knowledge regimes are being opened in ways that have historically been impossible.

Thanks to report authors David F. Strong & Peter B. Leach, for the report from which is drawn the title of this blogpost, and to Kathleen Shearer of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

CIHR draft policy: the leadership needed to overcome gridlock

SPARC's Senior Advisor, and former Founding Executive Director Rick Johnson, discusses CIHR's leadership in helping academia to overcome a kind of gridlock imposed by the prestige culture of the university to embrace the potential of the world wide web for open sharing and working together in so many new ways, from new research collaborations to open sharing of data for reuse.

In Rick Johnson's Will Research Sharing Keep Pace with the Internet?. The Journal of Neuroscience 26(37):pp. 9349-9351, recently self-archived in E-LIS.

All the more reason to support the CIHR Draft Policy on Access to Research Outputs!

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Response to CIHR Consultation on Access to Research Outputs

Here is my response to the CIHR Consultation on Access to Research Outputs:

Re: Canadian Insitutes of Health Research Draft Policy on Access to Research Outputs

Kudos to CIHR for your Draft Policy on Access to Research Outputs. As an open access advocate who follows policy developments and has participated in policy consultations around the world, I consider this policy to be exemplary, with elements that I hope will be a role model for future policy makers.

It is heartening to see that CIHR is requiring immediate deposit of peer-reviewed research articles funded by CIHR. In my opinion, the provision for up to a maximum 6-month publisher-imposed delay is more than generous. If I were to suggest one improvement to this policy, I would suggest not permitting any delay at all. This is reasonable given that the research is conducted using public funds, and there are many open access options – from publishing to archiving – available to researchers today.

The CIHR is a leader in requiring deposit of research data immediately on publication; an important step that will lead to more rapid advances in research.

CIHR’s suggestions that researchers consider retroactively archiving important articles, and that a researchers’ track record might be considered in future grant applications, are welcome innovations that other policy-makers might wish to consider in their own policy developments.

This policy will make the research made possible by Canadian taxpayer dollars more readily available to Canadians, as well as to everyone around the globe. Students and faculty members at smaller and more remote colleges will have more access to researchers, as will high school teachers and students, and professionals outside of the major research centres, among others.

Canadian researchers will benefit from increased impact and visibility.

Once again, congratulations on a well thought out policy.

This is an open letter, which will be published on my scholarly blog.

Sincerely,


Heather Morrison
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics

Information about the CIHR Consultation can be found at:
http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/32395.html

Here is a link to the draft policy:
http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/32326.html

Comments are due November 24, 2006

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Open Access and the Cost of Publishing

As posted to the American Scientist Open Access Forum, October 27, in response to a question about the approximate cost of the production, including
dissemination both in print and electronically.

Abstract: this post looks at the cost of publishing and dissemination in relationship with open access. The wide range of costs per article - from nothing, to thousands of dollars - is explained. A journal that relies on free, open source software, volunteer labor, and in-kind server support, may have no hard dollar costs. A commercial journal with paid editorial staff, profits and taxes to deal with, may have substantial expenditures.

The question of whether, and how much, to support open access processing fees is explored. The author concludes that researchers and universities should budget low for open access via author choice options, to allow market forces work to ensure that the transition from print to electronic, closed to open access looks for efficiencies such as automating publishing tasks, and that obsolete, print-based publishing tasks which may actually be counterproductive in the electronic environment, are dropped. Support open access publishers with true open access and reasonable costs, such as BioMedCentral, Hindawi, Public Library of Science, and many others. For journals with high processing fees and/or dubious open access status, author self-archiving is recommended as the only strategy for open access.

Full post:

This figure is highly variable, and in the process of change. With
ongoing developments in automation (publishing and word processing
software improvements, continuing decreases in per-byte costs for
storage of information), the cost of publishing an article is in a
process of decrease, and I do not believe we have yet seen equilibrium.

When considering publishers' "open choice" type arrangements -
payment for open access on publication - it is important to keep in
mind that open access does not apply to print. As long as journals
continue to be produced in print, this portion of the revenue stream
should come from print subscriptions.

The dollar costs of coordinating and disseminating a peer-reviewed
research article ranges from nothing to thousands of dollars.

The model that equates with zero costs is one based on voluntary
labor, free open source publishing software such as Open Journal
Systems http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs [disclosure - I am on the planning
committee for the First International PKP Conference), and in-kind
support. For example, your university or university library might
provide free server space for a journal local faculty participate in.

Models with dollar costs obviously involve payments of a variety of
types. Some journals have volunteer editors, others paid. One can
purchase publishing software and server space. Some publishers
(commercial, and also some not-for-profits) look to profit from
publishing. Commercial entities also need to factor in taxes.

Overall, the costs of publishing are decreasing dramatically, due to
the technology. The costs of disseminating an electronic-only
journal post-production are close to nothing per article, unlike
print which incurs per-issue printing and distribution costs. Many
of the tasks involved in publishing are either automated, or made
much easier by automation. Think of word processing software and the
difference this means for editing; copyediting is still needed, but
no doubt overall more articles are submitted with better spelling,
punctuation, and formatting than in the past. Word processing and
publishing software can automate much of the work that used to be
done manually. For example, thanks to citation software packages,
the work of switching from one bibliographic format to another to
prepare for publication in a particular journal can mostly be done
automatically.

I'm not sure how helpful this will be to your budgeting process,
Donat. Here is another suggestion: when budget for open access
dissemination, my advice is: budget low on a per-article basis. In
my opinion, this is important, partially to ensure best use of
current available funding, but more importantly, to ensure that
market factors work towards this efficiency in publishing. That is,
paying high per-article processing fees reflecting publishing
practices which should be in the process of becoming obsolete, is
counter-productive.

One way open access can be fully met with this low budget approach:
Most journals allow authors to self-archive, and there is no cost
involved to the researchers or their institutions.

I would encourage researchers to support open access publishing as
well. There are open access publishers who provide true open access,
and do not need to charge processing fees, or who charge reasonable
processing fees (such as BioMedCentral and HIndawi; also PLoS - more
expensive, but still reasonable considering they are aiming at the
top-quality market).

Not every open choice option is true open access, and not all fees
are reasonable. If a researcher (perhaps with help from their
university library) is able to distinguish the options that really do
move towards open access, these are worth supporting. If means are
not available to deal with all the complexities, my advice is to
stick with self-archiving, using tools such as the Sherpa Romeo list
and the new addenda for authors to keep their rights from JISC,
SPARC, and others, to ensure that authors keep their rights to self-
archive.

best,

Heather Morrison

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Chemists Without Borders Open Chemistry Position Statement

On Thursday, October 12, Chemists Without Borders endorsed an Open Chemistry Position Statement.

Synopsis

Within the vision of Chemists Without Borders, Open Access to the traditional scholarly, peer-reviewed journal literature is the library, a global library with equal access to our shared knowledge for all. Open Access is necessary to development of equitable access to chemistry education and research opportunities in both the developed and developing world. Chemists Without Borders strongly supports Open Access, as defined in the Budapest, Berlin, and Bethesda statements, and the measures necessary to implement open access, such as funding agencies requiring open access to the results of the research they fund, and educating researchers about Open Access.

Open Source Science promises more rapid advances in research through open sharing of research information at all stages of the reseach process. Open Source Science means more opportunities for collaboration, whether to facilitate Chemists Without Borders projects or provide researchers with more opportunities for participation in international research collaborations. Chemists Without Borders strongly supports Open Source Science within the context of Open Access.

Comment: as a member / open access specialist with Chemists Without Borders, it has been an honour and a great pleasure working with this group on what may be one of the strongest and most visionary of the "open" statements to date. The Chemists Without Borders Open Chemistry Position Statement fully endorses open access as defined in the Budepest Open Access Initiative, and goes beyond, for example, in specifying: "the freedom to extract data from the full-text, whether singly or in a collection of articles, and the freedom to download the supplemental data", as part of the definition of open access, and in supporting open source science and open data.

The Chemists Without Borders Open Chemistry Position Statement also articulates open access and open source science within the overall vision of Chemists Without Borders, for example outlining the importance of open access and open source science in a globally equitable approach to chemistry education. In this science, the Chemists Without Borders Open Chemistry Position Statement may be role model for other "without borders" groups.

On a personal note, my involvement with this group began with a question posed to the SPARC Open Access Forum, asking whether there might be a Chemists Without Borders. Chemists Without Borders Founders Steve Chambreau and Bego Gerber found my question through an internet search - my question kept coming up higher in a google search than the Chemists Without Borders' own blog! I first starting helping Steve & Bego to figure out ways to get the Chemists Without Borders blog to show up higher in a google search, but then became intrigued by this fledgling group trying to figure out how to change the world, and have been involved ever since. Kudos to Bego & Steve for all their hard work getting this group off the ground. Best of luck to all Chemists Without Borders members on current projects, such as AIDS Free Africa, research on using water hyacinth as water remediation (a weed that loves to soak up arsenic!), Useful Chemistry open blogging, and more.

Chemists Without Borders welcomes new members.

This post is part of the Creative Globalization series.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Draft Policy on Access to CIHR-Funded Research Outputs

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) has released its Draft Policy on Access to CIHR-Funded Research Outputs. Comments are requested by November 24, 2006.

This is a strong policy - kudos to CIHR! Highlights include a strong open access mandate for peer-reviewed journal articles, with no more than a 6-month publisher-imposed delay, a recommendation that researchers consider retroactively archiving their most important articles, an indication that a researcher's track record of providing access to research outputs will be considered in the future when considering requests for funding, and a requirement to deposit research data into the appropriate public database immediately on publication.

When considering your own response, it may be helpful to consult Peter Suber's Ten Lessons from the Funding Agencies Open Access Policies, in the August 2006 SPARC Open Access Newsletter.

Update October 12 -

Peter Suber's Comment, from Open Access News (please see OA News for the links):

Comment. Kudos to the CIHR for this exemplary policy.

1. The policy is an unambiguous mandate. It applies to all research funded in whole or in part by CIHR. It applies to both peer-reviewed journal articles and data files. (Although it requires some kinds of data-sharing and merely encourages others, it may be the strongest data-sharing policy by any funder to date.) It makes reasonable exceptions for royalty-producing publications like monographs. It lets grantees choose between OA journals and OA repositories, and in the latter case, between institutional and disciplinary repositories. The only condition on eligible repositories is that they be OAI-compliant. The policy uses the dual deposit/release strategy (requiring immediate deposit and permitting delayed OA release, in this case limiting embargoes to six months). And it takes a grantee's past compliance into account when evaluating new funding proposals. With one exception the policy embodies all the most important lessons from the funding agency open access policies. The exception is that CIHR doesn't offer to pay article processing fees for grantees who choose to publish in fee-based OA journals.

2. The CIHR has called for comments on its new draft. Responses are due by November 24, 2006.

3. For background, the CIHR announced that it was considering an OA policy and called for public comments back in April 2006. In June it released an update on where it stood in the process and in August (in a document dated June) it released a summary of the public comments.

4. If the CIHR draft counts as a policy, and the new OA policy in Austria counts as a mandate (it deliberately positions itself between a request and a requirement), then the CIHR policy is the seventh OA mandate to be adopted this month. There are the four new mandates from the RCUK, the expansion of the existing mandate at the Wellcome Trust, the Austrian policy, and now the CIHR. This is unprecedented momentum.

Comment by Stevan Harnad:

Stevan Harnad on Open Access Archivangelism reports that the CIHR proposal is 99% optimal - please see Stevan's blogpost for substantive details.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Dramatic Growth September 2006

Correction October 1, 2006:

OAIster is poised to exceed 10 million items in the near future, not 1 billion! My apologies for this mistake, and many thanks to Walter for catching it. Heather

The Dramatic Growth of Open Access continues! The number of open access journals included in DOAJ continues to increase at a rate of about 1.5 per calendar day, while the increase in material in open access archives in showing a dramatic increase in the rate of growth, for all archives followed, as well as absolute growth. There have been some significant events in the past quarter which the author predicts will accelerate the rate of growth of OA, including funding agencies' open access policies, hybrid open access journal programs, new OA presses and significant work on models for small publishers to transition to open access.

Overview

The growth illustrated by open access archives in the past quarter is best described as "wow!". OAIster is poised to exceed 10 million [a billion items] (not all are open access) far ahead of my June predictions (end of 2007, then the end of 2006). With over 9.4 million items and growth of more than 1.8 million items in the past quarter, it now seems very likely that OAIster will exceed a billion items in the very near future.

All archives tracked (arXiv, rePec, E-LIS, the CARL Metadata Harvester, and now, PubMedCentral) are showing a noticeable increase in growth rate over the last quarter. Seasonable variations in archiving patterns could be a factor.

Open access advocates and students now have two excellent sources of data for illustrating the Dramatic Growth of Open Access: the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) , by Dr. Tim Brody, which provides the number of OAI records for 746 archives, an estimated percentage that are fulltext, and charts illustrating the growth of each archive. The University of Michigan Digital Library Production Service's OAIster now also features growth charts for archives and records harvested.

Strong growth continues in full open access publishing as tracked by the Directory of Open Access Journals.

There were many events occurring in the past quarter which will result in increasingly dramatic growth of open access, particularly:

Open Access Funding Agency Policies:
Four of the UK Research Councils announcing strong open access policies - for an in-depth report on the funding agency policies, see the August 2006 SPARC Open Access Newsletter.

Journal Hybrid Open Access Programs:
A number of publishers have announced hybrid open access journal programs in the past quarter, which is likely to increase the number of open access articles available in the future. My prediction is that this will also result in an increase in the number of fully open access journals, as more traditional publishers have an opportunity to experiment with shifting to an open access business model. Details and analysis are available in the September 2006 SPARC Open Access Newsletter.

New OA presses and approaches:
A quieter trend for now which I think will have a big impact in a year or two is the development by universities and libraries of new OA presses, many using open source software solutions such as Open Journal Systems. Charles Bailey has now blogged about 12 such presses in Digital Koans. SPARC's Raym Crow has published a significant work on Publishing Cooperatives, a blueprint for open access approaches that I predict will significantly advance the transition to OA by smaller traditional publishers.

OAIster: wow!!!

Data

Early figures are from my preprint, The Dramatic Growth of Open Access: Implications and Opportunities for Resource Sharing, Journal of Interlibrary Loan, Document Delivery & Electronic Reserve, 16, 3 (2006), and my updates:
Dec. 31, 2005 Update and 2006 Predictions
March 31, 2006 Update.
June 30, 2006 Update.

Directory of Open Access Journals:
September 30, 2006: 2,401 journals (45 titles added in the last 30 days)
June 30, 2006: 2,292 journals (38 titles added in the last 30 days)
March 31, 2006: 2,158 journals (78 titles added in the last 30 days)
Dec. 31, 2005: 1,988 titles
February 2005 - over 1,400 titles

September 30, 2006: 697 journals searchable at article level - 109,840 articles in DOAJ total
June 30, 2006: 653 journals searchable at article level -- 101,434 articles in DOAJ total
March 31, 2006: 594 journals searchable at article level -- 92,751 articles in DOAJ total
Dec. 31, 2004: 492 journals searchable at article level - 83,235
This is an increase of 134 journal titles during April - June, 2006; a 6% growth rate, or equivalent of an annual 25% growth rate.

Note that the DOAJ list does not represent all open access journals, only the ones that have met DOAJ standards, and have gone through the DOAJ vetting process. Jan Szczepanski's list is much longer: over 4,705 titles total as of early December 2005.

OAIster
September 27, 2006: 9,417,772 records from 680 institutions
June 30, 2006: 7,605,729 records from 647 institutions
March 22, 2006: 7,040,586 records from 610 institutions
Dec. 22, 2005: 6,255,599 records from 578 institutions
February 2005: over 5 million records, 405 institutions
This is an increase of 1.8 records in a quarter, or an equivalent of over 7 million records annually. By percentage, this is an 24% increase in this quarter, or an equivalent of about 100% annually (at this rate, OAIster would double in size in a year). The number of institutions has increased by 33, 5%, or the equivalent of 20% annually.

Highwire Press Free Online Fulltext Articles
September 30, 2006: 1,435,924 free full-text article
June 30, 2006: 1,354,559 free full-text articles
March 31, 2006: 1,335,546 free articles
Dec. 31, 2005: 1,131,135 free articles
early January 2005: over 800,000 free articles
This is an increase of 81,365 articles, or a 6% increase (equivalent to 24% annually), supporting the suggestion that less than 1% increase in the previous quarter may have been a fluke due to timing of release.

PubMedCentral
696,503 OAI records, 100% freely accessible (data from the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) by Dr. Tim Brody. The ROAR site shows the impressive, if only beginning, growth curve of PMC.

arXiv
September 30, 2006: 386,716
June 30, 2006: 374,166 e-prints
March 31, 2006: 362,334 e-prints
Dec. 31, 2005: Open access to 350,745 e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science and Quantitative Biology.
This is an increase of 19,716 e-prints in this quarter, a 5% increase in this quarter, or the equivalent of 20% annually.

RePEC: Research Papers in Economics
September 30, 2006: over 428,000 items of interest, over 321,000 of which are available online
June 30, 2006: over 385,000 items of interest, over 282,000 of which are available online
March 31, 2006: over 367,000 items of interest, over 266,000 of which are available online
Dec. 31, 2005: over 350,000 items of interest, over 250,000 of which are available online.
February 2005: over 200,000 freely available items.
This is an increase of 39,000 items available online, a 14% increase, or the equivalent of a 55% annual increase, roughly double the rate of increase reported in the last quarter.

E-LIS
September 30, 2006: 4,285 documents
June 30, 2006: 3,885 documents
March 31, 2006: 3,539 documents
Dec. 31, 2005: 3,095 documents
This is an increase of 400 documents, just under 10% or the equivalent of a 50% annual increase.

Canadian Association of Research Libraries : Metadata Harvester
September 30, 2006: 24,370 items from 12 archives
June 30, 2006: 22,819 items from 12 archives
March 31, 2006: 22,566 records from 12 archives
Dec. 31, 2005: 21,922 records from 11 archives.
This is an increase of 1,551 items, or a 7% increase (equivalent of 28% annually), a significant increase in growth rate from last quarter's 1% (4% annual equivalent).

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Publishing Cooperatives: Another Seminal Work by Raym Crow

Raym Crow, author of the key SPARC discussion paper Institutional Repositories, has done it again!

Publishers cooperatives: an alternative for non-profit publishers, presents a blueprint for moving to open access that will work for a great many publishers. A very large percentage of peer-reviewed scholarly journals are still being produced by small societies, and many are still being produced in print only. Raym explains why publishing cooperatives, based on discipline, make a great deal of sense for such publishers. For Raym's excellent work, please see the link below. Following are some of my thoughts on how and why libraries should be helping to start and support publishing cooperatives.

From my perspective, this is a unique opportunities for libraries to be involved in helping to set up and support such cooperatives. Many of these societies would very much like to move to open access, but lack the means. Their members are our faculty; it makes sense for us to help them, as this creates the changes in scholarly communications we have been seeking.

It is not hard for a library to provide support. There is free, open source software available. Hosting costs are miniminal, and technical supports costs can be quite reasonable. Simon Fraser University Library, for example, has analyzed the costs involved per-journal to come up with a cost-recovery fee of $750 Canadian per journal, as listed on the SFU library web site at http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ojs.

This is a unique window of opportunity for library leadership in creating change in scholarly communications, in my view.

For the small, print-only publisher, with a little help, it could actually be quite easy to move from print-only to online and open access. It is easier to move to open access immediately, then to set up authentication and electronic subscription tracking first (it's probably more work to set up authentication and tracking than it is to set up an electronic journal). There could be journals that could easily afford an OA journal through cost savings from dropping print, although many will want to continue print.

The discipline-based cooperative makes a lot of sense to me from my experience as a new OA editor / editorial board member. When we have questions about how to run our new LIS OA journal, the first people we think to call are our friends at other LIS OA journals, and there is some overlap in editorial participation among our journals.

Even if the cooperative approach initially is likely to appeal first to the smaller publishers, not the big expensive ones where we'd really like to see changes, here is something to think about: once a cooperative is established, any editorial board fed up with high prices and limited access - has someplace else to go.

A brief article on publishing cooperatives is available in the latest First Monday:
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_9/crow/index.html.

The full discussion paper can be downloaded from the SPARC web site:

http://www.arl.org/sparc/.

For direct download, go to:
http://www.arl.org/sparc/pubs/papers/Cooperatives_v1.pdf

Many thanks to SPARC and Raym Crow!

thoughts?

Heather Morrison
heatherm at eln dot bc dot ca

Disclosure: I work for SFU Library, one of the partners in OJS, although I'm not involved in this project.

This was originally posted to the SCHOLCOMM listserv, and is the fourth post in the
Transitioning to Open Access Series.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

DRAFT Policy on Access to Research Outputs

Following is a copy of the CIHR Draft Policy on Access to Research Outputs of 2006, copied from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research website, without modification, on September 10, 2007:

Draft Policy on Access to CIHR-funded Research Outputs
The mandate of CIHR, as stated in The CIHR Act is:

"to excel in the creation of new knowledge and its translation into improved health for Canadians, more effective health services and products and a strengthened Canadian health care system.1"

As such, CIHR has a fundamental interest in ensuring that research outputs are available to the widest possible audience. Researchers, educators, decision makers and others require access to the latest knowledge and research materials in order to build on scientific discoveries, inform policy, develop new technologies, and establish health-related standards and best practices.

CIHR's policy promoting access to research outputs rests on the foundation of the CIHR Act and reflects the core values articulated in CIHR's Blueprint for Health Research and Innovation, the organization's strategic plan, which states that:

"the primary purpose of all research in the public domain is the creation of new knowledge in an environment that embodies the principles of freedom of inquiry and unrestricted dissemination of research results.2"

This policy was developed under the guidance of CIHR's Advisory Committee on Access to Research Outputs and with input from public consultation.
Scope

This policy applies to all research outputs that have been financially supported in whole or in part by CIHR (herein referred to as CIHR-funded research), including industry-partnered research. A research output is conceptual or practical knowledge, data, information, or a physical or biological object developed during the course of CIHR-funded research, and is essential for reproducing results and for furthering research discoveries.

Research outputs covered under this policy are the following:

1. peer-reviewed journal publications;
2. research materials; and
3. final research data.

Requirements for applicants of CIHR funding and grant and award holders

New and renewal applications for CIHR funding must now include a Research Output Access Plan. This plan must list anticipated research outputs, state how the applicant, grant holder, or award holder intends to make their research outputs accessible to others, or provide reasons for any restrictions on access to research outputs. Furthermore, grant and award holders have new responsibilities under the following outputs of CIHR-funded research projects:

1. Peer-reviewed Journal Publications

* CIHR requires grant and award holders to make every effort to ensure that their peer-reviewed journal publications are freely available. CIHR recognizes that there are several vehicles for delivering free access to research publications. And as such, we are providing two options for grant and award holders. Under the first option, grant and award holders must archive either final peer-reviewed published articles, or final peer-reviewed full-text manuscripts, immediately upon publication. Archiving must involve deposition in an appropriate open archives initiative-compliant digital archive, such as PubMed Central, or an institutional repository. A publisher-imposed embargo on open accessibility of no more than 6 months is acceptable.
* The second option allows grant and award holders to submit their manuscripts either to a journal that provides immediate open access to published articles (if a suitable journal exists), or to a journal that allows authors to retain copyright and/or allows authors to archive journal publications in an open access archive within the six-month period following publication.
* Book chapters, research monographs, editorials, reviews, or conference proceedings arising from CIHR-funded research are not covered under this policy. However, CIHR encourages grant and award holders to provide access to these and other forms of research publications where possible.
* CIHR recommends (but does not require) that grant and award holders consider retroactively archiving their most important articles subject to the copyright arrangements that apply to these articles.
* As a new requirement for "Acknowledgement of CIHR's Support", grant and award holders must now acknowledge the CIHR grant and award funding reference number(s) (FRN) in each publication that results from CIHR-funded research. Specifically, grant holders should include the following acknowledgement: "This work was supported by Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) grant(s) FRN: XXXXX."

2. Research Materials

* Research materials are defined as research tools or resources that are useful to other grant holders for replicating results and furthering research discoveries. Examples of research materials include: small molecules, organisms, viruses, cell lines, nucleic acids, purified enzymes, antibodies, reagents, source code and software, protocols, research tools for evaluation, questionnaires, interview guides, data abstraction forms, and manuals for patient services.
* Grant and award holders are required to comply with reasonable requests for research materials arising from CIHR funding made by researchers, students, and trainees working within the not-for-profit research community once the specific research material has been cited in a journal publication. Furthermore, research materials should be provided to recipients of not-for-profit research institutions at cost and with as few restrictions as possible.
* Research materials may also be shared with the commercial (for-profit) research community following university and institution procedures regarding material transfer agreements.

3. Research Data

* Final research data refers to the factual information that is necessary to replicate and verify research results. Data can include original data sets, data sets that are too large to be included in the peer-reviewed publication, and any other data sets supporting the research publication. Research data is typically an electronic data set, and may include interview transcripts and survey results provided confidential data and subject privacy is protected. Research data does not include lab books and unpublished research protocols, or physical objects like tissue samples.
* Grant and award holders should strive to make final data sets, generally in electronic form, available upon request after the publication date of a peer-reviewed publication.
* For effective sharing of data, grant and award holders should ensure the quality of the data and have accompanying metadata (i.e., information that describes the characteristics of the data set) or codebooks.
* CIHR requires grant and award holders to deposit bioinformatics, atomic and molecular coordinate data, experimental data, as already required by most journals, into the appropriate public database immediately upon publication of research results.
* CIHR also requires grant and award holders to retain original data sets arising from CIHR-funded research for a minimum of five years after the last date of the "Authority to Use Funds" period of the grant. This applies to all data, whether published or not.
* The grant or award holder's institution and research ethics board may have additional policies and practices regarding the preservation, retention, and protection of research data that must be respected.

Compliance

* Grant and award holders are reminded that by virtue of signing a CIHR application they accept the terms and conditions of the grant or award as set out in the Agency's policies and guidelines.3
* In the future, CIHR will consider a researcher's track record of providing access to research outputs when considering applications for funding, and will take into consideration legitimate reasons for restricting access.

References

1. Bill C-13: The Canadian Institutes of Health Research Act. April 13, 2000.
2. Investing in Canada's Future: CIHR's Blueprint For Health Research and Innovation (2003/04 - 2007/08), Ottawa, January 2004.
3. CIHR Grants and Awards Guide.

Canadian Institutes of Health Research Series

Michael Geist: New Research Policy a Victory for Open Access September 10, 2007

British Columbia Library Association Congratulates CIHR on Open Access to Research Outputs policy. September 10, 2007.

More kudos for CIHR! From the Canadian Association for Research Libraries, Olivier Charbonneau, and Research Information. September 2007.

More kudos for CIHR Open Access to Research Outputs policy Links to Jim Till's blog collection of kudos for CIHR. September 2007.

This post was originally posted September 10, 2007, backdated to Sept. 10, 2006, for blog housekeeping reasons.

Open Access Policy: Let's Put the Public Good First! Comments and reflections by Heather Morrison. September 2007.

Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Policy on Access to Research Outputs. Announcement of the policy, excerpt, Heather's comments, links to comments by Peter Suber and Michael Geist. September 4, 2007

Jim Till: Be Openly Accessible or Be Obscure Profile of Jim Till, Canadian OA activist, Chair of the CIHR Advisory Committee on Access to Research Outputs, and author of the blog, Be Openly Accessible or Be Obscure

Canada's CIHR: 31st to Adopt a Green Self-Archiving Mandate Kudos from Stevan Harnad.

That day has arrived, and Canada must seize it! More on CIHR. Heather Morrison queries whether CIHR draft policy goes far enough. November 2006.

CIHR draft policy: the leadership needed to overcome gridlock. Applause from Rick Johnson, founding Executive Director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), for CIHR leadership on the CIHR OA policy. November 1, 2006.

Draft Policy on Access to CIHR-funded Research Outputs. October 2006. Links to the Draft Policy, considered exemplary, with comments by Heather Morrison, Peter Suber, and Stevan Harnad.

DRAFT Policy on Access to Research Outputs. Text of CIHR Draft Policy, copied from CIHR website for historical purposes September 10, 2007.

Response to CIHR Consultation on Open Access. Heather Morrison's personal reponse to the CIHR consultation. September 2006.

Canadian Institutes of Health Research: Comments Due May 15, 2006 May, 2006. Announcement of CIHR Consultation. Consultation questions presented in full, with Heather Morrison's suggestions for responses.

Pre-submission peer-review (transitioning to open access)

Transitioning to open access can be facilitated for everyone involved by looking for efficiencies in the production of scholarly communications. This post looks at the hypothesis that pre-submission peer review results in higher quality submissions, reducing the workload for editors and peer-reviewers. If correct, this has interesting implications: enhanced viability for some types of open access journals, such as the strictly volunteer / in-kind or membership fee subsidized models, or potentially reduced processing fees for open access journals that rely on the latter.
To me, this is such a no-brainer that I'm not waiting for the results of the suggested research! In my view, open access publishers are well advised to include suggestions for pre-submission peer-review in their author guidelines, right now!

Pre-submission peer-review

Hypothesis: when an article has been reviewed before submission for publication, the workload for editors and peer-reviewers is less. This efficiency has the potential to enhance the viability of open access journals relying primarily or exclusively on volunteer labor and in-kind support, as well as to decrease revenue expenditures, and therefore potentially process fees, for process-fee based open access publishing. For many authors, there are side-benefits: this will also increase the chances of an article being accepted for publication, and result in a more congenial review process.

Background: in my experience as an author, editor, and peer-reviewer, the range of quality of articles submitted for publication, even those eventually published, is from articles that require absolutely no revision whatsoever to articles that are completely rewritten by the editor. There is a lot of middle ground - articles that need quite a bit of work. Reviewing a well-written article is a lot less work than reviewing an article that needs a lot of work; it's also much more pleasant, an important factor when coordinating volunteer labor. In my experience, the articles that need little work are those that have been carefully checked by the author, who has asked colleagues and/or experts to review the work before submission. (Note: there are two concepts here - self-review and peer-review, which are mixed up together here, as they are interrelated. It is important to consider them together, as either would improve the quality of an article submitting for publication).

As an author who has followed this process, my impression is that this is a more congenial experience for the author as well. If your article needs revision, it's much nicer to hear this from a friend, someone who might be able to sit down with you and help you understand how someone else might see your article, rather than an unknown stranger in a situation where asking the reviewer to clarify a comment may seem too much work to pursue, or at best is likely to leave you waiting some time for an answer.

Research: survey authors on submission to find out whether an article has gone through a pre-submission review, and to what level. For example, did a colleague provide a thorough critique, and did the author do substantial revisions based on this critique? Conduct a separate survey of editors and peer-reviewers to find out how much time was spent on reviewing and editing. If the hypothesis is correct, then there will be an inverse correlation between pre-submission peer-review and time spent on editing and review (the more peer-review, the less editing and post-submission peer review). It would be important to address potential confounding factors, such as discipline, topic, author's experience, linguistic or geographic origin, etc. It might be useful to survey editors and reviewers about their perceived quality of the experience (pleasant / unpleasant, etc.).

Implications:If this hypothesis is correct, there are some interesting implications. If a journal is using a processing fee approach, why should an author who submits an article close to perfection pay exactly the same rate as an author whose article needs substantial revision? Does it make sense for a volunteer / in-kind or membership fee subsidy based journal to actively encourage authors to seek pre-submission peer review? To me, this is such a no-brainer that I'm not waiting for someone to have time for this research!

This post is the third in the Transition ing to Open Access series.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

From buying to producing (transitioning to open access)

One of the key factors in the transition to open access is the considerable sum of money libraries currently pay for periodical subscriptions. Depending on your viewpoint, this can be seen as either a challenge, or an opportunity. From my point of view, the funds currently spent on subscriptions could easily form the most important component of an open access production-based economics model.

It is not necessary to simply abandon the buying (purchase / subscription) model and replace it with a production-based model, as there are many hybrid models which can be employed to ease the transition for everyone involved. This post explores the hypothesis that library (or consortia) specific incentives for support for an open access processing fee approach will maximize uptake of the processing fee approach. One potential model is presented, in which publishers reduce subscription prices in anticipation of processing fee revenue, at differing rates depending on the level of the library's commitment to the processing fee approach.

Prediction (hypothesis): the most successful approaches to transitioning from buying to producing models will be those with built-in incentives for the individual library or library consortium (all else being equal, of course; this may not help publishers with excessively high processing fees, or processing fee programs that are not truly open access).

Rationale: the challenge for this aspect of transition is that libraries must continue to purchase / subscribe to journals, even if they would very much like to support open access models. Incentives that apply directly to the purchasing / subscribing library or consortium, rather than generally, provide a means to free some of the funds from the subscription budget to help pay for open access processing fees.

Research: divide journals into groups of equivalent quality, open access policies, and production fees, but with differing incentives for libraries, with one group offering library (or consortia) -specific incentives, and the other either general or no incentives. If the hypothesis is correct, uptake of an open access processing fee option will be significantly higher at the journals with library or consortial-specific incentives.

A thought: some publishers are currently making rather vague promises of decreasing subscription prices for all libraries if revenues from processing fees warrant.

Why not anticipate success, and lower subscription rates now? For many publishers, subscriptions are currently covering the cost of production - plus profit. With funding agencies mandating open access, and often providing funding for processing fees, it is reasonable to anticipate some income from processing fees. Instead of the usual annual increase in prices, a modest reduction anticipating this new source of income makes sense. An across-the-board decrease in subscription prices will free up at least some funds which can then be employed to pay for production-based models; the deeper the discount, the greater the potential for a rapid, and smooth, transition.

One model: Imagine a publisher with an incentives program, featuing two or more levels depending on the library's level of commitment, for libraries wishing to transition from subscriptions to open access.

Level One: Membership / discounted processing fees: libraries pay a membership fee which provides discounts for their researchers' processing fees, and commit to promoting the publishers' open access optional program. These libraries receive a modest discount, e.g. 5 - 10%.

Level Two: Direct processing fee support. Libraries commit to paying for processing fees, whether fully or partially. The level of discount could depend on whether support was full or partial. For example, a library at a research-intensive university could provide matching funds for researchers' processing fees, and receive a discount of perhaps 20 - 30%. Or, a library could commit to paying the full processing fees and receive a larger discount, perhaps 50%.

Given that this approach is quite new, it might make sense to approach this on an individual library or consortial basis. One approach might be for the library to pay up-front the equivalent of a year's subscription, i.e. committing to a certain number of submissions, or to making up the difference through a lesser subscription discount.

This approach could be publisher-wide, or it could be experimental, as useful research to help inform future directions for the transitional period.

This post is the second in the series Transitioning to Open Access.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Transitioning to open access

This is the first post in a series examining some of the potential implications of the growing trend toward open access, for publishers and libraries, with some thoughts on how to make the transition as smooth as possible for everyone involved.

Prediction (hypothesis): Journals with strong support for open access, high quality and no or reasonable processing fees will see increasing article submissions. Strong support for open access could mean either open access publishing, or very friendly, easy to find, understand and follow self-archiving policies.

Rationale: the impact of the growing OA requirement policies (mandates) by funders and universities, combined with increased researcher awareness of OA due to both the mandates and educational efforts by librarians and others, will cause researchers to increasingly seek OA publishing venues over the next few years. Journals that are seen to be both of high quality and OA-friendly, will meet these criteria. There are no financial barriers to publishing in journals without processing fees, and it makes sense that the lower the processing fees, the more likely researchers are to succeed in securing funding for processing fees. Therefore, it is predicted that high-quality, OA-friendly journals will see an increase in submissions over the next few years.

IF this prediction is correct, it also makes sense that journals and publishers without strong support for open access will experience a relative drop in submissions, and hence either quantity, or quality (if a drop in submission rate is accompanied by an increase in the journal's acceptance rate).

Research:

This hypothesis could be tested by examining submission rates to journals with similar quality, differing levels of support for open access, and differing processing fees, over the next few years. Journals providing strong support for open access via self-archiving could be considered as journals with no processing fees. The Sherpa/ROMEO list could be used as a rough indication of strong support for open access via self-archiving.

Implications for libraries:

Journals / publishers with strong support for open access have a high probability of ongoing or increasing quality and quantity. It makes sense to plan to support these publications, whether through ongoing subscriptions or through arrangements for institutional payment of processing fees. In the case of subscriptions, libraries can be reasonably confident about the wisdom of signing relatively long-term licenses (e.g. 3-5 years).

Journals / publishers without strong support for open access could see a drop in quantity and/or quality of submissions over the next few years. While this is by no means a certainty, it might be prudent to consider licensing terms to protect libraries against this eventuality, particularly when signing relatively long-term license (e.g., 3-5 years).

Implication for publishers:

Strong support for open access is a good strategy to ensure ongoing quality of journals and support from libraries. In other words, it's a good business decision! Lukewarm support - or opposition - is something else...

Comment (from Peter Suber, Open Access News): I have no doubt that author preference for OA will grow in proportion to author understanding of OA, and that this will show up both in self-archiving and submissions to OA journals. If we focus on submissions to OA journals, however, then prestige must enter as another key variable. OA alone will not change submission rates much unless supported by prestige. Because most OA journals are new, they don't yet have prestige in proportion to their quality. But this will change. As the prestige of high-quality OA journals grows, then the combination of that prestige and the intrinsic advantages of OA will surpass the advantages of prestigious non-OA journals and this will be reflected in submission rates. For more on these lines, see SOAN for March 2005:

For authors, the only reason to submit work to a TA [toll access] journal is its prestige. In every other way, TA journals are inferior to OA journals because they limit an author's audience and impact. OA journals will start to draw submissions away from top TA journals as soon as they approach them in prestige. And by the time they equal them in prestige, the best TA journals will have lost their one remaining competitive advantage.

There's already some evidence that converting to OA or shortening embargoes increases submissions (at BMJ, JPGM, JMLA, MBC, and Medknow journals generally). I'll say more about this in an upcoming issue of SOAN and in the meantime would appreciate pointers to any additional anecdotes or evidence.

This post is part of the Transitioning to Open Access series.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

Dramatic progress in the adoption of OA self-archiving mandates

As reported by Stevan Harnad, American Scientist Open Access Forum:

There has been dramatic progress in the adoption of Open Access
Self-Archiving Mandates lately.

ROARMAP (Registry of Open Access Repository Material Archiving Policies)
http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php
and
ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories)
http://archives.eprints.org/
now list:

497 institutional repositories registered to date
29 institutional or funder self-archiving policies
*10 self-archiving mandates
**4 funder self-archiving mandates

*AUSTRALIA Queensland U. Technology
*EUROPE CERN
FRANCE CNRS
FRANCE INRA
FRANCE INRIA
FRANCE Institut Jean Nicod
FRANCE Inst fr rech exploit mer
FRANCE U Lumiere Lyon 2
GERMANY Bielefeld U
GERMANY Humboldt U
GERMANY Inst Sci Net Oldenburg
GERMANY Potsdam U.
GERMANY U Bremen
GERMANY U Hamburg
*INDIA Nat Inst Tech Rourkela
NORWAY U Oslo
*PORTUGAL U Minho
SWEDEN Lund U
*SWITZERLAND U Zurich
UK CCLRC
UK U Southampton
**UK BBSRC
**UK ESRC
**UK MRC
*UK U Southampton ECS
**UK Wellcome Trust
USA Case Western
USA NIH
USA U Kansas

If your university or research institutions or research funding agency
has an Open Access Self-Archiving policy,
please register it in ROARMAP:
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/sign.php
and register your institutional repository (IR) in ROAR:
http://archives.eprints.org/?action=add

You can track the growth of the number and nature of OA policies in
ROARMAP and the growth in the number and size of IRs in ROAR.

Comment: thanks, Stevan. The progress on OA mandates is important, and remarkable indeed!

It would be wonderful to have the exact number of open access articles, to assess growth in OA via self-archiving. I'll be looking into the ROAR data for the next Dramatic Growth update. Comments and suggestions for the best indicator(s) of growth of OA articles are most welcome. The ideal would be a single indicator, whether it is total OA articles or best estimate - or, a very few indicators.

July 23, 2006

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.