The Dramatic Growth of Open Access continues!
The Dramatic Growth of Open Access continues in the second quarter of 2006, although at a somewhat less hectic pace than the first quarter. Since I've only started noting growth on a quarterly basis beginning last December, it is possible that this reflects seasonable variation, i.e. two months of this period fall within the summer semester in the northern hemisphere, a slower time at academia in general.
Growth continued very strong in both the gold and green roads. DOAJ, today at 2,292 journals, added 134 journal titles, an increase of about 1 and 1/2 titles per day (calendar days, not business days), about an equivalent of a 25% annual increase. More than half a million items were added to an OAIster search, for a total of more than 7.6 million items, or about the equivalent of a 24% annual increase. At the current rate of growth, an OAIster search can be anticipated to encompass more than a billion items before the end of 2007.
The most significant change was a drop in the % increase to Highwire Free Press Online, from an 18% increase in the first quarter to a less than 1% increase in this quarter. It is too soon to draw any conclusions from this change, which could reflect Highwire procedural timing.
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.
Directory of Open Access Journals:
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
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
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 565,143 records in a quarter, or an equivalent of over 2 million records annually. By percentage, this is an 8% increase in this quarter, or an equivalent of about 32% annually. The number of institutions has increased by 37 6%, or the equivalent of 24% annually.
Highwire Press Free Online Fulltext Articles
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 19,013 articles, or less than 1% (compared with an 18% increase in the first quarter of this year).
arXiv
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 11,832 e-prints in this quarter, a 3% increase in this quarter, or the equivalent of 12% annually.
RePEC: Research Papers in Economics
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 16,000 items available online, a 6% increase, or the equivalent of a 24% annual increase, roughly the same as the first quarter.
E-LIS
June 30, 2006: 3,885 documents
March 31, 2006: 3,539 documents
Dec. 31, 2005: 3,095 documents
This is an increase of 346 documents, just under 10% of the equivalent of just under 40% annual increase.
Canadian Association of Research Libraries : Metadata Harvester
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 253 items, or a 1% increase (equivalent of 4% annually).
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.
Friday, June 30, 2006
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Ubiquitous Knowledge: A Vision
The vision: a copy of all of the knowledge of humankind available electronically, everywhere - on every laptop, every USB key.
Why?
If ever anyone is cut off from communications with the rest of the world - whether due to natural or technical disasters, war or whatever - is it not ideal to have all of our knowledge ready at hand, to keep up medical services and perhaps figure out how to cope with such a catastrophe?
This vision, admittedly, goes beyond today's current emphasis on the immediately foreseeable horizon, the typical 3 to 5 year plan. No apologies, however! I think we all should think about envisioning the world centuries into the future, and planning accordingly.
In the shorter term, here is a thought, given this vision:
Why not look for LOCKSS partners in faraway regions? That way, if our region is devastated, our work is secure elsewhere. If a region splits from the world and is no longer willing to share, they will only be able to lock up current and future works, not past ones; this limits, at least a little, the potential damage that could otherwise be done by wars, whether of the fighting or trade variety.
Originally posted to Open Access Archiving
Why?
If ever anyone is cut off from communications with the rest of the world - whether due to natural or technical disasters, war or whatever - is it not ideal to have all of our knowledge ready at hand, to keep up medical services and perhaps figure out how to cope with such a catastrophe?
This vision, admittedly, goes beyond today's current emphasis on the immediately foreseeable horizon, the typical 3 to 5 year plan. No apologies, however! I think we all should think about envisioning the world centuries into the future, and planning accordingly.
In the shorter term, here is a thought, given this vision:
Why not look for LOCKSS partners in faraway regions? That way, if our region is devastated, our work is secure elsewhere. If a region splits from the world and is no longer willing to share, they will only be able to lock up current and future works, not past ones; this limits, at least a little, the potential damage that could otherwise be done by wars, whether of the fighting or trade variety.
Originally posted to Open Access Archiving
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Transitioning to open access series
The Transitioning to open access series is designed to explore a variety of issues likely to emerge during the transitional period, make recommendations to smooth the transition process for publishers, librarians, and others, and occasionally suggest research on transitional issues.
High profits for commercial publishers, or jobs for academics? Let's #occupyscholcomm
Full open access articles with 70% cost savings for libraries
On the wide disparity in publisher cost-efficiency
Elsevier's 2009 $2 billion profit could global open access at $1,383 USD per article.
U.S. systemic savings from full shift to open access: $3.4 billion annually. Reanalysis of data published by Donald King.
For subscription journals: calculating open access success, and considering your options
Research Brief: Library Savings from a Full Flip to Open Access via Article Processing Fees could be two thirds - or more. Based on data supplied by Mark Ware in a recent report commissioned by STM, it is estimated that libraries could save two thirds of journal acquisitions budgets by flipping from subscriptions to full OA via article processing fees at PLoS One rates. Please note: the majority of OA publishers do NOT charge article processing fees, this data is meant simply to illustrate how affordable open access can be.
Humanities and Social Sciences Journals: thoughts on transition to OA. Inspired by Waltham's brave preliminary study, this post explores means and feasibility for HHS publishers to move to OA, including considering the marketing advantage, engaging members and subscribers in the transition, and re-analysis of Waltham's data, suggesting greater economic feasibility than there appears to be at first.
Taylor & Francis: free, free, free?. Is Taylor & Francis working to position itself for a future where information is free? If so, here are a couple of tips for how T & F might approach the transition.
Molecular Biology of the Cell, or Why Open Access by Article Processing Fees Sometimes Just Makes Sense. Re-analysis of data provided by the publisher illustrates how OA by article processing fee could be a very natural fit for this journal, as when the costs of print per se are taken out of the picture, virtually all of the costs are already covered by article processing fees (page and colour charges).
Drop print to save money, print-on-demand for those who like print. OA journal Communications in Information Literacy is using POD to EARN modest revenue.
Pre-submission peer review to reduce journal costs
When authors submit work to colleagues for review even before submitting for publication, the result is likely to be a higher quality submission, with less work involved in coordinating peer review and copyediting. For some journals, this can mean cost savings which can be passed along to customers as price reductions.
Who benefits from the University of Calgary Open Access Authors' Fund? This was one of the really good questions asked at a talk by U of C's Andrew Waller. In my opinion, there are two main beneficiaries - faculty and senior students at U of C without funding for OA article processing fees, who now at least have a place to go to ask for assistance; and all of us, as the lessons learned by the U of C - like supporting only fully open access journals and hybrids that reduce library subscription fees to reflect OA revenue - provide a great model for any library to follow.
Should university presses adopt an open access model for all of their scholarly books? Greco and Wharton presents a compelling case for why university presses should adopt a fully open access model for all of their scholarly books - for economic reasons.
Announcing the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association
Competing in the open access environment: will the smalls have the advantage?
There are reasons to think that the small publisher or journal, especially the small not-for-profit, has the competitive advantage in an open access environment.
Springer to acquired BioMedCentral.
Springer, one of the world's largest commercial for-profit publishers in the area of science, technology, and medicine (STM) announced plans to acquired BioMedCentral, a major open access publisher. This is a major milestone for OA, now, no longer just the ideological choice, but also the smart business move, too.
Sherpa RoMEO: even white is looking very green!. Even many publishers with no formal support for self-archiving (white publishers), are showing plenty of support for authors who must self-archive to meet research funders' open access mandates (the Sherpa list is full of green checkmarks).
The Society for Reproduction and Fertility has developed a Free Access policy which is noteworthy for publishers considering a transition to open access. Highlights include re-use rights on payment of the Free Access fee, and an embargo of only 6 months for authors making use of the free self-archiving option.
IEEE and Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society OA Panel
Report of a panel discussion on OA I participated in, August 2008. IEEE, long a leader in green OA for personal web servers and IRs (though oddly enough, not disciplinary repositories), is beginning to explore options for moving to gold OA alternatives. It will be very interesting to watch further developments; when there is a need for change - engineers have no lack of ideas!
Kudos to Oxford: Transitioning to Open Access. Oxford continues to lead the way for traditional publishers to transition to OA, providing discounts to authors at subscriber institutions, new discounts for consortial subscribing authors, and fee adjustments reflecting OA income for the third year in a row.
Kudos: Nature Self-Archiving on Behalf of Authors
Nature Publishing Group has announced that they will archive for open access (with a 6-month embargo) on behalf of authors, to institutional or disciplinary repositories.
The library as publisher: an emerging norm
A recent (April 2008) ARL study shows that 44% of the 80 ARL libraries surveyed are involved in publishing, with another 21% planning to become income - two thirds of libraries altogether.
Open Access: Roles for the Aggregators
There are important role for vendors of aggregated databases in the transition to open access, from increasing access and impact by indexing the journals to supporting DOAJ to providing economic support for inclusion of OA journal content in aggregated databases. This is a potentially win-win-win situation: great content at unbeatable prices for the aggregators; more impact, and economic support for the journals; and more robust search tools for libraries, too!
Taking the plunge: from print to online open access. Kevin D. Haggerty of the open access Canadian Journal of Sociology on the process of moving the journal to an online-only, open access version.
American Society of Civil Engineers and Open Access
This post explores ASCE as an example of a publisher obviously making some moves towards open access. Clear info for authors on posting papers to the internet is a strength; requiring copyright transfer and a 90-day embargo on the author's posting of their own postprint are weaknesses. Like many society publishers, ASCE's subscription prices are reasonable, suggesting a competitive advantage in an open access environment.
High Energy Physics Goes Open Access
The SCOAP3 Consortium aims to shift the entire field of High Energy Physics to open access publishing. This global collaboration already has more than half the commitments needed, and is growing quickly! Peter Brantley has blogged some notes on the important February 29, 2008 meeting on the SCOAP3 Consortium at Berkeley.
nowpublishing.com and Authors Advantages
nowpublishing.com has Advantages for Authors - including Liberal Copyright, Wide Access, and an honorarium, too! Librarians will like now's plans to provide librarians with value for money, through the use of modern web-based marketing and manufacturing techniques to minimize costs.
Whither white, fair RoMEO?
This blogpost explores the potential future for a publisher / journal with no open access archiving-friendly policy in an environment where research funding agencies require open access to the results of research they fund. The future does not look bright for such a Journal of Unfunded Research!
Combining subscriptions and open choice
The Max Planck Society and Springer have come to an agreement on a package combining subscription access and open choice.
Oxford Open: A Model for Transitioning to Open Access
Oxford Journals is decreasing subscription costs for some of the journals participating in the Oxford Open Choice program. Costs are determined on a journal-by-journal basis; the more the update in the Open Choice program, the better the chances the price has decreased and/or the larger the decrease.
SCOAP3, Accreditation, and Access to Research Laboratories
The SCOAP3 consortium led by CERN aims to flip the entire high energy physics community from subscription to open access. This method explores means of ensuring that payments for publishing in an open access environment are kept up. That is, institutions offering degrees in physics might reasonably to expected to contribute to physics knowledge to qualify for accreditation. Expecting participation of institutions whose researchers would like to take advantage of key research facilities such as those at CERN is another way to increase the likelihood of ongoing participation.
National open access journal subsidy. Jean-Claude Guédon, in a recently posted preprint, talks about how open access has the potential to overcome the divide between the mainstream and the peripheral in science, particularly important for developing countries. An often-overlooked model for open access publishing, national OA publishing subsidies, is already working very well in many latin countries. Heather suggests that it is not just governments that should be looking into subsidizing journals; there is a role here for libraries too.
Rethinking Collections and Transitioning to Open Access: First Monday
Two of my major works on transitioning to open access have been published in the October 2007 First Monday, a special issue devoted to papers arising from the First International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference. Rethinking Collections presents a vision for libraries and librarians in an open age, and ideas on how to get from here to there. Transitioning to Open Access, a group writing effort, is a report of the CLA/CARL/SPARC-sponsored preconference to the PKP Conference by this name.
Opposition to open access continues, while anti-OA coalition attempt implodes.
Opposition to open access continues, and so we OA advocates continue to have much work to do, to educate people about open access, and to counter misconceptions. However, in my opinion, the failure of PRISM is so complete as to suggest the possibility that the effort to build a publishing industry anti-OA coalition has imploded. If correct, this could be an important moment in the transition to open access; publishers who are no longer united in the fight against OA, are very likely to have more time and inclination to figure out how to make OA work.
Flipping journal subscriptions to open access
Peter Suber interviewed Mark Rowse, former CEO of Ingenta, about an intriguing idea: simply flip journals, publishers, or the whole publishing industry - from subscriptions to open access. Change the line of the invoice from "subscriptions renewal notice" to "this year's open access publication charges".
From interlibrary loans to institutional repository department: a natural transition
As open access grows, it makes sense that the need for interlibrary loan should decrease. Staff in the ILL department have skills that would transfer well to support for an IR; this could be a natural and thoughtful transition, that might benefit not only OA, but morale and organizational culture, too.
NIH Public Access Policy: Is the Funding for an OA Transition Already There?.
Some funders such as Wellcome Trust have designated funding for open access publishing. This is not strictly necessary for any publisher, as open access can be achieved through self-archiving. However, funding for transition to open access publishing may be already available from some funders, under existing grant conditions. One example is the US National Institutes of Health, which currently spends about $30 million per year on publication-related charges, and has provision for "indirect costs" of grants, which currently cover such items as library subscriptions and site licenses.
Are open access journals ten times more likely to survive?
Recent data from Ulrich's strongly suggests a survival advantage for open access journals.
A potential positive cycle: more access, more funds
Abstract
Hypothesis: a process of transitioning to open access can unleash funds, creating a positive cycle of increasing access and freed funds to create more open access; the very opposite of the negative serials pricing spiral of recent decades, which featured increasing prices and decreasing access.
As support for this hypothesis, this post looks at the potential for open access if libraries were to focus on high-priced journals (US $1,000 or more for an institutional subscription), and succeed in working with their faculty to convert just 10% to a volunteer / in-kind support model.
It is estimated with such a scenario, that individual libraries could save up to $450,000 US from their budgets after spending on open access journal support is factored in. The cumulative savings for libraries are potentially huge; for example, if the ARL libraries subscribed to just a quarter of these journals each, the annual savings for ARL would be in the order of $13.8 million annually. This would only be a fraction of the savings for libraries, as ARL is only a subset of libraries, albeit large ones. The true collective savings for libraries would have to factor in libraries around the globe, including libraries in Europe and the somewhat smaller libraries in North America. If these savings were invested in further open access initatives, libraries would save even more, freeing up more funds to create more access.
Publishing software, publisher independence, and open access
Originally posted to the Society for Scholarly Publishing list, this post explores the potential of new publishing software to facilitate both publisher independence and open access.
University Presses, Open Access, and Internal Reallocation of Funds
A recent statement by the American Association of University Presses (AAUP) on open access indicates a willingness to talk about transitioning to open access. AAUP sees a gift economy as possible, through internal reallocation of funds, for example from library purchasing to subidized publishing. AAUP suggests that we look at more than journal articles; perhaps monographs could be open access as well? This is definitely food for thought. Librarians, if the publishers are ready to talk about this - are we?
Scenarios about paying for open access
This post summarizes discussion about scenarios for open access article process fees (APF). Depending on the approach, supporting APFs could stimulate healthy competition in the scholarly publishing industry - or reward inefficiency. Many thanks to Jim Till for summarizing my comments to the American Scientist Open Access Forum. For Jim's own comments, additional links, and discussion, please see Be Openly Accessible or Be Obscure.
Elsevier Revenue to Open Access
Is there enough revenue in the current scholarly publishing system to fund an open access system? This post explores what would happen if Reed Elsevier's revenue were redeployed to support for open access, and the answer is a resounding yes! For example, Reed Elsevier's 2005 revenue was sufficient to pay for over 6 million BioMedCentral articles.
Open Access, Scholarly Communications, and the Processing Fee Model
There are arguments that the processing fee model approach to open access could introduce much needed competition into the scholarly publishing industry, and that this approach could simply result in a replacing a subscriptions crisis based on a price spiral with a processing fee price spiral. In my opinion, both arguments are correct. This post, based on a discussion on the American Scientist Open Access Forum, explores the key factor in creating incentives for competition, and looks at some examples of scenarios that could stimulate competition, or reward inefficiency.
Scholarly Publishing: High Quality at Low Cost
Advances in computing technology - hardware, software, and connectivity, combined with the age-old tradition of voluntary contributions to scholarship, mean that it is now possible to produce high quality peer reviewed journal articles at low cost.
This is a very different environment from that of a few years ago, when high quality publishing was very difficult without highly specialized equipment and skills...
Year-End Investments Towards Open Access: DOAJ!
This is an addition to the Year-End Investments Towards Open Access post, focusing on the newly announed DOAJ Membership program.
Year-End Investments Towards Open Access
Libraries and other organizations finding themselves with a little extra funds at fiscal year-end have many options that will help to leverage the transition towards open access. This post explores a few options: buying a LOCKSS box; buying a server and hardware for hosting open access journals and/or repositories; investing in ongoing open access to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; and, hosting a workshop or workshops on open access publishing or self-archiving.
The Ouellette Declaration
Canadian open access leader Francis Ouellette has some suggestions to help with the transition, such as one-time funding for a year or two to help libraries during these tough times when we still need subscriptions, but want to support open access. My thought...one time funding to create a permanent good public - is government listening? Francis also has some great tips for researchers on how to support open access.
Stop fighting - and free funds for open access!
Nature reporting that the American Association of Publishers (AAP) spent between $300,000 - $500,000 to a "media pitbull" to develop anti-open access messages in 2006. This post explores the potential if publishers were to redirect funds from such efforts, into open access publishing. This one expenditure could provide hosting and support services for 785 open access journals. Elsevier's annual U.S. lobbying budget is sufficient to fund hosting and support for over 3,000 open access journals - more than Elsevier publishes!
Ulrich's and DOAJ: an idea
Transitioning to Open Access: Beyond Fear of Change
Publishing Cooperatives: Another Seminal Work by Raym Crow
Pre-Submission Peer-Review: Transitioning to Open Access
From buying to producing: transitioning to open access
August 27, 2006
Transitioning to Open Access. 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.
August 7, 2006.
Open Access: the Membership Fee Subsidy Model
June, 2006
This post was created Augutst 20, 2006, and backdated to June 20 for organizational reasons.
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.
High profits for commercial publishers, or jobs for academics? Let's #occupyscholcomm
Full open access articles with 70% cost savings for libraries
On the wide disparity in publisher cost-efficiency
Elsevier's 2009 $2 billion profit could global open access at $1,383 USD per article.
U.S. systemic savings from full shift to open access: $3.4 billion annually. Reanalysis of data published by Donald King.
For subscription journals: calculating open access success, and considering your options
Research Brief: Library Savings from a Full Flip to Open Access via Article Processing Fees could be two thirds - or more. Based on data supplied by Mark Ware in a recent report commissioned by STM, it is estimated that libraries could save two thirds of journal acquisitions budgets by flipping from subscriptions to full OA via article processing fees at PLoS One rates. Please note: the majority of OA publishers do NOT charge article processing fees, this data is meant simply to illustrate how affordable open access can be.
Humanities and Social Sciences Journals: thoughts on transition to OA. Inspired by Waltham's brave preliminary study, this post explores means and feasibility for HHS publishers to move to OA, including considering the marketing advantage, engaging members and subscribers in the transition, and re-analysis of Waltham's data, suggesting greater economic feasibility than there appears to be at first.
Taylor & Francis: free, free, free?. Is Taylor & Francis working to position itself for a future where information is free? If so, here are a couple of tips for how T & F might approach the transition.
Molecular Biology of the Cell, or Why Open Access by Article Processing Fees Sometimes Just Makes Sense. Re-analysis of data provided by the publisher illustrates how OA by article processing fee could be a very natural fit for this journal, as when the costs of print per se are taken out of the picture, virtually all of the costs are already covered by article processing fees (page and colour charges).
Drop print to save money, print-on-demand for those who like print. OA journal Communications in Information Literacy is using POD to EARN modest revenue.
Pre-submission peer review to reduce journal costs
When authors submit work to colleagues for review even before submitting for publication, the result is likely to be a higher quality submission, with less work involved in coordinating peer review and copyediting. For some journals, this can mean cost savings which can be passed along to customers as price reductions.
Who benefits from the University of Calgary Open Access Authors' Fund? This was one of the really good questions asked at a talk by U of C's Andrew Waller. In my opinion, there are two main beneficiaries - faculty and senior students at U of C without funding for OA article processing fees, who now at least have a place to go to ask for assistance; and all of us, as the lessons learned by the U of C - like supporting only fully open access journals and hybrids that reduce library subscription fees to reflect OA revenue - provide a great model for any library to follow.
Should university presses adopt an open access model for all of their scholarly books? Greco and Wharton presents a compelling case for why university presses should adopt a fully open access model for all of their scholarly books - for economic reasons.
Announcing the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association
Competing in the open access environment: will the smalls have the advantage?
There are reasons to think that the small publisher or journal, especially the small not-for-profit, has the competitive advantage in an open access environment.
Springer to acquired BioMedCentral.
Springer, one of the world's largest commercial for-profit publishers in the area of science, technology, and medicine (STM) announced plans to acquired BioMedCentral, a major open access publisher. This is a major milestone for OA, now, no longer just the ideological choice, but also the smart business move, too.
Sherpa RoMEO: even white is looking very green!. Even many publishers with no formal support for self-archiving (white publishers), are showing plenty of support for authors who must self-archive to meet research funders' open access mandates (the Sherpa list is full of green checkmarks).
The Society for Reproduction and Fertility has developed a Free Access policy which is noteworthy for publishers considering a transition to open access. Highlights include re-use rights on payment of the Free Access fee, and an embargo of only 6 months for authors making use of the free self-archiving option.
IEEE and Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society OA Panel
Report of a panel discussion on OA I participated in, August 2008. IEEE, long a leader in green OA for personal web servers and IRs (though oddly enough, not disciplinary repositories), is beginning to explore options for moving to gold OA alternatives. It will be very interesting to watch further developments; when there is a need for change - engineers have no lack of ideas!
Kudos to Oxford: Transitioning to Open Access. Oxford continues to lead the way for traditional publishers to transition to OA, providing discounts to authors at subscriber institutions, new discounts for consortial subscribing authors, and fee adjustments reflecting OA income for the third year in a row.
Kudos: Nature Self-Archiving on Behalf of Authors
Nature Publishing Group has announced that they will archive for open access (with a 6-month embargo) on behalf of authors, to institutional or disciplinary repositories.
The library as publisher: an emerging norm
A recent (April 2008) ARL study shows that 44% of the 80 ARL libraries surveyed are involved in publishing, with another 21% planning to become income - two thirds of libraries altogether.
Open Access: Roles for the Aggregators
There are important role for vendors of aggregated databases in the transition to open access, from increasing access and impact by indexing the journals to supporting DOAJ to providing economic support for inclusion of OA journal content in aggregated databases. This is a potentially win-win-win situation: great content at unbeatable prices for the aggregators; more impact, and economic support for the journals; and more robust search tools for libraries, too!
Taking the plunge: from print to online open access. Kevin D. Haggerty of the open access Canadian Journal of Sociology on the process of moving the journal to an online-only, open access version.
American Society of Civil Engineers and Open Access
This post explores ASCE as an example of a publisher obviously making some moves towards open access. Clear info for authors on posting papers to the internet is a strength; requiring copyright transfer and a 90-day embargo on the author's posting of their own postprint are weaknesses. Like many society publishers, ASCE's subscription prices are reasonable, suggesting a competitive advantage in an open access environment.
High Energy Physics Goes Open Access
The SCOAP3 Consortium aims to shift the entire field of High Energy Physics to open access publishing. This global collaboration already has more than half the commitments needed, and is growing quickly! Peter Brantley has blogged some notes on the important February 29, 2008 meeting on the SCOAP3 Consortium at Berkeley.
nowpublishing.com and Authors Advantages
nowpublishing.com has Advantages for Authors - including Liberal Copyright, Wide Access, and an honorarium, too! Librarians will like now's plans to provide librarians with value for money, through the use of modern web-based marketing and manufacturing techniques to minimize costs.
Whither white, fair RoMEO?
This blogpost explores the potential future for a publisher / journal with no open access archiving-friendly policy in an environment where research funding agencies require open access to the results of research they fund. The future does not look bright for such a Journal of Unfunded Research!
Combining subscriptions and open choice
The Max Planck Society and Springer have come to an agreement on a package combining subscription access and open choice.
Oxford Open: A Model for Transitioning to Open Access
Oxford Journals is decreasing subscription costs for some of the journals participating in the Oxford Open Choice program. Costs are determined on a journal-by-journal basis; the more the update in the Open Choice program, the better the chances the price has decreased and/or the larger the decrease.
SCOAP3, Accreditation, and Access to Research Laboratories
The SCOAP3 consortium led by CERN aims to flip the entire high energy physics community from subscription to open access. This method explores means of ensuring that payments for publishing in an open access environment are kept up. That is, institutions offering degrees in physics might reasonably to expected to contribute to physics knowledge to qualify for accreditation. Expecting participation of institutions whose researchers would like to take advantage of key research facilities such as those at CERN is another way to increase the likelihood of ongoing participation.
National open access journal subsidy. Jean-Claude Guédon, in a recently posted preprint, talks about how open access has the potential to overcome the divide between the mainstream and the peripheral in science, particularly important for developing countries. An often-overlooked model for open access publishing, national OA publishing subsidies, is already working very well in many latin countries. Heather suggests that it is not just governments that should be looking into subsidizing journals; there is a role here for libraries too.
Rethinking Collections and Transitioning to Open Access: First Monday
Two of my major works on transitioning to open access have been published in the October 2007 First Monday, a special issue devoted to papers arising from the First International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference. Rethinking Collections presents a vision for libraries and librarians in an open age, and ideas on how to get from here to there. Transitioning to Open Access, a group writing effort, is a report of the CLA/CARL/SPARC-sponsored preconference to the PKP Conference by this name.
Opposition to open access continues, while anti-OA coalition attempt implodes.
Opposition to open access continues, and so we OA advocates continue to have much work to do, to educate people about open access, and to counter misconceptions. However, in my opinion, the failure of PRISM is so complete as to suggest the possibility that the effort to build a publishing industry anti-OA coalition has imploded. If correct, this could be an important moment in the transition to open access; publishers who are no longer united in the fight against OA, are very likely to have more time and inclination to figure out how to make OA work.
Flipping journal subscriptions to open access
Peter Suber interviewed Mark Rowse, former CEO of Ingenta, about an intriguing idea: simply flip journals, publishers, or the whole publishing industry - from subscriptions to open access. Change the line of the invoice from "subscriptions renewal notice" to "this year's open access publication charges".
From interlibrary loans to institutional repository department: a natural transition
As open access grows, it makes sense that the need for interlibrary loan should decrease. Staff in the ILL department have skills that would transfer well to support for an IR; this could be a natural and thoughtful transition, that might benefit not only OA, but morale and organizational culture, too.
NIH Public Access Policy: Is the Funding for an OA Transition Already There?.
Some funders such as Wellcome Trust have designated funding for open access publishing. This is not strictly necessary for any publisher, as open access can be achieved through self-archiving. However, funding for transition to open access publishing may be already available from some funders, under existing grant conditions. One example is the US National Institutes of Health, which currently spends about $30 million per year on publication-related charges, and has provision for "indirect costs" of grants, which currently cover such items as library subscriptions and site licenses.
Are open access journals ten times more likely to survive?
Recent data from Ulrich's strongly suggests a survival advantage for open access journals.
A potential positive cycle: more access, more funds
Abstract
Hypothesis: a process of transitioning to open access can unleash funds, creating a positive cycle of increasing access and freed funds to create more open access; the very opposite of the negative serials pricing spiral of recent decades, which featured increasing prices and decreasing access.
As support for this hypothesis, this post looks at the potential for open access if libraries were to focus on high-priced journals (US $1,000 or more for an institutional subscription), and succeed in working with their faculty to convert just 10% to a volunteer / in-kind support model.
It is estimated with such a scenario, that individual libraries could save up to $450,000 US from their budgets after spending on open access journal support is factored in. The cumulative savings for libraries are potentially huge; for example, if the ARL libraries subscribed to just a quarter of these journals each, the annual savings for ARL would be in the order of $13.8 million annually. This would only be a fraction of the savings for libraries, as ARL is only a subset of libraries, albeit large ones. The true collective savings for libraries would have to factor in libraries around the globe, including libraries in Europe and the somewhat smaller libraries in North America. If these savings were invested in further open access initatives, libraries would save even more, freeing up more funds to create more access.
Publishing software, publisher independence, and open access
Originally posted to the Society for Scholarly Publishing list, this post explores the potential of new publishing software to facilitate both publisher independence and open access.
University Presses, Open Access, and Internal Reallocation of Funds
A recent statement by the American Association of University Presses (AAUP) on open access indicates a willingness to talk about transitioning to open access. AAUP sees a gift economy as possible, through internal reallocation of funds, for example from library purchasing to subidized publishing. AAUP suggests that we look at more than journal articles; perhaps monographs could be open access as well? This is definitely food for thought. Librarians, if the publishers are ready to talk about this - are we?
Scenarios about paying for open access
This post summarizes discussion about scenarios for open access article process fees (APF). Depending on the approach, supporting APFs could stimulate healthy competition in the scholarly publishing industry - or reward inefficiency. Many thanks to Jim Till for summarizing my comments to the American Scientist Open Access Forum. For Jim's own comments, additional links, and discussion, please see Be Openly Accessible or Be Obscure.
Elsevier Revenue to Open Access
Is there enough revenue in the current scholarly publishing system to fund an open access system? This post explores what would happen if Reed Elsevier's revenue were redeployed to support for open access, and the answer is a resounding yes! For example, Reed Elsevier's 2005 revenue was sufficient to pay for over 6 million BioMedCentral articles.
Open Access, Scholarly Communications, and the Processing Fee Model
There are arguments that the processing fee model approach to open access could introduce much needed competition into the scholarly publishing industry, and that this approach could simply result in a replacing a subscriptions crisis based on a price spiral with a processing fee price spiral. In my opinion, both arguments are correct. This post, based on a discussion on the American Scientist Open Access Forum, explores the key factor in creating incentives for competition, and looks at some examples of scenarios that could stimulate competition, or reward inefficiency.
Scholarly Publishing: High Quality at Low Cost
Advances in computing technology - hardware, software, and connectivity, combined with the age-old tradition of voluntary contributions to scholarship, mean that it is now possible to produce high quality peer reviewed journal articles at low cost.
This is a very different environment from that of a few years ago, when high quality publishing was very difficult without highly specialized equipment and skills...
Year-End Investments Towards Open Access: DOAJ!
This is an addition to the Year-End Investments Towards Open Access post, focusing on the newly announed DOAJ Membership program.
Year-End Investments Towards Open Access
Libraries and other organizations finding themselves with a little extra funds at fiscal year-end have many options that will help to leverage the transition towards open access. This post explores a few options: buying a LOCKSS box; buying a server and hardware for hosting open access journals and/or repositories; investing in ongoing open access to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; and, hosting a workshop or workshops on open access publishing or self-archiving.
The Ouellette Declaration
Canadian open access leader Francis Ouellette has some suggestions to help with the transition, such as one-time funding for a year or two to help libraries during these tough times when we still need subscriptions, but want to support open access. My thought...one time funding to create a permanent good public - is government listening? Francis also has some great tips for researchers on how to support open access.
Stop fighting - and free funds for open access!
Nature reporting that the American Association of Publishers (AAP) spent between $300,000 - $500,000 to a "media pitbull" to develop anti-open access messages in 2006. This post explores the potential if publishers were to redirect funds from such efforts, into open access publishing. This one expenditure could provide hosting and support services for 785 open access journals. Elsevier's annual U.S. lobbying budget is sufficient to fund hosting and support for over 3,000 open access journals - more than Elsevier publishes!
Ulrich's and DOAJ: an idea
Transitioning to Open Access: Beyond Fear of Change
Publishing Cooperatives: Another Seminal Work by Raym Crow
Pre-Submission Peer-Review: Transitioning to Open Access
From buying to producing: transitioning to open access
August 27, 2006
Transitioning to Open Access. 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.
August 7, 2006.
Open Access: the Membership Fee Subsidy Model
June, 2006
This post was created Augutst 20, 2006, and backdated to June 20 for organizational reasons.
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.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Open Access: the Membership Fee Subsidy Model
Abstract:
The majority of open access journals do not charge processing fees. Such journals operate on a variety of models and combinations of approaches. This blogpost looks at the simple membership-fee-subsidy model. For a very large society, a small subsidy from membership fees could create a very substantial pool of money for open access publishing. For example, if the world's largest scientific society, the American Chemical Society, were to set aside $10 from the fees of each of its 158,000 members, this would create an annual fund of $1.5 million to subsidize open access publishing. For an organization of this size, it is not out of the question to find such money by shifting internal priorities, without raising membership fees by so much as a penny.
Details:
No-fee journals operate on a variety of business models, from volunteering to subsidies from various sources to advertising revenues to combinations. In this post, I will focus on a membership fee subsidy approach, for learned societies and associations.
Many traditional journals produced by societies and associations have always operated on a subsidy basis, with the subsidy funding coming from such sources as membership fees and conferences.
A large and wealthy association could no doubt subsidize a very substantial open access publishing program, if it chose to do so.
Picture, for example, how many journals and articles the largest scientist organization in the world could publish OA, if they chose.
According to their web site, the American Chemical Society is the world's largest scientific society, with 158,000 members. If $10 from every membership were devoted to OA publishing, this would create an annual subsidy fund of over $1.5 million per year.
It is not at all out of the question for an organization of this size to find this kind of money internally, without having to raise membership fees a penny.
Considering how important the benefits of open access are, perhaps the ACS should give this some thought.
If any of the organizations I belong to were to ask me if this were a suitable use of my membership funding, I would not hesitate for a second to say yes.
This blogpost is one of the answers to a question recently posed on the Liblicense listserv.
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.
The majority of open access journals do not charge processing fees. Such journals operate on a variety of models and combinations of approaches. This blogpost looks at the simple membership-fee-subsidy model. For a very large society, a small subsidy from membership fees could create a very substantial pool of money for open access publishing. For example, if the world's largest scientific society, the American Chemical Society, were to set aside $10 from the fees of each of its 158,000 members, this would create an annual fund of $1.5 million to subsidize open access publishing. For an organization of this size, it is not out of the question to find such money by shifting internal priorities, without raising membership fees by so much as a penny.
Details:
No-fee journals operate on a variety of business models, from volunteering to subsidies from various sources to advertising revenues to combinations. In this post, I will focus on a membership fee subsidy approach, for learned societies and associations.
Many traditional journals produced by societies and associations have always operated on a subsidy basis, with the subsidy funding coming from such sources as membership fees and conferences.
A large and wealthy association could no doubt subsidize a very substantial open access publishing program, if it chose to do so.
Picture, for example, how many journals and articles the largest scientist organization in the world could publish OA, if they chose.
According to their web site, the American Chemical Society is the world's largest scientific society, with 158,000 members. If $10 from every membership were devoted to OA publishing, this would create an annual subsidy fund of over $1.5 million per year.
It is not at all out of the question for an organization of this size to find this kind of money internally, without having to raise membership fees a penny.
Considering how important the benefits of open access are, perhaps the ACS should give this some thought.
If any of the organizations I belong to were to ask me if this were a suitable use of my membership funding, I would not hesitate for a second to say yes.
This blogpost is one of the answers to a question recently posed on the Liblicense listserv.
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.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Heather's Bio on Chemists Without Borders
My bio was featured in the June 2006 Chemists Without Borders Newsletter. A Continuation of Heather's Bio, in which I explain in some detail why open access is essential to the work of CWB, is posted on the CWB website. Thanks Steve!
Saturday, June 03, 2006
Defeat the Evil Captain Copyright!
Librarians, students, teachers, parents, school administrators, and every friend of the commons: let us unite, to defeat the evil Captain Copyright!
Captain Copyright is the brainchild of Access Copyright, a Canadian copyright collective with views that are decidedly unbalanced! For example, Access Copyright is calling for an internet tax on materials which creators have made freely available!
Access Copyright's latest ploy is the use of comic books (Captain Copyright), games and activities for children to educate them on copyright. The problem with this is, the view of copyright they are promoting is not balanced - for example, there is no mention of fair use / fair dealing, never mind the concept of open sharing and participating in the public domain.
It would be wrong to rely on fast-food companies to design educational materials on nutrition, and it is wrong to rely on Access Copyright for educational materials on copyright.
Students, teachers, parents, and school administrators - let us unite to defeat the evil Captain Copyright! Dr. Use and her sidekick Dealings, Private Copying and Public Domain - not to mention Share and her sidekick CommonsSense - are no villains, and should never be painted as such!
Other comments on the evil Captain Copyright:
Captain Copyright démistifié, by Olivier Charbonneau. English translation: Captain Copyright Demystified.
Captain Copyright, by Michael Geist.
February 11, 2007 update: Captain Copyright is no more! See Michael's Geist The End of Captain Copyright for details, and a suggestion for those looking for tools to help children learn about copyright: the Learning Commons - for copyright, copyleft, and everything in between.
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.
Captain Copyright is the brainchild of Access Copyright, a Canadian copyright collective with views that are decidedly unbalanced! For example, Access Copyright is calling for an internet tax on materials which creators have made freely available!
Access Copyright's latest ploy is the use of comic books (Captain Copyright), games and activities for children to educate them on copyright. The problem with this is, the view of copyright they are promoting is not balanced - for example, there is no mention of fair use / fair dealing, never mind the concept of open sharing and participating in the public domain.
It would be wrong to rely on fast-food companies to design educational materials on nutrition, and it is wrong to rely on Access Copyright for educational materials on copyright.
Students, teachers, parents, and school administrators - let us unite to defeat the evil Captain Copyright! Dr. Use and her sidekick Dealings, Private Copying and Public Domain - not to mention Share and her sidekick CommonsSense - are no villains, and should never be painted as such!
Other comments on the evil Captain Copyright:
Captain Copyright démistifié, by Olivier Charbonneau. English translation: Captain Copyright Demystified.
Captain Copyright, by Michael Geist.
February 11, 2007 update: Captain Copyright is no more! See Michael's Geist The End of Captain Copyright for details, and a suggestion for those looking for tools to help children learn about copyright: the Learning Commons - for copyright, copyleft, and everything in between.
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.
Captain Copyright Demystified
Here is an imperfect translation of Captain Copyright Demystified, by Olivier Charbonneau of ::CultureLibre.Ca::.
Captain Copyright Demystified
There, in the sky, is it a bird? Is it a plane? A rocket? No, it is Captain Copyright, the new Superhero of Access Copyright, the anglophone copyright collective , the latest addition to the family of Canadian superheroes.
This new initiative aims to promote copyright among Canadian students. The Captain Copyright website includes two chapters of comic book adventures of Captain Copyright, games, and classroom activities. The only problem is, the site presents a very biased view of the situation, and could be considered propaganda.
It is important to realize that Access Copyright is lobbying the Canadian Copyright Board for a supplementary tariff on Canada's educational institutions for the educational use of materials on the internet. Yes, you have read correctly, Access Copyright wants to impose an internet tax on students, to use materials which are freely available! This view was expressed at a Canadian Copyright Board hearing on Jan. 7, 2007.
According to the their 2005 Annual Report, Access Copyright spent 2.9 million dollars (Canadian), (nine times more than the previous year) on lobbying the Canadian government on this issue. In another post ::Culture Libre.Ca:: expresses the concern of the Canadian Ministers of Education about this position, which is to the detriment of education in Canada.
Professor Michael Geist reveals a number of the harmful aspects of the site in his expert blogpost, unfavorable to this approach. For example, one activity asks grade one students to create their own copyright form. Dr. Geist also explains that fair dealing and private copying are not covered, two important components of Canadian copyright law in favor of the users of content.
The knowledgable visitor leaves the site with a surrealist sensation, accompanied by the stench of misinformation and propaganda. What is the next step? Super-villains for Captain Copyright? Let's propose, as a start, Dr. Use and his sidekick Fair, a criminal duo devoted to study, private research and communicating news. Their only crime: informing and educating the Canadian public about reasonable uses of copyrighted work, without paying anyone.
Let's think also about Private Copy, a soldier with a photographic memory, who likes to transfer works from one format to another (from his CD to his iPod, for example). And let's not forget that very worst of all criminals, the extra-terrestrial-super-villian Public Domain, who dreams of all of the lucrative possibilities for creators of works, once his power is unleashed!
And above all, do not try to go too far with these characters, or else ::Culture Libre.Ca:: will have to pay a call on Captain Copyright! He will devastate you with his X-ray vision...or his authoritative injunctions...
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.
Captain Copyright Demystified
There, in the sky, is it a bird? Is it a plane? A rocket? No, it is Captain Copyright, the new Superhero of Access Copyright, the anglophone copyright collective , the latest addition to the family of Canadian superheroes.
This new initiative aims to promote copyright among Canadian students. The Captain Copyright website includes two chapters of comic book adventures of Captain Copyright, games, and classroom activities. The only problem is, the site presents a very biased view of the situation, and could be considered propaganda.
It is important to realize that Access Copyright is lobbying the Canadian Copyright Board for a supplementary tariff on Canada's educational institutions for the educational use of materials on the internet. Yes, you have read correctly, Access Copyright wants to impose an internet tax on students, to use materials which are freely available! This view was expressed at a Canadian Copyright Board hearing on Jan. 7, 2007.
According to the their 2005 Annual Report, Access Copyright spent 2.9 million dollars (Canadian), (nine times more than the previous year) on lobbying the Canadian government on this issue. In another post ::Culture Libre.Ca:: expresses the concern of the Canadian Ministers of Education about this position, which is to the detriment of education in Canada.
Professor Michael Geist reveals a number of the harmful aspects of the site in his expert blogpost, unfavorable to this approach. For example, one activity asks grade one students to create their own copyright form. Dr. Geist also explains that fair dealing and private copying are not covered, two important components of Canadian copyright law in favor of the users of content.
The knowledgable visitor leaves the site with a surrealist sensation, accompanied by the stench of misinformation and propaganda. What is the next step? Super-villains for Captain Copyright? Let's propose, as a start, Dr. Use and his sidekick Fair, a criminal duo devoted to study, private research and communicating news. Their only crime: informing and educating the Canadian public about reasonable uses of copyrighted work, without paying anyone.
Let's think also about Private Copy, a soldier with a photographic memory, who likes to transfer works from one format to another (from his CD to his iPod, for example). And let's not forget that very worst of all criminals, the extra-terrestrial-super-villian Public Domain, who dreams of all of the lucrative possibilities for creators of works, once his power is unleashed!
And above all, do not try to go too far with these characters, or else ::Culture Libre.Ca:: will have to pay a call on Captain Copyright! He will devastate you with his X-ray vision...or his authoritative injunctions...
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.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
The financial folly of pay-per-view, for the funder
Abstract
Some of the best arguments for open access, can be found by simply looking at the alternatives, such as pay-per-view. It is hypothesized that the costs to a funding agency of reviewing the previous work of a grant applicant, following the pay-per-view model, could quite easily average $12,000 US per grant application, or more. This makes the payment of a very modest fee, such as the PLoS $1,500 US per article, for top-notch open access publishing for access to everyone, everywhere - not only a good idea, but an incredible bargain, too. Reviewing the works of the self-archiving author provides significant benefits in terms of both costs and time for the funding agency, that perhaps it makes sense for the funder to prioritize or expedite such applications. It is hypothesized that even without conscious intent, expediting of grant applications by self-archiving authors may be a natural phenomenon, due to the time savings and simplicity of review of previous work.
Analysis
Let's look at pay-per-views, or purchase of article on a one-at-at-time basis, from the point of view of the research funding agency.
An application for a research grant is received. The application is reviewed by a committee. (As an aside - publishers sometimes think the funding agencies don't properly appreciate peer review. Nothing could be farther from the truth - the scrutiny the final article receives is nothing compared to the careful review before a funding decision is made).
For the sake of simplicity, let's assume that the researcher has previously published 20 articles, and there are 5 people on the review committee. Note that a great many researchers will have many, many more articles than 20, and many a review committee includes more than 5 people.
For the price of pay-per-view, let's take the $30 US that Elsevier charges for an article that I published in 1997, "Information literacy skills: An exploratory focus group study of student perceptions", Research Strategies, Volume 15, Issue 1, Winter 1997, Pages 4-17. (If anyone would like to read this article, please let me know - that would give me needed incentive to dig up an author's version for self-archiving).
5 reviewers each retrieving 20 articles on a pay-per-view basis at a rate of $30 US per article results in direct costs of $3,000 US to review the researcher's previous work. Factor in the indirect costs - 20 invoices each X 5 researchers - and this amount could easily double ($6,000 US per application).
Funding agencies need to review all applications, of course, not just the successful ones. If the rate of acceptance is 50%, the cost per funded applications doubles again ($12,000 US per application).
All this, just to pay-per-view for the application, and not a soul has seen the results of the funded research! Doesn't this scenario make the idea of paying one modest fee - such as the PLoS $1,500 US for top-notch publishing services, for access to everyone, everywhere - seem like not only a wonderful idea, but an incredible bargain, too?
Compare this pay-per-view scenario with the time and cost-efficient review of the works of the self-archiving author. See, for example, my own works in the SFU Institutional Repository, or E-LIS. Not only are there NO costs - either direct or indirect - but this approach takes an absolute minimum time for the busy reviewer of applications, too.
Given the vast difference in time and costs for full review of grant applications - perhaps funding agencies should prioritize, or expedite, review of applications from self-archiving authors? Or, is the expediting of such applications merely a natural phenomenon - after all, if the author's work is openly accessible, accessing previous work takes no time at all, right?
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.
Some of the best arguments for open access, can be found by simply looking at the alternatives, such as pay-per-view. It is hypothesized that the costs to a funding agency of reviewing the previous work of a grant applicant, following the pay-per-view model, could quite easily average $12,000 US per grant application, or more. This makes the payment of a very modest fee, such as the PLoS $1,500 US per article, for top-notch open access publishing for access to everyone, everywhere - not only a good idea, but an incredible bargain, too. Reviewing the works of the self-archiving author provides significant benefits in terms of both costs and time for the funding agency, that perhaps it makes sense for the funder to prioritize or expedite such applications. It is hypothesized that even without conscious intent, expediting of grant applications by self-archiving authors may be a natural phenomenon, due to the time savings and simplicity of review of previous work.
Analysis
Let's look at pay-per-views, or purchase of article on a one-at-at-time basis, from the point of view of the research funding agency.
An application for a research grant is received. The application is reviewed by a committee. (As an aside - publishers sometimes think the funding agencies don't properly appreciate peer review. Nothing could be farther from the truth - the scrutiny the final article receives is nothing compared to the careful review before a funding decision is made).
For the sake of simplicity, let's assume that the researcher has previously published 20 articles, and there are 5 people on the review committee. Note that a great many researchers will have many, many more articles than 20, and many a review committee includes more than 5 people.
For the price of pay-per-view, let's take the $30 US that Elsevier charges for an article that I published in 1997, "Information literacy skills: An exploratory focus group study of student perceptions", Research Strategies, Volume 15, Issue 1, Winter 1997, Pages 4-17. (If anyone would like to read this article, please let me know - that would give me needed incentive to dig up an author's version for self-archiving).
5 reviewers each retrieving 20 articles on a pay-per-view basis at a rate of $30 US per article results in direct costs of $3,000 US to review the researcher's previous work. Factor in the indirect costs - 20 invoices each X 5 researchers - and this amount could easily double ($6,000 US per application).
Funding agencies need to review all applications, of course, not just the successful ones. If the rate of acceptance is 50%, the cost per funded applications doubles again ($12,000 US per application).
All this, just to pay-per-view for the application, and not a soul has seen the results of the funded research! Doesn't this scenario make the idea of paying one modest fee - such as the PLoS $1,500 US for top-notch publishing services, for access to everyone, everywhere - seem like not only a wonderful idea, but an incredible bargain, too?
Compare this pay-per-view scenario with the time and cost-efficient review of the works of the self-archiving author. See, for example, my own works in the SFU Institutional Repository, or E-LIS. Not only are there NO costs - either direct or indirect - but this approach takes an absolute minimum time for the busy reviewer of applications, too.
Given the vast difference in time and costs for full review of grant applications - perhaps funding agencies should prioritize, or expedite, review of applications from self-archiving authors? Or, is the expediting of such applications merely a natural phenomenon - after all, if the author's work is openly accessible, accessing previous work takes no time at all, right?
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.
FRPAA: some benefits and cost savings for the U.S. taxpayer
As things stand, government departments, much like universities, must pay twice for research results - once, to fund the research, and again, to read the research results (or do without). Among other things, FRPAA will mean better access to the research literature for staffers at government agencies, at no cost for the research funded by the government agencies themselves - as it should be. For the taxpayer, this means better service (through a better-informed civil service), at less cost. This also eliminates the probability that the taxpayer is actually paying for the results of the research not just twice, as previously thought - but often thrice, or more (as explained below), without the taxpayer actually having access to the results at all! A situation that FRPAA will most definitely alleviate.
One of the ironies of scholarly publishing is that the producers of the research are also the customers. This is true not only in academia, but for the research funders, too.
How things work now is that a U.S. government department may provide the funding that makes research possible, but the results of the research are published in a scholarly journal - which is not available to the staff at the government department, unless they pay, either by subscription or on a per-article basis.
What this means is that, like universities and the taxpayer in general, government departments are often paying twice for the same research results - first, to conduct the research, and then, to pay to read the results. For the taxpayer, this means that access to research results is often paid for several times over, not just twice as we have been thinking. That is, the taxpayer pays to fund the research, then contributes to university subscriptions so that researchers can actually read the results of the research, then often pays again so that the staff at the government department which funded the research can read the results. The taxpayer may be paying more than thrice, of course, if the research results are needed by more than one government department. And - even after paying thrice, as things stand, the taxpayer still does not have rights to read the results of the research, unless the taxpayer pays yet again!
While the prime benefit of FRPAA will be enhanced access to research results for the researchers themselves, free access for the government staff means better tools for them to do their work, at less cost.
More information about the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 can be found at the Alliance for Taxpayer Access web site. See also Peter Suber's excellent overview in the May 2006 SPARC Open Access Newsletter, and keep up on developments by following Open Access News.
One of the ironies of scholarly publishing is that the producers of the research are also the customers. This is true not only in academia, but for the research funders, too.
How things work now is that a U.S. government department may provide the funding that makes research possible, but the results of the research are published in a scholarly journal - which is not available to the staff at the government department, unless they pay, either by subscription or on a per-article basis.
What this means is that, like universities and the taxpayer in general, government departments are often paying twice for the same research results - first, to conduct the research, and then, to pay to read the results. For the taxpayer, this means that access to research results is often paid for several times over, not just twice as we have been thinking. That is, the taxpayer pays to fund the research, then contributes to university subscriptions so that researchers can actually read the results of the research, then often pays again so that the staff at the government department which funded the research can read the results. The taxpayer may be paying more than thrice, of course, if the research results are needed by more than one government department. And - even after paying thrice, as things stand, the taxpayer still does not have rights to read the results of the research, unless the taxpayer pays yet again!
While the prime benefit of FRPAA will be enhanced access to research results for the researchers themselves, free access for the government staff means better tools for them to do their work, at less cost.
More information about the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 can be found at the Alliance for Taxpayer Access web site. See also Peter Suber's excellent overview in the May 2006 SPARC Open Access Newsletter, and keep up on developments by following Open Access News.
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Necessity is the mother of invention: open access, the developing world, and the cost-efficient solution
As authors and publishings in the developing world rapidly adopt open access publishing models and self-archiving practices, there are early signs that we are beginning to bridge the south-north knowledge gap.
Here is an hypothesis about a particular benefit of OA in less fortunate countries, which will be very useful in the developed world as well.
When it comes to the applied sciences, it stands to reason that scientists in the developing world have much more incentive to seek cost-effective solutions, than scientists in the developed world.
For example, many medical researchers in the developed world, particularly those who are funded or partially funded by for-profit companies, have reason to seek profitable interventions. Profit at a rate of percentage X of a high-cost intervention, is more profit than the same percentage of a low-cost intervention.
As an example, let's assume a 10% profit rate. Imagine you are a for-profit company selling medical products and tests. Your researchers come to you with two proposals. One is a medical test that will cost $1,000 per test (profit: $100). The other is an intervention with negligible costs (see below, listening to musics reduces the need for sedative medication). The total cost might be the shared cost of installing equipment to play music in a sterile environment, plus the cost of a one-page informational handout per patient - perhaps the total cost might be $1.00 per patient, the potential profit $.10.
If the purpose of your business is to make a profit - which research project are you likely to prioritize?
Scientists in less fortunate countries may not have access to the high-cost equipment needed to test costly interventions, and the people who fund them may be much less interested in finding such solutions.
If this hypothesis is correct, this does not mean that people in the developed world do not wish cost-effective solutions. In this area, the desires of those in businesses that will make use of the research are not the same as the desires of patients, public and private health administrators, all of whom would like to have the best possible interventions at the least cost.
One example of a study in India that illustrates this potential: Harikumar et al. found that Listening to music decreases the need for sedative medication during colonoscopy, as reported in the Indian Journal of Gastroenterology. (Note: it is important that the patient choose the music). What a wonderful approach! A low-cost, low-risk intervention that will reduce complications (including fatalities), and speed recovery. Better outcome at less cost! As a follow-up to this study, I am wondering whether this approach could also improve the morale of the health-care professionals and other staff, contributing to their good mental and physical health, too!
This is only one of the many potential benefits from bridging the south-north knowledge gap. Here is a second hypothesis, assuming the first is proved: would very modest investments in research in the developing world and/or open access in the developing world, be a prudent financial investment for health administrators in the developed world?
For that matter, is this a good reason for providing ample public funding for the operating costs of universities, so that researchers can do most of their research without special funding? To put this another way - if we are judging our medical researchers on the basis of the size of the grants they receive, should we be surprised at a tendency to seek high-cost solutions? Researchers who wish to focus on cost-efficient solutions - might not need the million-dollar grants, after all.
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.
Here is an hypothesis about a particular benefit of OA in less fortunate countries, which will be very useful in the developed world as well.
When it comes to the applied sciences, it stands to reason that scientists in the developing world have much more incentive to seek cost-effective solutions, than scientists in the developed world.
For example, many medical researchers in the developed world, particularly those who are funded or partially funded by for-profit companies, have reason to seek profitable interventions. Profit at a rate of percentage X of a high-cost intervention, is more profit than the same percentage of a low-cost intervention.
As an example, let's assume a 10% profit rate. Imagine you are a for-profit company selling medical products and tests. Your researchers come to you with two proposals. One is a medical test that will cost $1,000 per test (profit: $100). The other is an intervention with negligible costs (see below, listening to musics reduces the need for sedative medication). The total cost might be the shared cost of installing equipment to play music in a sterile environment, plus the cost of a one-page informational handout per patient - perhaps the total cost might be $1.00 per patient, the potential profit $.10.
If the purpose of your business is to make a profit - which research project are you likely to prioritize?
Scientists in less fortunate countries may not have access to the high-cost equipment needed to test costly interventions, and the people who fund them may be much less interested in finding such solutions.
If this hypothesis is correct, this does not mean that people in the developed world do not wish cost-effective solutions. In this area, the desires of those in businesses that will make use of the research are not the same as the desires of patients, public and private health administrators, all of whom would like to have the best possible interventions at the least cost.
One example of a study in India that illustrates this potential: Harikumar et al. found that Listening to music decreases the need for sedative medication during colonoscopy, as reported in the Indian Journal of Gastroenterology. (Note: it is important that the patient choose the music). What a wonderful approach! A low-cost, low-risk intervention that will reduce complications (including fatalities), and speed recovery. Better outcome at less cost! As a follow-up to this study, I am wondering whether this approach could also improve the morale of the health-care professionals and other staff, contributing to their good mental and physical health, too!
This is only one of the many potential benefits from bridging the south-north knowledge gap. Here is a second hypothesis, assuming the first is proved: would very modest investments in research in the developing world and/or open access in the developing world, be a prudent financial investment for health administrators in the developed world?
For that matter, is this a good reason for providing ample public funding for the operating costs of universities, so that researchers can do most of their research without special funding? To put this another way - if we are judging our medical researchers on the basis of the size of the grants they receive, should we be surprised at a tendency to seek high-cost solutions? Researchers who wish to focus on cost-efficient solutions - might not need the million-dollar grants, after all.
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.
Monday, May 08, 2006
Canadian Institutes of Health Research OA Policy: Comments Due May 15, 2006
Canadian Institutes of Health Research / Instituts de Recherche et Santé du Canada : is seeking input via survey to their Draft Policy in Development Access to Products of Research. Comments are due by May 15, 2006. Following are the survey questions, and my suggested responses. Thanks to Andrew Waller of University of Calgary for reviewing and commenting on these suggestions. Suggested responses are in bold.
Survey Questions
1) Please identify your affiliation
Researcher
Journal and journal editors
Scientific society
Libraries and library associations
Other (please specify)
If you selected other, please specify:
CIHR Policy in Development - Consultation on Access to Products of Research
2) Are there any specific research resources, tools, and products that you think should be included in this policy (e.g. software or protocols)?
OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative / Protocol for Metadata Harvesting)
3) How can we ensure that a policy increasing access to the physical products of research does not negatively impact the intellectual property (IP) rights of inventors, and the commercialization of IP?
There are two separate points here.
First - does it make sense for taxpayers to fund research for the economic benefits of a few? My suggestion: taxpayer-funded research belongs in the public domain.
Second - if some situations (such as co-funded studies) are considered consonant with IP of inventors and the commercialization of IP, it is still completely reasonable to require that any published peer-reviewed research article, be published as open access. Protecting trade secrets means either not publishing at all, or publishing as a patent rather than as a research article.
4) When is it appropriate for researchers to put restrictions on products of research?
Restrictions on products of research should be limited to protection of individual privacy rights.
5) Can you suggest appropriate restrictions that will minimize harms (or maximize benefits) to further research?
This question is backwards! It is restrictions that cause harms, and open access that maximizes benefits.
6) Is there a specific type of data (not mentioned above) that should be covered with this policy statement?
7) Would you support a policy statement that involved sharing research data obtained with the help of CIHR funding? Please elaborate on your answer in the comments section.
Yes No
Yes
8) If you answered No to question number 7, please explain
9) Do you think this policy should cover products other than peer-reviewed publications, such as book chapters, editorials, reviews, or conference proceedings?
Yes No
Yes
Additional comments:
Any publications produced as a result of taxpayer funding, should be openly accessible.
10) Do you support self-archiving of peer-reviewed research publications in an Institutional Repository (IR) at a Canadian university?
Note that not all universities in Canada currently have an IR.
Yes
No
Maybe
Yes
Additional comments:
There are other options for researchers who do not yet have an IR.
All CIHR-funded researchers can deposit in PubMedCentral for now, and copy articles to an IR as soon as one is available.
There are good reasons why depositing in more than one archive is optimal - for purposes of preservation, and enhanced impact. Canadians should deposit their in PubMedCentral to ensure that their work is retrieved by anyone who uses this resource exclusively. Copying to a Canadian repository is also advisable, for additional discovery as well as preservation purposes. Canadian works should be deposited in at least one Canadian repository, as soon as practical, to ensure ongoing access for Canadians.
There are open repositories, for example at the University of Tampere in Finland.
There are other disciplinary repositories that may be useful for some researchers, such as arXiv or E-LIS.
11) Would you prefer self-archiving of research publications using your personal website?
Note that personal websites are not interoperable. An advantage of IRs is that they use interoperability standards, such as those of the Open Archives Initiative.
Yes
No
No
Additional comments:
Education is needed here. There are advantages to IRs in terms of preservation as well as interoperability; also, this is not an either-or situation. Authors can post to their personal websites, too. Open access archives, whether institutional or disciplinary in nature, can provide authors with a single, clickable link to all of their works, one that is automatically updated with each new work. This mean if someone has copied a link to their works, anytime the link is accessed, new works will appear along with the old.
12) Would you endorse archiving of peer-reviewed results in the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central?
Yes, absolutely. This is the best option for preservation and searchability.
Or, would you prefer that Canadian peer-reviewed results be archived in a Canadian repository, such as a national repository of the kind which the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI) is positioned to develop for the National Research Council. (See the CISTI Strategic Plan for 2005-2010, http://cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/about/stratplan_3_e.html).
Yes, this too. But let's not wait - let's deposit in PMC right away, then copy to a Canadian repository as soon as one is available.
13) If you are a journal editor, or representative of a professional scientific society, what are potential positive or negative impacts that you see with the implementation of a policy requiring CIHR funded researchers to follow one of the aforementioned mechanisms?
For Canadian researchers - those who are served by local journals and professional scientific societies - the benefits of enhanced impact from open access should make open access an imperative. No Canadian journal can provide the kind of access to anyone, anywhere that open access can; the academic publishing market is simply too competitive internationally. Compare, for example, the difference in access between an article in a journal purchased by Canada's research libraries and a few international research libraries, with an article that is immediately openly accessible to anyone, anywhere. If Canadians want to make an impact on the world, we need to make our work available.
14) While considering IP rights and the commercialization of IP, what should be the minimum time required for release of these forms of data into the public domain?
Immediately
Three months
Six months
Other (please specify)
Immediately. Publicly funded research should be readily available to all without delay.
As a second option, some of the major policy initatives (Wellcome Trust, Federal Research Public Access Act in the U.S.) are allowing a maximum 6 month delay. If you would like to suggest this option, please note that the policy should state immediate open access as the preferred option.
If you selected other, please specify:
15) If CIHR were to mandate self-archiving of peer-reviewed publications, how long after publication should this occur?
Immediately
Three months
Six months
Other (please specify)
Immediately - see above.
If you selected other, please specify:
16) Can you think of any responsibilities or obligations for those requesting CIHR materials? (e.g. acknowledgements)
Authors should retain moral rights such as attribution. This can be clarified using a creative commons Attribution license.
17) How do you see co-funding influencing access to physical products of research?
Co-funding does complicate matters. However, I would suggest that any public funding should come with some obligations for open public access - the more the public funding, the greater the obligation. For example, a 100% publicly funded study might be required to be immediately open access. A 50% publicly funded study might be made available after a 6-month delay, and so forth.
18) Please comment on any experiences with other organizations, both nationally and internationally, regarding sharing or access to resources, data, and publications? Do you have suggestions or comments that CIHR should consider during policy development?
Based on the experiences of the U.S. National Institute of Health, it is clear that the policy must require, not recommend, deposit of research results for open access. The timeline must be very clear as well.
19) Other comments or suggestions:
Two excellent models for policy:
The U.S. Cornyn-Lieberman Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 Bill. Information can be found at:
http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/media/Release06-0502.html
The Wellcome Trust Position Statement in Support of Open and Unrestricted Access to Published Research
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD002766.html
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.
Survey Questions
1) Please identify your affiliation
Researcher
Journal and journal editors
Scientific society
Libraries and library associations
Other (please specify)
If you selected other, please specify:
CIHR Policy in Development - Consultation on Access to Products of Research
2) Are there any specific research resources, tools, and products that you think should be included in this policy (e.g. software or protocols)?
OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative / Protocol for Metadata Harvesting)
3) How can we ensure that a policy increasing access to the physical products of research does not negatively impact the intellectual property (IP) rights of inventors, and the commercialization of IP?
There are two separate points here.
First - does it make sense for taxpayers to fund research for the economic benefits of a few? My suggestion: taxpayer-funded research belongs in the public domain.
Second - if some situations (such as co-funded studies) are considered consonant with IP of inventors and the commercialization of IP, it is still completely reasonable to require that any published peer-reviewed research article, be published as open access. Protecting trade secrets means either not publishing at all, or publishing as a patent rather than as a research article.
4) When is it appropriate for researchers to put restrictions on products of research?
Restrictions on products of research should be limited to protection of individual privacy rights.
5) Can you suggest appropriate restrictions that will minimize harms (or maximize benefits) to further research?
This question is backwards! It is restrictions that cause harms, and open access that maximizes benefits.
6) Is there a specific type of data (not mentioned above) that should be covered with this policy statement?
7) Would you support a policy statement that involved sharing research data obtained with the help of CIHR funding? Please elaborate on your answer in the comments section.
Yes No
Yes
8) If you answered No to question number 7, please explain
9) Do you think this policy should cover products other than peer-reviewed publications, such as book chapters, editorials, reviews, or conference proceedings?
Yes No
Yes
Additional comments:
Any publications produced as a result of taxpayer funding, should be openly accessible.
10) Do you support self-archiving of peer-reviewed research publications in an Institutional Repository (IR) at a Canadian university?
Note that not all universities in Canada currently have an IR.
Yes
No
Maybe
Yes
Additional comments:
There are other options for researchers who do not yet have an IR.
All CIHR-funded researchers can deposit in PubMedCentral for now, and copy articles to an IR as soon as one is available.
There are good reasons why depositing in more than one archive is optimal - for purposes of preservation, and enhanced impact. Canadians should deposit their in PubMedCentral to ensure that their work is retrieved by anyone who uses this resource exclusively. Copying to a Canadian repository is also advisable, for additional discovery as well as preservation purposes. Canadian works should be deposited in at least one Canadian repository, as soon as practical, to ensure ongoing access for Canadians.
There are open repositories, for example at the University of Tampere in Finland.
There are other disciplinary repositories that may be useful for some researchers, such as arXiv or E-LIS.
11) Would you prefer self-archiving of research publications using your personal website?
Note that personal websites are not interoperable. An advantage of IRs is that they use interoperability standards, such as those of the Open Archives Initiative.
Yes
No
No
Additional comments:
Education is needed here. There are advantages to IRs in terms of preservation as well as interoperability; also, this is not an either-or situation. Authors can post to their personal websites, too. Open access archives, whether institutional or disciplinary in nature, can provide authors with a single, clickable link to all of their works, one that is automatically updated with each new work. This mean if someone has copied a link to their works, anytime the link is accessed, new works will appear along with the old.
12) Would you endorse archiving of peer-reviewed results in the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central?
Yes, absolutely. This is the best option for preservation and searchability.
Or, would you prefer that Canadian peer-reviewed results be archived in a Canadian repository, such as a national repository of the kind which the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI) is positioned to develop for the National Research Council. (See the CISTI Strategic Plan for 2005-2010, http://cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/about/stratplan_3_e.html).
Yes, this too. But let's not wait - let's deposit in PMC right away, then copy to a Canadian repository as soon as one is available.
13) If you are a journal editor, or representative of a professional scientific society, what are potential positive or negative impacts that you see with the implementation of a policy requiring CIHR funded researchers to follow one of the aforementioned mechanisms?
For Canadian researchers - those who are served by local journals and professional scientific societies - the benefits of enhanced impact from open access should make open access an imperative. No Canadian journal can provide the kind of access to anyone, anywhere that open access can; the academic publishing market is simply too competitive internationally. Compare, for example, the difference in access between an article in a journal purchased by Canada's research libraries and a few international research libraries, with an article that is immediately openly accessible to anyone, anywhere. If Canadians want to make an impact on the world, we need to make our work available.
14) While considering IP rights and the commercialization of IP, what should be the minimum time required for release of these forms of data into the public domain?
Immediately
Three months
Six months
Other (please specify)
Immediately. Publicly funded research should be readily available to all without delay.
As a second option, some of the major policy initatives (Wellcome Trust, Federal Research Public Access Act in the U.S.) are allowing a maximum 6 month delay. If you would like to suggest this option, please note that the policy should state immediate open access as the preferred option.
If you selected other, please specify:
15) If CIHR were to mandate self-archiving of peer-reviewed publications, how long after publication should this occur?
Immediately
Three months
Six months
Other (please specify)
Immediately - see above.
If you selected other, please specify:
16) Can you think of any responsibilities or obligations for those requesting CIHR materials? (e.g. acknowledgements)
Authors should retain moral rights such as attribution. This can be clarified using a creative commons Attribution license.
17) How do you see co-funding influencing access to physical products of research?
Co-funding does complicate matters. However, I would suggest that any public funding should come with some obligations for open public access - the more the public funding, the greater the obligation. For example, a 100% publicly funded study might be required to be immediately open access. A 50% publicly funded study might be made available after a 6-month delay, and so forth.
18) Please comment on any experiences with other organizations, both nationally and internationally, regarding sharing or access to resources, data, and publications? Do you have suggestions or comments that CIHR should consider during policy development?
Based on the experiences of the U.S. National Institute of Health, it is clear that the policy must require, not recommend, deposit of research results for open access. The timeline must be very clear as well.
19) Other comments or suggestions:
Two excellent models for policy:
The U.S. Cornyn-Lieberman Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 Bill. Information can be found at:
http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/media/Release06-0502.html
The Wellcome Trust Position Statement in Support of Open and Unrestricted Access to Published Research
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD002766.html
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.
Saturday, May 06, 2006
SSHRC to Actively Promote Open Access to Research Results
From the SSHRC March 2006 Council Meeting:
SSHRC to actively promote open access to research results
Following on Council’s October 2004 approval in principle of open access—permanent, free, online access to the results of federally-funded research—staff consulted with the social sciences and humanities community and reported on the options available to make open access a reality.
The idea of open access to all research is widely accepted, but presents a number of implementation obstacles, and the community is by and large cautious.
Rather than imposing mandatory requirements on researchers to publish via open access, Council chose to increase awareness of open access, pursue discussions with major stakeholders, and gradually incorporate open access provisions in research support programs.
Comments: encouraging and promoting open access are laudable goals. However, experience has shown that a mandate is necessary - for example, the NIH Public Access Policy which "requests and strongly encourages" open access, has had an absolutely dismal compliance rate, of 3.8%, as reported to Congress January 2006, and blogged by Peter Suber. This low compliance rate contrasts with the research of Swan and Brown, which found that 81% of authors would willingly comply with a mandate to deposit.
Hopefully, SSHRC will revisit the mandate issue in the near future, perhaps after the U.S. Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 passes. See the SPARC site for a FAQ for University Administrators and Faculty on FRPPA.
Meanwhile, SSHRC's commitment to increase awareness about open access and gradually incorporate open access provisions in research support programs will help to move us forward towards open access.
One question I have for SSHRC is whether the rule requiring 200 subscriptions for an academic journal to qualify for subsidy has been modified, as this provision actively discriminates against full open-access electronic journals.
There are many ways in which SSHRC could increase awareness about open access. One very simple means would be to prominently post SSHRC's Open Access Policy on the SSHRC web pages - if not on the home page, perhaps on the "About SSHRC", perhaps with a link not too far from the "Apply for Funding" link. The Open Access page could include links to key educational resources, such as Peter Suber's Open Access Overview, or his Very Brief Introduction to Open Access.
It would be a good idea to highlight Canadian resources and intiatives, such as the Canadian Association of Research Libraries' Institutional Repository program and Metadata Harvester. Or, how about a list of Canadian open access journals, or Canadian researchers and librarians with expertise on open access? The latter could be a self-service type of education - people could look up the writings of the many Canadian open access experts, or perhaps even invite us to speak.
Supporting technology learning to support open access initiatives should do a great deal to promote open access. In particular, it would be helpful to support learning about institutional repository software, and new journal publishing platforms such as Open Journal Systems. Supporting these kinds of initiatives now would mean that SSHRC could plan to review its policy in the near future, knowing that there would be fewer obstacles to OA.
Thanks to Peter Suber and the University of Toronto's Open Source | Open Access Project for the news about the SSHRC Council meeting, and also to Jean Claude Guédon on the American Scientist Open Access Forum for some inspiration on this topic.
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.
SSHRC to actively promote open access to research results
Following on Council’s October 2004 approval in principle of open access—permanent, free, online access to the results of federally-funded research—staff consulted with the social sciences and humanities community and reported on the options available to make open access a reality.
The idea of open access to all research is widely accepted, but presents a number of implementation obstacles, and the community is by and large cautious.
Rather than imposing mandatory requirements on researchers to publish via open access, Council chose to increase awareness of open access, pursue discussions with major stakeholders, and gradually incorporate open access provisions in research support programs.
Comments: encouraging and promoting open access are laudable goals. However, experience has shown that a mandate is necessary - for example, the NIH Public Access Policy which "requests and strongly encourages" open access, has had an absolutely dismal compliance rate, of 3.8%, as reported to Congress January 2006, and blogged by Peter Suber. This low compliance rate contrasts with the research of Swan and Brown, which found that 81% of authors would willingly comply with a mandate to deposit.
Hopefully, SSHRC will revisit the mandate issue in the near future, perhaps after the U.S. Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 passes. See the SPARC site for a FAQ for University Administrators and Faculty on FRPPA.
Meanwhile, SSHRC's commitment to increase awareness about open access and gradually incorporate open access provisions in research support programs will help to move us forward towards open access.
One question I have for SSHRC is whether the rule requiring 200 subscriptions for an academic journal to qualify for subsidy has been modified, as this provision actively discriminates against full open-access electronic journals.
There are many ways in which SSHRC could increase awareness about open access. One very simple means would be to prominently post SSHRC's Open Access Policy on the SSHRC web pages - if not on the home page, perhaps on the "About SSHRC", perhaps with a link not too far from the "Apply for Funding" link. The Open Access page could include links to key educational resources, such as Peter Suber's Open Access Overview, or his Very Brief Introduction to Open Access.
It would be a good idea to highlight Canadian resources and intiatives, such as the Canadian Association of Research Libraries' Institutional Repository program and Metadata Harvester. Or, how about a list of Canadian open access journals, or Canadian researchers and librarians with expertise on open access? The latter could be a self-service type of education - people could look up the writings of the many Canadian open access experts, or perhaps even invite us to speak.
Supporting technology learning to support open access initiatives should do a great deal to promote open access. In particular, it would be helpful to support learning about institutional repository software, and new journal publishing platforms such as Open Journal Systems. Supporting these kinds of initiatives now would mean that SSHRC could plan to review its policy in the near future, knowing that there would be fewer obstacles to OA.
Thanks to Peter Suber and the University of Toronto's Open Source | Open Access Project for the news about the SSHRC Council meeting, and also to Jean Claude Guédon on the American Scientist Open Access Forum for some inspiration on this topic.
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.
Friday, May 05, 2006
Peer Review in the Google Age: Transcript
A transcript of my presentation, Beyond Peer Review: Collaboration, February 23, 2006, has been posted on the Drexel CoAX E-Learning Transcripts page. Thanks to Jean-Claude Bradley & colleagues at Drexel for transcribing the screencast.
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.
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.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Congrats to U.S. Senators Cornyn & Lieberman!
Congratulations to U.S. Senators John Cornyn and Joseph Lieberman for setting the standard for open access policy, with their "Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006", introduced in the U.S. Senate today, May 2, 2006.
This bill builds on the leadership of the U.S. National Institute of Health with its Public Access Policy, and reflects lessons learned since the NIH policy was enacted a year ago. Experience has shown that a request to deposit research articles is not enough; this led to a dismal 4% compliance rate. A clear-cut mandate to deposit is what is needed, and what the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) of 2006 accomplishes. FRPAA also clearly sets the standard for timing of deposit of research, with immediate deposit being the ideal, and 6 months after publication the maximum delay.
The scope of FRPPA is broad, encompassing a number of U.S. federal funding agencies.
Thank you for FRPPA, Senators Cornyn and Lieberman. May this Act pass speedily and effortlessly, and may it become a model for other governments to follow. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research are currently considering their own Access to Products of Research policy, and I will certainly recommend looking to FRPPA as a model.
Peter Suber has posted a number of links on FRPPA. For Peter's thoughtful analysis, see the May 2006 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. More information can be found on the SPARC web site.
Even though the bill was only introduced this morning, enthusiastic endorsements are already coming in! The Alliance for Taxpayer Access and the American Association for College Libraries have already endorsed the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006.
This bill builds on the leadership of the U.S. National Institute of Health with its Public Access Policy, and reflects lessons learned since the NIH policy was enacted a year ago. Experience has shown that a request to deposit research articles is not enough; this led to a dismal 4% compliance rate. A clear-cut mandate to deposit is what is needed, and what the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) of 2006 accomplishes. FRPAA also clearly sets the standard for timing of deposit of research, with immediate deposit being the ideal, and 6 months after publication the maximum delay.
The scope of FRPPA is broad, encompassing a number of U.S. federal funding agencies.
Thank you for FRPPA, Senators Cornyn and Lieberman. May this Act pass speedily and effortlessly, and may it become a model for other governments to follow. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research are currently considering their own Access to Products of Research policy, and I will certainly recommend looking to FRPPA as a model.
Peter Suber has posted a number of links on FRPPA. For Peter's thoughtful analysis, see the May 2006 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. More information can be found on the SPARC web site.
Even though the bill was only introduced this morning, enthusiastic endorsements are already coming in! The Alliance for Taxpayer Access and the American Association for College Libraries have already endorsed the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Open Access: to Leverage the Research Dollar
For the research funder, here is yet another reason why the results of research should be openly accessible, as soon as possible: immediately on publication - or before: to leverage the research dollar.
Why? The way science works is in a series of steps, or like a puzzle. The goals of research are broad: finding cures for cancer, learning how to prevent or treat heart disease. These kinds of goals are rarely reached through a single study. Rather, each piece of research brings us just one step closer to the goal. One researcher discovers something that tells us that it looks like a disease just might be caused by a virus. Several studies later, this is confirmed, and the virus is identified. Other studies tell us best methods for treating the illness, and a vaccine is developed. Someday, hopefully, a means of destroying the virus altogether will be found.
When we fund one step in this research, we achieve more when more researchers are able to get on with the next steps, and we achieve the most when the results are shared as openly and quickly as possible, so that as many researchers as possible can get on to the next steps as quickly as possible.
How this relates to research dollars: because research occurs worldwide, the research dollars of one funder can be leveraged through the efforts of others, including researchers receiving funds from other agencies, and often researchers working without specific funding. Open, immediate sharing is like multiplying your research lab, your research team - with no extra dollars involved.
Another way to look at this: look at what happened when the world's researchers and funders worked together, sharing information openly and rapidly, to map the the human genome - and look how fast this was actually achieved. Why not use the same methods to understand and find better treatments or cures for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and other human ailments?
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.
Why? The way science works is in a series of steps, or like a puzzle. The goals of research are broad: finding cures for cancer, learning how to prevent or treat heart disease. These kinds of goals are rarely reached through a single study. Rather, each piece of research brings us just one step closer to the goal. One researcher discovers something that tells us that it looks like a disease just might be caused by a virus. Several studies later, this is confirmed, and the virus is identified. Other studies tell us best methods for treating the illness, and a vaccine is developed. Someday, hopefully, a means of destroying the virus altogether will be found.
When we fund one step in this research, we achieve more when more researchers are able to get on with the next steps, and we achieve the most when the results are shared as openly and quickly as possible, so that as many researchers as possible can get on to the next steps as quickly as possible.
How this relates to research dollars: because research occurs worldwide, the research dollars of one funder can be leveraged through the efforts of others, including researchers receiving funds from other agencies, and often researchers working without specific funding. Open, immediate sharing is like multiplying your research lab, your research team - with no extra dollars involved.
Another way to look at this: look at what happened when the world's researchers and funders worked together, sharing information openly and rapidly, to map the the human genome - and look how fast this was actually achieved. Why not use the same methods to understand and find better treatments or cures for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and other human ailments?
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.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Open Access: to Help the Helpers
Open Access: to Help the Helpers
An Open Letter to Gerald P. Koocher, President and all Members of the American Psychological Association
There are a very great many good reasons why researchers and practitioners across many disciplines are enthusiastically embracing the potential of the internet to create, as the Budapest Open Access Initiative describes it, an unprecedented public good: open access to the scholarly literature that was never produced for the creator's profit.
Today, my request is that the American Psychological Association give some thought to the potential of open access to help the helpers.
Many, if not most, of us, are involved in helping relationships at various points in our lives. A few of us have the advantage of professional training and resources to allow us ready access to the scholarly literature, such as the professional clinical psychologist practicing in the research hospital.
A very great many helpers, however, do not have access to these resources.
Consider, for example, the social worker in the inner city. Many social workers work long hours, and without much pay. Having to travel to a university, or pay to read research is a real barrier for someone like this. Ready access to the scholarly literature in psychology could make the difference between a practice that is evidence-based, and one that is not. What a difference this can make - for the social worker and clients alike.
Or, what about the parent struggling to understand an autistic child? Not every parent in such a situation will want to read the research literature - but, if they do - is this not their right?
How about all of the other caregivers - of family members with dementia, major or minor mental illnesses, or all the volunteers who help the caregivers?
Or, for that matter, the professional health care workers? Picture the doctor, or psychologist in a rural practice - no university library nearby. Couldn't open access make a world of difference to these people?
What about teachers and guidance counsellors? There may be a lucky few in schools with plentiful resources, but in my experience, schools are fortunate to be able to provide a few books and other resources for the students, never mind professional research literature for staff.
Or, let's think about all the people involved in various areas of crime and delinquency - our police and correctional officers? Wouldn't ready access to the latest in psychology help to inform their practice - and wouldn't open access be the optimum way to provide this?
If, like me, you believe that the science and art that is psychology truly matters to the world - because what, after all, could be more important than understanding ourselves - surely you will agree that our knowledge of psychology - all of it - should be shared, as openly as possible. There is a time for each discipline and profession to consider its own commitment to open access. Psychologists - it is your turn.
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.
An Open Letter to Gerald P. Koocher, President and all Members of the American Psychological Association
There are a very great many good reasons why researchers and practitioners across many disciplines are enthusiastically embracing the potential of the internet to create, as the Budapest Open Access Initiative describes it, an unprecedented public good: open access to the scholarly literature that was never produced for the creator's profit.
Today, my request is that the American Psychological Association give some thought to the potential of open access to help the helpers.
Many, if not most, of us, are involved in helping relationships at various points in our lives. A few of us have the advantage of professional training and resources to allow us ready access to the scholarly literature, such as the professional clinical psychologist practicing in the research hospital.
A very great many helpers, however, do not have access to these resources.
Consider, for example, the social worker in the inner city. Many social workers work long hours, and without much pay. Having to travel to a university, or pay to read research is a real barrier for someone like this. Ready access to the scholarly literature in psychology could make the difference between a practice that is evidence-based, and one that is not. What a difference this can make - for the social worker and clients alike.
Or, what about the parent struggling to understand an autistic child? Not every parent in such a situation will want to read the research literature - but, if they do - is this not their right?
How about all of the other caregivers - of family members with dementia, major or minor mental illnesses, or all the volunteers who help the caregivers?
Or, for that matter, the professional health care workers? Picture the doctor, or psychologist in a rural practice - no university library nearby. Couldn't open access make a world of difference to these people?
What about teachers and guidance counsellors? There may be a lucky few in schools with plentiful resources, but in my experience, schools are fortunate to be able to provide a few books and other resources for the students, never mind professional research literature for staff.
Or, let's think about all the people involved in various areas of crime and delinquency - our police and correctional officers? Wouldn't ready access to the latest in psychology help to inform their practice - and wouldn't open access be the optimum way to provide this?
If, like me, you believe that the science and art that is psychology truly matters to the world - because what, after all, could be more important than understanding ourselves - surely you will agree that our knowledge of psychology - all of it - should be shared, as openly as possible. There is a time for each discipline and profession to consider its own commitment to open access. Psychologists - it is your turn.
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.
Monday, April 17, 2006
Open Access Archiving Maillist
An open access archiving maillist has been set up, primarily for managers of open access archives who would like to discuss issues relating to OA archiving in the dual sense of providing access and preservation.
The reason for setting up this list was interest expressed in exploring the use of LOCKSS software as a preservation mechanism for OA archives. The nature of LOCKSS requires collaborative groups, as preservation involves a set of LOCKSS boxes (usually about 6) which constantly communicate with each other. There are reasons why LOCKSS boxes are best dispersed. Hence, this list can serve as a means for OA archivers to meet other potential LOCKSS-group participants.
The list is open to anyone, however, in order to avoid spam, subscribing and unsubscribing is manual. To subscribe, please contact me at heather dot eln dot bc dot ca.
Participants can send a message to the list by sending to openaccess-archiving@sfu.ca
Update April 26: an Archive is now available for the openaccess-archiving list.
The reason for setting up this list was interest expressed in exploring the use of LOCKSS software as a preservation mechanism for OA archives. The nature of LOCKSS requires collaborative groups, as preservation involves a set of LOCKSS boxes (usually about 6) which constantly communicate with each other. There are reasons why LOCKSS boxes are best dispersed. Hence, this list can serve as a means for OA archivers to meet other potential LOCKSS-group participants.
The list is open to anyone, however, in order to avoid spam, subscribing and unsubscribing is manual. To subscribe, please contact me at heather dot eln dot bc dot ca.
Participants can send a message to the list by sending to openaccess-archiving@sfu.ca
Update April 26: an Archive is now available for the openaccess-archiving list.
Friday, April 14, 2006
Open Access and the Copyright Collective
It is time to rethink the idea of the copyright collective, for a number of reasons. In Canada, the copyright collective is called Access Copyright. According to the Access Canada website, "The agency now represents a vast international repertoire along with more than 8,000 Canadian creators and publishers".
With the world wide web, it is possible for virtually everyone to publish their own works, and a very great many of us do. What exactly is the point of a copyright collective representing only 8,000 Canadians? In a country with a population of 32 million, surely there are millions of creators, not thousands?
I myself am an example of a creator who interests are not at all represented by Access Copyright.
On the contrary, as an academic I am disadvantaged by this collective. Academic institutions pay the copyright collective; this takes monies away from the educational and research functions of the universities. This makes no sense at all! Universities are major creators of intellectual content - if those who create intellectual property are to be reimbused through collectives, the cheques should be flowing to the universities, not from them. I'm not suggesting that this happen; merely, that it would make more sense.
This situation is rapidly becoming much more obvious, as university libraries take on an expanded role in serving the interests of their own creators, through the OA academic presses and open access archives. Canada is a bit behind Europe in this respect, but nevertheless, it is time to begin preparing for the future - a future where university library open archives will include not only the peer-reviewed literature, but also a great deal more: open access to research data per se, and grey literature which was never included in the deals of any copyright collective.
All librarians have a responsibility, in my view, to be the spokespersons for the popular individual creators, who also have never been part of the Access copyright collective. We librarians need to speak up for more than just library exceptions. It is our duty to speak for the public, both as users and creators of information. It is this obligation that gives us the authority to request the library exceptions to copyright; it is not libraries per se that need special treatment. The rights belong to those we serve. Ultimately, this is everyone.
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.
With the world wide web, it is possible for virtually everyone to publish their own works, and a very great many of us do. What exactly is the point of a copyright collective representing only 8,000 Canadians? In a country with a population of 32 million, surely there are millions of creators, not thousands?
I myself am an example of a creator who interests are not at all represented by Access Copyright.
On the contrary, as an academic I am disadvantaged by this collective. Academic institutions pay the copyright collective; this takes monies away from the educational and research functions of the universities. This makes no sense at all! Universities are major creators of intellectual content - if those who create intellectual property are to be reimbused through collectives, the cheques should be flowing to the universities, not from them. I'm not suggesting that this happen; merely, that it would make more sense.
This situation is rapidly becoming much more obvious, as university libraries take on an expanded role in serving the interests of their own creators, through the OA academic presses and open access archives. Canada is a bit behind Europe in this respect, but nevertheless, it is time to begin preparing for the future - a future where university library open archives will include not only the peer-reviewed literature, but also a great deal more: open access to research data per se, and grey literature which was never included in the deals of any copyright collective.
All librarians have a responsibility, in my view, to be the spokespersons for the popular individual creators, who also have never been part of the Access copyright collective. We librarians need to speak up for more than just library exceptions. It is our duty to speak for the public, both as users and creators of information. It is this obligation that gives us the authority to request the library exceptions to copyright; it is not libraries per se that need special treatment. The rights belong to those we serve. Ultimately, this is everyone.
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.
Friday, March 31, 2006
The Dramatic Growth of Open Access: March 31, 2006 Update
The Dramatic Growth of Open Access continues!
In the last quarter, over 780,000 records have been added to OAIster, suggesting that those open access archives are beginning to fill! There are 170 more titles in DOAJ, likely an understated increase due to a weeding project. 78 titles have been added to DOAJ in the past 30 days, a growth rate of more than 2 new titles per day. Disciplinary archives are showing remarkable growth. E-LIS has been increasing at the equivalent of 56% annually. Differences in growth rates suggest the possibility of a life-cycle factor in open access archives growth, perhaps initial slow growth, followed by very rapid growth, then a more steady growth as the archive matures.
Following is an overview and analysis of data examined. The data itself - a few indicators chosen primarily because they are relatively easy to determine - follows at the end.
Overview and Analysis
The most notable increase is the addition of over 780,000 records to OAIster, the equivalent of a 50% annual increase. This rate of increase doubles that of 2005 (25%). This evidence suggests that those open access institutional archives are beginning to fill! Among the disciplinary archives examined, the highest growth rate was shown at E-LIS, with an equivalent of a 56% annual increase.
The longer-established disciplinary archives showed impressive but slower growth rates: RePEC, 25%, and arXiv, 12%. One possible explanation could be a life-cycle factor for successful disciplinary archives, with a relatively high percentage growth rate at an early stage, followed by slower percentage growth at a more mature phase. This will reflect, in part, the larger size of the repository. It takes more records to create a 12% increase in a large repository than a 50% increase in a small one.
Data from the Canadian Metadata Harvester may indicate another potential life-cycle effect. That is, the Canadian repositories showed a growth rate equivalent to less than 12% per year. The difference between the Canadian open access archives data increase and the OAIster increase (50%) may reflect the relative newness of many of the Canadian repositories.
While delayed free access is not true open access, the 200,000 articles added to the Highwire Free program - an equivalent of a 72% annual increase - does represent a dramatic increase in free access.
DOAJ includes 170 more titles now than on Dec. 31, 2006, an equivalent annual growth rate of 34%. This percentage is likely an understatement, as DOAJ has been undertaking a weeding project to remove titles no longer meeting DOAJ criteria.
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 Dec. 31, 2005 Update and 2006 Predictions.
Directory of Open Access Journals:
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
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 8.5% increase, or the equivalent of a 34% annual increase. Please note that this figure may underestimate the growth of OA journals, due to recent weeding by DOAJ of titles no longer meeting the criteria.
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
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 a 12.5% increase in records in a quarter, or the equivalent of a 50% annual increase. This doubles the rate of increase noted Dec. 31 (25% increase in records in less than a year). The number of institutions has increased by 5.5%, or the equivalent of 22% annually, half of the increase reported in 2005. The latter may be an anomaly; that is, it is possible that this number could be artificially low, assuming that academic libraries would tend to wait until after the semester to implement a new repository.
Highwire Press Free Online Fulltext 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 18% increase in this quarter, or the equivalent of 72% annually.
arXiv
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 a 3% increase in this quarter, or the equivalent of 12% annually.
RePEC: Research Papers in Economics
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.
The rate of increase of items available online is 6.4%, or the equivalent of 25% annually, the same growth rate as last year. Recently, the American Economics Association began adding records directly from RePEC into EconLIT, as reported by Thomas Krichel - see Thomas Krichel: a man with vision - and drive!. This provides added incentive for authors to add their works to RePEC.
E-LIS
March 31, 2006: 3,539 documents
Dec. 31, 2005: 3,095 documents
This is a 14% increase, or the equivalent of 56% annually.
Open Access Publishers
The number of open access publishers and their journals is not being reported this time. There are too many, and I don't want to leave anyone out!
Canadian Association of Research Libraries : Metadata Harvester
March 31, 2006: 22,566 records from 12 archives
Dec. 31, 2005: 21,922 records from 11 archives.
This is a 2.9% increase, or the equivalent of 11.6% annually.
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.
In the last quarter, over 780,000 records have been added to OAIster, suggesting that those open access archives are beginning to fill! There are 170 more titles in DOAJ, likely an understated increase due to a weeding project. 78 titles have been added to DOAJ in the past 30 days, a growth rate of more than 2 new titles per day. Disciplinary archives are showing remarkable growth. E-LIS has been increasing at the equivalent of 56% annually. Differences in growth rates suggest the possibility of a life-cycle factor in open access archives growth, perhaps initial slow growth, followed by very rapid growth, then a more steady growth as the archive matures.
Following is an overview and analysis of data examined. The data itself - a few indicators chosen primarily because they are relatively easy to determine - follows at the end.
Overview and Analysis
The most notable increase is the addition of over 780,000 records to OAIster, the equivalent of a 50% annual increase. This rate of increase doubles that of 2005 (25%). This evidence suggests that those open access institutional archives are beginning to fill! Among the disciplinary archives examined, the highest growth rate was shown at E-LIS, with an equivalent of a 56% annual increase.
The longer-established disciplinary archives showed impressive but slower growth rates: RePEC, 25%, and arXiv, 12%. One possible explanation could be a life-cycle factor for successful disciplinary archives, with a relatively high percentage growth rate at an early stage, followed by slower percentage growth at a more mature phase. This will reflect, in part, the larger size of the repository. It takes more records to create a 12% increase in a large repository than a 50% increase in a small one.
Data from the Canadian Metadata Harvester may indicate another potential life-cycle effect. That is, the Canadian repositories showed a growth rate equivalent to less than 12% per year. The difference between the Canadian open access archives data increase and the OAIster increase (50%) may reflect the relative newness of many of the Canadian repositories.
While delayed free access is not true open access, the 200,000 articles added to the Highwire Free program - an equivalent of a 72% annual increase - does represent a dramatic increase in free access.
DOAJ includes 170 more titles now than on Dec. 31, 2006, an equivalent annual growth rate of 34%. This percentage is likely an understatement, as DOAJ has been undertaking a weeding project to remove titles no longer meeting DOAJ criteria.
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 Dec. 31, 2005 Update and 2006 Predictions.
Directory of Open Access Journals:
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
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 8.5% increase, or the equivalent of a 34% annual increase. Please note that this figure may underestimate the growth of OA journals, due to recent weeding by DOAJ of titles no longer meeting the criteria.
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
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 a 12.5% increase in records in a quarter, or the equivalent of a 50% annual increase. This doubles the rate of increase noted Dec. 31 (25% increase in records in less than a year). The number of institutions has increased by 5.5%, or the equivalent of 22% annually, half of the increase reported in 2005. The latter may be an anomaly; that is, it is possible that this number could be artificially low, assuming that academic libraries would tend to wait until after the semester to implement a new repository.
Highwire Press Free Online Fulltext 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 18% increase in this quarter, or the equivalent of 72% annually.
arXiv
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 a 3% increase in this quarter, or the equivalent of 12% annually.
RePEC: Research Papers in Economics
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.
The rate of increase of items available online is 6.4%, or the equivalent of 25% annually, the same growth rate as last year. Recently, the American Economics Association began adding records directly from RePEC into EconLIT, as reported by Thomas Krichel - see Thomas Krichel: a man with vision - and drive!. This provides added incentive for authors to add their works to RePEC.
E-LIS
March 31, 2006: 3,539 documents
Dec. 31, 2005: 3,095 documents
This is a 14% increase, or the equivalent of 56% annually.
Open Access Publishers
The number of open access publishers and their journals is not being reported this time. There are too many, and I don't want to leave anyone out!
Canadian Association of Research Libraries : Metadata Harvester
March 31, 2006: 22,566 records from 12 archives
Dec. 31, 2005: 21,922 records from 11 archives.
This is a 2.9% increase, or the equivalent of 11.6% annually.
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.
Saturday, March 25, 2006
Open Access: Transformative Change
An Open Letter to the President and Members of the American Chemical Society
Dear E. Ann Nally, President, ACS:
In a recent e-mail to ACS members, you inquire whether the NIH Public Access Policy is simply change for its own sake, whether it really adds value beyond what it presently available.
As an open access advocate, let me explain. The NIH Public Access Policy is merely one piece in the move towards open access. The potential of open access is not change for the sake of change; it is transformative change, towards an unprecedented public good.
Consider, for example, how through open sharing of information, the world's researchers were able to come together to map the human genome in a mind-bogglingly short time. Why not pursue this approach to solve the puzzle of developing sustainable, environmentally friendly energy resources - or to keep one step ahead of avian flu?
The NIH's Public Access Policy extends the already openly available Medline index in PubMed. It can be argued that open access to Medline has been a key in the move towards evidence-based practice in medicine over the past few years, since this has brought access to medical evidence to practitioners everywhere. This is a whole new approach to medicine, one that brings the latest research to the practitioner, benefiting practitioners and patients alike.
PubMedCentral also makes the research available to the general public, allowing the efforts of our doctors, nurses, and other health professionals to be supplemented by those individuals and family members who care to take advantage of this opportunity. Obviously, not everyone will want to read the research literature, certainly not for a routine, easily corrected medical problem. However, when people are afflicted with a serious illness for which there is no certain treatment, many will want to read the research literature, and this is their right.
Consider, Ann, whether one of your loved ones might someday suffer from terminal, incurable cancer. Could you imagine yourself wanting to comb the literature for any clues to a new approach?
Open access is transformative in another sense - it makes the research literature readily available to a great many more people than at present. As you are no doubt aware, Ann, the whole world cannot afford to purchase the journals of the ACS, not even all the wealthiest universities in the developed world. Many a college professor even in a wealthy country like Canada does not have ready access to the ACS journals. Lack of access is much more acute in the less-developed world.
The greatly expanded access that is open access will open up many, many opportunities. Professional practitioners in northern British Columbia will have the same access that is currently available at the teaching hospitals in Vancouver. More colleges, smaller universities and even high schools, will have ready access to the research literature, making it possible to teach in new ways, to develop an information and science literate populace. In the less-developed world, ready access to resources is one of the keys to developing education programs. Here, it is not just that colleges and universities will have more access; rather, more access will make it possible to develop more college and universities.
More researchers with ready access, both to the research literature and the impactful publishing opportunity that is open access, means more rapid advancement of knowledge.
As a former college professor, Ann, no doubt you are aware that many of your former colleagues enjoy a good deal less access than university professors. With open access, these colleagues will not only have the means to participate in research if desired - they will also be more effective teachers, partially because it will be easier to keep up with new developments, and partly because there will be more resources for students.
Change can be difficult for all of us, and perhaps moreso for the privileged, profitable society publisher. However, as the Budapest Open Access Initiative stated so well, open access makes possible an unprecedented public good:
Removing access barriers to this literature will accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge.
This kind of transformation is absolutely worth the relatively small and transitory discomforts of change. Ann, I invite you personally, along with every member of the American Chemical Society, not only to fully support the NIH Public Access Policy, but also to go much farther - to engage in the process of transformation, to openly and immediately share not just peer-reviewed postprints, but also preprints, data, conference presentations, and research in progress.
Heather Morrison
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com
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.
Dear E. Ann Nally, President, ACS:
In a recent e-mail to ACS members, you inquire whether the NIH Public Access Policy is simply change for its own sake, whether it really adds value beyond what it presently available.
As an open access advocate, let me explain. The NIH Public Access Policy is merely one piece in the move towards open access. The potential of open access is not change for the sake of change; it is transformative change, towards an unprecedented public good.
Consider, for example, how through open sharing of information, the world's researchers were able to come together to map the human genome in a mind-bogglingly short time. Why not pursue this approach to solve the puzzle of developing sustainable, environmentally friendly energy resources - or to keep one step ahead of avian flu?
The NIH's Public Access Policy extends the already openly available Medline index in PubMed. It can be argued that open access to Medline has been a key in the move towards evidence-based practice in medicine over the past few years, since this has brought access to medical evidence to practitioners everywhere. This is a whole new approach to medicine, one that brings the latest research to the practitioner, benefiting practitioners and patients alike.
PubMedCentral also makes the research available to the general public, allowing the efforts of our doctors, nurses, and other health professionals to be supplemented by those individuals and family members who care to take advantage of this opportunity. Obviously, not everyone will want to read the research literature, certainly not for a routine, easily corrected medical problem. However, when people are afflicted with a serious illness for which there is no certain treatment, many will want to read the research literature, and this is their right.
Consider, Ann, whether one of your loved ones might someday suffer from terminal, incurable cancer. Could you imagine yourself wanting to comb the literature for any clues to a new approach?
Open access is transformative in another sense - it makes the research literature readily available to a great many more people than at present. As you are no doubt aware, Ann, the whole world cannot afford to purchase the journals of the ACS, not even all the wealthiest universities in the developed world. Many a college professor even in a wealthy country like Canada does not have ready access to the ACS journals. Lack of access is much more acute in the less-developed world.
The greatly expanded access that is open access will open up many, many opportunities. Professional practitioners in northern British Columbia will have the same access that is currently available at the teaching hospitals in Vancouver. More colleges, smaller universities and even high schools, will have ready access to the research literature, making it possible to teach in new ways, to develop an information and science literate populace. In the less-developed world, ready access to resources is one of the keys to developing education programs. Here, it is not just that colleges and universities will have more access; rather, more access will make it possible to develop more college and universities.
More researchers with ready access, both to the research literature and the impactful publishing opportunity that is open access, means more rapid advancement of knowledge.
As a former college professor, Ann, no doubt you are aware that many of your former colleagues enjoy a good deal less access than university professors. With open access, these colleagues will not only have the means to participate in research if desired - they will also be more effective teachers, partially because it will be easier to keep up with new developments, and partly because there will be more resources for students.
Change can be difficult for all of us, and perhaps moreso for the privileged, profitable society publisher. However, as the Budapest Open Access Initiative stated so well, open access makes possible an unprecedented public good:
Removing access barriers to this literature will accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge.
This kind of transformation is absolutely worth the relatively small and transitory discomforts of change. Ann, I invite you personally, along with every member of the American Chemical Society, not only to fully support the NIH Public Access Policy, but also to go much farther - to engage in the process of transformation, to openly and immediately share not just peer-reviewed postprints, but also preprints, data, conference presentations, and research in progress.
Heather Morrison
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com
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.
Beyond Peer Review: Collaboration
Here is a webcast and powerpoint of my February 22, 2006 presentation - Peer Review in the Google Age, part of the Drexel COaS talks series.
This brief presentation summarizes my present view on the transformative potential of a fully open access approach in the area of peer review. While a great deal of research has been done on peer review per se, as Peggy Dominy and Jay Bhatt discuss in the same series, progress in science depends not just on incremental progress, but also on periodically reexamining our most basic assumptions. It is timely to do this with peer review - a long-standing tradition which may have evolved from the time of the Inquisition, as Peggy and Jay point out - not an optimal approach for Galileo, and perhaps not an optimal approach in our day and age, either.
Open sharing of information may be optimal throughout the research process - from investigating which research questions to pursue to every step of the experiment itself, as Jean-Claude Bradley has demonstrated with his Blogger Lab Notebook experiment. As an example f how this works: if there is a better research method, why not find out before you do the experiment - not after it is finished and you believe the work is complete and ready for publication?
Another way to look at this is that peer review is really a form of collaboration, of researchers working together, critiquing and supporting each other. Why not work openly and collaboratively together as peers throughout the research process, rather than submitting finished work for blind peer review when it is finished?
There likely are differences in potential for rapid change in different research areas. For example, in an area which bridges pharmacology and toxicology, where a slight error could be fatal - let's be careful with our quality controls, and keep traditional peer review until a better method is found. Most areas of research, however, have no such dire consequences, and there is no reason not to move forward, and experiment with new methods.
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.
This brief presentation summarizes my present view on the transformative potential of a fully open access approach in the area of peer review. While a great deal of research has been done on peer review per se, as Peggy Dominy and Jay Bhatt discuss in the same series, progress in science depends not just on incremental progress, but also on periodically reexamining our most basic assumptions. It is timely to do this with peer review - a long-standing tradition which may have evolved from the time of the Inquisition, as Peggy and Jay point out - not an optimal approach for Galileo, and perhaps not an optimal approach in our day and age, either.
Open sharing of information may be optimal throughout the research process - from investigating which research questions to pursue to every step of the experiment itself, as Jean-Claude Bradley has demonstrated with his Blogger Lab Notebook experiment. As an example f how this works: if there is a better research method, why not find out before you do the experiment - not after it is finished and you believe the work is complete and ready for publication?
Another way to look at this is that peer review is really a form of collaboration, of researchers working together, critiquing and supporting each other. Why not work openly and collaboratively together as peers throughout the research process, rather than submitting finished work for blind peer review when it is finished?
There likely are differences in potential for rapid change in different research areas. For example, in an area which bridges pharmacology and toxicology, where a slight error could be fatal - let's be careful with our quality controls, and keep traditional peer review until a better method is found. Most areas of research, however, have no such dire consequences, and there is no reason not to move forward, and experiment with new methods.
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.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Blogging Courses: English Lit
Simon Fraser University's Dr. Stephen Ogden, teacher of a popular new english literature course called Chick-Lit and Lad-Lit, blogs all his classes.
For example, the blog for Lady Shikubu's Erotic Political Fantasy: -- TALES OF GENJI -- A CLASS BLOG FOR STUDENTS OF ENGLISH 394:D2 AT SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
Dr. Ogden's poetic tendencies are obvious from his blog; his stated location of Bradford, Yorkshire, United Kingdom, is where his heart is. The prosaic truth is that Steve is more apt to be found right here, at the top of this our ivory (coloured) tower, high atop Burnaby Mountain, overlooking Greater Vancouver and its environs - the waterways and many mountains, spanning more than a country. And sometimes, looking down at nothing but clouds.
It's not just the professor, either - the students blog too!
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.
For example, the blog for Lady Shikubu's Erotic Political Fantasy: -- TALES OF GENJI -- A CLASS BLOG FOR STUDENTS OF ENGLISH 394:D2 AT SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
Dr. Ogden's poetic tendencies are obvious from his blog; his stated location of Bradford, Yorkshire, United Kingdom, is where his heart is. The prosaic truth is that Steve is more apt to be found right here, at the top of this our ivory (coloured) tower, high atop Burnaby Mountain, overlooking Greater Vancouver and its environs - the waterways and many mountains, spanning more than a country. And sometimes, looking down at nothing but clouds.
It's not just the professor, either - the students blog too!
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.
Sunday, March 05, 2006
R & D and Library Spending
Updated March 6, 2006
The following post forms part of the Liblicense-L Thread, "R & D and Library Spending":
In brief, my answer to whether there is - or should be - a correlation
between R & D spending and library budgets, particularly serials budgets is: no, and yes.
The reason I would suggest that there should be no direct correlation between R & D spending and library budgets is because needs for library funding are ongoing and independent of research funding, and predate research grants. Picture, for example, a brand new university, hiring new staff, none of whom have any research grants yet. The university will need to develop a library; the researchers will need to use the library in order to develop proposals for research grants. When the grants come in, it absolutely makes sense to consider further investments in the library. However, this correlation should not be direct, as the preexisting library investments need to be taken into account.
For example, if the library already subscribes to the "big deals" of all the big science publishers, it makes no sense at all to purchase more of the big deal when a research grant is received.
On the other hand, using additional research grant monies to invest in other areas would make a lot more sense. For example, universities need to develop Open Access Archives to allow faculty to openly share their peer-reviewed postprints. Once these are established and filled, a useful next step would be to set up the kinds of open access repositories that can handle open data and other enriched information resources that go beyond traditional publishing.
Thre were some excellent sessions at the OAI4 conference on open data and e-research - see especially the sessions by Peter Murray-Rust, Liz Lyons, and Hans Pfeiffenberger; links can be found at:
http://tinyurl.com/8r7kt
Other areas for library expenditures that might make sense for the big deal libraries include reinvesting in the works of the smaller society publishers whose works may have been cancelled in order to purchase the big deals, catching up on monographs purchases, library service investments (e.g. to pay for any additional information literacy, research, or interlibrary loans services that the new research projects may require). This could also be a good opportunity to use the funds for the preservation efforts which ARL has defined as a current priority.
Of course, for the library which does not yet have the "big deal", using the additional funding from research may be a way to afford the big deal as well.
Sent to Liblicense-L March 5, 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.
The following post forms part of the Liblicense-L Thread, "R & D and Library Spending":
In brief, my answer to whether there is - or should be - a correlation
between R & D spending and library budgets, particularly serials budgets is: no, and yes.
The reason I would suggest that there should be no direct correlation between R & D spending and library budgets is because needs for library funding are ongoing and independent of research funding, and predate research grants. Picture, for example, a brand new university, hiring new staff, none of whom have any research grants yet. The university will need to develop a library; the researchers will need to use the library in order to develop proposals for research grants. When the grants come in, it absolutely makes sense to consider further investments in the library. However, this correlation should not be direct, as the preexisting library investments need to be taken into account.
For example, if the library already subscribes to the "big deals" of all the big science publishers, it makes no sense at all to purchase more of the big deal when a research grant is received.
On the other hand, using additional research grant monies to invest in other areas would make a lot more sense. For example, universities need to develop Open Access Archives to allow faculty to openly share their peer-reviewed postprints. Once these are established and filled, a useful next step would be to set up the kinds of open access repositories that can handle open data and other enriched information resources that go beyond traditional publishing.
Thre were some excellent sessions at the OAI4 conference on open data and e-research - see especially the sessions by Peter Murray-Rust, Liz Lyons, and Hans Pfeiffenberger; links can be found at:
http://tinyurl.com/8r7kt
Other areas for library expenditures that might make sense for the big deal libraries include reinvesting in the works of the smaller society publishers whose works may have been cancelled in order to purchase the big deals, catching up on monographs purchases, library service investments (e.g. to pay for any additional information literacy, research, or interlibrary loans services that the new research projects may require). This could also be a good opportunity to use the funds for the preservation efforts which ARL has defined as a current priority.
Of course, for the library which does not yet have the "big deal", using the additional funding from research may be a way to afford the big deal as well.
Sent to Liblicense-L March 5, 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.
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