Kudos to Oxford, which continues to provide a great role model for transitioning to open access, with an announcement reminding subscribers about discounts for their authors on open access charges, a new program to extend these discounts to consortial subscribers, and price adjustments to take open access fees revenue into account for the third year in a row. For NIH-funded authors, the OA charges include not only full OA, but also deposit in PMC.
Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.
This post is part of the Transitioning to Open Access and Resources and Tips: Publishers series.
Update and comment: while OUP is a role model in this one aspect, OUP's "green" policies need some significant shaping up to be truly exemplary. Currently, OUP is pale green, allowing author self-archiving but with significant restrictions, such as lengthy embargoes. To be truly exemplary, OUP should adopt a full green policy, permitting (or better yet, like Nature, encouraging) author self-archiving of postprints immediately on acceptance for publication. This is not only good OA policy; it is good publishing policy, to keep authors who are increasingly needing to provide OA to fulfill OA mandate policies, or to take advantage of the OA impact advantage as more and more authors become aware of this. [Thanks to Stevan Harnad for the tip on the OUP pale green policy].
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Noteworthy Dramatic Growth July 2008: PMC & RoMEO
PubMedCentral Submissions Jump Sharply Under New NIH Policy, Library Journal Academic Newswire July 24, 2008. According to NIH's David Lipman, "It’s still too early to compute compliance rates, but the early returns suggest a stunning turnaround". The figures reported in the June 2008 Dramatic Growth of Open Access support this viewpoint.
JISC recently announced that the RoMEO service has now exceeded 400 publisher copyright policies on self-archiving. This is excellent news - with all the funders, universities, and researchers and librarians wanting and looking for opportunities to self-archive, every publisher should have a policy, and have it posted at RoMEO!
Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News, and to Charles Bailey for the info on RoMEO.
This post is part of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access Series.
JISC recently announced that the RoMEO service has now exceeded 400 publisher copyright policies on self-archiving. This is excellent news - with all the funders, universities, and researchers and librarians wanting and looking for opportunities to self-archive, every publisher should have a policy, and have it posted at RoMEO!
Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News, and to Charles Bailey for the info on RoMEO.
This post is part of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access Series.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
National Research Council OA Mandate begins January 2009
Update July 27: the NRC announcement can be found here. Thanks to Alison Ball and Peter Suber on Open Access News.
Richard Akerman on Science Library Pad has posted news of an open access mandate policy at the National Research Council, to take effect January 2009.
Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News for the alert.
This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement series.
Richard Akerman on Science Library Pad has posted news of an open access mandate policy at the National Research Council, to take effect January 2009.
Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News for the alert.
This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement series.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Indian Institutes of Science Director favors open archives
Padmanabhan Balaram, director of the highly prestigious Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore, India and editor of India's leading (open access) science journal, Current Science, explains why he favors the open access archives approach to open access, in SciDevNet.
Most scientific journals are published in Europe and the U.S., and Indian scientists tend to publish in these journals. The question is how to ensure research publicly funded is freely available to researchers in developing countries. In Padmanabhan's view, open archives is the solution. Researchers need to publish in the most prestigious journals; almost all allow author self-archiving. The OA publishing approach paid for through article processing fees has drawbacks; for the researcher in the developing country, the cost can be astronomical, and the idea of begging for waivers does not appeal.
IISc already has more than 10,000 articles in its institutional repository; this number is soon expected to exceed 20,000 articles. This is a very significant size and growth rate for any repository, an inspiration for us all!
Update July 11: to clarify, Balaram is discussing the relative advantages of two different forms of open access: open access archiving (also called the green road), and open access publishing (also called the gold road). Balaram uses the phrase "open access" where "open access publishing" would be more accurate.
Thanks to Subbiah Arunachalam.
Most scientific journals are published in Europe and the U.S., and Indian scientists tend to publish in these journals. The question is how to ensure research publicly funded is freely available to researchers in developing countries. In Padmanabhan's view, open archives is the solution. Researchers need to publish in the most prestigious journals; almost all allow author self-archiving. The OA publishing approach paid for through article processing fees has drawbacks; for the researcher in the developing country, the cost can be astronomical, and the idea of begging for waivers does not appeal.
IISc already has more than 10,000 articles in its institutional repository; this number is soon expected to exceed 20,000 articles. This is a very significant size and growth rate for any repository, an inspiration for us all!
Update July 11: to clarify, Balaram is discussing the relative advantages of two different forms of open access: open access archiving (also called the green road), and open access publishing (also called the gold road). Balaram uses the phrase "open access" where "open access publishing" would be more accurate.
Thanks to Subbiah Arunachalam.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Scientific Commons exceeds 20 million items!
Scientific Commons has now exceeded 20 million items.
Congratulations, Scientific Commons!
Other stats of interest:
More than 8 million authors
911 repositories
This post is part of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access series.
Congratulations, Scientific Commons!
Other stats of interest:
More than 8 million authors
911 repositories
This post is part of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access series.
Nature Letters to the Editor
Update July 10 - see Peter Suber on Open Access News for more on the story.
It seems that Nature ran a Letter to the Editor claiming that open access is harmful to developing countries, but is not publishing critical letters from scholarly authorities in this area (Peter Suber, Stevan Harnad, Subbiah Arunachalam, Leslie Chan, and Barbara Kirsop). In the interests of both open access and intellectual freedom, following is the text of the letters, thanks to the American Scientist Open Access Forum.
A number of people responded to the letter to
Nature, from Dr Gadagkar, IISc Bangalore, India,
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7194/full/453450c.html
by sending corrections of the impression given by Nature's headline
(Open Access more harm than good for developing countries) and the
misunderstandings of the policies of OA journals.
Unfortunately none of the letters I know about were published by
Nature. Other letters may have been sent unknown to me. Therefore,
so that misunderstandings may be corrected, I attach the letters sent
by Peter Suber, Stevan Harnad and three of the EPT Trustees (Subbiah
Arunachalam, Leslie Chan and myself).
It is important the Nature headline and the misunderstanding are
corrected as the EPT and many other colleagues are very concerned that
the economically poor countries do indeed benefit from the very significant
benefits that OA offers.
Here are the letters, in the order in which they were sent to Nature:
******
[1] Text of letter sent to Nature by Professor Stevan Harnad, Canada
Research Chair at the University of Quebec at Montreal, and Professor of
Cognitive Science at the University of Southampton, UK
Sir,
Open Access (OA) means free online access to peer-reviewed journal
articles. There are two ways to provide OA:
(1) either by publishing one's article in an OA journal that makes all
articles free online ("Gold OA")
http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/21.html
(2) or by publishing one's article in a non-OA journal and
self-archiving it to make it OA ("Green OA")
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13309/
R. Gadagkar (Letter to Nature, 22 May 2008) suggests that although
denying access to users because of unaffordable subscription fees
to the user-institution is bad, denying publishing to authors because
of unaffordable OA publishing fees to the author-institution is
worse, especially in the Developing World.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7194/full/453450c.html
The usual reply is that (1) many Gold OA journals do not charge
a publishing fee and (2) exceptions are made for authors who
cannot pay. More important, there is also Green OA self-archiving,
and the self-archiving mandates increasingly being adopted by
universities (e.g. Harvard) and research funders (e.g. NIH).
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/
Self-archiving costs nothing, and if it ever makes subscriptions
unsustainable it will by the very same token generate the windfall
institutional savings out of which to pay for OA publishing instead.
Nor are the costs of publishing likely to remain the same under
self-archiving: If journal subscriptions are ever no longer in
demand (because users all use authors' self-archived drafts
rather than publishers' subscription-based versions) journals
will not convert to OA publishing under its current terms (where
journals still provide most of the products and services of
conventional journal publishing), but under substantially
scaled-down terms.
Current costs of providing the print and PDF edition, of access-provision
and of archiving will all vanish (for the publisher). Those
functions will have been off-loaded onto the distributed network of
OA institutional repositories, each hosting its own peer-reviewed,
published output. The only service that peer-reviewed journal
publishers will still need to provide then will be peer review itself
http://www.nature.com/nature/webmatters/invisible/invisible.html and the
windfall institutional cancellation savings will be more than enough to
pay for that.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm
But until then, Green OA is OA enough -- and free.
Sincerely,
Stevan Harnad
***
[2] Letter sent to Nature by Trustees of the Electronic Publishing Trust
for Development
Sir,
As Trustees of the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development working
with research scientists and publishers in developing countries* for
over a decade, we write to correct misunderstandings conveyed in the
correspondence from Raghavendra Gadagkar (Nature, 453, 450, May 22nd,
2008).
First, the choice for researchers in the economically poor regions is not
between 'pay to publish' versus 'pay to read' since by far the majority of
'Gold' Open Access (OA) journals make no charge to authors whatsoever.
Most are therefore free to both authors and readers.
Second, the alternative 'Green' route to OA for universities is to create
low-cost institutional repositories (IRs) -- in which their researchers
can self-archive their publications to make them freely available to
all users with Internet access -- and this has already been adopted by
about 1300 institutions worldwide.
A growing number (44) of universities and funding organisations (including
Harvard, Southampton, Liège, CERN, NIH, Wellcome Trust, 6 of the 7 UK
research councils, and India's National Institute of Technology) have
already gone on to officially mandate Green OA self-archiving for all
their research publications.
Usage of these resources by developing countries is now well recorded.
As examples, usage of journals published in developing countries
(and making no charge to authors or readers) was recorded by Bioline
International as having reached 3.5 million full text downloads in
2007. Usage of research publications archived in IRs shows India, China,
Brazil and South Africa among the top15 most active user-countries, and
smaller developing countries to a lesser degree. Full text downloads
from just one of the 1300 registered repositories showed UK: 10,174;
India: 5,733; China: 5,070; South Africa: 1155. Detailed usage of 4
such IRs by 6 countries is shown in the EPT Blog.
It is clear from these small but representative examples of usage that OA
has huge benefits for the progress of research in the developing world,
and advances steadily.
Sincerely,
Subbiah Arunachalam, Flat No. 1, Raagas Apts, 66 Venkatakrishna Road,
Chennai 600 028, India. Tel: +91 44‰? 2461 3224, Mobile: 97909 23941
Leslie Chan, University of Toronto, Department of Social Sciences, 1265
Military Trail, Scarborough, Ontario, M1C1A4, Canada, Tel: +1 416 287
7505
Barbara Kirsop, Electronic Publishing Trust for Development, Wilmots,
Elmton, Worksop, S80 4LS, UK Tel: +44 1909 724184, Mobile 07773677650
Electronic Publishing Trust for Development,
http://www.epublishingtrust.org
University of Otago, New Zealand, http://eprints.otago.ac.nz/es/
Bioline International, http://www.bioline.org.br)
EPT Blog: http://epublishingtrust.blogspot.com/2008/03/bring-on-irs.html
***
[3] Letter sent to Nature by Peter Suber, Professor of Philosophy,
Earlham College, USA
Dear Sir/Madam,
Re: Raghavendra Gadagkar's letter in the May 22 issue, Open-access more
harm than good in developing world.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7194/full/453450c.html
Nature gave Gadagkar's letter a misleading title. His argument is
not against open access (OA) as such, or even OA journals as such, but
against fee-based OA journals or "the 'pay to publish and read for free'
business model".
However, Gadagkar's argument is misleading in its own right. He is
apparently unaware that most OA journals charge no publication fees [1].
As of late 2007, 67% of the journals listed in the Directory of Open
Access Journals charged no publication fees [2], and 83% of OA journals
from society publishers charged no publication fees [3].
Gadagkar writes that "A 'publish for free, read for free' model may
one day prove to be viable..." as if it were untried, when in fact it
is the majority model around the world. Moreover, it's the exclusive
model in his own country. All OA journals published in India are of
the no-fee variety.
He also fails to mention that OA archiving already follows the model
of no fees for readers and no fees for authors. In the same week that
Nature published Gadagkar's letter, the OA repository at his institution,
the Indian Institute of Science, passed the milestone of 10,000 deposits.
Peter Suber
Research Professor of Philosophy, Earlham College
Visiting Fellow, Yale Law School
1. http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/newsletter/11-02-06.htm#nofee
2.
http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/2007/12/new-data-showing-that-most-
oa-journals.html
3. http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/newsletter/11-02-07.htm#list
It seems that Nature ran a Letter to the Editor claiming that open access is harmful to developing countries, but is not publishing critical letters from scholarly authorities in this area (Peter Suber, Stevan Harnad, Subbiah Arunachalam, Leslie Chan, and Barbara Kirsop). In the interests of both open access and intellectual freedom, following is the text of the letters, thanks to the American Scientist Open Access Forum.
A number of people responded to the letter to
Nature, from Dr Gadagkar, IISc Bangalore, India,
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7194/full/453450c.html
by sending corrections of the impression given by Nature's headline
(Open Access more harm than good for developing countries) and the
misunderstandings of the policies of OA journals.
Unfortunately none of the letters I know about were published by
Nature. Other letters may have been sent unknown to me. Therefore,
so that misunderstandings may be corrected, I attach the letters sent
by Peter Suber, Stevan Harnad and three of the EPT Trustees (Subbiah
Arunachalam, Leslie Chan and myself).
It is important the Nature headline and the misunderstanding are
corrected as the EPT and many other colleagues are very concerned that
the economically poor countries do indeed benefit from the very significant
benefits that OA offers.
Here are the letters, in the order in which they were sent to Nature:
******
[1] Text of letter sent to Nature by Professor Stevan Harnad, Canada
Research Chair at the University of Quebec at Montreal, and Professor of
Cognitive Science at the University of Southampton, UK
Sir,
Open Access (OA) means free online access to peer-reviewed journal
articles. There are two ways to provide OA:
(1) either by publishing one's article in an OA journal that makes all
articles free online ("Gold OA")
http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/21.html
(2) or by publishing one's article in a non-OA journal and
self-archiving it to make it OA ("Green OA")
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13309/
R. Gadagkar (Letter to Nature, 22 May 2008) suggests that although
denying access to users because of unaffordable subscription fees
to the user-institution is bad, denying publishing to authors because
of unaffordable OA publishing fees to the author-institution is
worse, especially in the Developing World.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7194/full/453450c.html
The usual reply is that (1) many Gold OA journals do not charge
a publishing fee and (2) exceptions are made for authors who
cannot pay. More important, there is also Green OA self-archiving,
and the self-archiving mandates increasingly being adopted by
universities (e.g. Harvard) and research funders (e.g. NIH).
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/
Self-archiving costs nothing, and if it ever makes subscriptions
unsustainable it will by the very same token generate the windfall
institutional savings out of which to pay for OA publishing instead.
Nor are the costs of publishing likely to remain the same under
self-archiving: If journal subscriptions are ever no longer in
demand (because users all use authors' self-archived drafts
rather than publishers' subscription-based versions) journals
will not convert to OA publishing under its current terms (where
journals still provide most of the products and services of
conventional journal publishing), but under substantially
scaled-down terms.
Current costs of providing the print and PDF edition, of access-provision
and of archiving will all vanish (for the publisher). Those
functions will have been off-loaded onto the distributed network of
OA institutional repositories, each hosting its own peer-reviewed,
published output. The only service that peer-reviewed journal
publishers will still need to provide then will be peer review itself
http://www.nature.com/nature/webmatters/invisible/invisible.html and the
windfall institutional cancellation savings will be more than enough to
pay for that.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm
But until then, Green OA is OA enough -- and free.
Sincerely,
Stevan Harnad
***
[2] Letter sent to Nature by Trustees of the Electronic Publishing Trust
for Development
Sir,
As Trustees of the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development working
with research scientists and publishers in developing countries* for
over a decade, we write to correct misunderstandings conveyed in the
correspondence from Raghavendra Gadagkar (Nature, 453, 450, May 22nd,
2008).
First, the choice for researchers in the economically poor regions is not
between 'pay to publish' versus 'pay to read' since by far the majority of
'Gold' Open Access (OA) journals make no charge to authors whatsoever.
Most are therefore free to both authors and readers.
Second, the alternative 'Green' route to OA for universities is to create
low-cost institutional repositories (IRs) -- in which their researchers
can self-archive their publications to make them freely available to
all users with Internet access -- and this has already been adopted by
about 1300 institutions worldwide.
A growing number (44) of universities and funding organisations (including
Harvard, Southampton, Liège, CERN, NIH, Wellcome Trust, 6 of the 7 UK
research councils, and India's National Institute of Technology) have
already gone on to officially mandate Green OA self-archiving for all
their research publications.
Usage of these resources by developing countries is now well recorded.
As examples, usage of journals published in developing countries
(and making no charge to authors or readers) was recorded by Bioline
International as having reached 3.5 million full text downloads in
2007. Usage of research publications archived in IRs shows India, China,
Brazil and South Africa among the top15 most active user-countries, and
smaller developing countries to a lesser degree. Full text downloads
from just one of the 1300 registered repositories showed UK: 10,174;
India: 5,733; China: 5,070; South Africa: 1155. Detailed usage of 4
such IRs by 6 countries is shown in the EPT Blog.
It is clear from these small but representative examples of usage that OA
has huge benefits for the progress of research in the developing world,
and advances steadily.
Sincerely,
Subbiah Arunachalam, Flat No. 1, Raagas Apts, 66 Venkatakrishna Road,
Chennai 600 028, India. Tel: +91 44‰? 2461 3224, Mobile: 97909 23941
Leslie Chan, University of Toronto, Department of Social Sciences, 1265
Military Trail, Scarborough, Ontario, M1C1A4, Canada, Tel: +1 416 287
7505
Barbara Kirsop, Electronic Publishing Trust for Development, Wilmots,
Elmton, Worksop, S80 4LS, UK Tel: +44 1909 724184, Mobile 07773677650
Electronic Publishing Trust for Development,
http://www.epublishingtrust.org
University of Otago, New Zealand, http://eprints.otago.ac.nz/es/
Bioline International, http://www.bioline.org.br)
EPT Blog: http://epublishingtrust.blogspot.com/2008/03/bring-on-irs.html
***
[3] Letter sent to Nature by Peter Suber, Professor of Philosophy,
Earlham College, USA
Dear Sir/Madam,
Re: Raghavendra Gadagkar's letter in the May 22 issue, Open-access more
harm than good in developing world.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7194/full/453450c.html
Nature gave Gadagkar's letter a misleading title. His argument is
not against open access (OA) as such, or even OA journals as such, but
against fee-based OA journals or "the 'pay to publish and read for free'
business model".
However, Gadagkar's argument is misleading in its own right. He is
apparently unaware that most OA journals charge no publication fees [1].
As of late 2007, 67% of the journals listed in the Directory of Open
Access Journals charged no publication fees [2], and 83% of OA journals
from society publishers charged no publication fees [3].
Gadagkar writes that "A 'publish for free, read for free' model may
one day prove to be viable..." as if it were untried, when in fact it
is the majority model around the world. Moreover, it's the exclusive
model in his own country. All OA journals published in India are of
the no-fee variety.
He also fails to mention that OA archiving already follows the model
of no fees for readers and no fees for authors. In the same week that
Nature published Gadagkar's letter, the OA repository at his institution,
the Indian Institute of Science, passed the milestone of 10,000 deposits.
Peter Suber
Research Professor of Philosophy, Earlham College
Visiting Fellow, Yale Law School
1. http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/newsletter/11-02-06.htm#nofee
2.
http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/2007/12/new-data-showing-that-most-
oa-journals.html
3. http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/newsletter/11-02-07.htm#list
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Elsevier moderates price a little
According to Charles Bailey, Elsevier is keeping its 2009 price increases to less than 6%, below what Elsevier claims is the industry average of 8.7% in Europe and over 10% in the U.S. Revenue from author payments is cited as one of the reasons for this moderation.
Congratulations to Elsevier for taking a step in the right direction.
The Consumer Price Index in Canada is currently 2.2% - an increase from recent months due to dramatically rising gas prices. This being the case, even without accounting for a new revenue source (author fees), a 6% increase is not modest at all, but rather very inflationary.
Think about the impact of compounding; annual price increases of 6% amount to much more over a few years. By the third year, prices have increased 20%; by the fifth year, prices have increased by 33%.
Interesting, this is the maximum increase. If some Elsevier journals are charging less than the maximum, or the average increase is less, now that would be very interesting!
Thanks to Gavin Baker on Open Access News.
Congratulations to Elsevier for taking a step in the right direction.
The Consumer Price Index in Canada is currently 2.2% - an increase from recent months due to dramatically rising gas prices. This being the case, even without accounting for a new revenue source (author fees), a 6% increase is not modest at all, but rather very inflationary.
Think about the impact of compounding; annual price increases of 6% amount to much more over a few years. By the third year, prices have increased 20%; by the fifth year, prices have increased by 33%.
Interesting, this is the maximum increase. If some Elsevier journals are charging less than the maximum, or the average increase is less, now that would be very interesting!
Thanks to Gavin Baker on Open Access News.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Kudos: Nature Self-Archiving on Behalf of Authors
July 10 update: these kudos to Nature are shadowed by recent publication of an anti-OA Letter to the Editor - and not publishing critical Letters to the Editor by renowned scholars in this area. For details, click here.
Kudos to Nature Publishing Group for yet another creative move in the direction of open access, offering to undertake a free service to self-archive on behalf of authors to help fulfill funder and institutional mandates. This move supplements other innovative practices, such as a standard author license to publish agreement that leaves copyright with the author, and actively encourages authors to self-archive in disciplinary and/or institutional repositories.
Text of the announcement:
Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is pleased to announce the initiation of a free service, launching in 2008, to help authors fulfil funder and institutional mandates.
NPG has encouraged self-archiving, including in PubMed Central, since 2005. Later in 2008, NPG will begin depositing authors’ accepted manuscripts with PubMed Central (PMC) and UK PubMed Central (UKPMC), meeting the requirements for authors funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), The Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council and a number of other major funders in the US, the UK and Canada who mandate deposition in either PMC or UKPMC. NPG hopes to extend the service to other archives and repositories in future.
"We are announcing our intention early in the process to solicit feedback from the community and to reassure authors that we will be providing this service," said Steven Inchcoombe, Managing Director of NPG. "We invite authors, funding bodies, institutions, archives and repositories to work with us as we move forward."
Initially, the service will be open to authors publishing original research articles in Nature, the Nature research titles and the clinical research section of Nature Clinical Practice Cardiovascular Medicine . NPG will then extend the service to society and academic journals in its portfolio that wish to participate.
For eligible authors who opt-in during the submission process, NPG will deposit the accepted version of the author’s manuscript on acceptance, setting a public release date of 6-months post-publication. There will be no charge to authors or funders for the service.
"NPG is committed to serving as a partner to the scientific and medical communities," continued Steven Inchcoombe. "We believe this is a valuable service to authors, reducing their workload and making it simple and free to comply with mandates from their institution or funder. We recognise that publishing in an NPG title can be a career high-point for researchers, and want to ensure that our authors enjoy the best possible service from their publisher of choice."
NPG has been an early mover amongst subscription publishers in encouraging self-archiving. In 2002, the publisher moved from requesting copyright transfer for original research articles to requesting an exclusive license to publish. In 2005, NPG announced a self-archiving policy that encourages authors of research articles to self-archive the accepted version of their manuscript to PubMed Central or other appropriate funding body's archive, their institution's repositories and, if they wish, on their personal websites. In all cases, the manuscript can be made publicly accessible six months after publication. NPG’s policies are explained in detail at this web page: www.nature.com/authors/editorial_policies/license.html
Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News, who points out that this is the first publisher to offer to deposit into institutional repositories on behalf of authors.
This post is part of the Transitioning to Open Access Series, and the Resources and Tips for Publishers Series.
Kudos to Nature Publishing Group for yet another creative move in the direction of open access, offering to undertake a free service to self-archive on behalf of authors to help fulfill funder and institutional mandates. This move supplements other innovative practices, such as a standard author license to publish agreement that leaves copyright with the author, and actively encourages authors to self-archive in disciplinary and/or institutional repositories.
Text of the announcement:
Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is pleased to announce the initiation of a free service, launching in 2008, to help authors fulfil funder and institutional mandates.
NPG has encouraged self-archiving, including in PubMed Central, since 2005. Later in 2008, NPG will begin depositing authors’ accepted manuscripts with PubMed Central (PMC) and UK PubMed Central (UKPMC), meeting the requirements for authors funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), The Wellcome Trust, the Medical Research Council and a number of other major funders in the US, the UK and Canada who mandate deposition in either PMC or UKPMC. NPG hopes to extend the service to other archives and repositories in future.
"We are announcing our intention early in the process to solicit feedback from the community and to reassure authors that we will be providing this service," said Steven Inchcoombe, Managing Director of NPG. "We invite authors, funding bodies, institutions, archives and repositories to work with us as we move forward."
Initially, the service will be open to authors publishing original research articles in Nature, the Nature research titles and the clinical research section of Nature Clinical Practice Cardiovascular Medicine . NPG will then extend the service to society and academic journals in its portfolio that wish to participate.
For eligible authors who opt-in during the submission process, NPG will deposit the accepted version of the author’s manuscript on acceptance, setting a public release date of 6-months post-publication. There will be no charge to authors or funders for the service.
"NPG is committed to serving as a partner to the scientific and medical communities," continued Steven Inchcoombe. "We believe this is a valuable service to authors, reducing their workload and making it simple and free to comply with mandates from their institution or funder. We recognise that publishing in an NPG title can be a career high-point for researchers, and want to ensure that our authors enjoy the best possible service from their publisher of choice."
NPG has been an early mover amongst subscription publishers in encouraging self-archiving. In 2002, the publisher moved from requesting copyright transfer for original research articles to requesting an exclusive license to publish. In 2005, NPG announced a self-archiving policy that encourages authors of research articles to self-archive the accepted version of their manuscript to PubMed Central or other appropriate funding body's archive, their institution's repositories and, if they wish, on their personal websites. In all cases, the manuscript can be made publicly accessible six months after publication. NPG’s policies are explained in detail at this web page: www.nature.com/authors/editorial_policies/license.html
Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News, who points out that this is the first publisher to offer to deposit into institutional repositories on behalf of authors.
This post is part of the Transitioning to Open Access Series, and the Resources and Tips for Publishers Series.
Sunday, July 06, 2008
Dramatic Growth June 30, 2008: correction on growth percentages
The Dramatic Growth of Open Access version showing annual growth over the past year has been corrected (the earlier version showed numeric growth as a percentage of the current year rather than the previous year).
This means that all annual growth percentages are actually higher than originally reported. For example, both RePEC and E-LIS showed growth of more than 30% in the past year, not 25% as previously reported.
The corrected version has been posted at http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pqCs8wrw32HH5igWgsHZ6SQ, and at the Dataverse Network.
This means that all annual growth percentages are actually higher than originally reported. For example, both RePEC and E-LIS showed growth of more than 30% in the past year, not 25% as previously reported.
The corrected version has been posted at http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pqCs8wrw32HH5igWgsHZ6SQ, and at the Dataverse Network.
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Open Access Class 2008: Final Projects
Links to a few of the wonderful final projects of students in my 2008 SLAIS Open Access class have been posted - subject guides to open access resources for the environment, chemistry, environmental and occupational health, HIV/AIDS, Media Studies, a tutorial on preservation issues, and a draft research projects on OA mandates.
I hope to add to the list once students return from vacation and catch up with their e-mail.
It was a real pleasure to teach LIBR 559K; my only regret was that there wasn't more time.
I hope to add to the list once students return from vacation and catch up with their e-mail.
It was a real pleasure to teach LIBR 559K; my only regret was that there wasn't more time.
NIH Public Access Policy instructions prominent on PubMed home page!
Instructions for NIH-funded authors have been prominently placed on the PubMed home page.
There is a link to a list of journals that will manage the submission process with the NIH guidelines on behalf of authors - very handy! - as well as instructions for authors who publish in journals that do not provide this service.
What a good idea!
Thanks to Margaret Russell.
There is a link to a list of journals that will manage the submission process with the NIH guidelines on behalf of authors - very handy! - as well as instructions for authors who publish in journals that do not provide this service.
What a good idea!
Thanks to Margaret Russell.
Monday, June 30, 2008
The Dramatic Growth of Open Access: June 30, 2008
Update July 6: please note corrections. Growth for this quarter and this year are higher than originally reported!
Highlights: the growth of open access continues to amaze! The Directory of Open Access Journals added 750 new titles over the past year, a rate of increase of 2 titles per calendar day. This is close to double the growth rate of 1.2 titles per calendar day as reported in June 2007. OAIster recently passed a significant milestone, the 1,000th repository harvested. OAIster added close to 5 million items over the past year, for a growth rate of 30%. A Scientific Commons search now encompasses close to 20 million items.
PubMedCentral is showing early signs of success of the new NIH mandate policy. 466 journals now participate voluntarily in PMC (up from 410 in March); of these, 355 or 75% provide immediate free access. There is a marked increase in the percentage of NIH-funded items that are freely available shortly after publication (30, 60, or 90 days after publication). For example, the percentage of NIH-funded articles freely available within 30 days of publication has increased 50%, from 6 to 9%. (Thanks to Jim Till for the earlier data and search strategy). This remarkable increase in free access immediately or soon after publication is important because it exceeds expectations. NIH allows up to 12-month embargo, but clearly not everyone is interested in taking advantage of this generosity.
RePEC and E-LIS have had strong growth over the past year, each increasing by about 25%. The only negative is Highwire Free, which grew slightly overall but lost one fully free site, producing a small but rare negative growth number. Björk Roosr, and Lauri presented an important study at the ELPUB conference, reporting that close to 20% of the world's peer-reviewed literature published in 2006 is freely available, whether published as open access or self-archived by the author.
The Open Data Edition of Dramatic Growth can be found here. A plain data version (without quarterly growth) is available here - note the second sheet which has data on PMC titles. A list of journals participating in PMC and analysis by time of free access is available here. If anyone would like to collaborate on these documents (even just to be able to download them), please let me know. Update July 2nd: excel versions are now available to download from the Dataverse Network.
Details
Directory of Open Access Journals
DOAJ added 179 titles this quarter, a slight decrease from the first quarter, or 750 over the past year, a growth rate of 22%. DOAJ is adding new titles at the rate of 2 titles per calendar day, up from the average of 1.4 reported for last year. The number of DOAJ journals providing searching at the article level has increased, as has the number of articles which can be searched through DOAJ.
OAIster now includes 16.9 million records, added more than 1.3 million records this quarter, close to 5 million over the past year, for a very strong growth rate of close to 30 %. the 1,000 repository on June 28, 2008
Scientific Commons now includes over 19.5 million items, and added more than 1.4 million records and over half a million authors this quarter, for a strong growth rate of more than 20% over the past year.
ELPUB article Björk, Bo-Christer; Roosr, Annikki; Lauri, Mari (2008) Global annual volume of peer reviewed scholarly articles and the share available via different open access options, ELPUB2008. Openness in Digital Publishing: Awareness, Discovery and Access - Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Electronic Publishing held in Toronto, Canada 25-27 June 2008 / Edited by: Leslie Chan and Susanne Mornatti. ISBN 978-0-7727-6315-0, 2008, pp. 178-186 ELPUB 2008
Jim Till. More baseline data from pubmed. Be Openly Accessible or Be Obscure.
This post is part of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access Series.
Highlights: the growth of open access continues to amaze! The Directory of Open Access Journals added 750 new titles over the past year, a rate of increase of 2 titles per calendar day. This is close to double the growth rate of 1.2 titles per calendar day as reported in June 2007. OAIster recently passed a significant milestone, the 1,000th repository harvested. OAIster added close to 5 million items over the past year, for a growth rate of 30%. A Scientific Commons search now encompasses close to 20 million items.
PubMedCentral is showing early signs of success of the new NIH mandate policy. 466 journals now participate voluntarily in PMC (up from 410 in March); of these, 355 or 75% provide immediate free access. There is a marked increase in the percentage of NIH-funded items that are freely available shortly after publication (30, 60, or 90 days after publication). For example, the percentage of NIH-funded articles freely available within 30 days of publication has increased 50%, from 6 to 9%. (Thanks to Jim Till for the earlier data and search strategy). This remarkable increase in free access immediately or soon after publication is important because it exceeds expectations. NIH allows up to 12-month embargo, but clearly not everyone is interested in taking advantage of this generosity.
RePEC and E-LIS have had strong growth over the past year, each increasing by about 25%. The only negative is Highwire Free, which grew slightly overall but lost one fully free site, producing a small but rare negative growth number. Björk Roosr, and Lauri presented an important study at the ELPUB conference, reporting that close to 20% of the world's peer-reviewed literature published in 2006 is freely available, whether published as open access or self-archived by the author.
The Open Data Edition of Dramatic Growth can be found here. A plain data version (without quarterly growth) is available here - note the second sheet which has data on PMC titles. A list of journals participating in PMC and analysis by time of free access is available here. If anyone would like to collaborate on these documents (even just to be able to download them), please let me know. Update July 2nd: excel versions are now available to download from the Dataverse Network.
Details
Directory of Open Access Journals
DOAJ added 179 titles this quarter, a slight decrease from the first quarter, or 750 over the past year, a growth rate of 22%. DOAJ is adding new titles at the rate of 2 titles per calendar day, up from the average of 1.4 reported for last year. The number of DOAJ journals providing searching at the article level has increased, as has the number of articles which can be searched through DOAJ.
OAIster now includes 16.9 million records, added more than 1.3 million records this quarter, close to 5 million over the past year, for a very strong growth rate of close to 30 %. the 1,000 repository on June 28, 2008
Scientific Commons now includes over 19.5 million items, and added more than 1.4 million records and over half a million authors this quarter, for a strong growth rate of more than 20% over the past year.
ELPUB article Björk, Bo-Christer; Roosr, Annikki; Lauri, Mari (2008) Global annual volume of peer reviewed scholarly articles and the share available via different open access options, ELPUB2008. Openness in Digital Publishing: Awareness, Discovery and Access - Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Electronic Publishing held in Toronto, Canada 25-27 June 2008 / Edited by: Leslie Chan and Susanne Mornatti. ISBN 978-0-7727-6315-0, 2008, pp. 178-186 ELPUB 2008
Jim Till. More baseline data from pubmed. Be Openly Accessible or Be Obscure.
This post is part of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access Series.
NSERC Open Access Policy in Development: update
More on the open access policy in development at Canada's National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC); a presentation by NSERC's Denis Leclerc's to the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) AGM, May 15, 2008, on the NSERC Open Access policy in development is available at: http://www.carl-abrc.ca/horaire/2008/d_leclerc_nserc.ppt (thanks to Kathleen Shearer).
Highlights:
OA is seen as a global trend. Governments, universities, and research funding agencies have developed or committed to open access policies. Publishers are adjusting, by experimenting with OA publishing and permitting author self-archiving. The status quo is not an option; there are profound negative consequences to not having an open access policy. The plan is to present an OA policy to NSERC by March 2009. Overall, the policy is likely to be similar to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) policy, with some important innovations under consideration. One very innovative idea under consideration is the possibility of negotiating consortial arrangements with publishers to cover article processing fees, possibly working cooperatively with libraries. This is a gem of an idea. Bringing the library subscription purchase together with article processing fees is the best possible way to avoid double dipping (publishers receiving revenue for both subscriptions and article processing fees) in the short term, and for facilitating full-scale transition to open access in the longer term. Also noteworthy is that NSERC is contemplating investment in infrastructure, to support local publishing and repository development, and that the need for enforcement of an OA policy is being addressed early on.
Details:
Negative consequences to NSERC of not having an OA policy - from Denis Leclerc's presentation:
- NSERC-funded researchers are in a policy vacuum as to their own responsibilities when engaging in multi-funder collaborations (collaborators may be subject to OA).
- Possible risks: where original/raw data is not openly available for scrutiny, scientific misconduct may be facilitated.
- NSERC may be vulnerable to criticism regarding accountability to taxpayers.
- Missed opportunity to further demonstrate societal impact and relevance, as well as potential additional means to measure and monitor scientific output from funded research.
- Missed opportunity with respect to the 5th goal of NSERC`s Strategic Plan - To increase the visibility of Canadian NSE research in Canada and worldwide.
Conclusion: the Status Quo is not an option
Options being explored range from policy to institutional repository development. Particularly noteworthy is the idea of negotiating consortial deals with publishers, perhaps working cooperatively with university libraries to cover author OA charges, funding for infrastructure development, including support for local publishing, and enforcing / monitoring adherence to policy.
This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement series.
Highlights:
OA is seen as a global trend. Governments, universities, and research funding agencies have developed or committed to open access policies. Publishers are adjusting, by experimenting with OA publishing and permitting author self-archiving. The status quo is not an option; there are profound negative consequences to not having an open access policy. The plan is to present an OA policy to NSERC by March 2009. Overall, the policy is likely to be similar to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) policy, with some important innovations under consideration. One very innovative idea under consideration is the possibility of negotiating consortial arrangements with publishers to cover article processing fees, possibly working cooperatively with libraries. This is a gem of an idea. Bringing the library subscription purchase together with article processing fees is the best possible way to avoid double dipping (publishers receiving revenue for both subscriptions and article processing fees) in the short term, and for facilitating full-scale transition to open access in the longer term. Also noteworthy is that NSERC is contemplating investment in infrastructure, to support local publishing and repository development, and that the need for enforcement of an OA policy is being addressed early on.
Details:
Negative consequences to NSERC of not having an OA policy - from Denis Leclerc's presentation:
- NSERC-funded researchers are in a policy vacuum as to their own responsibilities when engaging in multi-funder collaborations (collaborators may be subject to OA).
- Possible risks: where original/raw data is not openly available for scrutiny, scientific misconduct may be facilitated.
- NSERC may be vulnerable to criticism regarding accountability to taxpayers.
- Missed opportunity to further demonstrate societal impact and relevance, as well as potential additional means to measure and monitor scientific output from funded research.
- Missed opportunity with respect to the 5th goal of NSERC`s Strategic Plan - To increase the visibility of Canadian NSE research in Canada and worldwide.
Conclusion: the Status Quo is not an option
Options being explored range from policy to institutional repository development. Particularly noteworthy is the idea of negotiating consortial deals with publishers, perhaps working cooperatively with university libraries to cover author OA charges, funding for infrastructure development, including support for local publishing, and enforcing / monitoring adherence to policy.
This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement series.
Ontario Institutes of Cancer Research: Official Announcement
The Ontario Institutes of Cancer Research (OICR) Open Access Policy will give researchers worldwide immediate access to OICR data (from Portal 2:3, the OICR Newsletter).
Text of the announcement:
The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) is taking the lead in 2008 and making the research it funds available to the public through an open access policy that takes effect July 1. OICR’s policy, “Access to Research Outputs,” provides the guidelines for OICR’s scientists when they publish their work and describes the institutional repository where all publications from OICR scientists will be deposited for public accessibility.
The policy, which builds on the policy in place at the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), requires OICR researchers to provide unrestricted access to their publications within six months of publishing, either through self-archiving of the journal article in the OICR Institutional Repository or through publication in open access journals. The large majority of publishers already offer such accessibility within their copyright agreements.
“The main reason behind implementing an open access policy at OICR is that it allows the world to read OICR’s published papers and to benefit from the research funded by the Ontario government,” says Francis Ouellette, OICR’s Associate Director of Informatics and Biocomputing and a key member of the panel tasked with developing this policy for OICR. “It is important for people to know that what we do here at OICR is important and relevant, and they can do that by reading the papers that our researchers publish.”
Open access publishing has gained increasing attention and support over the past decade with the growth of the Internet and digital publishing. In addition, an increasing number of research institutions like OICR, as well as funding agencies like CIHR, have adopted open access policies to ensure publicly funded research is made freely available to the public.
Ouellette says researchers are starting to recognize that open access publishing and repositories greatly expand readership not only within the international research community itself, but also among the public.
“The average person knows how to use a basic search engine and knows how to find information and articles that are relevant to their disease,” Ouellette says. “If they have open access to research publications, even if they can’t fully understand the content, they can take that paper to their physician and ask about the disease. Open access empowers patients and their families – and since the research at OICR is publicly funded, they should have access to it.”
Ouellette feels that in addition to federal funding agencies, it is up to organizations like OICR who are developing new policies to lead the way and prove that open access can work.
“OICR has developed a very important policy for the open accessibility of its research output,” Ouellette says. “I think it will become a model policy for the Canadian research community.”
For details as released by Francis Ouellette at the ELPUB conference, and my comments, please see this IJPE post.
Congratulations once more to OICR for a very progressive policy that is indeed a model in many respects, and a fine example of Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement.
Text of the announcement:
The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) is taking the lead in 2008 and making the research it funds available to the public through an open access policy that takes effect July 1. OICR’s policy, “Access to Research Outputs,” provides the guidelines for OICR’s scientists when they publish their work and describes the institutional repository where all publications from OICR scientists will be deposited for public accessibility.
The policy, which builds on the policy in place at the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), requires OICR researchers to provide unrestricted access to their publications within six months of publishing, either through self-archiving of the journal article in the OICR Institutional Repository or through publication in open access journals. The large majority of publishers already offer such accessibility within their copyright agreements.
“The main reason behind implementing an open access policy at OICR is that it allows the world to read OICR’s published papers and to benefit from the research funded by the Ontario government,” says Francis Ouellette, OICR’s Associate Director of Informatics and Biocomputing and a key member of the panel tasked with developing this policy for OICR. “It is important for people to know that what we do here at OICR is important and relevant, and they can do that by reading the papers that our researchers publish.”
Open access publishing has gained increasing attention and support over the past decade with the growth of the Internet and digital publishing. In addition, an increasing number of research institutions like OICR, as well as funding agencies like CIHR, have adopted open access policies to ensure publicly funded research is made freely available to the public.
Ouellette says researchers are starting to recognize that open access publishing and repositories greatly expand readership not only within the international research community itself, but also among the public.
“The average person knows how to use a basic search engine and knows how to find information and articles that are relevant to their disease,” Ouellette says. “If they have open access to research publications, even if they can’t fully understand the content, they can take that paper to their physician and ask about the disease. Open access empowers patients and their families – and since the research at OICR is publicly funded, they should have access to it.”
Ouellette feels that in addition to federal funding agencies, it is up to organizations like OICR who are developing new policies to lead the way and prove that open access can work.
“OICR has developed a very important policy for the open accessibility of its research output,” Ouellette says. “I think it will become a model policy for the Canadian research community.”
For details as released by Francis Ouellette at the ELPUB conference, and my comments, please see this IJPE post.
Congratulations once more to OICR for a very progressive policy that is indeed a model in many respects, and a fine example of Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Three forthcoming OA policies announced at ELPUB in Toronto
Three new open access policies were announced by Canadians at the ELPUB 2008 conference in Toronto last week.
Stanford Faculty of Education
John Willinsky, in his home town of Toronto, announced the Stanford Faculty of Education unanimous OA mandate, as detailed by Peter Suber on Open Access News. What was most remarkable about John's announcement is the ease of the decision - the question was raised about whether Stanford's Faculty of Education should adopt a policy similar to Harvard's, and the answer was yes!
Comment: watch for more and more reports along these lines - institutional OA policies that come much, much easier than earlier victories. Why? Thanks to these early victories, we have models. Harvard did not have the Harvard OA mandate to refer to - but now, all of us do!
National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC)
Kathleen Shearer, research associate at the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), talked about an open access policy in the works at Canada's NSERC, one of Canada's three major federal funding agencies, anticipated for March 2009. The NSERC policy is likely to resemble that of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, with expectation of OA within 6 months of publication via OA publishing (preferred and encouraged) or self-archiving. Kathleen stressed that OA policies need to be accompanied by strong implementation strategies, and that libraries have a key role to play in OA education, advocacy, and infrastructure.
Ontario Institute of Cancer Research
Francis Ouellette of the Ontario Institute of Cancer Research announced that an OICR Policy on Access to Research Outputs is nearing completion and details will be released within the next couple of weeks, adapted from the CIHR's Open Access policy document. An OICR institutional repository will be established, and OICR funded scientists will be expected to deposit peer-reviewed journals articles in the IR as soon as they are accepted for publication, and made freely accessible within 6 months of publication. OICR encourages publication in fully open access journals, and has plans for a fund for direct reimbursement of OA article processing fees for OICR-funded research, up to a maximum of $3,500 if the first, last or corresponding author is funded by the OICR. It is assumed that if scientists belonging to multiple institutions are contributing to a publication, they will share proportionately the cost of publication. Researchers are also expected to immediately deposit publication-related resesarch data into a publicly accessible database.
Comments: Kudos to OICR and the open access policy team, chaired by Jim Till. OICR funds about 60 principal investigators at about $75 million per year, and is in a growth process; in the next few years, OICR is expected to grow to about 120 principal investigators. While OICR follows the CIHR open access policy, clarification of expectation of access via a reprint request button for articles embargoed beyond six months is an important improvement. The optional OA-publication-specific funding is a welcome addition which will really help in the transition to open access. The maximum limit of $3,500 is very generous, more than most current OA article processing fees and even to cover even the researcher with a major breakthrough with an article well-suited for the very highest end journals in scholarly publishing.
Note: watch for OA policies at other Canadian provincial funding agencies - discussions are underway!
Could Canada become the first country in the world to mandate that all publicly funded research be open access? That day is not yet here - but with these announcements and more to come, it might not be long...
This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement series.
Stanford Faculty of Education
John Willinsky, in his home town of Toronto, announced the Stanford Faculty of Education unanimous OA mandate, as detailed by Peter Suber on Open Access News. What was most remarkable about John's announcement is the ease of the decision - the question was raised about whether Stanford's Faculty of Education should adopt a policy similar to Harvard's, and the answer was yes!
Comment: watch for more and more reports along these lines - institutional OA policies that come much, much easier than earlier victories. Why? Thanks to these early victories, we have models. Harvard did not have the Harvard OA mandate to refer to - but now, all of us do!
National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC)
Kathleen Shearer, research associate at the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), talked about an open access policy in the works at Canada's NSERC, one of Canada's three major federal funding agencies, anticipated for March 2009. The NSERC policy is likely to resemble that of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, with expectation of OA within 6 months of publication via OA publishing (preferred and encouraged) or self-archiving. Kathleen stressed that OA policies need to be accompanied by strong implementation strategies, and that libraries have a key role to play in OA education, advocacy, and infrastructure.
Ontario Institute of Cancer Research
Francis Ouellette of the Ontario Institute of Cancer Research announced that an OICR Policy on Access to Research Outputs is nearing completion and details will be released within the next couple of weeks, adapted from the CIHR's Open Access policy document. An OICR institutional repository will be established, and OICR funded scientists will be expected to deposit peer-reviewed journals articles in the IR as soon as they are accepted for publication, and made freely accessible within 6 months of publication. OICR encourages publication in fully open access journals, and has plans for a fund for direct reimbursement of OA article processing fees for OICR-funded research, up to a maximum of $3,500 if the first, last or corresponding author is funded by the OICR. It is assumed that if scientists belonging to multiple institutions are contributing to a publication, they will share proportionately the cost of publication. Researchers are also expected to immediately deposit publication-related resesarch data into a publicly accessible database.
Comments: Kudos to OICR and the open access policy team, chaired by Jim Till. OICR funds about 60 principal investigators at about $75 million per year, and is in a growth process; in the next few years, OICR is expected to grow to about 120 principal investigators. While OICR follows the CIHR open access policy, clarification of expectation of access via a reprint request button for articles embargoed beyond six months is an important improvement. The optional OA-publication-specific funding is a welcome addition which will really help in the transition to open access. The maximum limit of $3,500 is very generous, more than most current OA article processing fees and even to cover even the researcher with a major breakthrough with an article well-suited for the very highest end journals in scholarly publishing.
Note: watch for OA policies at other Canadian provincial funding agencies - discussions are underway!
Could Canada become the first country in the world to mandate that all publicly funded research be open access? That day is not yet here - but with these announcements and more to come, it might not be long...
This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement series.
Monday, June 23, 2008
University of Calgary funds Open Access Authors Fund
Thomas Hickerson, Vice-Provost Libraries and Cultural Resources and University Librarian, University of Calgary has just announced a new Open Access Author's Fund.
Text of the announcement:
University of Calgary professors and graduate students will now have access to a $100,000 Open Access Authors Fund designed to increase the amount of publicly available research.
The new fund, announced today by Thomas Hickerson, Vice-Provost, Libraries and Cultural Resources and University Librarian, is the first of its magnitude in Canada.
“I am proud that the University of Calgary is taking leadership in this movement to increase the worldwide accessibility of cutting-edge research,” said Hickerson (left).
The new fund will provide U of C faculty and graduate students with financial support to cover Open Access author fees. Open Access publishing is a rapidly expanding development in the exchange of research information. An increasing number of academic journals make research literature openly available via the internet without the restrictions on authors and without the high costs to users imposed by traditional subscription-based publications.
This new publishing model does, however, often require that authors pay fees contributing to the costs of publication. With the establishment of this new fund, researchers at the University of Calgary will have the freedom to exercise their own choice in publishing decisions. Open Access publishing is emerging as the best hope for a sustainable and responsible course of action for the future of scholarly communication.
“The Open Access movement is a significant initiative in bringing our research activity more quickly and broadly to the awareness of the scholarly community and to the public at large,” said Dr. Rose Goldstein, Vice-President, Research. “The establishment of this fund by Libraries and Cultural Resources is a crucial development for our faculty and graduate students.”
Open Access publishing allows authors to retain copyright control over their work and promotes broad educational use of the latest information. Open Access is also a key means by which university research can serve the larger community, providing public access to the new findings in everything from cancer treatment to global warming.
Comment: The key to a long-term, sustainable open access future is transitioning economic support from subscriptions to open access. Kudos to the University of Calgary for taking an early leadership step in the right direction.
Thanks to Andrew Waller. This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement Series.
Text of the announcement:
University of Calgary professors and graduate students will now have access to a $100,000 Open Access Authors Fund designed to increase the amount of publicly available research.
The new fund, announced today by Thomas Hickerson, Vice-Provost, Libraries and Cultural Resources and University Librarian, is the first of its magnitude in Canada.
“I am proud that the University of Calgary is taking leadership in this movement to increase the worldwide accessibility of cutting-edge research,” said Hickerson (left).
The new fund will provide U of C faculty and graduate students with financial support to cover Open Access author fees. Open Access publishing is a rapidly expanding development in the exchange of research information. An increasing number of academic journals make research literature openly available via the internet without the restrictions on authors and without the high costs to users imposed by traditional subscription-based publications.
This new publishing model does, however, often require that authors pay fees contributing to the costs of publication. With the establishment of this new fund, researchers at the University of Calgary will have the freedom to exercise their own choice in publishing decisions. Open Access publishing is emerging as the best hope for a sustainable and responsible course of action for the future of scholarly communication.
“The Open Access movement is a significant initiative in bringing our research activity more quickly and broadly to the awareness of the scholarly community and to the public at large,” said Dr. Rose Goldstein, Vice-President, Research. “The establishment of this fund by Libraries and Cultural Resources is a crucial development for our faculty and graduate students.”
Open Access publishing allows authors to retain copyright control over their work and promotes broad educational use of the latest information. Open Access is also a key means by which university research can serve the larger community, providing public access to the new findings in everything from cancer treatment to global warming.
Comment: The key to a long-term, sustainable open access future is transitioning economic support from subscriptions to open access. Kudos to the University of Calgary for taking an early leadership step in the right direction.
Thanks to Andrew Waller. This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement Series.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Richard Poynder interviews Leslie Chan
The University of Toronto's Leslie Chan is one of the Canadian early leaders in the open access movement, recognized around the world (and here at home) for his work on open access, particularly for the developing world through his work as Associate Director of Bioline International.
Richard Poynder's interview ofLeslie Chan in Open and Shut is well worth reading, both to learn about Leslie Chan and for some interesting perspective on open access, scholarship and the developed and developing worlds.
Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News for the tip and a useful excerpt. My recommendation, though, is to read the original.
This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement Series.
Richard Poynder's interview ofLeslie Chan in Open and Shut is well worth reading, both to learn about Leslie Chan and for some interesting perspective on open access, scholarship and the developed and developing worlds.
Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News for the tip and a useful excerpt. My recommendation, though, is to read the original.
This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement Series.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
STM Issues Statement on Digital Copyright Exceptions: A Great Case for Author's Rights!
The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers has just issued several statements on digital copyright exceptions.
These are disturbing statements. Clearly some of the very wealthy and highly profitable companies behind the STM - noted for their anti-OA lobbying efforts - have plans to make every effort to influence copyright laws, at an international level, for their own private benefit, and to limit uses of material made available through library subscription, both through influencing law and through influencing licensing practise.
One of the disturbing elements of the STM statement is its complete lack of recognition of authors, as well as other contributors to scholarly publishing.
For example, the STM statement says: "For example, journal articles, academic treatises and textbooks are published by STM publishers for the very purpose of contributing to scholarly communication and education", and talks about libraries as consumers with no mention of the scholars that write the journals articles and perform the peer review free of charge, nor the contributions of those who fund the research and/or pay the salaries of the researchers.
Disturbing as this is, there is a bright side: this is the best case for author's rights I have seen so far! Libraries should post this prominently on their scholarly communications websites. When scholars are giving away their copyright, they should be aware of who they are giving it to.
These are disturbing statements. Clearly some of the very wealthy and highly profitable companies behind the STM - noted for their anti-OA lobbying efforts - have plans to make every effort to influence copyright laws, at an international level, for their own private benefit, and to limit uses of material made available through library subscription, both through influencing law and through influencing licensing practise.
One of the disturbing elements of the STM statement is its complete lack of recognition of authors, as well as other contributors to scholarly publishing.
For example, the STM statement says: "For example, journal articles, academic treatises and textbooks are published by STM publishers for the very purpose of contributing to scholarly communication and education", and talks about libraries as consumers with no mention of the scholars that write the journals articles and perform the peer review free of charge, nor the contributions of those who fund the research and/or pay the salaries of the researchers.
Disturbing as this is, there is a bright side: this is the best case for author's rights I have seen so far! Libraries should post this prominently on their scholarly communications websites. When scholars are giving away their copyright, they should be aware of who they are giving it to.
STM response to Science Foundation Ireland OA policy consultation: critique
Thanks to Peter Suber for pointing to, and commenting on, the STM anti-OA response to the Science Foundation Ireland's open access policy consultation. As usual, I agree with Peter's thorough and thoughtful comments, and would like to add that there is a serious factual misstatement in the STM response (a claim that only 30 journals make articles freely available after an embargo period; the evidence suggests that the actual number is hundreds or thousands of journals).
Details:
Excerpt from the STM Comments.
"An alternative route to open access involves making the article freely available online following publication after some embargo period, typically six, twelve or more months in duration. This approach assumes that an article has little value after its embargo period. For the vast majority of journals this is a dangerous and fallacious assumption. Data from the DC Principles Group of Publishers shows that only about 1% of active learned journals have business models that allow this approach: even in this small group of titles very few indeed, 0.1% (30 journals) make content available by the embargo period in SFI’s draft policy." No citation provided.
Here is what the DC Principles group says on the DC Principles website:
Principle 3. As not-for-profit publishers, we have introduced and will continue to support the following forms of free access:
[snip]
* The full text of our journals is freely available to everyone worldwide either immediately or within months of publication, depending on each publisher’s business and publishing requirements.
If the DC Principles Group is making back issues of their journals freely available, and they are not the only ones to do this - how many journals are there?
Here are a few indications of what the numbers might actually be:
There are more than 3,400 fully open access journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals. DOAJ is a vetted list which includes only fully open access, peer reviewed journals. The Electronic Journals Library is a more inclusive list, including journals with free back issues; Electronic Journals Library lists over 18,000 free journals. Highwire Press lists 42 completely free sites, and 249 sites with free back issues. Over 400 journals make their articles freely available in PubMedCentral; as of March 2008, 321 made these articles freely available immediately on publication. For the analysis, see this post on IJPE.
In sum, while I don't have the exact figures for how many journals make back issues freely available, clearly the numbers are in the hundreds (Highwire, PubMedCentral), or thousands (Electronic Journals Library) - not just 30!
Details:
Excerpt from the STM Comments.
"An alternative route to open access involves making the article freely available online following publication after some embargo period, typically six, twelve or more months in duration. This approach assumes that an article has little value after its embargo period. For the vast majority of journals this is a dangerous and fallacious assumption. Data from the DC Principles Group of Publishers shows that only about 1% of active learned journals have business models that allow this approach: even in this small group of titles very few indeed, 0.1% (30 journals) make content available by the embargo period in SFI’s draft policy." No citation provided.
Here is what the DC Principles group says on the DC Principles website:
Principle 3. As not-for-profit publishers, we have introduced and will continue to support the following forms of free access:
[snip]
* The full text of our journals is freely available to everyone worldwide either immediately or within months of publication, depending on each publisher’s business and publishing requirements.
If the DC Principles Group is making back issues of their journals freely available, and they are not the only ones to do this - how many journals are there?
Here are a few indications of what the numbers might actually be:
There are more than 3,400 fully open access journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals. DOAJ is a vetted list which includes only fully open access, peer reviewed journals. The Electronic Journals Library is a more inclusive list, including journals with free back issues; Electronic Journals Library lists over 18,000 free journals. Highwire Press lists 42 completely free sites, and 249 sites with free back issues. Over 400 journals make their articles freely available in PubMedCentral; as of March 2008, 321 made these articles freely available immediately on publication. For the analysis, see this post on IJPE.
In sum, while I don't have the exact figures for how many journals make back issues freely available, clearly the numbers are in the hundreds (Highwire, PubMedCentral), or thousands (Electronic Journals Library) - not just 30!
Put yourself in the patient's shoes: no embargoes to medical research
One of the side-benefits of medical research is that businesses get to profit from some of the money spent on research. This is a fine thing, but it is essential to remember that this is not the point.
There are those in the open access movement who are very sensitive to the desires of publishers to retain revenues, and willing to compromise by allowing for embargo periods before open access. This is generous, but my plea is to please remember the point of medical research: preventing and alleviating human suffering.
For anyone considering whether an embargo period on open access is fair, or how long an embargo period is fair, please put yourself in the patient's shoes.
Imagine that you are in your own living room, talking with your loved one who has just received a diagnosis of a terminal or very serious illness, that cannot be treated with yesterday's treatments.
If a new treatment or cure is made possible with money paid for by your tax dollars, how long do you think you, your loved one and your health care providers should wait to read the results?
If a new line of research has opened up that shows some promise of a new treatment, how long should we hold off on making the results available to all researchers so that everyone available and interested can build on what has been done, and advance our knowledge towards the cure?
For more of my writings on this topic, please see In Lieu of Flowers: An Open Letter to the American Association of Cancer Research and Open Access: to Help the Helpers.
There are those in the open access movement who are very sensitive to the desires of publishers to retain revenues, and willing to compromise by allowing for embargo periods before open access. This is generous, but my plea is to please remember the point of medical research: preventing and alleviating human suffering.
For anyone considering whether an embargo period on open access is fair, or how long an embargo period is fair, please put yourself in the patient's shoes.
Imagine that you are in your own living room, talking with your loved one who has just received a diagnosis of a terminal or very serious illness, that cannot be treated with yesterday's treatments.
If a new treatment or cure is made possible with money paid for by your tax dollars, how long do you think you, your loved one and your health care providers should wait to read the results?
If a new line of research has opened up that shows some promise of a new treatment, how long should we hold off on making the results available to all researchers so that everyone available and interested can build on what has been done, and advance our knowledge towards the cure?
For more of my writings on this topic, please see In Lieu of Flowers: An Open Letter to the American Association of Cancer Research and Open Access: to Help the Helpers.
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