Author's Rights Negotitations: Research Ideas

Open Access, and particularly open access policies, creates opportunities for researchers to rethink about their copyright, and seek to retain their rights when they publish in scholarly journals. Here are some ideas for small, doable research projects that could be very helpful to advance our understanding about progress on Author's Rights. If you are considering such research, please consider openly posting your work on the web (with links from the Open Access Directory). This could, in my opinion, facilitate ad hoc collaborations. Others could comment on your research methodology even before you start, and/or others could do research using the same set of questions / approach elsewhere, so that results can be compared.

Following is a recent contribution I've made to the Open Access Directory:

A small study could help to get started on understanding what is happening around author's rights. For example, interview researchers in one or a few departments at one university about their experiences with seeking more rights than what a standard contract allows. How many have sought additional rights? What methods did they use - one-on-one negotiations, author's addenda? What were the results? The recent requirement policy of the US NIH means that there are likely many US authors with recent experiences in this area. A qualitative study of this nature could provide a great set of questions to follow up with a survey approach. The ideal would be a survey representative of all researchers everywhere - a smaller sample would be very useful, though. If anyone tries this, please write up your research methodology and post a link under Research in Progress - this would greatly facilitate ad hoc collaborations. Someone else might use your survey questions!

Open Access Permissions: Research Idea

A simple way to obtain a rough measure of permissions or full OA (the element of open access that goes beyond free to read, to providing permission to reuse the material in a variety of ways, from downloading and redistributing (including, or not including, commercial re-use), to making derivatives), is to review the DOAJ journals and note which journals use Creative Commons licensing, which license, and which ones use which license. It would be helpful to follow the DOAJ Subject lists for this, as there could be disciplinary differences, and also to note the publishers. BMC uses CC-BY, for example, and is a large enough publisher to impact the percentage of journals using CC-BY in biomedicine. It would be a good idea to download the DOAJ title list on a particular date, and work with that. Otherwise, the ongoing dramatic growth of DOAJ will mean your title list will keep changing as you research.

For a smaller but useful study, just look at one of the DOAJ subject areas, or a few very different subject areas to get some idea of the range. This could be useful information in and of itself, and/or as a pilot project for a larger study.

It is important to note that lack of CC licensing does NOT mean that a journal is not willing to provide permissions-OA, only that the journal has not expressed permissions-OA in this manner.

Another interesting research question would be whether DOAJ journals that are not using Creative Commons licensing consider their journals to be providing some aspect of permissions OA. A survey approach, working cooperatively with DOAJ to distribute the survey to DOAJ journals, might be workable.

I just contributed this idea to the Journal Business Models section of the Open Access Directory.

Hypothesis: decline in author submissions if no self-archiving allowed

Hypothesis: author submissions will decrease at toll-access journals that do not allow author self-archiving, resulting in a decline in quantity of articles published, or quality, or both. Rationale: authors who are educated about open access, aware of the OA impact advantage, or impacted by open access policies, are likely to seek open access friendly venues for publishers. The rate of submission decline will vary, depending on the discipline, relevant open access policies, and the availability and credibility of open access alternatives (open access journals and self-archiving friendly journals).

This hypothesis was developed for the Research Questions section of the Open Access Directory (OAD).

For a more poetic expression, see Whither White, Fair RoMEO?

Open Access Research Questions

Following are a few of the more substantial entries I've recently contributed to the Research Questions section of the Open Access Directory, repeated here so that a copy is kept of the original questions, and so that there is one copy of the questions under my name as the author. Please join us at the OAD to add and refine questions - and be sure to add a note about any research in progress! Feel free to get in touch if you are interested in pursuing any of the following and my questions are not completely clear.

Hypothesis: there is a rural / urban split in subscription-based access. This will appear in many countries, developed and developing alike. The largest gap will be evident for the public, followed by educational institutions. There will be some gaps even for research institutions, i.e. even a remote / field location of a research university will not always have the same access as the main campus.

This can be tested with a case scenario, e.g. a member of the public in a particular location. Does the location have a public library, and if so, what scholarly subscriptions, if any, are available? What about ILL services? Is there a local college or university campus - if so, is there walk-in access? If walk-in access is available but not close by, what would be involved for the person to take advantage? Is it a simple trip to a larger centre, something the person would be likely to do for other reasons such as shopping anyways? Or, is it an expensive trip?

This research would be very well-suited for collaboration in different regions.

Note likely confounding factor: there will also likely be a rural-urban split in quality and availability of internet. This may be inconsistent (e.g., some very remote locations are very well-served via satellite).

Hypothesis: there is a split in subscription-based access based on relative wealth, both across and within countries and sectors. A mid-sized college in a poorer area will tend to have fewer subscriptions and may not have as robust support for interlibrary loans services. Note: poorer colleges and universities need to attract students. Not all will be happy to advertise less access. Perhaps an anonymous study would help?

[from OAD:} It's also important to distinguish demand for access from people without access. Some of those without access may not care to have it. How well can we measure the demand for access among those who don't currently have it?

Heather's addition:
* On the other hand, demand for access may be due to lack of access. Is there research on demand for reading materials or right-to-read among illiterate people?

Medline free usage jump
When Medline was made freely available, usage jumped a hundred fold. This may be worth exploring and documenting in detail. Is there a relationship between free availability of Medline and the emergence of evidence-based medicine? Possible approaches: usage statistics, surveys, interviews.

Library Support for Open Access
* Library support for open access. (Can be by nature of support, type / size of library and region / location). Types of support:

* Journal hosting (see Karla Hahn's recent ARL study on library publishing activities) [date? link?]
* Payment of article processing fees
* Economic support (and/or commitments) for open access initiatives, e.g. SCOAP3, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
* Institutional and disciplinary repositories (note: the Canadian Association of Research Libraries does an annual survey). # of repositories, type, contents, staffing by type and FTE.
* Educational - number and type of workshops. See recent SPEC kit on scholarly communications activities.


Library use of open access resources. (Can be by nature of use, type / size of library and region / location).

* Inclusion of DOAJ and other open access lists in link resolving services. (Statistics on hits / downloads?).
* Local open access collection development.
* Interlibrary loan searching for open access resources.

Library support for open access as measured by library website design.

* Is there a link to information about open access and scholarly communication? If so, where - the library home page, placed prominently or not-so-prominently, several clicks in, etc.?
* Does this differ by library type, size, region or country?
* Is there a correlation between library OA support and OA success at the organization?