June 30, 2013 Dramatic Growth of Open Access

Kudos to the Directory of Open Access Journals for an oustanding second quarter! In the past few months, DOAJ has added 912 titles for a total of 9,759 journals. That's a net growth rate of over 10 titles per day, up from the previous rate of over 3 titles per day. At this rate it won't be long before DOAJ exceeds the milestone of 10,000 journals. PubMedCentral growth continues to be very strong in spite of what looks like a bit of backsliding. The percentage of articles published with free fulltext available continues to grow at a steady pace and is now up to 25%. There are now 69 more journals are actively participating in PMC while there has been a drop of 102 journals providing immediate free access and of 16 journals making all articles open access. Highwire Free shows a similar pattern - overall strong growth - more than 60,000 free fulltext articles added this quarter for a total of 2.3 million and an increase of 2 completely free sites with a drop of 6 sites with free back issues. Overall the pattern for journals is very strong growth in full open access and cooperation with PMC, suggesting that the backsliders are a very small minority.

Open access policy developments are also showing a strong increase this quarter, with proposed mandates up by 4 to 31 and sub-institutional mandates up by 3 to 39.

 The growth rate of documents include in a search of the Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE)  - 3.6 million documents growth this quarter for a total of over 47 million documents - illustrates the ongoing robust growth of the repository movement. Although only a portion of these documents are peer-reviewed open access journal articles (many are theses, increasingly research datasets and historical digitized materials), if even a tiny portion of these numbers are peer-reviewed articles that would still be highly significant - 10% of 3.6 million documents would be 360,000 documents, for example. The Social Sciences Research Network alone added 14,403 fulltext papers, and arXiv more than 22,000 documents this quarter, supporting this evidence of strong growth in open access via repositories.

Megajournal PLoS ONE's amazing growth has not been slowed one little bit by the entrance of competition in this market - in 2012 PLoS ONE published over 23,000 articles, up from just under 14,000 in 2011!

Finally, a special mention to the Internet Archive - while only a small fraction of the works posted there are scholarly in nature, the capture of over 66 billion webpages this quarter for a total of over 347 billion webpages is noteworthy.

The full data edition is available via uO Recherche along with charts and a PDF of this commentary.
 

The Dramatic Growth of Open Access: June 30, 2013

Heather Morrison

Assistant Professor, University of Ottawa École des sciences de l’information / School of Information Studies

http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/

June 30, 2013 Dramatic Growth of Open Access coming soon

The June 30th edition of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access will be issued just a little bit later than usual as I'm moving to a new province, starting a new job and opening up my account at the uO open access repository. The data has been gathered and I am working on the analysis and commentary.

The Springer sub-prime scholarly publishing deal?

Reuters recently announced that a group called BC Partners will buy Springer for 3.3 billion euros. Of this, 2.5 billion is debt - backed by Barclays, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Nomura and UBS. This debt is described as "covenant lite," a structure that offers little or no protection for lenders via financial tests".

This makes no sense at all from a financial perspective. Why buy a company whose traditional high profits are based on an outmoded model that currently enjoys revenues at 4-5 times higher than what is necessary for normal profits  in an emerging open access environment for scholarly publishing that is just beginning to open up to competition - including competition on price? Even if it made sense to buy the company, how could it possibly make sense to load the company with debt? If you're going to take risks like this, wouldn't it make sense to look for more rather than less guarantees? 

On the surface this looks a lot like the sub-prime mortgage situation - go ahead and lend money even though this obviously makes no sense at all - and appears to involve some of the same companies. Am I missing something here?

Outsell Open Access Report: missing the main point or are governments really committed to throwing away taxpayer money?

The Outsell Open Access Report is an interesting development in itself - industry looking at open access as a market rather than as a threat, and some of the information in the report is very useful. However, this report misses the mark in two very essential ways. The information in the report per se makes clear that with open access it is possible to publish at a small fraction of current publishing costs. Also, in an online environment, professional commercial publishers simply are not needed anymore. This report suggests that there is not yet a single fully open access journal in the social sciences and humanities, when DOAJ lists over 1,800 journals under social sciences and humanities.

Current gold open access (immediate free access on publishing) is responsible for  10-12% of the world's scholarly articles at about 2.2% of the total journal revenues, according to this report. The average open access article processing fee is reported at $950, less than a quarter of the $4,000 average for subscription journals. Taking these two calculations together, based on this report open access publishing is 4-5 times more cost-efficient than subscription publishing. However, this is just the commercial / professional sector. The Outsell report appears to be completely unaware of the substantial not-for-profit sector. For example, the report states that ""hybrid options support limited uptake markets, such as the social sciences and humanities, perhaps just until the market for a subject-specific “traditional” gold OA journal coalesces" p. 12 - presumably the authors are completely unaware of the well over 1,800 full open access journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals under Social Sciences.

Outsell predicts rising prices for open access article processing fees, when the reality is that scholars no longer need to rely on the commercial scholarly publishing sector at all. Publishing in the online environment just isn't that hard, or expensive. Priorities for public funding in higher education should be funding the research per se, addressing the growing problem of lack of full-time faculty, and keeping costs down for students - not protecting the profit margins of a bloated industry that has yet to note that the costs of things like computer storage in recent years have been going down, not up.

Outsell suggests that other countries will follow the UK's support for publisher profits approach. This is mad enough in the UK, where at least they have the excuse of protecting a positive balance in trade, but for every other country this is holding up innovation, increasing public costs, and shoring up a negative balance of trade.

Detailed quotes and comments

 "Drilling down to the journal market specifically, Outsell estimated that journal subscription revenue (which excludes society membership revenues) amounted to $6.0 billion in 2011, which makes open access 2.2% of this market for the most recent year in which we have built such an estimate" p. 8

Comment: In 2008, Outsell reported STM journal revenue at $8 billion - for details and citations, see chapters 2 and 5 of my dissertation. The $2 billion revenue discrepancy is not explained. I cannot afford the Outsell toll access reports. "

A 2012 paper published in BMC Medicine, the latest in an ongoing study by academics Mikael Laakso and Bo-Christer Björk, calculated that in 2011 the number of articles available in full, immediate open access journals encompassed 9% and 11% of all articles indexed in Scopus and Web of Knowledge, respectively. Hybrid articles added just under 1% of all articles to that total in both cases, meaning that the combination of gold and hybrid open access accounted for 10% or 12% of indexed articles, depending on the database".

"Outsell sees three scenarios that could drive OA revenue as a higher proportion of total STM market revenue, stemming first and foremost from the ultimate behavior of funding bodies." p. 13 Scenario 1 — New European Mandates Encourage Gold OA Scenario 2 — New Mandates Stimulate Green OA Scenario 3 — Mandates Accelerate in Non-European Research Centers: Suggests only Scenario 1 is likely.

 "We also anticipate that the average charge per article will slide upward with the launch of new, higher-value journals from strongly branded commercial and society publishers such as Elsevier, Wiley, and Nature", p. 15 "

Outsell estimates that the average APC (distorted somewhat by discounts and waivers, but excluding membership revenues) was about $660 in 2011; in 2015, this will increase to roughly $950 due in part to the increased number of well-branded journal publishers offering OA options at higher price points", p. 15

"also estimates that, based on Scenario 1, the revenue per subscription article will decrease by about $100, from $4,000 today to $3,900". p. 16

LIS publisher Emerald: profit, not knowledge-sharing?

As sent to various lists, June 17, 2013. Update June 17 - comment from Issac Gilman inserted into the message for context. LIS publisher Emerald has introduced a 24-month embargo on authors whose institutions have open access mandates, according to Richard Poynder on Open and Shut: http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/open-access-emeralds-green-starts-to.html This is a significant backtrack from what was a really good open access archiving policy. As of today, there are 146 titles listed under Library and Information Studies in the Directory of Open Access Journals, and most say Publication Fee - No: http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=subject&cpId=129&uiLanguage=en

Librarians, Emerald current and potential editors, authors, and reviewers, perhaps it is time to ditch this "it's about the profit" publisher in favour of journals that prioritize sharing of our knowledge? If none of the current DOAJ titles fit your scholarly niche - why not start your own?

I heartily agree - that's what we did! :) says Isaac Gilman of the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication

(inserted in original text for context)

best,

Heather G. Morrison The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com

Thanks to Richard Poynder for this additional background:

Librarians have been here before: http://www.infotoday.com/it/nov02/poynder.htm. The library organisation ASLIB sold all its journals to Emerald, and then the organisation appears to have sold itself to Emerald, if I am reading this correctly: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/about/news/story.htm?id=2257

Comments on DOAJ proposed new selection criteria

The Directory of Open Access Journals has posted a draft of their new selection criteria and is requesting comments by July 15, 2013. Kudos to DOAJ for taking this open, transparent approach to their process. Following are my comments.

DOAJ proposed criteria and my comments in bold

We have tried to construct objective criteria that can facilitate compliance verification easily. In order to be listed in the DOAJ, a journal must meet the following criteria:

• Journal will be asked to provide basic information (title, ISSN, etc.), contact information, and information about journal policies

Comment: make sense!

• Journal is registered with SHERPA/RoMEO

Comment: this should be a recommended good practice, not a criteria for inclusion in DOAJ. The reason is that registering with SHERPA/RoMEO is controlled by SHERPA/RoMEO, not the journal.  SHERPA/RoMEO is an important service, but it is UK-based and focuses on UK priorities. Few Canadian scholarly journals are listed, for example. Before considering such a suggestion, someone should ask SHERPA/RoMEO if they are prepared to take on the task of including all of the world's journals on request, including journals from every language used by scholars around the world.

• Journal has an editorial board with clearly identifiable members (including affiliation information)

Comment: not every high-quality journal has an editorial board; some small journals are managed very well by a single managing editor.  Including a criterion like this may have the unfortunate effect of changing the way that journals are published, and not necessarily for the best. Suggested change to: Journal has a transparent and academically appropriate editorial practice.

• Journal publishes a minimum of five articles per year (does not apply for new journals)

Comment: this should be struck, for several reasons. This criteria would discriminate against smaller journals. For example, last night in my scholarly communication class a student raised a point about a journal produced by a small community that one year declined to publish any articles, as no submitted articles were seen as meeting the journal's standards. As open access becomes the default and inclusion in DOAJ essential to marketing, this criteria could end up defining what constitutes a journal. Houghton and colleagues found that the most cost-effective means of providing open access in the long term would involve a peer review overlay over articles deposited in repositories. To facilitate this development we need to allow creativity in how this work is done. Eliminating small journals would not be a good idea!

Another important point is that journals that have ceased to publish should still be made available. DOAJ should work towards noting that the journals are inactive, rather than eliminating them from DOAJ. Otherwise, authors who choose to publish in a journal in part because it is listed in DOAJ may find their work eliminated from DOAJ simply because the journal ceased to exist - a common occurrence even in the print / subscription world. Also, libraries use the DOAJ list to include open access works in library catalogues and serials lists, and dropping ceased journals is a loss of valuable content.

Finally, as may be obvious from the example above of the journal that refused to publish one year, a requirement of a minimum of 5 articles per year may drive journals to publish articles that they would otherwise decline. In other words, this will sometimes be an incentive to publish lower quality articles.

• Allows use and reuse at least at the following levels (as specified in the Open Access Spectrum, http://www.plos.org/about/open-access/howopenisit/ ): 

Comment: please strike any reference to the Open Access Spectrum. This is a conceptual framework for open access that is not shared by the whole open access community. For example, the website points to PLOS journals using the OAS grid and Assess a Publisher or Publication with the OAS grid. This very much reflects a gold or open access publishing perspective which does not entirely leave out green or open access archives, but places it at a much lower priority level. Another consideration is that is open access definitions are opened up to a spectrum approach, there is no reason why others could not propose alternate spectra. For example, in recent discussions in Canada it appears that there are those who confuse national free access with open access. If we entertain a spectrum approach, why not a continuum from free access to a few people to global free access? Not all alternative possible spectra are negative examples like this. For example, a scholar-centered open access spectrum (which would appeal much more to me, as a scholar) might focus on the continuum of time of sharing, from when a research idea first occurs to you through to publication. Similarly, why not a spectrum from immediate open access to perpetual copyright with extremely limited rights - something that we should all remember is the real closed access.

• Full text, metadata, and citations of articles can be crawled and accessed with permission (Machine Readability Level 4)
• Provides free readership rights to all articles immediately upon publication (Reader Rights Level 1)
• Reuse is subject to certain restrictions; no remixing (Reuse Rights Level 3)
• Allow authors to retain copyright in their article with no restrictions (Copyrights Level 1)
• Author can post the final, peer-reviewed manuscript version (postprint) to any repository or website (Author Posting Rights Level 2)

Comments:

Machine readability is another example of a good practice to encourage which should not be required for inclusion in DOAJ. There will be variations in the ease with which different journals can achieve machine readability. Even PLoS uses locked-down PDFs, for example. More research is needed to determine whether machine readability of journal articles is always desirable. For example, if pictures of people are included, does the researcher have rights to permit facial recognition software? With the PLoS locked-down PDFs, do we really want the PDFs unlocked to facilitate data mining - wouldn't it be much more useful to work towards having scholars share the data as open data, preferably linked to from the journal but housed elsewhere? Sometimes machine readability does make sense and is highly desirable - for example, I'd like to see the default for electronic works in general to be works that can be instanteously translated into the format of the reader's choice, whether PDF, html, daisy or braille. Here, what is needed is not refusal to include journals in DOAJ if they are not at this standard, but rather education and support to help journals develop this capacity.
 
Provides free readership rights to all articles immediately upon publication is very basic to the definition of open access; this makes sense. I suggest adding the word "global" to avoid confusion with regionally limited free access, to: "Provides free global readership rights to all articles immediately upon publication"

Reuse is subject to certain restrictions; no remixing. It is good to see that journals that prefer to include some restrictions can be included in the Directory of Open Access Journals, but this statement is confusing and counter-productive. For example, as stated any journal that does allow re-use should rejected, so good-bye to the likes of PLoS and BMC!

Allow authors to retain copyright in their article with no restrictions (Copyrights Level 1)  Comment: it may be useful to encourage author rather than journal copyright retention, however this is not an essential part of open access and may not always be possible or desirable. For example, in the case of works-for-hire, some authors will not be able to claim copyright ownership. Another example came up at a recent conference, where scholars working with First Nations peoples are granting copyright in research articles to the First Nations peoples. A narrow requirement of author copyright retention would tend to prevent innovations in scholarly copyright at a period in time when I would argue that encouraging experimentation (articulating the commons) is optimal. Plus if a journal retains copyright but is clearly open access, the journal should be included in DOAJ.

Author can post the final, peer-reviewed manuscript version (postprint) to any repository or website (Author Posting Rights Level 2)

Comment: suggest add "at minimum" to encourage the common practice of allowing deposit of any version including the final version. Finally, thanks very much to DOAJ, PLoS and everyone else involved in this initiative and the Open Access Spectrum. While as this post likely makes clear I strongly disagree with many of the specifics, I do greatly appreciate all the work that the people involved in these initiatives have contributed towards open access. Update June 13: PLoS participating in the selection criteria team is a conflict of interest, because PLoS is one open access publisher and what they are attempting to do here is to control the definition of open access - if this is accepted, this will give them a competitive advantage over other open access publishers. Reader comments that meet the standard for commenting on IJPE are welcome, i.e. no anonymous comments and if you work for or are affiliated with a journal, publisher, or other initiative with an interest in these questions this affiliation must be stated in the comment.

Other posts on IJPE on related topics include the Creative Commons and Open Access critique series and through the open access definition label.

Open access is global unrestricted access

This post is in response to an initiative to digitize Canadian historical materials ironically "leaked" on Bibliocracy. This leak describes a plan by Canadian and Library and Archives Canada to digitize and put online Canadian historical materials for exclusive access by CRKN members with "open access to Canadians" opened up at a rate of 10% per year. This is described as an opportunity to partner in "Canada's largest Open Access Initiative".

There are two major definitional problems with this proposal with respect to open access, and both are major and important problems:

 1. A plan involving exclusive access to subscribers, even for a limited time frame, is NOT open access. There are many toll access publishers that provide free access to back issues of journals in much less then ten years. It would not be acceptable to have this kind of embargoed open access permitted in response to funding agency open access policies. Library associations in Canada and elsewhere have supported strong open access policies; we should not be implementing plans that involve open access definitions that our own community would not consider acceptable.

2. National access is NOT open access. The open access movement is global in scope. There are journals and open access archives in every continent. If we each restricted access to the people in the countries where the works were produced, we would all have a very great deal less. In Canada, it is mind-boggling that anyone would consider putting forth such a proposal. The proportion of the world's knowledge produced in Canada is small - if each country only gained access to its own cultural and scholarly output, we would not have much. One way to think of this: do we want to U.S. to follow this example? Would we like our free access to PubMed and PubMedCentral switched to U.S. national access?

Anyone who is confused about the meaning of open access should learn the basic definition before using the phrase. I recommend Peter Suber's short, highly readable and affordable book, "open access", and/or his free Open Access Overview, and the Budapest Open Access Initiative, for starters. I have developed and taught a course at SLAIS on open access; convened the CLA Task Force on Open Access; and drafted responses to the CIHR open access consultations for CLA and BCLA. Feel free to send questions about open access my way (no charge). There are many other librarians and academics with expertise in OA who would say the same thing.

 One way to engage people like me in this process would be to follow an open meetings approach, as does the Digital Public Library of America. This would be a great way to implement the goals of the Open Government Partnership. There is no good reason for an initiative to digitize and make available Canada's heritage to be planned behind closed doors. Surely this is not a state secret? Opening up the process can help to avoid errors of this nature - and get Canadian engaged in and excited about the initiative.

Academic libraries could fund a fully open access journal system - and save money, too

The title expresses the gist of my article, Economics of scholarly communication in transition, published today in First Monday. Abstract Academic library budgets are the primary source of revenue for scholarly journal publishing. There is more than enough money in the budgets of academic libraries to fund a fully open access scholarly journal publishing system. Seeking efficiencies, such as a reasonable average cost per article, will be key to a successful transition. This article presents macro level economic data and analysis illustrating the key factors and potential for cost savings.

The transnational open access movement: paper to be presented at the Global Communication Association conference in November

My proposal for the Global Communication Association's 7th annual conference this November in Ottawa has been accepted! The Global Communication Association is the founder of the innovative suite that is the open access Global Media Journal. The title and abstract of my proposal follows

The transnational open access movement

Open access is literature that is digital, online, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions (Suber, 2013). The focus of the global open access movement is the scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed journal articles, monographs, and emerging forms of scholarly communication such as research data. The growth in resources that are freely available is remarkable, and the growth rate dramatic (Morrison, 2004 - ). The potential of the open access movement is a global knowledge commons of knowledge, a free pool of all of the knowledge of humankind available to everyone (assuming an internet connection) for free, from which all may draw and all can contribute.

This paper will analyze the global open access movement in the context of the transnational advocacy networks described by Keck and Sikkink (1998). Transnational advocacy networks involve distinct groups working across borders to achieve a common set of goals. Transnational advocacy networks often share a set of motivations, such as the achievement of shared instrumental goals, shared causal ideology, and/or shared principles or values.

The Budapest Open Access Initiative of 2002 defined open access and coalesced this global movement with a common definition and a vision of what open access can achieve which reads: The public good…is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds. 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.

After more than a decade, the open access movement has achieved considerable success: more than 8,000 fully open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journals, over 1,200 open access repositories containing millions of items, and over two hundred funding agencies and universities have open access mandate policies.

Areas of emerging division within the open access movement include sub-instrumental goals (e.g. specific definitions, open access journals versus open access archiving), fundamental ideology (e.g. neoliberal emphasis on scholarly publishing as industry versus state subsidy and scholar-led publishing) and fundamental principles and values (sharing the learning of the poor with the rich and the rich with the poor versus fueling capitalist innovation for private profit).

This paper explores the potential for the open access movement as a natural experiment in achieving an effective transnational advocacy network outside of the issues involving obvious harm to human rights identified by Keck and Sikkink as most likely to succeed. The shared basic goal of open access to scholarly works may open up the possibility of a high level global conversation on the impact of neoliberal ideology with scholarly communication as an example. The potential for various participants to overcome differences in sub-instrumental goals to achieve the greater (but less specific) common vision of open access will be explored.

References

Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002). Retrieved April 22, 2013 from http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/openaccess/read

Keck, M. E., & Sikkink, K. (1998). Activists beyond borders: Advocacy networks in international politics. Ithaca, N.Y.; London: Cornell University Press.

Morrison, H. (2004 - ). The dramatic growth of open access. The imaginary journal of poetic economics. Retrieved April 22, 2013 from http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2006/08/dramatic-growth-of-open-access-series.html Suber, P. (2013). Open access overview. Retrieved April 22, 2013 from http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm

California call to OA action

California people - call to action to support the California Taxpayer Access to Publicly Funded Research Act

Two tough questions for Access Copyright

As posted today to the IPC and other lists:

Access Copyright has applied to the Canadian Copyright Board for a tariff to force a $35 / student payment on the post-secondary sector:
http://www.gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p1/2013/2013-05-18/html/sup1-eng.html

This is a tenfold increase from the previous rate.

There are many problems with this proposed tariff: in this post, I'll highlight two, and ask some questions about potential actions that libraries and universities might consider with respect to our licenses:

First, there is the sheer absurdity of paying MORE for copying when so much of what we purchase is bought not in the old single-copy paper model (where paying to make extra copies did make some sense), but rather as electronic resources for which we are already paying a lot more for sitewide access.

Second, it appears to me that this is a system significantly lacking in transparency. Because libraries are already paying quite a bit for usage of many of the resources, perhaps we should be looking carefully to make sure that some of the publishers we are paying are not double-dipping by collecting for sitewide usage with broad-based rights, then collecting again through copyright collectives.

For example, using the Access Copyright lookup tool I see that if I have a copy in digital format only of Elsevier's Accident and Emergency Nursing, then "You may make a copy of this publication under your Access Copyright licence or tariff.*" What's wrong with this picture? Canada's university libraries that subscribe to Science Direct are paying quite a bit for university usage which would include the uses Access Copyright is seeking under the tariff.

This isn't a national issue anymore. There is nothing in the Access Copyright application to the Copyright Board that says that they are collecting money to send to publishers based in other countries, on the Access Copyright website is a link to the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organizations (IFRRO): http://www.ifrro.org/

Two questions:

1.    If indeed publishers are collecting via copyright collectives in addition to the revenue that they get from us via licenses that cover the same uses, wouldn't this be a breach of our "This Agreement...shall comprise the complete terms and conditions of use"? If so, this would not be a new breach, but rather one that extends back quite a bit in time, right? If this is the case, it strikes me that this might give our universities potential avenues of legal push-back worth exploring with the campus lawyers.

2.    Should we start asking for full disclosure of participation in copyright collectives in our negotiations? Access Copyright is suing York University. Given that Elsevier content is obviously in Access Copyright's repertoire, then indirectly this is Elsevier suing York University, isn't it?

Thoughts?

Dr. Heather G. Morrison
Freedom for scholarship in the internet age
http://summit.sfu.ca/item/12537

Access Copyright lawsuit: are some of us inadvertently suing our employers?

The latest Access Copyright lawsuit against York University and renewed attempt to force every post-secondary and K-12 to pay Access Copyright's tariff is an opportunity to look at their "intellectual property" and approaches in new ways. For example, it just dawned on me that academic authors may be in a position of indirectly suing their employers, through their publishers, represented by Access Copyright and other members of the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organizations (IFFRO) as well as pushing for draconian tracking regimes that threaten our own academic freedom.

For example, one of the members of the IFFRO is the UK's Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA). One of the members of CLA is the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP). Members of ALPSP obviously are learned and professional society publishers, including the American Chemical Society (ACS) Publications Division, Cambridge University Press, Elsevier Ltd., Oxford University Press, Sage Publications, and Taylor & Francis, to name a few.

Scholars working at York University publish their work in journals owned by ALPSP members, who then work indirectly through the IFFRO and Access Copyright to sue the employer of their authors, York University. I have a strong hunch that there are some very interesting legal and strategic implications here.

Information about the Access Copyright suit can be found here:
http://www.accesscopyright.ca/media/35670/2013-04-08_ac_statement.pdf

Access Copyright? NOT A MEMBER!

Access Copyright is suing York University and looking for steep tariffs to force every K-12 and post-secondary to pay them money for use of their copyrighted material.

Access Copyright has a LOT of nerve for thinking that teaching our kids is all about creating an "educational market" to funnel money into their pockets.

Like most people in academia, I do a lot of writing - creating original works which I share openly with others (for evidence, see the other writings and links on this blog!). Post-secondary institutions are net creators of copyrighted works - by far. IF it made any sense to be sending cheques for use of copyrighted works, they should be flowing FROM Access Copyright to universities and colleges! Not that I agree with this approach, this is just to illustrate how absurd this situation is.

Maybe you're not an academic - but do you post your pictures on flickr or videos on YouTube for anyone to view or download? If so, you're a creator of copyrighted content. Does Access Copyright represent you? 

As for the K-12 sector: the companies and occasional individuals behind Access Copyright have an obligation, just like the rest of us, to help the next generation get a start in life. You should be donating works to your local schools and helping out by providing free author talks. If you can't be bothered with this, at least don't sue our school systems.

As a prolific writer and open access activist, I am very proud to say that I am NOT A MEMBER of Access Copyright.

Michael Geist has a great takedown of Access Copyright's Desperate Declaration of War Against Fair Dealing. 

Industry pretends to be "student-led", or another misleading OA survey

Third update April 7: this is a brief statement which I think captures the essence of the problem. Thanks to participants in the open science list for helping to clarify things. I won't copy and paste all of the discussion, but would suggest that anyone interested sign up.

The Oxbridge Biotech Roundtable, a student-led organization with a stated affinity for industry and a long list of industry sponsors, has posted an open access survey on its website. The preamble to the survey suggests that this is a survey conducted by this student-led organization for its own purposes, while the fine print at the bottom of the survey clearly indicates that this a survey sponsored by an unknown entity. The reason that this is problematic is that when research is conducted in this manner, the sponsoring entity could then easily present the results as the "student viewpoint". This would be as simple as copying and pasting from the preamble. I have no way of knowing whether this is intent of the industry sponsor or whether OBR deliberately markets their services in this way. However, this is a problematic survey and OBR should take steps to at minimum correct the preamble to reflect the industry sponsorship.

The relevant sections:

Preamble:

Thank you very much for taking part in this study on European trends in Open Access Publishing by the Oxbridge Biotech Roundtable, a UK-based student-led organisation. It should take ~7 minutes to complete. Your answers will help us to gain valuable insight into the Open Access use among academics in your field.

Fine print at the bottom of the form:

Our sponsors pay a fee to OBR for gathering, aggregating and collecting the data as well as for preparation of a Summary Report of the data compiled. In participating in this survey, the participant recognizes that the information provided in this survey will be used in an industry aggregate report and therefore grants OBR unrestricted use of this information.

As universities increasingly get involved in industry partnerships, addressing the kinds of questions brought up by this survey will become increasingly important. This research which looks like it is being done by students, but actually is sponsored by industry, does not appear to have gone through a research ethics process. This is an opinion survey; even here, opinions based on this kind of "evidence" can inform public policy. A more critical question, because OBR works in the area of biotech, is whether this approach would be considered suitable in more sensitive areas such as health research. Kudos to these students for creating this innovative company - I very much encourage them to actively participate in this discussion.

Second update April 6: thanks to Tom Morris (status and affiliation unknown) on the open science list for pointing out that the fine print on the bottom of the survey form indicates that this is commercial research undertaken by this organization for pay. Here is the language on the form: "Our sponsors pay a fee to OBR for gathering, aggregating and collecting the data as well as for preparation of a Summary Report of the data compiled. In participating in this survey, the participant recognizes that the information provided in this survey will be used in an industry aggregate report and therefore grants OBR unrestricted use of this information" from the survey form. This statement contrasts with the preamble which speaks to the "student-led organization" and the comments of Daniel Perez and Mehmet Fidanboylu who are emphasizing their student credentials. Like Tom, I would appreciate clarification of who the sponsor of this research is. Tom's post to open science and my reply will be added below.

Update April 6: Daniel Perez on the Open Science list and Mehmet Fidanboylu (see comment below) are with OBR and object strenuously to my characterizing their organization as not being student-led. Daniel points out that he started the organization while a student, and Mehmet points to the Executive Committee, which is composed of students. I was aware of this list when writing this post.

Neither Daniel nor Mehmet has provided information about who is conducting and/or sponsoring the survey. If the survey is being conducted by a "student-led" organization, then the survey should include the name(s) of the students responsible for the survey, with links to the names of their academic supervisors and research ethics clearance. Until these questions are answered, the origins of this survey remain opaque.

Daniel's comments bring up some important questions about the importance of academic freedom and independence. For this reason, I will post both Daniel's comments and my response below.

In brief, this discussion illustrates the need for academic freedom / independence. Academic freedom is far more than a nice perk for academics - it is a critical need for society as a whole. For example, one of the sponsors of this group is GlaxoSmithKline. If academics are aligned with, and funded by, GlaxoSmithKline, then this has a strong probability of making it difficult or impossible for academics to do research that is critical of this sponsor or its products. Good health information requires independent academic research.

Another question I raise in response to Daniel's comments is, considering that this group has posted a survey claiming to be conducted by a "student-led organization" without addressing traditional academic protocols such as noting authorship, sponsorship, and research ethics - does this group consider itself beyond such protocols? If so, this has some interesting and important implications, especially since this is a biotech-oriented group, so would be very likely to be involved in medical research.

I encourage both Daniel and Mehmet to actively engage in this discussion as an opportunity to consider these questions.

Original post:

Thanks to Peter Suber for the tip about yet another misleading open access survey. Following are my comments. In brief, this appears to be a curious case of two layers of smoke and mirrors about who is behind the survey that could make for an interesting question for a research methods class. The survey preamble says that this is a student-led organization. The about page claims that this is the health care and life sciences industry. The description of gold and green OA reflect the biases of the toll access scholarly publishing industry, which are at odds with those of the health care and life sciences industry. Who are you really, OBR?

The preamble starts with:

Thank you very much for taking part in this study on European trends in Open Access Publishing by the Oxbridge Biotech Roundtable, a UK-based student-led organisation. 

About OBR says

OBR’s mission is to engage our academic and industry communities on-campus to foster a conversation about the health care and life sciences industry.  We seek to create a global network of academic innovators from across disciplines, to connect them with each other and the industry resources necessary to move ideas forward.

Comment: what a way to start off a survey - lying about your organization. This is clearly an industry organization, not a student-led organization.

The background of this survey is misleading about Open Access.

OBR:  Gold model:  Authors pay article processing charges (APC) to the journal for publishing the paper and making it freely available upon publication. 

Comment: as Peter Suber points out, article processing charges is just one of the business models for open access journals, and one that is used by only about half of open access journals.

OBR: Green model (self-archiving):  the author deposits his/her post-peer reviewed article (but not the published record) in an OA online repository (e.g. institutional or subject-based repository).

Comment: the green model can involve posting a number of versions of works, from preprints to post-peer-reviewed postprints to the final published version. 

Both of these definitions are suspicious, suggesting that this survey was written by a traditional scholarly publisher with a vested interest in toll access. This interest is not shared by the health care and life sciences industry. For this industry, toll access is an expense and a barrier. This suggests two levels of smoke and mirrors in this survey - pretending to be student led while the "about" page suggests the health care and life science industries while the bias in the initial question page suggests a toll access publisher.

As David Solomon notes in a comment on Suber's post, a survey like this just posted to the web which can be answered by anyone is not very meaningful, to put it mildly.

I haven't gotten into the questions per se, but would like to note that if whoever is behind this survey wants this "research" to be taken seriously, they really should come out of the closet and tell us who they are.

This survey could make an interesting question for a research methods class.

 Daniel Perez' comments to the open science list (April 6, 2013)

Dear Heather – I just read your paranoid notes below (and blog) about the Oxbridge Biotech Roundtable (OBR), a student led organization - instigated by our act of conducting a survey into Open Access Publishing (how dare we?) and not living up to Paul Zuma’s standards of scholarship?

Heather: you asked: “Who are you really, OBR?”  (In what appeared to be a McCarthy-esqe tone.)

Look, if you were capable of even the bare minimum of research into OBR and looked at our executive committee you would see we’re led entirely of PhD students and post-docs: http://www.oxbridgebiotech.com/about-obr/executive-committee/

As the founder and President of OBR (and PhD student at Oxford) I do not take exception towards Zuma for finding our survey methodology imperfect (when it comes to OA he’s beyond biased, but obviously raised good points). 

I do, however, take exception that you then pursue some whisper campaign maligning our character and even claiming we’re not really student led.

We were founded in Oxford in June 2011, then opened a chapter in Cambridge, then London and since we’ve grown to nearly 8,000 members with additional chapters in Manchester, Glasgow (Scotland), and San Diego, Los Angeles and SF-Bay.  Our goal is to foster a conversation between academics (from across disciplines) and industry experts.  Look Heather, we actually don’t think “industry” is an ugly word. We welcome commerce, the commercialization of science, and the jobs and innovative products that comes from it.  For you to suggest we’re just “smoke and mirrors” is border-line slanderous and I highly encourage you to avoid these Holier Than Thou witch-hunt campaigns.

But as OBR's mission is to educate, here are two simple steps to avoid repeat episodes like this:

1)    Research your facts
2)    Remove the tin-foil from around your head

ps. Ok I’ll admit it: we have some post-docs on our exec committee. We really are out to get to you.

best, Dan
--
Daniel A. Perez
CEO & Founder, Oxbridge Biotech Roundtable
+4407583873540  |  @danperez610
DPhil Student, Biochemistry, University of Oxford

My reply (April 6, 2013)

hi Daniel,

Thank you for your response. To clarify, are you doing this research as a student? If so, can you point me to your academic supervisor for this study and your ethics clearance information?

In academic research it is important to state such matters as who sponsored a study, declare conflicts, etc. Look at the author guidelines of a reputable publisher such as Nature, PLoS, BMC for the kinds of information academic critics should have access.

Alternatively, perhaps you think your group is beyond such academic protocols as research ethics? If so, this has interesting implications, particularly in biotech which presumably includes medical research.

I would be interested in hearing your perspective on academic critique. What constitutes an appropriate response to critique of your approach?

Looking forward to your response,

Heather Morrison

Tom Morris (gmail account, status & affiliation unknown) post to open science (April 6, 2013)

Heather - It says right on the survey page that it's paid for by sponsors, so I don't think there's much mystery as to whether it's a commercial or academic survey.  You can find their corporate registrations here: http://opencorporates.com/companies?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=oxbridge++roundtable&commit=Go

Daniel - Congratulations on building your company to this scale at such a young age.  Since the focus of this thread is open access, can you tell who's paying for the survey?  That should help provide insight into it's construction and administration.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious about your funding in overall, so if you'd like to share a more general revenue picture, that'd be awesome.

Tom

My reply (April 6, 2013)


Tom,

Thanks, this is a good point. However, this indicates a contradiction in the information provided on the survey form.

The preamble says: "Thank you very much for taking part in this study on European trends in Open Access Publishing by the Oxbridge Biotech Roundtable, a UK-based student-led organisation. It should take ~7 minutes to complete. Your answers will help us to gain valuable insight into the Open Access use among academics in your field".

This presents the survey as one conducted by a student-led organization.

The fine print at the bottom of the page says: "Our sponsors pay a fee to OBR for gathering, aggregating and collecting the data as well as for preparation of a Summary Report of the data compiled. In participating in this survey, the participant recognizes that the information provided in this survey will be used in an industry aggregate report and therefore grants OBR unrestricted use of this information".

Both Daniel Perez and Mehmet Fidanboylu in comments here and on my blog are emphasizing their status as students and listing their academic affiliations. This is deceptive.

Mehmet says: in a comment on my blog:

May be worth taking a look at these faceless execs shamelessly posing as students?

Daniel Perez, CEO - "dual-doctorate at Lincoln College, Oxford and The Scripps Research Institute in California (DPhil, PhD)"...

Mehmet Fidanboylu, CMO - "completing a PhD in neuropharmacology at King's College London"

It is not appropriate to conduct a survey posing as students at these institutions when you are actually undertaking commercially sponsored research.

While we are on the broad topic of transparency, could you explain who you are and what your interest is, Tom? It's hard to tell from a gmail account.

I am a professional librarian and scholar, having recently completed a doctoral dissertation on the topic of scholarly communication and open access. My interest in this is finding out who is really behind this survey and what their motivations are.

I've updated my blogpost on this topic and am encouraging Daniel and Mehmet to actively engage in this discussion as I think it gets at the heart of the very important topic of the societal need for academic freedom and independence.

The post can be found here:
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2013/04/industry-pretends-to-be-student-led-or.html

I'll update with this information.

best,

Heather Morrison
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogpost.omc

If you would like to comment on this post, please note that this is a scholarly blog. Say who you are and give relevant background. Are you a scholar, a journalist, interested member of the public, or do you work for a publisher? Anonymous comments will not be posted. The content of this post may help to explain why.

Elsevier's twist on open access and Creative Commons includes exclusive license to publish

It should come as no surprise that Elsevier's venture into "open access" involves creating a new hybrid of free and toll access. In brief, authors publishing in Elsevier's new open access journals have an option of Creative Commons licenses (good), but are also expected to sign an exclusive license agreement granting Elsevier publishing and distribution rights and leaving authors and their institutions with "copyright" and a range of scholarly use rights which is the same limited range of options available to subscription-based authors. At best, this is confusing and conflicting and should be regarded as a new form of pseudo open access.

From the Elsevier explanation of Open Access Journals:

All articles published in Elsevier Open Access Journals are peer reviewed and upon acceptance will be immediately and permanently free for everyone to read and download. Permitted reuse is defined by your choice of user license.

Authors publishing in these journals will use an exclusive licensing agreement, where they will retain copyright alongside scholarly usage rights and Elsevier will be granted publishing and distribution rights.

The new open access journal Climate Risk Management's Guide for Authors page which points (through one intermediary step) to this Rights & Responsibilities page.

Excerpts:

At Elsevier, we request transfers of copyright, or in some cases exclusive rights, from our journal authors in order to ensure that we have the rights necessary for the proper administration of electronic rights and online dissemination of journal articles. Authors and their employers retain (or are granted/transferred back) significant scholarly rights in their work.    

How authors can use their own journal articles

Authors publishing in Elsevier journals have wide rights to use their works for teaching and scholarly purposes without needing to seek permission.

Summary: Elsevier has created a new form of pseudo-open-access combining Creative Commons licensing with exclusive copyright transfer with authors supposedly retaining "copyright" but actually retaining only very limited rights to use their own work.

If you would like to comment on this on any other post on IJPE please note that this is a scholarly blog. State who you are and any relevant affiliation - for example, are you an academic, journalist, interested member of the public, or do you work for a publishing company? Anonymous comments are not posted.

Dramatic Growth of Open Access 2013 First Quarter: Comparisons

Update April 5, 2013: Dirk Pieper of the Bielefeld Academic Search Engine reports on the BASE new OA designation (from the GOAL Open Access list). BASE has been able to confirm:

we can indicate 11.320.432 out of 43.713.380 documents almost certainly as OA. In result lists you will see the small OA symbol if a document is OA, in addition you can refine your result list to OA results only.

This 25% should be regarded as a minimum as not every repository is able to report OA contents to the BASE search harvester.  Repository managers please see the GOAL list post for information on how to make OA information for contents in your repository available.


Second corrections: the title of this post has been changed to 2013 from 3013 to reflect the correct milennium, and the w in HighWire is now capitalized throughout.

Correction and clarification: the number of articles added by OASPA in 2012 was 81,780, not 25,788. This would place CC-BY growth in the same ballpark as arXiv, but still less than HighWire Press and much less than repository growth.  An anonymous commenter reports the split of DOAJ articles by license type. I am not able to replicate the search and do not have contact information for this person. If anyone can explain to me how I can do a DOAJ search by license without having a specific term that would be appreciated, as would contact information for the anonymous commenter. The chart above and data below have been updated to reflect this correction.

Clarification: the BASE documents number is used as a very rough surrogate of open access growth through repositories. Not all works in repositories are open access, and not all are scholarly works. However, I argue that the sheer size of the growth strongly suggests strong growth of open access in repositories. If only 1% of the 9.2 million document growth of BASE reflects open access scholarly peer-reviewed journal articles, that would still be close to 100 thousand articles added in 2012. This consideration is described in my rationale and method. Another important point is that open access repository growth isn't just about scholarly articles - this growth reflects a lot of grey literature, for example, reports and theses that are valuable scholarly works that generally received very little dissemination in previous years, increasingly research data, and the historical works are valuable primary documents for many scholars. This is a whole range of growth of open access materials that is taking place largely within the repository movement, and very little in open access publishing.

Thanks very much to Jyrki Ilva and "Alf" the anonymous commenter for this most welcome peer review. Can this now be considered a peer-reviewed blogpost?

Highlights

This issue features a comparison of open access growth including CC-BY article growth figures supplied by OASPA. In brief: for every CC-BY article addition tracked by OASPA, repositories around the world add 359 documents as found by a BASE search, DOAJ adds 10 articles that are not CC-BY licensed (90% of DOAJ article growth), arXiv and SSRN each add 3 documents, and the Internet Archive adds lots of texts, movies, sound recordings and concerts. Recent research suggests that CC-BY is the preference of a small minority of scholars.

The top 10 growth figures by percentage for both this quarter and the past year are presented. Looking at percentage growth brings out substantial growth in initiatives with smaller numbers. Note that smaller numbers are not necessarily less significant. One open access funding agency mandate can mean free access to tens or even hundreds of thousands of articles, for example. Open access mandates are high on the list of percentage growth figures, including 26 funding agency OA mandates this quarter for a total of 80 and a growth rate of 48%. The Directory of Open Access Books is growing up leaps and bounds, or to be more specific added 13 publishers and 135 books this quarter. The usual suspects (Directory of Open Access Journals, PubMedCentral, and BASE) continue to rank highly on percentage comparisons. HighWire Press added a total of 20 totally free sites this past year for a total of 71, an impressive sixth place (not bad for an initiative that isn't focused on open access).

Kudos to DOAJ for hitting the 1 million article milestone. Bjork, Laakso, Welling and Paetau have issued a preprint of another major open access growth study, the Anatomy of Green Open Access, finding that the coverage of all journals articles as green open access is currently at 12%. Suber has posted additional figures and analysis and updated the open access by the numbers section of the Open Access Directory. New this issue is the amazing 281 billion web pages of the Internet Archive.

Full data, a word version of this commentary and jpg of the chart above are available in SFU SUMMIT.

Comparisons and CC-BY

This issue features a comparison of some of the top open access growth figures, by number and percentage for this quarter and the past year.  This comparison is inspired by some of my colleagues in the open access movement who equate open access with the Creative Commons - Attribution Only license and appear to believe that this is becoming a default for open access, as illustrated by the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association's odd release of CC-BY article data (this is odd because not all members use this license, and OASPA has not released data for other licenses used by members).

The chart above shows number of works added from March 31, 2012 to March 31, 2013 by source, limited to the top 9 sources of those tracked in this series plus the OASPA CC-BY figures. On the left we see that the growth of documents in repositories encompassed by a Bielefeld Academic Search Engine search dwarfs all other figures, with over 9.2 million documents added this past year. I include figures from the Internet Archive even though most are not scholarly works because this resource and the phenomenon of digitization and sharing of current and past works of various kinds is worth tracking, with this initiative being just one example. This past year IA added over 1 million texts, half a million movies, 360,000 audio recordings and close to 14 thousand concerts. The number of articles searchable at article level in the Directory of Open Access Journals grew by over 270,000. The HighWire Press free articles collection grew by over 130,000. arXiv grew by over 86,000 documents, and the Social Sciences Research Network by over 65,000 full text papers. OASPA tracked growth of over 25,000 documents.

Another way to compare these figures for CC-BY aficionados: for every CC-BY paper added by OASPA, the following were added by these services (corrected April 4, 2013):

• 113 BASE documents
• 13 Internet Archive texts
• 7 Internet Archive movies
• 5 Internet Archive recordings
• 3 DOAJ articles searchable at the article level
• 1.6 HighWire Press free articles
• 1 arXiv documents

Other perspectives

Of the 271,715 articles searchable at the article level added by DOAJ, the 81,780 CC-BY articles as per OASPA data represents 30%. Another way to express this is that 70% of the articles added to the DOAJ article search in 2012 are NOT CC-BY. (Updated April 4, 2013).

Most of the journals participating in HighWire Press are fairly traditional scholarly society journals. These journals are providing access to free articles at a rate 1.6 times higher than the CC-BY group. (Corrected April 4, 2013 - was 5).

Note also that research indicates that CC-BY is the preferred license of only a small minority of scholars (5-10%).


Highest growth this quarter by percentage (top 10 plus 2 due to 3-way tie for 10th place)

1. Funding agency open access mandates (ROARMAP): 26 mandates added this quarter for a total of 80 (48% growth this quarter).
2. Publishers participating in the Directory of Open Access Books: 13 added this quarter for a total of 48 (37% growth this quarter).
3. Proposed open access mandates (ROARMAP): 4 added this quarter for a total of 27 (17% growth this quarter).
4. The number of journals in PubMedCentral providing immediate free access: 177 more this quarter for a total of 1,203 journals (17% growth this quarter).
5. The Internet Archive added 616,132 texts this quarter, bringing the total to over 3.3 million (16% growth this quarter).
6. HighWire Press added 8 completely free sites this quarter, bringing the total to 71 (a 13% increase this quarter).
7. The Directory of Open Access Books added 135 books this quarter, for a total of 1,394 (11% increase this quarter).
8. The Directory of Open Access Journals added 100,097 articles searchable at article level this quarter, for a total of 1,055,817 (10% increase this quarter).
9. The number of journals in PubMedCentral depositing selected articles: grew by 166 journals to a total of 2,064 (9% growth this quarter).
10. The number of documents included in a Bielefeld Academic Search Engine search grew by over 3 million to a total of more than 43.5 million (7% growth this quarter). 
11. The number of journals searchable at the article level in the Directory of Open Access Journals grew by 292 for a total of 4,539 (7% growth this quarter).
12. The Internet Archive added more than 75 thousand movies this quarter for a total approaching 1.2 million (7% growth this quarter).

Social Sciences Research Network - paper downloads in the last 30 days - up 33% (likely a fluke as Dec. 31 would have reflected the slower December period).

Highest growth in past year (March 31 - March 31) by percentage. The OASPA CC-BY article figure is added for illustration purposes although this data is not part of the dramatic growth series.

1. Multi-institutional funding agency open access mandates: 3 added in the past year for a total of 4. (300% growth). 
2. Internet archive moving images (movies): 556,115 added in the past year for a total of close to 1.2 million (88% growth).
3. Funding agency open access mandates: 28 added in the past year for a total of 80 (54% growth).
4. CC-BY articles: 81,780 added in the past year for a total of over 250,000 (46% growth). (Based on data supplied by OASPA). Corrected April 4, 2013.
5. Proposed open access mandates: grew by 8 in the past year for a total of 27 (42% growth).
6. HighWire Press completely free sites: grew by 20 in the past year for a total of 71 (39% growth).
7. # of journals participating in PubMedCentral with immediate free access: 324 added this year for a total of 1,203 (37% growth).
8. Directory of Open Access Journals # of articles searchable at article level: grew by 271,715 this year for a total of over 1 million (35% growth).
9. # journals in PubMedCentral with all articles open access: 230 added this year for a total of 976 (31% growth).
10. Social Sciences Research Network - paper downloads in the last 12 months: grew by 2.6 million for a total of 11.4 million (30% growth).

The numbers

 Directory of Open Access Journals

• 8,847 journals 
• 328 journals added this quarter - growth rate of over 3 per day
• 4,539 journals searchable at article level - 292 added this quarter
• over 1 million articles searchable at article level - over 100,000 added this quarter - growth rate of over 1 thousand articles per day

Directory of Open Access Books

• 1,394 academic peer-reviewed books; 135 added this quarter (more than 1 per day)
• 48 publishers; 13 added this quarter

Electronic Journals Library

• 39,227 journals that can be read free of charge; 1,422 added this quarter (15 per day)

 HighWire Free

• 2.3 million free articles; over 100,000 added this quarter - over 1 thousand per day
• completely free sites: 71: 8 added this quarter
• sites with free back issues: 284: 2 less this quarter

OpenDOAR

• 2,269 repositories: 16 added this quarter

 Registry of Open Access Repositories

• 3,379 repositories: 39 added this quarter

Bielefeld Academic Search Engine

• 43.5 million documents
• 3 million documents added this quarter - over 30 thousand per day

PubMedCentral

• 2.6 million items (not updated regularly)
• 1,487 journals actively participating (23 added this quarter)
• 1,203 journals with immediate free access (177 added this quarter or 2 per day)
• 976 journals with all articles open access (83 added this quarter or 1 per day)

arXiv

• 832,859 documents
• 23,010 documents added this quarter (over 250 per day)

Social Sciences Research Network

• 385,838 fulltext papers
• 13,066 added this quarter (145 per day)

Open Access Mandate Policies (ROARMAP)

• 36 sub-institutional (2 added this quarter)
• 80 funder (26 added this quarter)
• 165 institutional (2 added this quarter)
• 4 multi-institutional
• 100 thesis
• 385 total (32 added this quarter)
•  27 proposed

 Internet Archive

• 281 billion web pages (new)
• 1.1 million movies: 75 thousand added this quarter (over 800 per day)
• 114 thousand concerts: 3,789 added this quarter
• 1.5 million audio recordings; close to 100 thousand added this quarter
• 4.3 million texts; 616,132 added this quarter (close to 7 thousand per day)

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

 



 

Attitudes and values regarding the dissemination of your research

Summary

This portion of the T&F OA survey supports arguments that scholars as a group do not support the Creative Commons - Attribution Only license (CC-BY), but rather when using CC licenses tend to prefer more restrictive licenses, with CC-Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) being the most popular option. There was strong support for text and data mining. There was an interesting difference in reaction to pre-approving translations (largely positive) and adapations as a whole (largely negative), suggesting the possibility of a more nuanced approach such as ND with preapproval of translations outside the CC license per se. Attribution is taken as a given; further research into the question of attribution might be merited as attribution may not be advisable in the case of research data and the norms for attribution can vary, for example with scholarship and Wikipedia. This portion of the survey indicates support for Taylor and Francis traditional practices (Exclusive License to Publish and Copyright Transfer), which is not surprising considering the survey pool (scholars connected with T&F) and high probability of bias in these responses. 

Details

This is the third post in my Taylor and Francis Open Access Survey critique series covering p. 8 - 10 of the results of this survey, on Attitudes and values regarding the dissemination of your research and Licenses. Please see the main post above for overall critique of this survey. In brief, social science research intended to inform public policy should not be conducted by a commercial entity with a stake in the outcome (this is fox researches hen research), and the survey as a whole is significantly flawed methodologically. The following comments should be interpreted in the light of this overall critique.

Taylor & Francis questions are in bold. 

What are your attitudes and values regarding the dissemination of your research? p. 8 (14,533 respondents)

It is acceptable for ... without my prior knowledge or permission, provided I receive credit as the original author.

Comment: this question assumes attribution as a given. For further research, it should be noted that there are reasons to question the assumption of attribution. For example, with data sharing public domain (not attribution) may be preferable, and some scholars are experimenting with contributing to Wikipedia, which uses attribution but in a different way (authors are anonymous).

The strongest support was for my work to be re-used for non-commercial gain, with 64% either agreeing or strongly agreeing. This was followed by others to use my work in text - or data-mining with 48% agreeing or strongly agreeing. Translations and including works in an anthology received only slightly less support. 

Respondents reacted negatively to others to use my work for commercial gain with 67% agreeing or strongly agreeing and others to adapt my work with 50% disagreeing or strongly disagreeing.

Licenses (p. 9) (13,143 respondents)

Please indicate in each case if you would be willing to sign the license when publishing your research (Response options: Yes, always; Only in certain circumstances; No, never).

Response options included a variety of Creative Commons licenses, with a significant omission: the Sharealike option, along with License to Publish and Copyright Transfer. The most popular response was Creative Commons - Attribution - Noncommercial - NoDerivatives CC-BY-NC-ND with 71% responding Yes, always.  

Exclusive License to Publish and Copyright Transfer were only slightly less popular. I am inclined to discount these responses because of the obvious strong likelihood of social desirability and acquiescence biases, that is, this is a T&F survey which is likely to elicit positive responses to T&F practices (see the main post in this series for detailed explanation and references); also the pool of respondents are obviously a group that continues to work with this traditional publisher ("Yes, always" actually defines the group), and respondents in favor of the publisher's practices may have been more likely to respond. 

The Creative Commons - Attribution only license (CC-BY) received the lowest positive response, with 15% indicating "Yes, always", 59% indicating "Only in certain circumstances" and 26% "No, never".

License preferences (p. 10)  (12,882 responses)

Please choose your most preferred, and your second most preferred, of the above licences.

Please choose your least preferred of the above licences.

Responses show a similar pattern to the questions on the page above. The most popular option was CC-BY-NC-ND. CC-BY elicited a strong negative reaction.

The response bias discussed above should be taken into account in interpreting the apparent popularity of traditional Taylor & Francis practices (Exclusive License to Publish, Copyright Transfer). That is, the survey population consists of scholars who work with Taylor & Francis; scholars who favor T&F practices may have been more likely to respond to the survey; and of respondents, there is a strong likelihood of social desirability and acquiescent response biases. 

Discussion

This section of the survey supports the argument that many scholars do not support the Creative Commons - Attribution Only license (CC-BY), but rather when using CC licenses prefer more restrictive licenses, in this case with CC-BY-NC-ND being the top preference. Other evidence supporting this argument comes from Nature Publishing Group's analysis of author choices for Scientific Reports, referenced from here, which offers a range of CC licenses and found that CC-BY is selected by only 5% of scholars.

This is important because many open access advocates equate open access with the CC-BY license. I argue that the similarity between CC-BY and the open access definition of the Budapest Open Access Initiative is superficial in nature, that CC-BY has both positive and negative implications for scholarship, and as a default has significant loopholes which would present an ongoing danger to open access. My work in this area can be found in my Open Access and Creative Commons critique series.  

The detailed questions about re-use are somewhat useful in indicating what kinds of re-use scholars are likely to be willing to grant. Noncommercial, text and data-mining, translations and including works in anthologies are all supported by many scholars. The difference between adaptions (negative reaction) and translations (positive reaction) is interesting, as this suggest that while scholars do not necessarily want to grant blanket rights for all kinds of derivatives, many would be okay with blanket permissions for translations. This suggests that a more nuanced approach might be worthwhile, for example perhaps NoDerivs with pre-approval of translations handled outside of the CC license per se.

The results of this survey also show that respondents to a T&F survey tend to respond favorably to T&F traditional practices. This is evidence of ongoing support for T&F, which may not be necessary given that authors and editorial boards continue to work with this publisher; beyond that, given the high probability of bias, this finding should be largely discounted. 

This post is part of the Taylor and Francis Open Access Survey critique series.

Is DOAJ inadvertently promoting publisher power over scholars?

The Directory of Open Access Journals has a new feature, to narrow a search by Creative Commons licenses. This can be very useful for the article level search, as searchers may be looking for re-usable content. I use this type of limitation when searching flickr for photos that I can re-use, for example.

However, when this is used to calculate the percentage of DOAJ journals using a particular CC license, as Peter Suber does in this post this inadvertently makes the assumption that choice of licensing is made (should be made?) by journals and publishers, not by scholars.

Merely framing a research question in this way can limit the way that we think of potential answers. For example, there appears to be no way in this categorization to consider an approach such as that of First Monday, which provides authors with a range of choices. This is the option that I recommend for journals, the one that is most compatible with author choice and Freedom for scholarship in the internet age. The last thing that scholars need in the transition to open access is to replace subscription-publisher overlords with open access-publisher overlords.

This post is part of the Creative Commons and Open Access Critique series.