Where Open Access Publishing is coming from and where it's going to.

 

The SOAP (Study of Open Access Publishing) project 

 

Outlining and analysing the world of open access publishing – from what publishers offer to what researchers want – SOAP was a two year project, which ended in 2011, coordinated by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in partnership with libraries (The Max Planck Digital Library), funding agencies (UK Science and Technologies Council), and major open access publishers (Sage, Springer, BioMed Central).

An invaluable undertaking, SOAP described and analysed open access publishing by comparing and contrasting business models for a better understanding of the marketplace as well as the opportunities and risks associated with open access publishing. It also conducted a large scale survey that investigated the European Research Area (ERA) scholars’ requirements for scientific publishing.

Delivered in three main phases, SOAP provided a fact based impartial platform for public debate on Open Access publishing and the sustainable future of scholarly communication. The three phases consisted of:

I. Examining existing ‘fully’ Open Access publishing and corresponding business models including hybrid;

II. Assessing international demand for Open Access publishing across disciplines;

III. Comparison of offer, supply and demand with further analysis of the opportunities and results.

The SOAP repository provides a useful overview of the developments and debates which informed this study and provides a fascinating qualitative and quantitative insight into attitudes, desires and practices surrounding the drivers and barriers in the transition towards Open Access.

 

Open Access for the People!

Yesterday brought about the launch of PeerJ, a peer-reviewed, open-access journal that offers paid-for-life subscriptions. There are three plans: $99 and it allows for them to publish one paper a year; $199 for two papers a year; and $299 will give you unlimited publications per year.

Academic publishing is pretty much locked-down by the four big companies these days: Springer, Elsevier, Wiley, and Taylor & Francis. All four companies charge minimally $1000 - author processing charges vary journal-by-journal - but often climb toward $2000 or $3000. 

Peer J isn't the only new journal trying to make open access a bit less financially grim, Open Library of Humanities and eLife have both launched during this past month. eLife is, like PeerJ, for science and biomedical research whereas OLH is aimed at humanities and social sciences. eLife is currently APC-free, while OLH is aiming to offer a low-APC service.

Blog-watching

More articles on Open Access that the Transition Project Team have found interesting:

Mounce, Ross. The Gold OA Plot.
A visualization of different publisher’s OA permissions.

Van Noorden, Richard. Mathematicians Aim to take publishers out of publishing.
Mathematicians are creating a series of free open-access journals that are backed by funding through the French government.

Taylor, Mike. Hiding Your Research Behind a Paywall is Immoral.
Taylor’s opinion piece on open access as it relates to science papers.


Neylon, Cameron. OA and the UK Humanities & Social Sciences: Wrong risks and missed opportunities
 A scientist working for the Science and Technology Facilities Council reflects on the impact of RCUK open access publishing policy for Humanities and Social Science researchers.


Holcombe, Alex O. and Matthew Todd. Free for all: ARC-funded research now open to the public
Australian Research Council (ARC) implements an open access publishing policy for those researchers in receipt of funding.

Creative Commons Licenses

Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools. Their free copyright licenses provide a simple and standardized way to give the public permission to share and use an author’s creative work — on conditions set by the author. 

From 1 April 2013, Research Councils UK and Wellcome Trust ask researchers who produce work as a result of research being funded by them, to publish papers in open access journals using a CC-BY license or equivalent. A CC-BY-NC license or equivalent is to be used for papers that are alternatively deposited in an open access institutional repository.

Attribution CC-BY:

You can:

• share
• copy
• distribute
• transmit
• remix

a work for commercial purposes as long as you attribute the work.

Attribution-NonCommercial/ CC-BY-NC:

You can:

• share
• copy
• distribute
• transmit
• remix

a work for non-commercial purposes as long as you attribute the work.

Blog Post Roundup: Learned Societies and OA

Links about the issues surrounding open access and learned societies.

Jump, Paul.  Open access will cause problems for learned societies' journals, accepts Finch
Dame Janet Finch admits that the new regulations that have been implemented because of her report’s findings could negatively impact learned societies’ journals.

Meadows, Alice. Open Access - What’s a Learned Society To Do?
Should learned societies do more to participate in the questions around Open Access?

Wilson, Emma.  A Learned Society perspective on Open Access publishing models.
The new RCUK regulations from the point of view from a member of a learned society.

Worlock, Kate. Open Access and Learned Societies.
General rundown of issues surrounding learned societies and open access.

Open Access Transition Briefings

On December 4th and 5th, Queen Mary University held briefing sessions to help researchers explain the upcoming changes in RCUK’s Open Access policy, answer initial questions, and to provide an outline of the work being undertaken by a Task and Finish group.

 

Initial Meetings

Date: 04/12/12 Time: 12:30-14:00 Location: Mile End Library, Seminar Room

Date: 05/12/12 Time: 11:00-12:30 Location: Mile End Library, Seminar Room

Date: 16/01/13  Time: 14:00-15:30  Location: Charterhouse Sq, Rotblat G.05

Briefings are being held for the Directors of Research and Principal Investigators from various disciplines. These presentations are on:

•    Understanding the Policy

•    Frequently Asked Questions

•    Developing a procedure:  

• Task and Finish group
• Funds allocation

Upcoming Meetings

Date: 22/01/13  Time: 12:00-13:30  Location: Mile End Library, Seminar Room
Date: 25/01/13  Time: 14:00-15:30  Location: Whitechapel, Garrod 1.21
Date:  11/02/13  Time: 11:00-12:30  Location: Mile End Library, Seminar Room

Booking is not required.

OA Transition Survey Launched

Open Access Survey Launched

The Library's Open Access Transition team have been approaching a number of academic colleagues to find out how they manage their OA publications. A short survey has been launched; it will review existing procedures for managing outputs accepted for publication. This is to identify any support the Library can provide to enable researchers to comply easily with their funders’ open access publishing mandates. We are interested in the views of all researchers, not only those funded by RCUK and the Wellcome Trust, so please take a few moments to complete the survey and give us a clearer picture of how we can help. All responses will be confidential.

At the end of the survey there is an opportunity to share comments or ask questions concerning Open Access and Queen Mary's intended response to RCUK and the Wellcome Trust's new requirements.

RCUK (the seven Research Councils) have recently announced changes to their Open Access policy starting on 1 April 2013; an outline of which can be viewed here.

The Wellcome Trust has already been supporting open access for output of research funded by the Trust.  However, from 1 April 2013, they too are expanding their open access publishing policies by stipulating that research output can be used for commercial purposes as well whenever a publisher has been paid an open access fee.  Their policy statement can be viewed here.

Queen Mary will receive a block grant to cover some of the Article Processing Cost (APC) of open access publishing for RCUK-funded projects; this block grant will be administered by the Library. Queen Mary Library also manages an institutional repository where researchers can deposit the accepted version of their paper.  In order to ensure that we administer funds efficiently for Gold access and to support researchers in self-archiving their papers for Green access, we will need to know early in the process when a paper is accepted and through which one of the open access routes it is going to be published.