Kudos to the UK Business, Innovation & Skills Committee: important steps in the right direction

The UK's Business, Innovation & Skills Committee just released its report on its inquiry into UK Open Access policy.The conclusions and recommendations are available here. On March 11: the BIS Committee has posted the full set of evidence here. My submission to the BIS Committee is posted on IJPE here.

Highlights

Following are the Conclusions and Recommendations themselves in full, and my comments. In brief, the BIS report is a welcome correction to the problems brought forward by the RCUK push for gold open access. I would like to highlight the BIS suggestion that more research is needed on the impact of APCs; my preliminary research suggests that a $3,000 APC is equivalent to the full-time salary for an Associate Professor in a country like Ethiopia, for example. The BIS emphasis on market correction is welcome, however two of the most promising approaches for cost-effective scholarly publishing (direct subsidy for publishing and peer-review overlay on repositories) are not included. The RCUK approach actually lends itself to decreasing access by encouraging the development of longer embargoes on free access. Like BIS, I am concerned that the RCUK approach takes needed dollars away from researchers to further fund an already distorted market. Finally, while the BIS committee notes the absence of voices of SMEs, no doubt appropriate for their mandate, I would like to add that the major group whose voices are not heard in open access policy discussions is academics. It is our work, after all.

Details

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmbis/99/9911.htm

In the report conclusions are shown in bold, recommendations are shown in bold italics. In this list, recommendations are shown in italics. [Heather: BIS conclusions are in block quotes].

Current open access policy in the UK
1.  The major mechanism through which the UK has achieved its world leading status (Green open access) has been given inadequate consideration in the formation of Government and RCUK policies. Neglecting repositories and consigning them to a relatively minor role in open access policy is likely to see repository infrastructure, which has been established through continued public investment, fall behind through lack of investment and monitoring. (Paragraph 24)
2.  We are disappointed by the Government's conclusion that "development of infrastructure for repositories will primarily be a matter for institutions themselves", not least because the Government has spent £225m on repositories in recent years. We recommend that the Government takes an active role in working with the Joint Information Systems Committee and the UK Open Access Implementation Group to promote standardisation and compliance across subject and institutional repositories. (Paragraph 25)

Comment: it is important for every country's open access policy to support local open access repositories. One basic gap with the open access publishing approach is that it leaves open the possibility that the only copies of open access works will be outside of the country that funded the work. This leaves such works vulnerable to shifting ownership and approaches of publishing companies as well as political shifts over time. These are additional reasons for the UK to follow the BIS committee's recommendation to restore funding and UK leadership in the area of open access repositories.

Strengthening deposit mandates to increase open access
3.  We strongly support author freedom of choice between Green and Gold open access. If implemented, HEFCE's proposals would ensure that the UK's existing network of repositories was used and monitored effectively. We commend HEFCE for its considered approach to developing its open access policy, and support its proposals for the post 2014 Research Excellence Framework, in particular the immediate deposit mandate as a requirement for eligibility. (Paragraph 29)
4.  We recommend that HEFCE implements its proposals, and maintains the strength of its proposed immediate deposit mandate in the appropriate institutional repository as a pre-condition of Research Excellence Framework eligibility. (Paragraph 30)
5.  RCUK should build on its original world leading policy by reinstating and strengthening the immediate deposit mandate in its original policy (in line with HEFCE's proposals) and improving the monitoring and enforcement of mandated deposit. (Paragraph 31) 

Comment: immediate deposit in a local repository is the best means to ensure that the conditions of the policy are met, and to address the need to assure local access to works as described above.

Open access worldwide
6.  Government and RCUK should rigorously monitor global take up of Gold and Green and international developments in open access policy worldwide. This data should be used to inform both the reconvening of representatives of the Finch working group in the Autumn of 2013, and RCUK's review of its open access policy in 2014.(Paragraph 35) 

Comment: in addition to monitoring international developments, I suggest that UK funders consider more carefully the impact of UK open access policy on researchers around the world. A $3,000 article processing fee charged by some publishers for open access would, in many areas of the world, be sufficient to fund either a full-time annual salary for a professor, or a substantial portion of one. This is another reason to consider green or open access archiving as the most basic or generic necessary portion of policy. Institutional repositories everywhere can benefit by paying local average salaries for the necessary personnel.

The transition to open access: costs and hidden costs
7.  RCUK has undertaken to publish data on "how the open access block grants are being used, specifically the numbers of research papers which are being made open access through payment of an APC and the actual APCs being paid to publishers". We recommend that RCUK also requires data on subscription expenditure from UK HEIs to establish the impact of its policy on subscription purchasing and pricing. (Paragraph 41) 

Comment: this is an excellent idea, as it would quantify the likely problem of double-dipping by hybrid journals with the push for gold open access publishing.

Embargo periods
8.  We note the absence of evidence that short embargo periods harm subscription publishers. We have seen evidence that current UK open access policy risks incentivising publishers to introduce or increase embargo periods. This has serious implications for open access in the UK and the rest of the world. We agree with the Government that lengthened embargoes are counter to its aim to increase access. (Paragraph 49)
9.  The stated policy objective of the Government and RCUK is to increase access to publicly funded research. Long embargoes are a barrier to access. We recommend that the Government and RCUK revise their policies to place an upper limit of 6 month embargoes on STEM subject research and up to 12 month embargoes for HASS subject research, in line with RCUK's original policy published in July 2012. (Paragraph 50)
10.  Given the importance of ensuring that UK open access policy does not result in reduced access in the UK or worldwide, the Government and RCUK must monitor and evaluate the impact of their open access policy on embargo lengths imposed by UK publishers. The impact on different subject areas must also be carefully monitored. That information must inform future meetings of the Finch Group and RCUK's reviews of open access policy. (Paragraph 51) 

Comment:  it is a very good thing that the BIS committee has found evidence that the current UK policy creates incentives to increase embargo periods. It is highly unlikely that UK preference for gold will be repeated elsewhere. Thus, if publishers increase embargoes to try to force authors to pay for OA gold in the UK, then everyone everywhere experiences greater delays in access to published works.

Levels of Article Processing Charges
11.  We conclude that the Finch Report, the Government and RCUK have failed to assess adequately the existing levels of APCs that are charged by a range of open access journals, both within the UK and worldwide, and instead formed a plan of expenditure based on payments to publishers that, compared to a range of benchmarks including APCs of the largest "pure" Gold publisher, are rather less than competitive. (Paragraph 57)
12.  We recommend that the Finch working group commissions an independent report on APC pricing, which should include average APC prices of pure Gold journals and hybrid journals, domestically and internationally. (Paragraph 58)
13.  We strongly support the recommendation of the Science and Technology Committee of the House of Lords that the Government undertake a full cost-benefit analysis of open access policy, including the impact on different subject areas. This analysis must include data to reflect actual rather than projected costs during the transition period. (Paragraph 59)

Comment: I fully support the statement of the committee that further research is needed. Economics of transition to open access is one of my areas of research. I am sharing my work openly in the spirit of open research. My very preliminary data suggests that we should question whether an article processing fee approach would work in many countries, even assuming local operations. As for the developing world paying UK level APCs, note that the fee many charge of $3,000 US is approximately the annual salary for an Associate Professor in a country like Ethiopia. This is one of the reasons I urge research funders with an interest in the developing world to require green open access archiving, and not to support gold. Direct the funds to support the researchers, please. See this blogpost for details: http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2013/09/comparing-oa-article-processing-fees.html

Affordability of APCs for authors and UK research organisations
14.  At a time when the budgets of research organisations and HEIs are under great pressure, it is unacceptable that the Government has issued, without public consultation, an open access policy that will require considerable subsidy from research budgets in order to maintain journal subscriptions and cover APCs. Significant public investment has already been made in institutional repositories, of which there are 120 in the UK, and they could represent a more cost-effective and sustainable route to full open access. (Paragraph 63)
15.  We are concerned that the expectation appears to be that universities and research organisations will fund the balance of APCs and open access costs from their own reserves. We look to the Government and RCUK to mitigate against the impact on university budgets. The Government must not underestimate the significance of this issue. (Paragraph 64) 

Comment: I cannot speak to the UK situation, however from a Canadian perspective, our funding councils in many disciplines can only fund about 20% of applications, and is turning down some that are "approved but not funded".  Diverting funds from research to paying for article processing fees will not result in the acceleration of research that is one of the potentials of open access, because it means that less research will be done. Junior scholars, far from enjoying the full benefits of the OA citation impact advantage, will be disadvantaged in not having support to do the research. Much of this funding is designed to support grad students, so diverting funding from the research per se hurts them, too.

The shared ultimate goal of full Gold open access
16.  The pro-active stance the Government has taken in the formation of open access policy is to be welcomed. However, we are of the view that the Government has failed to communicate effectively that Gold open access is the ultimate goal at the end of a transition phase. Because insufficient attention has been given to the transitional route, the Government has neglected the opportunity to ensure that costs are constrained, and that institutions and research authors are convinced of the merits of open access policy. (Paragraph 69)
17.  The Government and RCUK should clarify that Gold open access is the ultimate goal of, rather than the primary route to, their open access policies. We recommend that the Government and RCUK reconsider their preference for Gold open access during the five year transition period, and give due regard to the evidence of the vital role that Green open access and repositories have to play as the UK moves towards full open access. (Paragraph 70)
18.  RCUK's current guidance provides that the choice of Green or Gold open access lies with the author and the author's institution, even if the Gold option is available from the publisher. This is incompatible with the Publishers Association decision tree, and RCUK should therefore withdraw its endorsement of the decision tree as soon as possible, to avoid further confusion within the academic and publishing communities. (Paragraph 71)
Achieving a functional market
19.  Both the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee's 2004 Report, and the Finch Report, highlighted the fact that VAT currently applies to e-journals, but not to print journals. This creates a clear disincentive for online access, and therefore to open access. Despite this anomaly, the Government has asserted that it does not consider it worthwhile to pursue a reduction in VAT rates with the European Union. We disagree, and believe that the Government should be willing to increase its efforts to remove or reduce this barrier. (Paragraph 76)
20.  If RCUK and the Government continue to maintain their preference for Gold, they should amend their policies so that APCs are only paid to publishers of pure Gold rather than hybrid journals. This would eliminate the risk of double dipping by journals, and encourage innovation in the scholarly publishing market. (Paragraph 77)
21.  The evidence we saw suggested that authors have little price sensitivity when they choose a journal in which to publish. We recommend that RCUK amends its policy to allow grant funds to be used for publishing charges, which is by far the most common model internationally. This would re-introduce price pressure by prompting authors to make an informed decision on where to publish. We recommend that the Government endorse genuine price transparency from publishers so that it is clear to subscribers which services and costs are and are not included in the overall subscription price, enabling subscribers to assess the costs and benefits of purchasing. (Paragraph 78)
22.  We strongly agree with the recommendations of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee and the Finch Report that the Government should work to introduce a reduced VAT rate for e-journals. Given the emphasis the Government has placed on the benefits of increasing open access, the Government should seek a derogation on this point from the European Commission. (Paragraph 79)
23.  We further recommend that the Government indicates clearly that non-disclosure clauses should not be included in publishing contracts which involve public funds. In the first instance, this should be achieved through dialogue between Government, publishers and universities. If the use of non-disclosure clauses persists, then the Government should consider referring the matter to the Competition Commission. (Paragraph 80)

Comment: the recommendations of the BIS Committee here are sound, however there are two notable omissions. First, the model of direct subsidy of scholarly journal publishing that is common in many countries (e.g. Canada, most Latin American countries) is not considered. Second, the peer review overlay with institutional repositories which the  JISC funded Houghton & colleagues study found to have the most potentially transformative effect from an economic standpoint, is not considered. An immediate move to this system would not be possible, however looking out at the next five years it would make sense to at least consider this possibility and fund some pilot projects.

Licensing
24.  We conclude that the Government must keep an open mind on licensing requirements until the findings of the ministerial roundtable are available. The Government should commission independent research on the implications of the most common licences if necessary. We believe that authors should be able to choose the licence that applies to their work, especially during the transitional period while further evidence is gathered. Mandating the use of a particular licence should not be prioritised over immediate online access to findings of publicly funded research, which is at the heart of open access. (Paragraph 84)
25.  We recommend that the Government reports the outcomes of its further investigations into licensing to us and communicates them clearly through RCUK as soon as possible in order to assuage concerns of authors and their institutions. (Paragraph 85)
26.  RCUK should monitor complaints from authors and/or their institutions about breach of licensing conditions or inappropriate re-use of content, consider these at its review of open access policy, and identify appropriate action if necessary. (Paragraph 86) 

Comment: this is wise. I would add that analysis and experience with the use of open licenses is needed. It is good to monitor author complaints, however at this point in time we do not fully know how people might make use of open licenses, and since no permission is required, authors might not be aware of how their works are being used. Also, some of the potential for abuse comes only when a substantial number of works are openly licensed. For example, commercial re-sale of a single article available via a CC-BY license under toll access conditions is hardly likely to attract the interests of the private sector; but millions of articles is a different matter.

Open access, innovation and growth
27.  We believe that BIS must review its consultation processes to ensure that lessons are learned from the lack of involvement of a broader range of businesses, particularly SMEs, in the formation of open access policy. It is particularly important to ensure that future policies and initiatives (for example Gateway to Research) take into account the specific needs of the communities they are intended to serve, to ensure optimum functionality and a more efficient use of public funds. (Paragraph 91) 

Comment: this makes sense in terms of the mandate of the BIS committee, however I would like to note that the group most absent from open access policy discussions is academics themselves.  Professional staff of scholarly society publishers are not an adequate surrogate for researchers engaged in academic work on a full-time basis.

Comparing OA article processing fees with academic salaries

Update September 12: data added from Ayalew's (2012) research indicating that gross annual salary for an associate professor in Ethiopia is 56,400 Ethiopian birr, or approximately $3,400 US (ETB 16.6 = U.S. $1.00). Assuming that at least the equivalent of $400 is paid in tax, that means that a scholarly publisher charging $3,000 for an open access article processing fee is paying a sufficient amount to cover a full-time salary for an Associate Professor in a country like Ethiopia. My recommendation is that research funders supporting work in the developing world should consider carefully before supporting gold open access article processing fees. Do the math. Instead of paying publishers like Elsevier and Springer $3,000 to make a single article open access, why not require green open access archiving and use the funds to support a full-time academic in the developing world instead? 

My advocacy interests include both open access and sustainable scholarly publishing. One area in need of further attention is the impact of publisher costs (whether subscription or open access) on resources to support academics (salaries and research funding).

One concern that I have with the push for payment of gold open access article processing fees (the RCUK approach) is that publishers are likely to set standards based on the UK approach which then impact scholars around the world, because scholarly publishing is global in nature.

One area of research in need of attention is comparison of open access article processing fees with academic salaries. This is particularly needed in the developing world, but even in the developed world it is worth noting that the $3,000 OA fee charged by some scholarly publishers is more than many adjuncts in the US are paid to teach a course (see for example this table by the American Psychological Association): http://www.apa.org/workforce/publications/12-fac-sal/table-32.aspx

Considering the high percentage of voluntary labour involved in scholarly publishing (unpaid writing for research articles, peer review and much of the editing), it is possible to publish using models that involve extremely low dollar costs. See, for example, Shieber's post An efficient journal detailing how the Journal of Machine Learning publishes at an average of $10 per article. Valuable as open access is, the research and writing needs to be done and we academics should be asking ourselves whether we want universities and research funders to be paying a $3,000 article processing fee, or whether we would prefer DIY at $10 or so per article and directing the funds to support academic salaries and research grants instead.

Results of a research collaboration by the "Laboratory for Institutional Analysis (LIA) from the Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow, Russia, and the Boston College Center for International Higher Education (CIHE) in the United States in collaboration with experts from 28 countries around the world" links here finds that even after adjusting for differences in currency using the purchasing power parity (PPP) method, the local equivalent of $3,000 is more than a month's salary for an academic at the top rank for 7 of the 28 countries studies (25%), and more than a month's salary at 11 of the 28 countries studied (more than a third). Even the PLoS ONE fee of $1,350 is more than month's salary at the PPP equivalent at the top academic rank in 3 countries (China, Russia Federation, and Armenia). Method: go to Quantitative Data, download the data for academic salaries (only PPP provided), sort by rank (I used top rank and rank 3).

This is very preliminary data, shared in the spirit of open research and also as an illustration of the kind of research that is needed before global approaches to paying for open access are even considered. This data would appear to suggest that at some countries, not necessarily even the world's poorest countries, even local equivalents of open access using article processing fees at the rates of PLoS ONE or Springer would cost more than a month's salary for a top ranked academic.

As a next phase, I'm thinking of looking into the actual data not adjusted for currency differences to compare the actual academic salaries with open access article processing fees.

Reference

Ayalew, E. (2012). Salary and incentive structure in Ethiopian Higher Education. In: Altbach, P. ; Reisberg, L.; Yudkevich, Ml; Androushchak, G., and Pacheco, I. , eds. Paying the professiorate: a global comparison of compensation and contracts.  Routledge: New York and London, 2012. [Note: I have access to a copy of this book through the excellent collection at the University of Ottawa's library. How many academics in less affluent areas would have ready access to a work like this?]

Academically appropriate comments are welcome.

Beginning of the great California Community Colleges sell-out?

All of the California Community Colleges now require that all works funded by the Chancellor's Office be licensed as CC-BY. There is some good news in this, in that these works will now be much more widely available for re-use, and for adaptation. However, there is a real danger in this approach. The Creative Commons CC license grants blanket permission for commercial use downstream, with no obligation except attribution. This means that the private for-profit "education sector" can take these works funded by the public and use them for profit-seeking, with no obligation to make the works or derivatives that they create freely available. Ultimately, this could undermine the whole public college sector. Let's hope that the Chancellors recognize this mistake sooner rather than later and rectify the problem by making works open access, but not CC-BY.

Update: here is a bit of background that may be helpful to understand the danger. The state in question, California, has a reputation of being home to private for-profit "education" businesses with a clear-cut interest in profits and less than clear interests in actually providing education. Probably the best illustration of this is expressed in this Examiner piece, California tops list of US states with most diploma mills.  Kolowich's recent article on MOOCs in the Chronicle of Higher Education, while it focuses on lack of interest in credit for MOOCs, discusses the trend toward introducing legislation requiring public colleges and universities (including in California) requiring acceptance of MOOCs for credit. On the surface, this looks like a great idea - if students can largely learn on their own through low-cost online platforms, why not? However, the problem with this is that the substance behind the MOOCs comes from the largely public and private not-for-profit education sectors. If all of the work produced by faculty on salary in the public sector can be used by for-profit companies without recompense either to the faculty or to the public, and the cheaply built MOOC competitors take away work from the public sector, then ultimately this undermines the public education sector.

There is far more at play here than Creative Commons licensing. However, CC licensed works are distributed and used in a real world where there are many variables at play. Aside from the licenses per se, there are the people and organizations that use them with the full range of motives and purposes of human endeavours.

New course blog: information policy and government publications

Just created: a new blog for my course this fall, information policy and government publications, ISI 5164. This is a seminar-based course with minimal lectures, so posting is likely to be light. The blog will give me a convenient way to share links to readings with students; my approach is to point to open access resources wherever possible.

Open Access Week 2013: Heather's schedule

Open Access Week is coming up October 21 - 27, 2013 everywhere. Here is my schedule for OA Week this year so far - in brief, emerging research at uO on Monday, October 21, and Whose scholarship? Our scholarship! at the University of Regina library on Thursday, October 24.

University of Ottawa - Monday, October 21 (time / place TBA)
(coordinated by University of Ottawa Library)

Making the switch to open access: emerging research at uO, and why and how scholars should get involved

Description:  New research by the European Commission suggests that open access is reaching a tipping point, with about 50% of scientific papers published in 2011 now available for free. The University of Ottawa's Dr. Heather Morrison will talk about her emerging research on keys to the transition to an open access scholarly communication ecosystem that is free to prioritize the needs of scholars, and of scholarship. What does it take to sustain open access scholarly publishing led by scholars and scholarly societies? What are the elements of policy and licensing needed for the knowledge commons (as opposed to publisher profits or administrative efficiencies)? There are discussions underway around the world that will have a profound impact on faculty members everywhere. This session will discuss why the voices of scholars are important, and how scholars can get involved.

Reference:

EU Commission Press Release: Open access to research publications reaching 'tipping point'
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-786_en.htm

University of Regina Library Thursday, October 24 

Whose scholarship? Our scholarship!

The current system in academia drives scholars to give away the 
visible results of our work. We hand over copyright, often to 
multinational corporations that enjoy an inelastic market - record or 
near-record profits of 30-40% even in recent years after the financial 
crisis when university budgets have been squeezed and programs often 
cut. This doesn't have to continue! This talk is call for scholars to 
take back our scholarship from a system that drives enclosure for 
profit to one led by scholars that can put the priorities for sharing 
where they belong: prioritizing the needs of scholars and the public 
good. Open access advocates and newcomers alike with leave with some 
clear and compelling arguments about why this is necessary, and 
practical steps that will help the transition along.

 

Thoughts on transforming peer review processes: lessons from funding agency initiatives?

Update September 9: the Open Scholar group in the UK is developing something very much along the lines of what I've described below (thanks to Bjoern Brembs). 

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research is in the process of developing a new, streamlined peer review support system. The development process includes testing IT solutions for coordinating peer review. Details can be found on the CIHR website. 

Idea!

Could there be lessons from this kind of initiative that would further transition to a completely new form of peer review, for scholarly publications, building an overlay on open access archives? Houghton and colleagues (2009) in a major economic study of scholarly publishing in the UK found that this approach, while more transformative in nature, has the potential to achieve much greater cost savings than a shift to either gold or green open access combined with traditional publishing (both of which were found to lower costs as compared to subscriptions, even for one country moving on its own).

Here is a picture of what I think this might look like:

After a researcher completes a study funded by CIHR, the researcher deposits the preprint into the applicable open access archive (in this case, PubMedCentral Canada). CIHR then would use the technology and processes that they are currently investigating to streamline the peer review process applied at the application stage to coordinate the publication peer review process. When peer review is complete, the final article, with appropriate notice of peer review completion status, is also posted in PMC Canada. Articles can be cross-deposited in the institutional archives of all authors; ideally, this task would be automated.

Why do this? For starters, this ensures that the results of Canadian funded research are preserved in Canada, under the control of Canadian agencies reporting to the Canadian taxpayer. This would be a marked improvement over the current situation where a large portion of publications arising from Canadian taxpayer funded research end up as the "intellectual property"(1) of commercial publishers that report to shareholders, are generally not located in Canada and have no obligations to Canadians.

CIHR and the Canadian universities where the researchers work then have a wealth of published material to assist with demonstrating the value of the work that they do, and to drive website traffic to further demonstrate interest in the work that they do. This in turn can only help funding agencies and universities to receive the support that they deserve.

There are people in the publishing industry whose experience of peer review stems from their own organization's operations who tend to speak as if this was the only, or the most important, form of peer review of scholarly research. Perhaps this is a good time to bring into the discussion the far more complex peer review procedures that go into research before it is even funded - increasingly, research that is not even funded. Currently, for example, the rate of success of applications for Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) is about 20%, with some applications being returned approved but not funded (due to lack of funding).

For researchers and universities concerned about prestige, the fact of funding agency success is a mark of prestige. If I had to choose between publishing with Elsevier and SSHRC funding, I know what I'd choose (even if I weren't part of the Elsevier boycott).

Are other research funding agencies conducting similar investigations? Is anyone looking into this?

Reference

-->

Houghton, J., Rasmussen, B., Sheehan, P., Oppenheim, C., Morris, A., Creaser, C., et al. (2009). Economics implications of alternative scholarly publishing models: Exploring the costs and benefit: A report to the Joint Information Systems Committee. Loughborough University. Retrieved February 7, 2010 from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/reports/2009/economicpublishingmodelsfinalreport.aspx

Note

1. "Intellectual property" is in scare quotes to indicate that I consider this to be a fictional concept of questionable usefulness at best and considerable harm to society at worst. 

The commerical overlords of scholarship rewrite copyright licenses to suit themselves

As just posted to the openscience list:

What can or cannot be done under CC-BY may quickly become a moot point - according to Elsevier Connect, "the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM) is contemplating the release of a more specific user license designed for scholarly communication. This would likely:

• Permit scholarly non-commercial use 
• Prohibit the creation of derivative products 
• Expressly permit text and data-mining for academic purposes and translation"

The International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM) has a Copyright & Legal Affairs Committee which aims: "To pursue, within the limits of the STM Association's aims and objectives, the highest possible level of international protection of copyright works and of the services of publishers in making these works available".

from: STM / An Introduction to Copyright & Legal Affairs / The Aims of the Copyright and Legal Affairs Committee
http://www.stm-assoc.org/copyright-legal-introduction/

Elsevier, Wiley, Springer, and Taylor & Francis all have multiple listings under STM Membership.

In other words, while the academics who do the work of scholarship, writing and editing struggle to understand the legal concepts and present solutions off the sides of our busy desks, the companies that have long been in the business of profiting off our work and our generosity have lots of $ to hire lawyers to change the legal landscape to suit their preferred priorities (profits for themselves / their shareholders).

best,

--
Dr. Heather Morrison
Assistant Professor
École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies
University of Ottawa

http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html
Heather.Morrison@uottawa.ca

ALA Accreditation site visit scheduled for 30 Sept-1 Oct 2013 /
Visite du comité externe pour l'accréditation par l'ALA est prévu le 30
sept-1 oct 2013
http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/accreditation.html
http://www.esi.uottawa.ca/accreditation.html

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

The Elsevier "open access" / exclusive license to publish hybrid

Elsevier has come up with a twist on open access licensing that should give pause to advocates of equating open access with particular Creative Commons licenses such as CC-BY, that is, a version of what they call "open access" that involves an exclusive license to publish.

In Elsevier's own words, from Elsevier Connect:

"for open access articles we use an exclusive licensing agreement, which applies to all our Gold Open Access content. While granting publishing and distribution rights to us, this exclusive licensing agreement means that authors retain copyright alongside the scholarly usage rights we have always supported. - See more at: http://elsevierconnect.com/what-changes-when-publishing-open-access-understanding-the-fine-print/#sthash.dTcOLuCV.dpuf"

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

for open access articles we use an exclusive licensing agreement, which applies to all our Gold Open Access content. While granting publishing and distribution rights to us, this exclusive licensing agreement means that authors retain copyright alongside the scholarly usage rights we have always supported. - See more at: http://elsevierconnect.com/what-changes-when-publishing-open-access-understanding-the-fine-print/#sthash.dTcOLuCV.dpuf

for open access articles we use an exclusive licensing agreement, which applies to all our Gold Open Access content. While granting publishing and distribution rights to us, this exclusive licensing agreement means that authors retain copyright alongside the scholarly usage rights we have always supported. - See more at: http://elsevierconnect.com/what-changes-when-publishing-open-access-understanding-the-fine-print/#sthash.dTcOLuCV.dpuf

for open access articles we use an exclusive licensing agreement, which applies to all our Gold Open Access content. While granting publishing and distribution rights to us, this exclusive licensing agreement means that authors retain copyright alongside the scholarly usage rights we have always supported. - See more at: http://elsevierconnect.com/what-changes-when-publishing-open-access-understanding-the-fine-print/#sthash.dTcOLuCV.dpuf

for open access articles we use an exclusive licensing agreement, which applies to all our Gold Open Access content. While granting publishing and distribution rights to us, this exclusive licensing agreement means that authors retain copyright alongside the scholarly usage rights we have always supported. - See more at: http://elsevierconnect.com/what-changes-when-publishing-open-access-understanding-the-fine-print/#sthash.dTcOLuCV.dpuf

for open access articles we use an exclusive licensing agreement, which applies to all our Gold Open Access content. While granting publishing and distribution rights to us, this exclusive licensing agreement means that authors retain copyright alongside the scholarly usage rights we have always supported. - See more at: http://elsevierconnect.com/what-changes-when-publishing-open-access-understanding-the-fine-print/#sthash.dTcOLuCV.dpuf

for open access articles we use an exclusive licensing agreement, which applies to all our Gold Open Access content. While granting publishing and distribution rights to us, this exclusive licensing agreement means that authors retain copyright alongside the scholarly usage rights we have always supported. - See more at: http://elsevierconnect.com/what-changes-when-publishing-open-access-understanding-the-fine-print/#sthash.dTcOLuCV.dpuf

Canada's Action Plan on Open Government Consultation - my comment

Following is the comment that I just posted to Clement's consultation on the Action Plan on Open Government, currently queued for moderation.

Good progress has been made on the Action Plan. However, progress on the details does not begin to make up for overall increasing secrecy and lack of accountability by this government. For example, when the International Monetary Fund "devotes nine pages to the trials and travails of Page’s five years trying to shine a torchlight in the government’s murky budget process — and especially on the toxic responses he got from Harper’s ministers" (from http://globalnews.ca/news/765289/imf-gives-page-high-marks-for-pbo-work/) our Prime Minister prorogues parliament when there are major questions relating to accountability that should be answered in Parliament, serious scholars like John Dupuis document The Canadian War on Science: a long, unexaggerated, devastating chronological indictment http://scienceblogs.com/confessions/2013/05/20/the-canadian-war-on-science-a-long-unexaggerated-devastating-chronological-indictment/, Canada engages in secretive trade treaty negotiations like FIPA and TPP, "Open Government" sounds like a phrase straight out of Orwell's 1984. Canada needs to step back and ask, not whether we are making progress on these details (good though this is in itself) - that is to say, not to ask "how much progress are we making towards open government", but rather "are we moving towards open government at all, or are we moving fast in the opposite direction, towards more secret and unaccountable government"? I am really sorry to have to write such a critical comment as I am sincere about the genuine progress made by Clement and those who really are working for open government and would much rather give them the applause that they deserve, but this is far too important and we need to focus on the big picture.

DFATD Development Data widget generator

The Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (DFATD) Development Data widget generator is a tool that anyone can use to create a widget for a website that will search the DFATD aid data. This tool can also be adapted for use with other aid agencies that share data according to the IATI standard. The example below illustrates how someone with an interest in Canada's support for basic health care in Haiti can create a widget like the one displayed at the bottom of this blog that will gather information on Haiti as a recipient country and health as a sector. This tool is a supplement to other search tools for aid development such as aidview, a global search tool for aid data designed for the end user.  

How to use the widget generator

The DFATD data that is searched by the widget generator can be viewed in xml format here. This file adheres to the International Aid Transparency Intitiative (IATI) file standard. The codes can be viewed at the IATI site. For example, the general category for the health sector is 121; sub-categories add an additional 2 numbers. Following is a sample widget. This can be copied and pasted into a website tool such as google blogger's gadget function from the blogger layout menu, that accepts html/javascript. The DFATD Development Data widget generator is a tool that anyone can use to create a widget for a website that will search the DFATD data using any two parameters. For example, someone with an interest in Canada's support for basic health in Haiti can create a widget that will gather information on Haiti as a recipient country and health as a sector.

To create your own widget, simply copy the script and change the parameters that are of interest to you, your group or community.

For example, to search a different recipient country, find the place in the script that says:

recipient-country&up_mykeyword2=HT

and change the country code from HT (for Haiti) to the country code of your choice. The country codes are listed on the IATI codes site here. To change the recipient country to Bhutan, for example, code the piece of code above, replacing HT with BT.

To change the language to french, find the part of the code that says lang=en and change to lang=fr. The IATI site provides a list of language codes; DFATD information is available in english and french.

Examples <script type="text/javascript" src="//www.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/108447061287942535117/hello3.xml&up_myfield1=sector&up_mykeyword1=12220&up_myfield2=recipient-country&up_mykeyword2=HT&synd=open&w=250&h=300&title=Haiti+Basic+Health+Data&lang=en&country=ALL&border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C1px+solid+%23999999&output=js"> "</script> <script src="//www.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/108447061287942535117/hello3.xml&up_myfield1=sector&up_mykeyword1=15160&up_myfield2=recipient-country&up_mykeyword2=CN&synd=open&w=350&h=350&title=Droits+de+L'homme+n+Chine&lang=fr&country=ALL&border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C1px+solid+%23999999&output=js"></script&lgt;

 

Future possibilities

• GUI interface (e.g. drop down menus) to make it easier for website administrators to generate new widgets
• more style options
• Transparency might be enhanced by giving beneficiaries in the recipient countries and other key stakeholders an opportunity to crowdsource their own quantitative or qualitative assessment of the results of a project, and/or suggestions for future projects. 

About this project: The CIDA Development Data widget generator is an early prototype designed to illustrate the potential for enhanced searching of development data created by Team Widget, my group at the Citizen Attaché hackathon.The project website which includes technical information and contacts, is available here.

This post is part of the Creative Globalization series.

♥ Copying is an act of love. Please copy and share according to the principles of copyheart.

Creative Commons and Open Access research: some next steps

Rosie Redfield has posted results of a survey on author perspectives of CC-BY licenses on RRResearch, along with her own comments. This is a useful addition to a question that is very much in need of serious critical research and analysis, a line of research that I am in the process of developing.  In order to make informed decisions about what kinds of uses to permit, encourage, forbid or discourage, authors and others with interests in this area (such as research funders) need to know all of the implications. Redfield's research to date has shown that many authors that have agreed to CC-BY licenses did not realize some of the implications of this decision - for example, authors did not know that their CC-BY articles could be republished as book chapters by a commercial publisher for profit without their knowledge or permission.

Here is my overall perspective on what is needed in this line of research:

Analysis of what might actually be permitted (or forbidden) under CC licenses. With any legal matter, there is the question of what the writer of the law / license intended and how others might reasonably interpret the words. Specific areas that need attention include:

• permission for re-enclosure for profit, whether accidental or purposive. CC licenses do not imply that works need to be free of charge. The licenses forbid adding DRM to a work, but they do not forbid paywalls before one gets to the work (this is probably impossible, given that most of us have to go through a paywall of some kind to access the internet per se).  From my perspective this is a signficant danger, one that could be a huge setback for the open access movement. For example, if commercial medical publishers moved to CC-BY open access then changed course and decided to release these works as toll access only (CC-BY does not preclude this), and then lobby to remove funding for PubMedCentral and other publicly owned open access archives, then it is feasible that massive amounts of works made OA via CC-BY could very quickly revert to toll access, with no recourse available to authors or their funders. This is the primary reason I argue against CC-BY as a default.
• author moral rights are stronger under CC BY attribute than automatic copyright. What are the implications for scholarship? I argue that at minimum this is the opposite of the intention of BOAI.
• What kinds of re-use of scholarly works would actually be desirable and useful for scholarship, and what are the conditions where this would make sense to the authors? Translation is one example - there are obvious advantages to scholarship to making this as easy as possible, but obviously dangers to authors' reputations if poor translations are attributed to the author. There is probably some middle ground. For example, automated translation services are available even for many works not CC licensed for reuse. This does not appear to be contentious, perhaps because the translation services are not portraying the results as authorized versions.

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

Academically appropriate comments are welcome - by which I mean, state who you are and where you are coming from. For example if you are affiliated with an organization that has a vested interest in or commitment to a particular CC license, this affiliation should be stated in your comment.

Open Access class 2013

Some of the final projects from my open access class of 2013 at the University of British Columbia's School of Library, Archival and Information Studies are now posted on the course blog.

Our fair deal for a fair digital future

Our Fair Deal http://ourfairdeal.org/ is crowdsourcing ideas for what we the people want to see in trade agreements like the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) currently being negotiated. Go to the Our Fair Deal to learn more or to participate, or to this OpenMedia site which has a convenient form to fill out.

Here is my vision for A Fair Deal:

Trade treaty negotiations involve broad-based, open consultation with the public and all groups with an interest in participating. We should be hearing about what is happening from our elected representatives, not through leaks! This is completely in the spirit of what governments say that they want to do - it would fulfill the commitments made by many of our governments through the Open Government Partnership.

Copyright should be fair, balanced, and reflect not only the desires of "copyright holders", but also the important and not entirely understood role that copying has always played in the development of human civilization. Human language, manners, and basic life skills are learned by copying. Storytelling, music, and arts aren't just about a few people making a living; they are about all of us building communities, expressing and fulfilling our potential. Artists have always copied from each other - the latest techniques, approaches, philosophies. New movements in art and music involve a lot of copying, and this is not inconsistent with artists making a living. Balance is also needed to provide an environment that can facilitate ongoing creativity and innovation, as excessively strong intellectual property rules favour a few owners of "intellectual property". This is a system that appears likely to lead to concentration of ownership in the hands of a few, as has been the trend with scholarly publishing in the last few decades.

In order to achieve a more fair and balanced copyright, here is what I see as needing to happen: 

•  there already is an international body dedicated to intellectual property, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) - discussions of intellectual property and copyright should be limited to this forum and removed from other international negotiations. If governments are negotiating with countries that are not signatory to WIPO, then signing WIPO could be part of the negotiations 
• formally recognize at something like an international constitution that culture, community, and the public interest are important goals, not just economic benefits of intellectual property. For example, strong intellectual property laws designed to protect the profits of pharmaceutical companies at the expense of the health of those who cannot afford the medicines, are not good public policy. This does not mean that the interests of the industry are irrelevant, rather that we need to recognize that this not the only thing that is relevant - ultimately, the purpose of a pharmaceutical industry should be the health of the public, with economic sustainability of the industry a key but secondary sub-goal.
• make open access - free online access to everywhere, everywhere with an internet connection with few or no copyright restrictions - the default for all information and resources paid for by the public (government data and publications, government-funded scholarly research)
• eliminate automatic copyright; require a creator to take at least some simple step (e.g. the inverse of creative commons) in order to assert copyright 
• limit the term of copyright to 10 years with one extension on request 
• expand fair dealing - support strong net neutrality 
• support strong personal privacy protection measures everywhere 
• added July 27: the penalties for copyright infractions should be proportionate to the infraction, and to other types of societal penalties. Downloading movies for personal viewing should at most be at about the level of hopping on a bus without paying.

That's my vision. What's yours? Please participate!

Thank you very much to the organizers of Our Fair Deal for providing a venue for this crowdsourcing.

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