Open Research Online

Last week for the first time the OU Library Services in conjunction with the PVC (Research, Scholarship and Quality) Office ran five lunchtime events from the 22nd to the 26th October for Open Access Week.  There were  17 speakers  over the week ranging from academics. librarians, publishers and open access advocates and the events were attended by over 90 people from across the Open University.  Discussion during the week ranged from will article procesing charges be higher in the arts and humanities than the sciences, the Research Council UK policy on open access, how Open University Open Access journals are managed, experiences of publishing in open access journals, how publishers are moving forward with open access, the challenges and opportunities open access is presenting Higher Education Institutions with.  We would like to thank all those speakers and participants for making the week so interesting in engaging  and are looking forward to seeing how open access publishing evolves over the next few years.

Nicola Dowson & Chris Biggs Open Access Publishing: An Introduction

Ian Rowlands Open Access: University of Leicester Experience

Ian Bannerman Open Access Taylor and Francis

Wim van der Stelt Open Access Springer

Rupert Gatti OA monograph publishing

Zdenek Zdrahal CORE Presentation

Petr Knoth Aggregating, enriching and reusing Open Access

Markus Muhr The European Library: Connecting Knowledge

Astrid Wissenburg Open Access Publishing challenges and opportunities for HEIs

Fred Friend Open Access: potential benefits, worldwide hope, UK uncertainty

Having just spent an hour putting together a presentation on the role our repository can play in maximising citations, and thus preparing for the inevitable sceptisism one will always receive when talking to some people on such matters, I was reminded of an ongoing debate I have with (of all people) my father-in-law, on the issue of climate change.

Not one to pick too many debates with my father-in-law, for obvious reasons, I’m afraid I do tend to stand firm when it comes to climate change, and I frequently find myself (metaphorically-speaking) bashing my head against the wall in many a frustrating exchange. Without getting into the nitty-gritty (and please, I don’t want this post itself to turn into a debate on climate change!), my point is essentially that, even if global warming to a damaging degree doesn’t happen in the next century or two, if there is a chance that it will, and measures can be taken to mitigate it, why not do so anyway? If you were to be told there is a 70% chance your house will burn down tomorrow, but if you take this measure to prevent it then it probably won’t happen, you are more than likely going to take that measure.

And so on to the parallels with open access (OA), in particular the OA citation advantage…

For those unfamiliar with this, based on the (quite reasonable) assumptions that 1) a proportion of researchers do not have access to all published research that is relevant to them; 2) the problem would be otherwise addressed by unavailable research being freely available online; and 3) some of these articles would be relevant, and thus citable… the expectation is that published research made openly accessible online will carry a “citation advantage”. In other words, by publishing or archiving research in an open access manner, the chances of one’s work being cited improves.

Unsurprisingly, there have been many studies which have attempted to investigate this notion, many of which have provided convincing evidence for its existence. However, also unsurprisingly, there are a lot of people who argue serious flaws in concluding that it is OA that is causing the apparent advantage. I’m not going to go into all the details in this post, but for those interested in following up the debate, a good starting point would be Alma Swan’s recent summary of reported studies on the OA citation advantage.

For the purposes of this post, however, the point I want to make is where the parallels with the climate change debate come in. Even if the advantage of doing something contains an element of doubt, if there is no disadvantage to not doing it, why not do it anyway? If there is even the slightest chance that you could become better cited or achieve broader impact for your research through OA, why not just do it? As I always like to remind people, it takes little over one minute to deposit a journal article in ORO using the DOI (for proof see our screencast of this being done, and at a rather conservative pace, it has to be said!), and certainly no more than two or three minutes if you have to enter the details manually, so don’t come back with the argument that you don’t have the time!

As a closing thought, if we think of academic journals in the OA debate as oil in the climate change debate, we are only going to have less and less access to them as time goes on. Academic libraries cannot afford to subscribe to them all, and that is only going to get worse. In the same way that in 50, 100, 150 years time (whatever it may be) we will have no oil-based fuel to put in our cars, in 10, 15, 20 years time you may be even less likely than you are now to reach your desired audience by simply relying on the subscription base of a given journal. Rather than waiting to see if this happens, why not do something about it now?

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the depth of the Open Access (OA) debate runs no further than you’re either for or against it. Indeed, a couple of years ago, in my former life as a humble Managing Editor, before I really began showing an interest in and reading about OA, that is exactly what I thought. You’ve got your OA advocates (librarians and some academics) on one side of the fence, driving OA forward, and then you’ve got your publishers on the other side of the fence, who’d really rather it didn’t happen. Simple. Right? Wrong!

Having worked in both camps, so to speak, moving from a journals publishing world to one in which I manage an OA institutional repository, it strikes me that there is probably more cohesion and agreement among OA “delayers” (as I like to call them) than there is among its advocates. I was, perhaps naively, expecting a bit more of a “united we stand” feel to the OA movement when I joined it. As far as revolutions go, it actually strikes me as being a bit “bitchy”.

Take a random sample of postings from the Amercian Scientist (AmSci) Open Access Forum and you’ll see exactly what I mean. You’ve got some arguing the case that OA archiving (repositories) must come before OA publishing, and that throwing money at the latter is a waste of time because the former is already universally achievable. Then you’ve got others saying that OA archiving is just a half-way-house measure – that OA publishing is the ultimate goal, and so why waste time, energy and resources running relatively empty repositories. On top of this you’ve got regular wranglings about copyright, who should pay OA publication fees, whether institutions should implement OA mandates… The list goes on.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for healthy debate in order to find the best way forward. However, there is a line (or lines) where, if crossed, healthy debate becomes infighting, and you end up with diverging factions among a group of people that actually, when you remind yourself, all set out in the beginning to achieve the same thing, ultimately. Sometimes, the comments going back and forth between people on the AmSci Forum seem more like body blows between jealous enemies than constructive remarks between united comrades. I have this picture in my head of a personified subscription-based-publisher, reclining in his chair, watching on his monitor in front of him all this arguing going on, with an evil grin spread across his face as we all play into his hands.

Ok, perhaps a bit dramatic, but you get what I mean.

The fact of the matter is that there are many people doing great jobs in working towards OA, whether it is in the “green” (repositories) form or the “gold” (publishing) form, and no one should be vilified for their efforts. If you think of OA as an organism surviving in the publishing world through evolution, then having as varied a genome as possible surely has to be a healthy thing. If any one element of OA does turn out to be too weak, then it will die off naturally in the fullness of time. Arguing excessively about it now will succeed only in slowing down its natural development.

Yesterday, I delivered a presentation on ORO to one of our research centres here at the OU: the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance (CCIG). During the Q&A session at the end, the issue of people’s unease in making final accepted draft versions of journal papers and book chapters openly available in ORO was raised. Generally, the feeling from the audience was that they were very interested in open access to their research, but they would much rather it be the definitive published version (a version that not many publishers will allow to be deposited in an open access reository) rather than the final accepted draft version (a version that many publishers will allow to be deposited).

There wasn’t a lot of time available for a detailed discussion on this issue, but it occurred to me that it is probably something that many other researchers outside of the CCIG Forum would be interested in, and so I’ve decided to write a blog post on the topic.

First, here are a few points about why it is a good thing, a safe thing, and indeed perhaps a necessary thing, to deposit your final accepted draft manuscripts in ORO:

1. If your research is externally funded, there is an ever-increasing chance that you will be required by your funding body to make the published output from that research available in an open access form as soon as possible after publication. Depending on whom you choose to publish with, the only option open to you to comply with this may be to deposit your final accepted draft version in your institutional repository, i.e. ORO. It is worth noting that all of the UK Research Councils now place such a requirement on their grantees.
2. ORO always provides a link through to the definitive published version of your work, but, whether an individual arriving at your work through ORO can click through to that published version depends on whether his or her university has access (a journal subscription, for example). There is a very strong possibility that this won’t be the case. So, in making a copy of your final accepted draft version available to this person instead, you have broadened access to your research and possibly even improved your chances of becoming well cited.
3. We will soon be including cover sheets for full text items deposited in ORO. These cover sheets will explain to the person viewing or downloading the article exactly what version they are accessing, and again will provide a link through to the definitive published version. There will also be a link through to our FAQ on how to cite papers discovered through ORO.

To a certain extent, I would say a decision has to be made by an individual depositing in ORO what is most important to them: 1) open and wider access to their research; or 2) the look and presentation of that research. If it is the former, then depositing final accepted draft versions is definitely for them – it is a way (within the copyright agreements of most publishers) to make their work freely available online. However, if it is the latter, then that person may not be happy about a non-copyedited, non-typeset version of their article being available in the public domain. For these individuals – and particularly for those that would still like to explore open access options for their research – perhaps open access publishing is the answer, which I’ll now move on to.

To be clear, when thinking about journal articles, there are two main ways to make your work available in an open access form:

1. Deposit the final accepted draft version in an open access repository such as ORO.
2. Publish your work in an open access journal.  

Then, within option 2) there are a further three variants:

1. Fully open access journals that do not charge a fee.
2. Fully open access journals that do charge a fee.
3. So-called ‘hybrid’ journals that contain both subscribed content and open access content, the latter of which they charge for.

Obviously, publishing in a fully open access journal that does not charge a fee seems on the surface to be the best solution. However, many of these journals are quite young and are not the recognised ‘journals of choice’ that many researchers habitually prefer to publish with in their respective fields. For a list of such journals see the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

There are now, however, a few commercial publishers that have made open access publishing their sole publishing model; for example BioMedCentral (BMC), Public Library of Science (PLOS) and Hindawi. These publishers have made what appear to be sustainable businesses from open access publishing by charging a fee to their authors. This fee covers all of their peer review, editorial and production costs – something that subscription fees cover under traditional publishing models.

Furthermore, what I would term traditional commercial publishers (e.g. Elsevier, Springer, Taylor & Francis, Sage, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press etc.) now operate many of their journals under the ‘hybrid’ model mentioned above. That is, if you want your paper to be published open access online then you can pay for the privilege. If not, it just gets published as subscribed content in the usual way. In fact, many of you may have started to receive emails from your publishers upon acceptance of your papers asking if you want to pay for open access. These will be ‘hybrid’ journals.

The issue, of course, with paying for open access is how? Well, some funding bodies (e.g. the Wellcome Trust) are offering to pay for the publication fees of their grantees, or apply retrospectively to claim them back. Others, such as the UK Research Councils, invite researchers to include publication fees as part of their indirect costs in their grant applications. In addition, there is another school of thought that universities themselves should have budgets for open access publishing fees, to which researchers can apply for funds. The University of Nottingham is an example of a UK institution that has recently gone down this route. Universities UK and the Research Information Network have just produced a very useful guide on paying for open access publication charges, including advice for authors, universities, publishers, and funding bodies. It’s well worth a read if anyone is interested in following this issue up further.

In summary then, with my Repository Manager hat on, I would of course encourage everybody to deposit their final accepted draft manuscripts in ORO. It is currently the quickest, easiest and cheapest way to ensure open and broader access to your research. However, I do understand people’s concern about draft versions, even if they have been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication. Therefore, for these individuals, I would recommend exploring the possibility of open access publishing. Of course, if you do publish in a open access journal we can still put it in ORO, so everyone’s a winner!

I’ve recently read a Case Study by Matthew Cockerill of BioMed Central on the University of Nottingham’s moves to estalish a central fund for its researchers to use for open access publishing. This, combined with coming across a couple of other news items on similar funds established by Dutch universities and the University of Calgary, has prompted me to blog a few thoughts of my own on the topic.

For anyone reading this who happens to be new to the topic of open access (OA), there are two main ways by which academics can make available their research in an OA manner. First, by publishing in OA journals (so called ‘Gold’ OA), and second by archiving their paper in an OA repository (such as ORO – so called ‘Green’ OA). Within Gold OA, there is also a distinction to be made between those journals that charge a fee to the author and those that don’t. It is the former of these two models where one might expect an OA fund to be necessary. This is what the University of Nottingham (and some others) have decided to establish.

The driver for this has come from the beginning of the food chain – research funders. Many of these bodies now insist their grantees make the published outcomes of their research openly available, and compliance with this can be made through either Gold or Green OA. Some funders (e.g. the Wellcome Trust) have gone further and specifically set aside funds for their grantees to use for OA publishing fees. This is because many of the high impact journals in which authors prefer to publish are owned by commercial publishers that still need to make money from OA publishing in order to survive and thus charge a fee to the author for the privilege. These journals that offer both subscribed and OA content are known as ‘hybrid journals’.

All of this raises an interesting issue. Who should provide the funds to pay for OA publishing, if that is what the researcher wants or is required to do? Should it be the institution (as Nottingham have decided), or should it be the funding body (as the Wellcome Trust have acknowledged)? Or, should it be some combination of the two?

Some would argue there shouldn’t be a charge at all for OA publishing. However, if there is no charge, publishers could not cover the costs of peer review, production, and editorial development; it would not be a viable business model and would therefore not be adopted. Instead, journals would have to be run (as ‘free’ OA journals currently are) voluntarily by enthusiastic and dedicated academic staff that give up their time for nothing. Many would disagree with me, but I feel in order to not lose the value added by publishers and the decades (centuries, even) of expertise they have, every effort should be made for OA publishing to be a money-making business model, and therefore there should be a charge. Indeed, BioMed Central are a credible example of how this can be done. So much so, Springer decided to buy them!

Anyway, I digress slightly. Who should pay for OA publishing? On the one hand, the funder wants the research to be carried out and, as such, is willing to fund it. Surely, then, they should also be willing to put up the money for publishing it? On the other hand, not all research is funded, so there must also be a strong case that universities should be willing to pay for publishing.

The theory goes that as more and more research is published OA, publishers should reduce their subscription prices accordingly, as they get more and more revenue in through author OA fees. In practice, however, while some shining examples exist (Oxford University Press springs to mind), bottom-line greed on the part of publishers might mean this doesn’t happen. And, even if it does, how easy would it be on a practical level for universities to redistribute funds from their serials budgets to an OA budget?

As Matthew Cockerill reports in the abovementioned Case Study, the University of Nottingham have decided not to rely on such a transition; they have instead made funds available for OA publishing on top of their serials budget. Of course, not all institutions will have the luxury of being able to afford to do this – particularly in these troubled economic times.

Thinking aloud I wonder if there is room for some kind of agreement to be struck between funders and institutions whereby the former pays for OA publishing of funded research and the latter for unfunded research. My worry would be that if more and more universities take the same steps as Nottingham, funding bodies will be less forthcoming in making money available for OA publishing. No one can dispute that moving to Gold OA is ultimately the fairest publishing model for all, but I do think that care needs to be taken that within that model the cost is distributed fairly.