Comment on EU Green Paper "Copyright in the Knowledge Economy"

Following are my comments on the EU Green Paper Copyright in the Knowledge Economy

This comment pertains to question #19:

19. Should the scientific and research community enter into licensing schemes with publishers in order to increase access to works for teaching or research purposes? Are there examples of successful licensing schemes enabling online use of works for teaching or research purposes?

Comment:

In the Internet age, the optimum dissemination of scholarship involves open sharing of peer-reviewed research articles, data, and more. The human genome project illustrated just how rapidly humankind can advance in knowledge through open sharing of information and cooperation, building a solid base of knowledge on which researchers - both academic and commercial - will be able to build for many years to come. We need to apply such approaches in other areas, such as finding solutions to global warming and sustainable energy sources.

There are already more than 3,700 fully open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals, and more than 2 new titles are added each day. Scientific Commons, a search service encompassing 960 repositories, includes more than 23 million items in searches.

In addition to these fully open access resources, there are many indications that scholarly publishing is in a period of transition to open access. Many publishers provide free access to back issues of journals, and the vast majority permit authors to self-archive their own works as open access. One of the largest commercial scholarly publishers, Springer, recently acquired the open access publisher BioMedCentral, a good indication that open access is seen as the smart business decision for the future.

In the Internet age, the copyright that makes sense is the Creative Commons approach, not at all the traditional copyright transfer agreement. Many scholarly journals are using Creative Commons licenses. Even traditional publishers are increasingly seeking only a License to Publish, leaving copyright with the author.

Research funding agencies, universities and research organizations around the world have, or are developing, strong policies requiring open access to the published research of funded research, and to research data. Here in Canada, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) has a Policy on Access to Research Outputs with an expectation of open access to funded research within 6 months of publication; this embargo period is viewed as an interim measure, to be reviewed as the publishing community transitions to open access. Canada's other federal and provincial research funding agencies either have, or are developing, similar open access policies. Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council has an Aid to Open Access Journals program.

Policies should always be for green open access, or author self-archiving. This gives authors the choice of choosing a traditional, subscription-based publisher and self-archiving their work for open access, or publishing in an open access journal with a copy to the open access archive. Good policy makes open access a requirement, not a request. The policy should specify that the author should self-archive immediately on publication, although access may be delayed if necessary to accommodate an embargo period.

Many thanks for the opportunity to comment.

Hat tip to Peter Suber on Open Access News.

Who benefits from the University of Calgary authors' fund?

Who benefits from the University of Calgary open access authors' fund? This was a good question, raised by an audience participant at a talk this Monday by Andrew Waller. Obviously, the U of C's OA Authors' Fund at $100,000 is not meant to cover a full switch to open access publishing-by-article-processing-fees at the U of C.

My thoughts are that there are two main groups of beneficiaries. First, U of C faculty and students who wish to publish in an open access journal that charges article processing fees at least have a place to submit a request for assistance. Contrast this with a recent message from a librarian friend of mine, who had a grad student come to the library wishing such help, but the library had no procedures in place at all to help. It is quite possible that no other department on campus had a means to assist the student, either.

Second, we all benefit from this pilot project. I was very glad to hear that U of C has figured out that it makes sense to support fully open access journals, such as Public Library of Science, BioMedCentral, and Hindawi, and also hybrid journals that recognize the revenue from author fees and lower subscription fees for libraries accordingly, such as Oxford and the American Institute of Physics. This is a great model for other libraries. If others develop open access funds with similar criteria, then the odds that other publishers will develop responsible policies lowering subscription fees to reflect OA revenue are that much greater. If subscription fees go down, libraries will have more money to pay open access article processing fees; a potential positive cycle to replace the vicious cycle of the serials crisis.

Another useful question was whether researchers would offload traditional page charges onto the library. Andrew pointed out that such charges would not fit the criteria for the program, so would be rejected.

Approaching an authors' fund as U of C has done in a pilot manner, with a limited fund and soft launch, gives the library time to reflect on such questions, and develop really good procedures to address these questions.

Please note that the vast majority of open access journals do NOT charge article processing fees. This should not be a barrier to finding creative ways to support those that DO. It is also not necessary to publish in an OA journal to make your work OA. The green approach, publishing in a traditional journal and self-archiving for open access, is another perfectly good approach, and one recommended as appropriate by the U of C as part of the authors' fund process.

These are reflections on a talk by Andrew Waller at the University of British Columbia this Monday, November 17, coordinated by the BC Research Libraries Group. Andrew will be posting his presentation in the U of C D-Space and E-LIS in the near future, and so I will refer readers there for the full presentation (highly recommended). A recent presentation by Andrew at the U of C law school is available in the U of C D-Space.

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

Libraries and Publishing 3.0: Student Views from SLAIS

The Canadian Library Association's Canadian Association of Special Libraries and Services (CASLIS) has just released the Occasional Paper, Libraries and Publishing 3.0: Student Views from the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, The University of British Columbia, available for free download from: http://www.cla.ca/caslis/CASLIS-Paper-01.pdf

Contents include:

• Historical Collections 2.0: From Information to Understanding by Tania Alekson

• Digital Copyright and Indigenous Cultural Ownership by Erin M. Abler

• The Impact of the Open Access Movement for Scholars in India by Natalie Porter

• The Past, Present and Future of Scholarly Communication in Ornithology by Christina Struik

• Google Scholar: An Outcast in the Library World by Mê-Linh Lê

Congratulations to all of the students! I am especially proud to see works by two of the students from my scholarly communications in this occasional paper. Congratulations, Natalie Porter and Christina Struik!

[Disclosure: I am an Adjunct Faculty at UBC's SLAIS, where I teach courses on open access and scholarly communications, and co-teach information policy with Devon Greyson].

Thanks to CASLIS' Robyn Stockand.

This post in part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement (emerging) series.

Heather Morrison: Speaker Biography (Open Access and Scholarly Communications)

This is my open access Speaker's Biography (long version), developed for the Open Access Directory OA Speaker's Bureau.

Heather Morrison:

• is a well-known, passionate advocate of open access and transformative change in scholarly communication

• the author of Scholarly Communications for Librarians Chandos Publishing in March 2009.

• a PhD student at Simon Fraser University's School of Communication, and a librarian based in Vancouver, Canada.
  

• presents and publishes extensively on open access and scholarly communication; most of her works can be found in the SFU Institutional Repository and E-LIS. Recent major presentations include a keynote at the 2010 LIBER conference, The role of the research library in an emerging global public sphere, and a spotlight at the 2010 OCULA conference, Freedom for Scholarship in the Internet Age.
  

• Heather served on the organizing committees for ELPUB 2009 and the Second International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference, and on the E-LIS Governance Team. Heather has developed and taught courses on Open Access and Issues in Scholarly Communication and Publishing at the University of British Columbia's School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, and also co-taught Information Policy

• is co-chair of the CUFTS Free! Open Access Collections Group, and participates in the ALPS LINK team which coordinates sharing of learning objects by British Columbia librarians.

• has worked with the British Columbia Library Association and the Canadian Library Association, on open access advocacy, drafting Resolutions on Open Access passed by BCLA in 2004 and CLA in 2005, responses to open access policy consultations, and served as the Co-Convenor of the CLA Task Force on Open Access (2006-2008), which drafted strong policies on open access to CLA's own publications and a Position Statement on Open Access for Canadian Libraries, both endorsed by CLA, and formed an Open Access Interest Group to carry forward the work of the Open Access Task Force.

• currently serves as Managing Editor of Stream, the SFU School of Communication graduate student journal, and was the first Editor, Theory / Research of the open access journal, Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research
  

• author of the scholarly blog, The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics. A substantial portion of posts are on open access and/or scholarly communications. Major series include The Dramatic Growth of Open Access, a quarterly series available in open data and commentary form, which attempts to explore the growth of open access in numeric terms, and Transitioning to Open Access, which presents and comments on models and potential models for transitioning from purchase / subscriptions to open access.
  

• founder of the OA Librarian blog

• open access consultant to Chemists Without Borders, and drafted the Open Chemistry Position Statement.

• librarian with extensive experience in licensing electronic resources in library consortial settings (many types and sizes of libraries), resource sharing, communications & strategic planning

• an active contributor to the Open Access Directory

• co-planning a cross-Canada research study on open access support at Canadian university libraries and research offices
  

Speaking topics of interest:

• open access overview, especially policy, advocacy, and growth / status
  
• open access transitional strategies, for librarians, publishers, and/or scholars (economics, scholarly publishing and archiving)
  
• transformative potential of open access for society
• philosophical issues in open access and scholarly communications
• E-LIS

Potential workshops:

• open access overview (policy, archives, publishing) (based on open access class - weekend)
• scholarly communications (group exercise to create a practice journal, from writing and peer review to editing to publishing) (based on scholarly communications class)

Heather loves public speaking and developing new presentations, and very much enjoys facilitating groups discussions too. Interested in online / distance presentations.

Aside from open access and scholarly communication, Heather speaks about library consortia and cooperation (particularly BC Electronic Library Network, where she works).

Should university presses adopt an OA model for all of their scholarly books?

At ELPUB 2008, Greco & Wharton presented a compelling case for why university presses should adopt an OA model for all of their scholarly books - a case based entirely on economics, not philosophy.

Greco & Wharton present analysis showing how a small press releasing 20 Open Access books would generate $128,511. in profit; a large press releasing 100 titles would generate $642,555.00 in profit (p. 11).

This is based on a processing fee approach (G&W use the term author-pays), with $250 as a preliminary charge, and $10,000 on final publication. This is for electronic text, with print-on-demand.

At first, this figure seems high, and I was quite sceptical. The more I think about it, the more sense this makes. Like journals, the primary market for scholarly books is academic libraries. Instead of paying to purchase for very limited access (in print, only one reader at a time - or none, if the book disappears), why not work together to pay for production of a book for open access?

$10,000 is a lot of money for a book - but another way of looking at this, is that 100 libraries contributing $100 each can pay for the production of an open access book. Libraries already do a lot of purchasing as groups through library consortia and groups of consortia; this approach could be a great fit.

There are other possible models, such as combinations of subsidy and direct support. For example, a library could host an Open Monographs Press, just as many now provide hosting and support services for Open Journal Systems. Libraries could work towards matching funds for scholarly books, rather than funding the full cost.

Full citation for Greco and Wharton's paper:
Greco, Albert N; Wharton, Robert Michael (2008) Should university presses adopt an open access [electronic publishing] business model for all of their scholarly books?, ELPUB2008. Open Scholarship: Authority, Community, and Sustainability in the Age of Web 2.0 - Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Electronic Publishing held in Toronto, Canada 25-27 June 2008 / Edited by: Leslie Chan and Susanna Mornati. ISBN 978-0-7727-6315-0, 2008, pp. 149-164 http://elpub.scix.net/cgi-bin/works/Show?149_elpub2008

[Disclosures: I am on the ELPUB 2009 planning committee, and I work for a library consortium].

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

King Midas 2008, or, you can't eat capital-intensive anything

There is a folk tale of a King Midas who received a magical gift, to transform everything around him into what he loved: gold.

This is a story that we need to hear, again.

For example:

It seems that there are some who believe that the best use of land is the most capital-intensive use. If this is what you believe, it makes sense to pave or build over every inch of arable land. It seems that some of those who have these beliefs, have the magical ability (or intensive capital) to make this happen.

The only problem is: you can't eat capital-intensive anything.

Some say economics is very complicated. I say: let's grow apples and cherries, wheat and rice!

The trouble with metrics (for scholarship)

Anyone who has followed The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics for any length of time is no doubt aware that I like numbers. Measuring the Dramatic Growth of Open Access is one of my favorite past-times, along with calculating just how low the per-article cost of a scholarly peer-reviewed journal article can, or should, be.

It is really important to remember, though:

Numbers work best when they serve us, and not we them.

There are, in my opinion, serious potential dangers to scholarship (and to the world), if we move to a metrics-based assessment system without giving this a very great deal of thought. Here are a few of my comments on this topic, as originally posted to the American Scientist Open Access Forum:

Whether metrics are improving, and whether it is a good idea to base decisions about quality of and funding for research and journals entirely on usage metrics, are two separate questions.

In this post, I agree that metrics are improving with potential to advance our understanding of scholarship, but that there are dangers to be considered from over-reliance on usage metrics. Another idea I would like to introduce is cost-efficiency metrics.

As Stevan points out, "metrics are becoming far richer, more diverse, more transparent and more answerable than just the ISI JIF". There is indeed potential to develop much richer metrics, and this is a good thing, as it gives us a better means to research scholarship per se.

However, there are potential dangers to scholarship from relying too much on metrics. One important point is the distinction between popularity (or temporary importance), and real importance to scholarship or to the world.

Consider, for example:

Biology - species. There will always, of necessity, be a limited pool of scientists studying any one species in danger of extinction. Do articles and journals in these areas receive fewer citations? If so, what happens if we reward scholars and journals on the basics of metrics? Will these researchers lose their funding? Will journals that publish articles in this area lose their status?

Literature - authors. There are many researchers studying Shakespeare. A lesser-known local author will be lucky to receive the attention of even one researcher. In a metrics-based system, it seems reasonable to hypothesize that this bias will increase, and the odds of studying local culture decrease.

History - the local versus the global. A reasonable hypothesis is that historical articles and journals with broader potential readership are likely to attract more citations than locally-based historical studies. If this is correct, then local studies would suffer under a metrics-based system. (In the medium to long term, the broader studies would suffer, too, through lack of background that can be supplied by in-depth local research).

Medicine - temporary importance: AIDS, bird flu, SARS, are all viral diseases, horrible diseases and pandemics or potential pandemics. Of course, our research communities must prioritize these threats in the short term. This means many articles on these topics, and new journals, receiving many citations. Great stuff, this advances our knowledge and may have already prevented more than one pandemic. But what about other, less-pressing issues, such as the resistance of bacteria to antibiotics and basic research? In the short term, a focus on research usage metrics helps us to prioritize and focus on the immediate danger. In the long term, if usage metrics lead us to undervalue basic research, we could end up with more pressing dangers to deal with, such as rampant and totally untreatable bacterial illnesses, and less basic knowledge to help us figure out what to do.

This is speculation, but hopefully enough theoretical substance to illustrate that there are good reasons to think carefully about the impact of metrics-based systems before rushing to implement them.

Cost-efficiency metrics, such as average cost per article, is a tool that can be used to examine the relative cost-effectiveness of journals. In the print world, the per-article cost for the small, not-for-profit society publishers has often been a small fraction of the cost of the larger commercial for-profit publishers, often with equal or better quality. If university administrators are going to look at metrics, why not give thought to rewarding researchers for seeking publishing venues that combine high-quality peer review and editing with affordable costs?

More discussion on this topic can be found on The American Scientist Open Access Forum.

More evidence of a spike in DOAJ additions in 2008

Gavin Baker on the Journal of Insignificant Inquiry reports a spike in the growth of DOAJ in 2008, based on data generated from the DOAJ new title search page.

The DOAJ numbers are the best estimate I am aware of of how many open access journals there are in the world, however it is important to remember that DOAJ is intended as a directory of journals, and is not a perfect measure of OA journals.


Thanks, Gavin, for a useful addition to the Dramatic Growth of Open Access Series.

Comment

Some factors to consider when looking at DOAJ as a measure of open access journals:

Discovery - there could be open access journals which DOAJ staff are not aware of.

Vetting - DOAJ journals go through a vetting process; they not only need to be fully open access and peer reviewed (or equivalent), DOAJ needs evidence. Because of the vetting process, there is always at least some delay between when a journal becomes OA and when it is included in DOAJ.

Useful delay - DOAJ does not include forthcoming journals, and does not automatically and immediately include new journals. Journals must be active to be included in DOAJ; sometimes, it makes sense to wait for a few issues to be released.

Human resources - the people at DOAJ are human beings. Minor fluctuations in growth can simply reflect someone's vacation time. If libraries want DOAJ to be as up to date as possible - take out a membership in DOAJ so that this important service has the support it needs to keep up.

Language - while the DOAJ staff seem remarkably comfortable in a multilingual environment, it must add some complexity that OA journals can be in any language, in any alphabet. I have no idea whether discovery and/or vetting is slower for some languages than others, but it does seem likely.

Weeding - DOAJ removes journals that no longer meet its criteria for inclusion (fully open access, peer reviewed or equivalent, and active).

Journal start dates in DOAJ reflect the first OA issue, not necessarily when a new journal started, or when an older one converted to OA.

CLA Announces new Open Access Interest Group

The following announcement was sent by Ken Roberts, Canadian Library Association President, to the CLA list on October 14, 2008, the First International Open Access Day.

This September, the CLA Executive approved the formation of a new Open Access Interest Group. Today, it is my pleasure on this First International Open Access Day (http://openaccessday.org/), to officially announce the formation of this group!

This group will follow on the recent work carried out by the CLA Open Access Task Force and will focus on one of the most important issues in the library world at present, particularly in the academic library community. The Open Access Interest Group will incorporate elements of the Information Commons Interest Group, which will be reconstituted.

The first co-conveners of the Interest Group will be Leah Vanderjagt and Lisa Goddard.

Terms of Reference
· To provide a forum for members to discuss issues and topics relating to Open Access.
· When requested, to respond to Open Access matters on behalf of CLA.
· To work with both Canadian and international organizations (including other CLA/ACB Interest Groups and Committees) to promote Open Access initiatives.
· To organize Open Access-related sessions and other events at the annual CLA/ACB conference and elsewhere.

Membership in the Open Access Interest Group is open to all CLA members. The CLA website is being modified to allow registration in this group; expect a follow-up message when this is ready. In the meantime, you can sign up for the CLA Open Access Interest Group listserv by contacting Heather Morrison at heatherm@eln.bc.ca. The purpose of this listserv is to allow participants to share ideas and news about open access at their respective institutions, in Canada, and in the global information environment.

This May, CLA adopted a Position Statement on Open Access for Canadian Libraries, which reads:

Whereas connecting users with the information they need is one of the library's most essential functions, and access to information is one of librarianship's most cherished values, therefore CLA recommends that Canadian libraries of all types strongly support and encourage open access.

CLA encourages Canadian libraries of all types to:
· support and encourage policies requiring open access to research supported by Canadian public funding, as defined above. If delay or embargo periods are permitted to accommodate publisher concerns, these should be considered temporary, to provide publishers with an opportunity to adjust, and a review period should be built in, with a view to decreasing or eliminating any delay or embargo period.
· raise awareness of library patrons and other key stakeholders about open access, both the concept and the many open access resources, through means appropriate to each library, such as education campaigns and promoting open access resources.
· support the development of open access in all of its varieties, including gold (OA publishing) and green (OA self-archiving). Libraries should consider providing economic and technical support for open access publishing, by supporting open access journals or by participating in the payment of article processing fees for open access. The latter could occur through redirection of funds that would otherwise support journal subscriptions, or through taking a leadership position in coordinating payments by other bodies, such as academic or government departments or funding agencies.
· support and encourage authors to retain their copyright, for example through the use of the CARL / SPARC Author's Addendum, or through the use of Creative Commons licensing.

The CLA Position Statement on Open Access for Canadian Libraries is freely available on the CLA website, at: http://www.cla.ca/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Position_Statements&Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=5306

For further information, please contact:
Heather Morrison
Interim Convenor, CLA Open Access Interest Group
heatherm at eln dot bc dotc a
Lisa Goddard
Co-Convenor, CLA Open Access Interest Group
lgoddard at mun dot ca
Leah Vanderjagt
Co-Convenor, CLA Open Access Interest Group
leah dot vanderjagt at ualberta dot ca

Ken Roberts, CLA President

Thanks, CLA, Ken Roberts, Lisa Goddard and Leah Vanderjagt for initiating yet another fine example of Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement! Thanks, also, to all of the many CLA members who supported the proposal for the development of this new interest group.

Open Access and Free Journals in OutLook OnLine: Happy International Open Access Day!

Today, in celebration of the First International Open Access Day, BC Electronic Library Network (ELN), with BC Public Library Services Branch (PLSB), have officially launched the Open Access and Free Journals in OutLook OnLine. There are over 5,000 titles in all; the majority are scholarly, peer-reviewed journals from the Directory of Open Access Journals, supplemented by other open access and free collections considered of quality and collectible by BC Librarians. Examples include: the peer-reviewed Open Medicine; the Ha-Shilth-Sa Newspaper, published by the Nuu chah nulth Tribal Council; the BC Grasslands Magazine, and the Caledonia Nordic Newsletter.

OutLook OnLine is a gateway to the collections of British Columbia's public and post-secondary libraries, 92 libraries in all. From my perspective as an open access advocate, this is an important and welcome moment in open access history. This is no longer just me, one of a few open access advocates. The Open Access and Free Journals collection emerges from the work of the local CUFTS Free! Open Access Collections group, which itself emerged from the enthusiasm of BC librarians for collecting open access materials. BC ELN is an innovative organization, sometimes leading-edge but never bleeding edge, and certainly not fringe. We are, rather, grassroots and responsive to our community. This initiative represents a moment when open access has clearly become mainstream.

The MARC records are freely available for any library to download, to include in local library catalogues or regional services like OutLook OnLine, at: http://eln.bc.ca/marc_dump081007.mrc.

An A to Z list of the BC ELN Open Access and Free Journals collection can be found at:
http://cufts2.lib.sfu.ca/CJDB/BCELN/browse.

Any opinion expressed in this post is that of the author alone, and does not represent the opinion or policy of BC Electronic Library Network or Simon Fraser University Library.

Announcing the launch of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA)

Kudos to the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association!

Announcement:

ANNOUNCING THE LAUNCH OF THE OPEN ACCESS SCHOLARLY PUBLISHERS ASSOCIATION, OASPA

14 October 2008, London. The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, OASPA, announces its official launch today in conjunction with an OA Day celebration hosted by the Wellcome Trust in London. The mission of OASPA is to support and represent the interests of Open Access (OA) journals publishers globally in all scientific, technical, and scholarly disciplines through an exchange of information, setting of industry standards, advancing business and publishing models, advocating for gold OA journals publishing, education and the promotion of innovation.

>From having first emerged as a new publishing model over a decade ago, OA publishing has become an embedded feature of the scholarly publishing landscape: The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) lists over 3500 peer-reviewed journals; a growing number of professional organizations offer OA publications; university libraries increasingly support OA publishing services; funding organizations support and encourage OA publishing; and a long tail of independent editorial teams and societies now publish their titles OA. Professional OA publishers such as BioMed Central and the Public Library of Science (PLoS) have been in business for over five years, while some scientist/scholar publishers (editorial teams operating independently of a professional publisher) have published their OA journals for a decade or more. Moreover, a number of traditional publishing houses are now engaging in Open Access activities, the recent acquisition of BioMed Central by Springer and the SAGE-Hin dawi partnership being two cases in point. By bringing together those who share an interest in developing appropriate business models, tools and standards to support OA journals publishing, it is hoped that success in these areas can be achieved more quickly to the benefit of not only OASPA members, but more importantly, for the scholarly community that OA publishers serve.

Membership in OASPA is open to both scholar publishers and professional publishing organizations, including university presses and for profit and non-profit organizations. Members are expected to demonstrate a genuine interest in OA journals publishing by having signed either the Berlin or Budapest Declarations and must publish at least one full OA journal. Other individuals and organizations who support OA journals publishing or who are interested in exploring opportunities are also welcome. Membership criteria and an application form can be found on the OASPA website, www.oaspa.org.

The founding members of OASPA represent a broad spectrum of OA publishers and include: BioMed Central, Co-Action Publishing, Copernicus, Hindawi Publishing Corporation, Journal of Medical Internet Research (Gunther Eysenbach), Medical Education Online (David Solomon), the Public Library of Science (PLoS), SAGE, SPARC Europe and Utrecht University Library (Igitur). Representatives from each of these publishers will form an interim board until a first General Meeting is held during 2009.

Open Access Scholarly Publishers’ Association, OASPA, is launched today 14 October 2008 in response to long-time informal discussions among Open Access publishers, and aims to represent the interests of OA journals publishers globally. For more information about the organization, visit the OASPA website at: www.oaspa.org.

The Wellcome Trust is the largest charity in the UK. It funds innovative biomedical research, in the UK and internationally, spending over £600 million each year to support the brightest scientists with the best ideas. The Wellcome Trust supports public debate about biomedical research and its impact on health and wellbeing.

Open Access (OA) scholarly publication refers to the dissemination of peer-reviewed manuscripts containing original research or scholarship immediately upon publication, at no charge to user groups, without requiring registration or other restrictions to access. OA publications also allow users to "copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship."

Press Contact:
Caroline Sutton
Tel/skype: +46 (0)18 495 1126
Cell: +47 90 69 05 06
Caroline.Sutton@co-action.net

Comment: this is a very welcome development, kudos to all involved! It is about time that all the OA publishers had an organization to speak for them (us). No doubt this will be the beginning of many opportunities for publishers looking to transition to open access.

Why Open Access Matters to Me (Open Access Day Synchroblogging)

This post is part of the Open Access Day Synchroblogging Competition. (There is still time to participate!)

Why does Open Access matter to me?

As a librarian with many years' experience in academic libraries and library consortia, I am very aware of the gaps in access.

Some examples, from my experience:

The look on the face of a poor student when told that the article they want will cost $48. The student went away without the article. This was not a good day for learning, or for scholarship. Not every library can afford to bridge the access gaps with interlibrary loans, even in a wealthy country like Canada. Pay per view is like a tax on reading.

From an economics perspective, open access is the only model for scholarly electronic resources that makes sense. It costs money to keep people out; money spent preventing learning is worse than wasted.

There are scholarly resources that libraries of all types would like to have, but do not purchase because they cannot afford to do so. There are needs that are not being met, and will never entirely be met with a subscriptions-based model, but could be met with open access.

Open access brings us all together. When library budgets are scarce, we do not purchase the scholarly journals of developing countries, for example, regardless of merits; with open access, we can have it all, and proceed with our research is a way that is much more inclusive.

How did I first become aware of open access?

A speech by early open access advocate Jean-Claude Guédon at a conference in Alberta (2001) - arranged for, and supported by, local librarians, and also Peter Suber's wonderful SPARC Open Access Newsletter.

Why should scientific and medical research be an open-access resource for the world?

Thanks to an approach of open sharing and collaboration, mankind mapped the Human Genome in about 13 years, lightning speed compared to traditional approaches to scholarship. We need to optimize research progress in other areas, particularly the environment and how to live in our global world in peace, and we need to do this now. There is no time to waste.

What do I do to support Open Access, and what can others do
There are many things that can be done! Others should do what they feel most comfortable with. If you are in a position to advocate for an open access mandate policy, please do. Otherwise, please self-archive your own work, help start up or run an open access journal, talk about open access, or whatever else works for you.

As for me, I work as an advocate for open access with my local library associations, have served as the Co-Convenor of the CLA Open Access Task Force, am part of the governance team of E-LIS, the Open Archive for Library and Information Studies; I self-archive my own work, and publish as much open access as I can; I was the first Editor, Theory/Research of the open access journal, Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research; I write, present, and publish extensively on open access, formally and informally; I participate in the Open Access Directory, and on the PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference Team; I have developed and taught courses on open access and scholarly communications, and am writing a book on scholarly communications, which I believe will help advance the transition to open access.

As you can tell from this list, I am very busy, and it is not easy to find time for Working Less! Why do I do this? It is my belief that humankind is at a crossroads, a major moment in history when we have some very basic decisions to make, such as whether our scholarly knowledge is a commodity, for the few who can afford it; or, as I believe, knowledge is for all. I do not know how anyone could see what I see, and not commit themselves, wholeheartedly, to advocating for open access.

Competing in the open access environment: will the smalls have the advantage?

In an Open Access environment, it may be that the small, independent publishers and journals have the advantage - if they take advantage of relatively low costs to compete.

The average cost per article will be the key to assessing the affordability of an open access journal, regardless of business model (subsidies of various kinds, article processing fees, advertising). It is the small, not-for-profit society publishers that have the lowest prices for quality provided; if these publishers embrace open access, the larger publishers may find it hard to compete.

Current advantages for the smaller publishers and journals

Free Open Source Software and Library Hosting Services
There is free, open source software available, such as Open Journal Systems, that make it fairly easy for any journal to convert to, or start as, online and open access. There are many libraries involved in providing hosting and support services for faculty publishing. If you are involved with a scholarly journal, there is a very good chance that there is someone on the Editorial Board with connections at a publishing library that can help out.

The Flexibility of Small
A single journal has a lot more flexibility than a huge publishing outfit. If an article processing fee approach is to be considered, for example, one only needs to think about the costs of producing the one journal. For a large operation, assessing such costs on a per-journal basis is a very great deal more complex.

Free and Easy Marketing Advantages for Open Access
It is easy for libraries to include open access content in library services, ranging form A to Z title lists to subject guides to library catalogues. Indeed, without the need for authentication, providing library service to OA material is both easier and more reliable for libraries. This provides an instant, cost-free means for marketing of open access journals.

For indexing services, too, there are advantages to including open access material; subscribers to the indexing service can easily click through to the content, adding more value to the indexing service than an expensive publication with customers of the indexing service may or may not be able to afford.

This post is part of the Transitioning to Open Access and Resources and Tips for Publishers Series.

Springer to acquire BioMedCentral: major milestone in transition to open access

Springer, one of the world's largest for-profit commercial publishers in science, technology, and medicine (STM) has announced that it plans to acquire BioMedCentral, a leading open access publisher.

Excerpt from the announcement:
Derk Haank, CEO of Springer Science+Business Media said: “This acquisition reinforces the fact that we see open access publishing as a sustainable part of STM publishing, and not an ideological crusade. We have gained considerable positive experience since starting Springer Open Choice in 2004, and BioMed Central’s activities are complementary to what we are doing. Additionally, this acquisition strengthens Springer’s position in the life sciences and biomedicine, and will allow us to offer societies a greater range of publishing options.”

I agree with Richard Smith that this is a great day for science. As Derk Haank points out, open access is no longer the road to take for ideological reasons only (profound though I believe these are); open access is the smart business move, too.

It is good to see another open access option available to the society publishers that prefer to work with the commercial sector.

What about library support for BioMedCentral? A few years ago, when BMC moved from an early pricing model that was clearly not sustainable to one based on processing costs, my approach was to encourage libraries to overlook the sticker shock and fully embrace the new, sustainable approach to pricing.

BioMedCentral, to date, has met my criteria for whether libraries should provide smart support for article processing fees. The fee pays for full open access (no free to read but only on our website nonsense); as a fully open access publisher, there is no need for concern about double dipping (collecting revenues from both subscriptions and article processing fees for the same material); and there is obviously a real effort to connect pricing with actual costs of production.

Into the future, whether I would continue to encourage libraries to support BMC under Springer depends on the pricing (and ongoing quality, of course). That is, if pricing remains largely the same, I would encourage libraries to continue to provide partial or full support. If there were substantial price increases, it would be understandable if libraries were to pull back from full to partial support, or partial to no support.

Springer has some interesting opportunities for innovation here, and some time to pursue them as the early industry leader. For example, why not strengthen library customer relations by providing additional discount to libraries that are both BMC supporters and substantial Springer customers?

Thanks to Scientific American via Peter Suber.

This post is part of the Transitioning to Open Access and Resources and Tips for Publishers Series.

International Open Access Day: Tuesday October 14

Tuesday, October 14th is the first International Open Access Day.



Correction note: October 14th is Tuesday, not Monday as originally posted.

STM on copyright: no need for education exemptions

Libraries and the educational community should take note of the STM Digital copyright exceptions and limitations for scholarly publications in the education and research communities
(Position paper of the International Association of STM Publishers), available for download from here.

In brief, the position of STM is that because education is their primary market, there is no reason for education and research to be considered a "certain special case" under the Berne convention. There is no reason to allow interlibrary loan, for example, if items are available for purchase. STM recommends licensing contracts with fewer rights than are available to libraries and educational institutions under copyright law.

The Basic Principles begins with:
STM publishers prepare and distribute their materials (scholarly and scientific journals, books and databases) for and into the research and education communities, communities that therefore constitute their most significant audiences and markets.

Comment: these arguments sound very similar to the ludicrous Conyers bill in the U.S. The basic principles imply that STM publishers are alone responsible for preparing and distributing materials. This is not correct. A great deal of the research that is published by STM publishers is paid for through publicly funded research agencies; the articles themselves are written by authors who are not paid for their work, and reviewed by peer reviewers who are not paid for their work, either. The contributions of STM publishers are real, and of value, but only a small proportion of the total resources that go into the works that they publish.

Authors - retain your rights!

arXiv exceeds half a miliion items!

Today, arXiv passed the milestone of half a million items!


The arXiv physics e-prints server and founder Paul Ginsparg was an early pioneer in open access, and is among the oldest, largest, and most-used open access archives in the world today. The main arXiv server at Cornell University Library not only hosts the more than half a million preprints, it also serves the considerable demand from physicists and others around the world, with usage statistics in the hundreds of thousands or even over a million on a typical day. That's just the main server, too - arXiv has 18 mirror sites around the world.

Congratulations and thanks to arXiv and everyone involved with arXiv.

Hat tip to Peter Suber.

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

NIH Compliance Rate Triples (so far) with mandatory public access policy

Early indications are that the NIH shift to a mandatory public access policy - which took effect this April - is having quite an impact!

The estimated compliance rate from April to August 2008 is 56% (30% author manuscripts, 26% publisher PDFs), up from 19% for 2005-2007 (12% author manuscripts, 7% publisher PDFs).

44% of NIH-funded research results covered under the policy for April to August 2008 is still missing; however, with a maximum one-year embargo permitted, it is likely too early to draw any conclusions. Assuming a good percentage of the researchers will want further funding, I would anticipate an increase in the percentage of works publicly available both in the April-August 2008 time frame, and even more in the future, as researchers, libraries, and universities become more familiar with the details of the policy, and how to comply.

From: U.S. National Institutes of Health. Analysis of Comments and Implementation of the NIH Public Access Policy. Undated.

Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.

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

National Cancer Institute of Canada adopts open access mandates

Kudos to the National Cancer Institute of Canada on the adoption of a leading-open Open Access Policy!

Open Access policy

Effective July 2009, all researchers supported in whole or in part through the NCIC are required to make their published results of NCIC supported work publicly available. Researchers are encouraged to make their work publicly available as soon as possible, but must do so no later than six months after the final publication date.

Archives such as PubMed Central, researchers’ host institution websites, and/or open access journals are all acceptable ways to make research findings publicly available.

The NCIC appreciates the importance of publishing research results in the most widely read and respected scientific journals. In no way is this policy designed to compromise the ability of any researcher funded through the NCIC to publish in these journals. Nor is the NCIC open access policy designed to operate in a manner that in any way violates copyright law. Increasingly, however, many publishers are supportive of open access and have policies in place to allow open access without infringing their copyright.

NCIC believes strongly, however, that unrestricted public access to research findings is a crucial part of upholding the values and responsibilities of the NCIC as a granting agency and of the NCIC’s funders, the Canadian Cancer Society and The Terry Fox Foundation, both of whom are supported in turn by donations from the public. Major funding bodies around the world have progressively adopted open access as a means of increasing the public availability and transparency of the research they fund. Open access allows for broader dissemination of knowledge and ultimately promotes research advancement, crucial to the NCIC’s mission to reduce the incidence, morbidity and mortality of cancer.

As part of this policy, the NCIC will provide support for any charges levied by publishers that are required to comply with this open access process. Such charges may be included as legitimate research expenses (fully justified as with all other expenses) in the budget of a research grant submission.

For more information about the NCIC’s open access policy please refer to the provided Open Access FAQs or contact us at research@cancer.ca.

Comments: strengths of this policy include encouragement for immediate OA, the 6-month embargo, commitment to paying for open access publishing, and the definition of public accessibility as open access, defined in the FAQ as The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in a digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship, as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.. This is libre open access, and a great model for other funders to follow.

Thanks to Jim Till and Peter Suber.

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

Dramatic Growth of Open Access September 30, 2008

The Dramatic Growth of Open Access continues! This quarter, more than 3 million publications were added to Scientific Commons, 1 million records to OAIster; the DOAJ stands at 3,668 titles, and has added 822 titles (net) in the past year, for an average daily addition of 2.25 titles. The percentage of the world's scholarly literature that is freely available appears to be close to 20%. PubMedCentral includes 2.4 million free items; 375 journals provide immediate free access to contents, and addition of 20 in the past quarter, and 257 journals provide immediate open access. There are 53 open access mandates in the world, with more to come; and more than 15,000 blogposts on Open Access News!

Highlights

Directory of Open Access Journals
Number of Journals: 3,668
Journals Added in the Last Year: 822
Average daily added titles: 2.25

Scientific Commons
# Publications: 22.6 million
# Publications Added Last Year: 6.4 million
# Publications Added this Quarter: 3 million

OAIster
# Records: 17.9 million
# Records Added this Past Year: 4.5 million
# Records Added this Past Quarter: 1 million

OpenDOAR
# Repositories: 1,254
Repositories Added this Year: 304

PubMedCentral
# journals with immediate free access: 375
added this quarter: 20
# journals with immediate open access: 257
# free items from PubMed: 2.4 million
% of literature indexed in PubMed freely available: 18%

Total Mandates: 53

% of scholarly literature freely available (2006, Björk et al)
19.40%

# blogposts on Open Access News: On Friday, September 28, OA News passed the milestone of 15,000 blogposts

For full data, please see the following. Please note that there are two different figures for PubMedCentral, one from an Entrez PubMed search (see the PMC worksheet), and the other from the Registry of Open Access Repositories, likely a subset of PMC, maintained in Dramatic Growth for purposes of comparison with earlier figures.

Dramatic Growth Open Data - For Web Viewing

Dataverse (for downloading data)

For further analysis, commentary, and links to previous issues, please see the Dramatic Growth of Open Access Series (English), or the Japanese translation.

IJPE followers please note: this post is early! I had meant to wait until International Open Access Day, but posting this right away makes more sense.

Are Elsevier prices going down yet?

According to correspondence from an Elsevier correspondent to Rosie Redfield, Elsevier is charging authors a rather substantial amount ($3,000 per article), because they do not plan to charge subscribers for author-sponsored content.

Interesting.

Has any librarian heard the other side - subscription fees going down because of author-sponsored content?

Authors: if you're going to pay for open access, make sure you are getting open access! There is a lot more to OA than just free access from one website. Here is the definition of OA, from the Budapest Open Access Initiative:

By "open access" to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

Open Access Service Charges: Hydrology and Earth Systems Science

Update September 28: kudos to the Max Planck Society (MPS) for a really ingenious approach! The MPS will pay the publication charges if the first author is affiliated with MPS; however, they will ONLY pay the amount for an article formatted properly according to the technical specifications. If the author chooses to submit an article that will cost more because more work is needed, they can do so, and pay the difference.

The open access journal Hydrology and Earth Systems Science uses an approach they call service charges which may be of interest to publishers looking for ways to transition to open access.

Service charges vary by the number of pages (not unlike the traditional page charges), but also by the format the author uses to submit articles. In other words, an author can keep the fee down by submitting in Latex rather than Word, and/or by submitting according to the technical specifications for either Latex or Word. A 10-page article submitted in Latex according to the technical specification is €450 + 19% VAT, $657 US before taxes, $800 US total with taxes. Not bad!

Authors can choose to pay for copyediting, or take responsibility for this themselves.

The service charges approach seems to have some merits. At the very least, it is helpful, in my opinion, to think about publishing as a service.

This post belongs to the series Resources & Tips for Publishers.

Thanks to Elias A. Zerhouni

Today the U.S. National Institutes of Health released an announcement of NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni's intention to step down October 28 to pursue writing and other professional opportunities.

Dr. Zerhouni has led the NIH through the long process of the NIH Public Access mandate, first the voluntary policy, then the mandatory one, most recently speaking up forcefully for the NIH and against the absurd Conyers bill. The NIH is the world's largest medical research funder, and from my viewpoint, this is one of the OA initiatives that has been the subject of the most intense lobbying efforts. Thank you, Dr. Zerhouni. Public access is a great gift to the world; it is appreciated, and you will be missed.

This is only one of Dr. Zerhouni's many accomplishments, outlined in detail in the NIH letter.

Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.

Twice as much gold OA articles in 2008 as in 2006! The Dramatic Growth of Open Access

Update: please note that the estimate of 9.3% are the articles in fully gold journals. The number of OA articles including hybrid journals, and numbers of articles that become OA only after an embargo or delay, is not included in this number.

About 9.3% of the world's peer-reviewed journal articles are now fully gold! This is double the number reported for 2006. Another sure sign of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access!.

Björk et al. (2008) calculated that of the estimated 1,350,000 journals articles published in 2006, 19.4% are freely accessible (4.6% OA immediately on publication, 3.5% freely accessible after an embargo, usually at least on year; and 11.3% through self-archiving).

From: Björk, Bo-Christer, Annikki Roosr, and Lauri, Mari. Global annual volume of peer reviewed scholarly articles and the share available via different open access options. ELPUB2008. Open Scholarship: Authority, Community, and Sustainability in the Age of Web 2.0 - Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Electronic Publishing held in Toronto, Canada 25-27 June 2008 / Edited by: Leslie Chan and Susanna Mornati, 2008, pp. 178-186.
http://www.elpub.net/

DOAJ currently lists 3,653 journals, about 15% of the world’s peer-reviewed scholarly journals, and is adding new titles at a rate of more than 2.2 per calendar day. If we multiply the number of journals in DOAJ (3,653) by the mean number of articles / OA journal calculated by Björk et al. (2008), of 34.6, we get an estimated total number of articles that are fully OA of 126,393, 9.3% of the total estimated output of 1,350,000 estimated by Björk et al., or twice as much fully gold OA now as there was in 2008.

Please note that this is a rough estimate. The 1.35 million articles per year has likely increased by about 7-8%, based on average increases of about 3-3.5% per year. This figure has not been changed for the estimate, as the 34.6 articles / OA journal may also have changed; it is possible that the average number of journals per article has increased as awareness of open access increases, and as some of the OA journal start-ups have been around for a while and are beginning to attract more submissions.

Apologies to e-mail subscribers for the duplication; I accidentally posted two versions of this in draft.

Open Access - refining the definition: work versus process

Open Access as a concept can apply to either a work, or a process. I believe that this distinction would help in making our definitions of open access more precise. This distinction is not quite the same as the distinction between noun and verb.

Open Access work: a work can be said to be open access when it is, at minimum, free for anyone, anywhere to read online (gratis open access), or, better yet, free for anyone to re-use (libre open access). A work that has been closed access for the full term of copyright, can be made open access after it enters the public domain.

Open Access process: a process, such as publishing, can be open access as well. In this sense, it makes sense to reserve the term open access for full open access publishing, where a work is made open access (gratis or libre) as part of the publishing process, with no delay.

One way to understand this distinction: when a journal employs a transitional strategy such as free back issues, it makes sense to say that the journal is NOT open access, but rather that it uses a free back issues strategy. The issues and the articles, as they become free, however, ARE open access. That is, it is the works that are open access, even though the journal / publisher is not OA.

There is probably a better way to articulate this distinction; if anyone is willing to undertake this task, please do! To facilitate reuse of this work, this particular post is CC-BY.

Precision in OA definitions is extremely important, partially because of the potential for confusion arising from the many changes in scholarly communications (and indeed, in our world) taking place all at once, and also because of lobbying efforts by those opposed to open access, which often take the form of opposing something other than what open access is (a good example being the Conyers bill in the U.S., which you can read about on Open Access News).

This is a bit of reflection to prepare for writing the chapter on Open Access, Open Data, and other Movements towards Open for my forthcoming book Scholarly Communications for Librarians (Chandos Publishing).

The Oxford English Dictionary could really use an update on its definition of Open Access. A job for Peter Suber, perhaps?

For definitions of gratis and libre open access, see Peter Suber's article in the August 2008 SPARC Open Access Newsletter.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada License.

ibelieveinopen.ca

Canadians - do you believe in open government? If so, please go to ibelieveinopen.ca and take the pledge today!

ibelieveinopen is a movement to push politicians to make 5 commitments:

1. Support reforms that increase government transparency and accountability.

2. Make campaign promises specific and measurable, and report progress on promises and their metrics at least semi-annually.

3. Publish the content of his or her daily schedule, including meetings with lobbyists and special interest groups.

4. Support reforms allowing free access to scientific and survey data gathered by government institutions.

5. Support reforms that make it easier for Canadians to obtain government information they have a right to know.

Thanks to Jennifer Bell of civicaccess.ca

Housekeeping: Dramatic Growth of Open Access Series release dates

As the dramatic growth of open access is itself growing, future updates of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access will be released in phases, rather than all on the same day. The quarterly time frame will remain as the date of data capture (March 31, June 30, Sept. 30, and Dec. 31), and the open data edition will be released on this day. Analytic and commentary versions will be released later, usually a week or two after the end of the quarter.

The next releases are:
Sept. 30 (open data - dataverse)
Oct. 14 - International Open Access Day: Analysis and Commentary. This release will be planned for early in the day (possibly October 13 to accomodate different time zones), in case anyone would like to announce the very latest figures on OA Day. OA friends: if you need this information early for planning purposes, send me an e-mail.

PubMedCentral Canada (PMC) Initiative

Thanks to Kumiko Vezina, and Donna Meighan, Partnership Development Officer, Health Portfolio, NRC:

Over the summer, NRC-CISTI and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) finalized the first step in the partnership for the PubMed Central Canada agreement process, a national digital repository of peer-reviewed health science research. With CIHR funding now in place, CISTI plans to contribute its technological expertise to build & host the infrastructure and manage & develop the e-repository.

Watch for further developments in this emerging example of Canadian leadership in the open access movement.

SECOND INTERNATIONAL PKP SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING CONFERENCE July 8 - 10, Vancouver, British Columbia: Preliminary Announcement and Call for Papers

Quick link to 2nd International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference Website:
http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009

SECOND INTERNATIONAL PKP SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING CONFERENCE
PRELIMINARY ANNOUNCEMENT

The Public Knowledge Project is pleased to announce that the second international PKP conference will be held from July 8 – 10, 2009 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The first PKP conference was an overwhelming success with presentations and participants from around the world. A selected set of conference papers was subsequently published in the October 2007 issue of First Monday.

The conference will appeal not just to members of the PKP community, but to anyone interested in trends and developments for scholarly publishing and communication. There will be a wide range of topical sessions on new reading and publishing technologies; open access initiatives; alternative publishing and funding models; national and international collaborative projects; new roles and partnerships for libraries, scholarly publishers and others; and sustainability for open access publishing and open source software. Prospective and first time users of OJS and other PKP software will be able to learn more about the systems and establish contacts with the PKP community. Experienced implementers, developers, and system administrators will have an opportunity to participate in technical sessions and exchange information.

The conference will commence with an opening keynote session on the evening of July 8 convened by John Willinsky, the founder of the Public Knowledge Project. There will be several pre-conference workshops on July 8, and the main conference program will present a combination of concurrent and single track sessions during on July 9 and 10. The conference will conclude with three special symposia on community and network building intended for each of the core PKP constituents: journal editors and publishers; librarians; and software developers.

The conference will be hosted at Simon Fraser University’s downtown campus and will be adjacent to a wide range of accommodations, restaurants, and other popular tourist destinations. Please mark the July 8 – 10 dates on your 2009 calendars. The PKP partners look forward to welcoming you to the second PKP conference.
Session proposals will be accepted until January 15, 2009 and conference registration opens October 15, 2008. For more information, please visit the conference web site: http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009

The Public Knowledge Project is a federally funded research initiative at Simon Fraser University, Stanford University, and the University of British Columbia. It seeks to improve the scholarly and public quality of academic research through the development of innovative online environments. PKP has developed free, open source software for the management, publishing, and indexing of journals and current conferences. The PKP software suite is comprised of three modules in production: Open Archives Harvester, Open Journal Systems, and Open Conference Systems, and two in development: Lemon8-XML and Open Monograph Press.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Public Knowledge Project is pleased to announce that the second international PKP conference will be held from July 8 – 10, 2009 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The first PKP conference was an overwhelming success with presentations and participants from around the world. A selected set of conference papers was subsequently published in the October 2007 issue of First Monday.

The conference will consist of a mixture of plenary talks and parallel conference streams intended for the following groups:

- journal editors and publishers
- researchers in scholarly publishing
- librarians and information specialists
- open source software developers and system administrators

Papers and presentation proposals that address one or more of the following topics are especially encouraged:

- New reading and publishing technologies, e.g. integration of Web 2.0 features;
- Open access initiatives;
- Alternative publishing and funding models;
- National and international collaborative projects;
- New roles and partnerships for libraries, scholarly publishers, and others;
- Sustainability for open access publishing and open source software.

Parallel sessions will each be up to 1 hour in length. They may consist of a workshop, a case study, a research report, a set of 3 presentations on a single theme, a panel discussion as well as other options.

Proposals for papers or presentations should be submitted by January 15, 2009, using the submission guidelines and form available at http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/pkp/index.php/pkp2009/

The conference will be hosted at Simon Fraser University’s downtown campus and will be adjacent to a wide range of accommodations, restaurants, and other popular tourist destinations. Please mark the July 8 – 10 dates on your 2009 calendars. The PKP partners look forward to welcoming you to the second PKP conference.

The Public Knowledge Project is a federally funded research initiative at Simon Fraser University, Stanford University, and the University of British Columbia. The partnership brings together faculty members, librarians, and graduate students dedicated to exploring whether and how new technologies can be used to improve the professional and public value of scholarly research. Its research program is investigating the social, economic, and technical issues entailed in the use of online infrastructure and knowledge management strategies to improve both the scholarly quality and public accessibility and coherence of this body of knowledge in a sustainable and globally accessible form. It seeks to improve the scholarly and public quality of academic research through the development of innovative online environments. It continues to be an active player in the open access movement, as it provides the leading open source software for journal and conference management and publishing. The research and publishing activities of the project have been reviewed and cited in Inside Higher Ed, Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, Science, The Scientist and others.

CANLII Legal Open Access Database Most-Used Resource!

CANLII, an open access Canadian legal database, is the most frequently used electronic legal resource in Canada, according to a recent CANLII Survey.

Following is the summary of responses, as posted by Ivan Mokanov, CANLII Chief Editor:

1. CanLII is the most frequently used electronic legal resource. The list below shows the percentage of lawyers who use the following resources once a week or more frequently:

* CanLII - 39%
* Provincial sites for legislation – 34%
* Commercial services – between 17% and 29%
* Various secondary material sources – 29%
* Courts’ websites – 21%
* Library services - 15%

The use is consistent across office size.

2. In terms of user-friendliness, lawyers rated CanLII first among the national legal information services. Lawyers who gave CanLII “very good” and “excellent” scores are 47% of the respondents.

3. Almost one-half of lawyers (43%) state that they can accomplish 50% or more of their legal research work with CanLII.

4. The majority of lawyers (74%) use CanLII to find documents and conduct legal research. A small percentage uses it only as a tool to find known documents.

5. A significant number of lawyers (71%) find that CanLII allows them to reduce their cost for legal information. Almost one half (43%) estimate that CanLII’s impact in the reduction of their cost is significant.

Congratulations, CANLII! This post - and the CANLII initiative - are part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement series.

Hat tips to Michel Adrian on Library Boy via Gavin Baker on Open Access News.

Dramatic Growth of Open Access - in Japanese!

The Dramatic Growth of Open Access series is now available in Japanese. I am deeply honoured by this translation - many thanks to SUGITA Shigeki!

This is yet another illustration of the wonder of Creative Commons. While I appreciate hearing about this translation, it is not necessary to ask my permission for this, because my Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike license gives permission in advance.

Copyright transfer: not necessarily a condition of publication (Taylor & Francis)

From the Taylor & Francis Copyright page:

What if I want to retain copyright in my own name?

Whilst Taylor & Francis strongly recommends to authors that they transfer copyright, it is not necessarily a condition of publication. An author can retain copyright in her or his paper, but we must receive a formal signed statement licensing us to publish the work exclusively, worldwide, and in all forms, in the journal.

Comment: congrats, Taylor & Francis - this is definitely a step in the right direction!

Beautiful Butterfly - quick lesson on Creative Commons

This Red and Orange Butterfly on a yellow flower - France - July 2006 by Gaetan Lee provides a beautiful illustration of Creative Commons in action! This photo is licensed under the CC-BY (Attribution) license. So it's no problem for me to add this pretty picture to brighten up IJPE. With CC-BY, even commercial use is allowed! This is only ONE of the 192,822 flickr results with the word flower restricted to Creative Commons licensed work (as of Sept. 7, 2008), available for commercial use, and modifiable too!

Sherpa RoMEO: even white is looking very green!

Sherpa RoMEO maintains a list of Publisher Copyright Policies and Self-Archiving. Publishers are identified by colour, with white being the least author-self-archiving friendly (self-archiving not formally supported), and green being the most author-self-archiving-friendly (self-archiving of preprints and postprints is permitted).

As of today, even the Sherpa RoMEO white list is looking very green! This is because even a great many publishers with no overall policy supporting self-archiving, have green checks indicating compliance with funding agencies' open access mandates. Yet another sign of Transitioning to Open Access. As more publishers modify their policies to accomodate research funding grantees, watch for more and more movement towards full support for author self-archiving.

Society for Reproduction and Fertility Self-archiving and Free Access Option: A Good Model

The Self-archiving and free access option of the Society for Reproduction and Fertility is a good model, for traditional publishers transitioning to open access. Authors are allowed to self-archived a copy of their own final manuscript with no charge after a 6-month embargo, or, they can pay a Free Access fee for immediate free access, which includes re-use rights.

Excerpt from The Society for Reproduction and Fertility's Terms and conditions for the re-use of Open Access articles:

The Society for Reproduction and Fertility makes some articles published in its journal freely available immediately upon publication, as a result of author-side financial support, usually funded by research funding bodies. These articles (hereafter referred to as ‘documents’) are also posted on PubMed Central (PMC) and PMC mirror sites. They are freely accessible and re-useable for non-commercial purposes, subject to the terms and conditions set out below.

The fee of $2,192 US is lower than what some other publishers are charging (which is good)!

What is missing? There is no indication that the Free Access Fee will take into account other sources of revenue (e.g. lower fees if the author is a member of a subscribing library).

One element of the Society's policy that is not a good model (for publishers), in my opinion, is the disclaimer authors must post on free self-archived versions. Asking authors to link to the journal home page, even stating that the article is the author's manuscript, is fine. Pointing out that the article has not gone through copyediting, formatting, and proofreading might concern the reader so that they go to the final published version, and might convince the author to take up the Free Access option. However, there is also a risk of eliciting a "who cares?" reaction from the reader, and a desire to investigate other publishing venues on the part of the author.

This post is part of the Transitioning to Open Access and Resources and Tips for Publishers.

DOAJ: over 200,000 searchable articles!

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) has passed another milestone! The DOAJ article search now includes more than 200,000 articles. Note: this understates the number of articles in DOAJ journals, as less than a third are searchable at the article level through DOAJ at this point.

Watch for further interesting growth on this measure, as more authors choose to publish in open access journals, and as more DOAJ journals set up article-level searching through DOAJ.

Detail: as of September 5, 2008, from the DOAJ website: As of today 208710 articles are included in the DOAJ service.

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

Danielle Dennie and Librarian Activist.Org

Another Canadian OA Librarian hero! Danielle Dennie, of Concordia University, Montreal, one of the principal bloggers of LibrarianActivist.Org. In addition to OA, Danielle is one of our experts on Net Neutrality. This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement series.

DOAJ: Continued Growth (plus a Creative Commons bonus)

Over at Social Justice Librarian, Devon Greyson has posted an illustration of Creative Commons in Action.

Devon's post takes content from my post DOAJ growth rate nearly doubles in the past year, and adds content of her own, such as this alternative DOAJ growth chart, showing numeric growth as well as the accelerating growth rate.

This to-and-fro is made possible by our respective Creative Commons licenses, CC-Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike for IJPE, and the very similar CC-Attribution-Noncommercial for Social Justice Librarian.

Since we are both open access advocates and are interested in alerting people to this Dramatic Growth, we are both a little closer to our goal through the sharing of ideas and charts facilitated by Creative Commons, than we would have been if our work had been "All rights reserved" - or egads, toll access only!

Thinking about Prestige, Quality, and Open Access

Here is a great article to send to faculty and university administrators! Peter Suber's Thinking about Prestige, Quality, and Open Access covers in some depth the reasons TA journals are so entrenched, even in comparison with newer OA journals of equal (or better) quality - and some thoughts on what can be done about this. For example, university hiring procedures could either focus on quality instead of surrogates such as the impact factors of journals faculty have published in, or, at the very least, at some of the newer surrogate measures that don't oversimplify as much as IF.

Where my own perspective differs a little: I am more optimistic about change in the near term, and I think that there may be more happening already than what is readily visible. Authors may feel that they need to publish in the most prestigious journals, even if they are TA. However, my gut feeling (and various comments from researchers) tell me that it's a little easier to say no to a request to review after a publisher has said no to the open access you (or your funder) desire, and a little easier to say yes to the open access publication. As Peter points out, sometimes prestige and quality diverge; a gradual loss of reviewers may impact quality first, but will inevitably impact prestige, too.

Librarians need not, and indeed are not, standing by on the sidelines. We are educating, providing support for open access initiatives, and beginning to look for open access-friendly policies as a positive in evaluation for purchasing decisions.

As Peter emphasizes (and I agree), there is a great deal more that can be done to educate people about existing rights to deposit work that is published in TA publications, which allow author self-archiving. For example, Sherpa RoMEO recently posted a list of Publishers that allow self-archiving of the publisher's PDF without fee or embargo. Librarians - is there an e-mail going out to all your faculty who publish in these journals with a simple request - may we place this in this archive for you?

Meet Pam Ryan

Pam Ryan, along with colleague Denise Koufougiannakis, is one of the librarian movers and shakers behind the strong OA support at the University of Alberta Libraries. See Pam's personal blog for info on her library interests, which often include open access and scholarly communications.

[Disclosure: I am proud to say that Pam Ryan and Denise Koufougiannakis are both former classmates at the University of Alberta's School of Library and Information Studies].

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

Tracey Lauriault

Meet Tracey Lauriault, one of Canada's most vocal open data advocates. Tracey and Hugh McGuire are the principle writers of datalibre.ca, a loose collective of data activists urging governments to make data about canada and canadians free and accessible to citizens.

Datalibre.ca is based on civicaccess.ca, a group of citizens which believes all levels of government should make civic information and data accessible at no cost in open formats to their citizens. We believe this is necessary to allow citizens to fully participate in the democractic process of an "information society."

Consider joining us for some very lively discussion on the civicaccess.ca mailing list!

Thanks for everything you do, Tracey. This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement series.

Hugh McGuire: Montreal Engineer, Open Access / Open Data Advocate

Meet Hugh McGuire, a Montreal-based engineer and open access / open data advocate. Among other accomplishments, Hugh is the founder of LibriVox.org, as he describes it: a project to make audio versions of every public domain book in the universe, and give them away for free.

Thanks, Hugh McGuire! This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement series.

Hat tip to Michael Geist.

Epilepsia: free public access for NIH; charges for Wellcome authors

Epilepsia has just announced their policy reflecting the National Institutes of Health Open Access Policy.

Kudos to Editors Philip A. Schwartzkroin and Simon D. Shorvon for an informative introductory paragraph that stats the purpose of the NIH and Wellcome Trust policies:

Last spring, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a new mandatory Public Access Policy (http://grants.nih.gov.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-08-033.html) that applies to final peer-reviewed manuscripts accepted for publication on or after April 7, 2008 (NIH). A similar policy had been announced earlier by the UK funding agency, the Wellcome Trust, applying to all research papers from October 1, 2006. These policies are designed to make published research that is funded by NIH and the Wellcome Trust accessible to everyone.

From: Editorial Public (open) access policy. Epilepsia 49:8 (August 2008). Caution: toll-access only at Epilepsia.

In response, Epilepsia will deposit all articles in PMC immediately on publication in PMC, for public access 12 months after publication. To meet the conditions of Wellcome Trust, Epilepsia requires payment of the Wiley Online Open fee. For a brief critique of the Wiley Online Open Fee, which appears to include print-based costs - click here.

Epilepsia authors note: the majority of open access journals do not charge article processing fees. Of those that do, many charge much less than the Wiley Online Open fee. Here is a link to the Neurology section of the Directory of Open Access Journals, currently 54 fully open access journals in this section alone. Or, go to the DOAJ Author Search. To view traditional journals with author-friendly self-archiving policies, go to the Sherpa RoMEO Publishing Policies and Self-Archiving page. Note: be sure to look for a publisher that allows deposit in disciplinary archives, such as PubMedCentral, not institutional repositories only.

Hat tip to Peter Suber on Open Access News.

Update Sept 1: Jim Till on Be Openly Accessible or Be Obscure notes that Epilepsia was already making all articles freely available after 12 months. This move will enhance accessibility by direct linking through PubMed, but makes no difference in access to Epilepsia articles.

Wiley Online Open: why print-based charges?

The Wiley Online Open program says, in addition to article processing fees, Any additional standard publication charges will also apply, such as for color images or supplementary datasets.

This makes no sense! Colour charges do make sense in the print environment. It does cost extra to print in colour. Not so online!

If Wiley journals are still publishing in print, these costs should be borne by print subscribers, not those wishing to make the electronic version open access.

Tip for publishers: DO NOT include print-based costs in open choice processing fees. Unless you're planning to distribute the print for free?

American Journal of Transplantation will deposit all articles in PMC!

The American Journal of Transplantation has decided to react to the National Institutes of Health's Public Access Policy, by depositing all journal articles into PubMedCentral immediately on publication - regardless of funding sources - for public access 12 months after publication, the maximum embargo allowable under the NIH policy.

The reason given for this decision is to avoid extra work and confusion for authors covered under this policy.

This is a move in the right direction, so kudos to The American Journal of Transplantation for extending public access beyond the NIH-funded articles.

Some suggestions for The American Journal of Transplantation to continue to move forward towards open access in a sustainable way:

Consider recognizing the contributions of society members and subscribing libraries, perhaps by providing for no embargo (or a shorter embargo) if the author is a member or the author's institution is a subscriber.

Provide more information on both sides of this issue through further editorials explaining the reasons for, and benefits of, the Public Access policy.

Editorial (caution - toll access only): AJT's Response to the National Institutes of Health Public Access Regulations. A. D. Kirk a and D. R. Salomo. American Journal of Transplantation August 22, 2008.

Hat tip to Peter Suber on Open Access News.