Open Access: Which Side Are You On

Open Access to Scholarly Literature:
Which Side Are You On?
Jill Cirasella
The Graduate Center, CUNY
jcirasella@gc.cuny.edu
Slides at: http://tinyurl.com/OAwhichside

Co-Sponsors for Information Intervention #1
LACUNY Scholarly Communications Roundtable
Just Publics @ 365
Upcoming Information Interventions:
Predatory Publishers & Conferences (11/15)
Open Educational Resources (Spring)
Open Access and Dissertations (Spring)

What was once difficult and costly
is now easy and inexpensive.
Do journal prices reflect this?
For the most part, no!

The traditional system
of scholarly communication
is outmoded, expensive,
and suboptimal.
And exploitative, too!

Sound Familiar?
Scientist Meets Publisher
http://youtu.be/GMIY_4t-DR0

Open Access: Which Side Are You On

Journal Publishing is BIG Business

Source: Bosch, Stephen, and Kittie Henderson. "The Winds Of Change: Periodicals Price Survey 2013."
Library Journal 21 July 2013. http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2013/04/publishing/the-winds-of-changeperiodicals-price-survey-2013

Journal Subscriptions are BIG Costs
Journal prices are increasing
at an alarming rate, straining
academic library budgets.
From 1986 to 2009, serial
expenditures at research
libraries increased 381%.
(Book expenditures rose only
77% in the same period.)

“I Like to Buy Houses on the Beach”
Up to 38% in 2012!

Despite Noble-Sounding Claims…
―Elsevier disseminates and preserves STM literature
to meet the information needs of the world’s
present and future scientists and clinicians —
linking thinkers with ideas.‖
from Elsevier’s Mission Statement
http://www.elsevier.com/about/mission

Don’t Take My Word for It!
―Publishing obscure academic journals is
that rare thing in the media industry:
a licence to print money.‖

Source: "Open sesame: Academic publishing." The Economist 14 Apr. 2012.
http://www.economist.com/node/21552574

What Is the Solution?

Open access to
scholarly journal articles
and other scholarly materials!

What Is Open Access?
Open access (OA) materials are:
 accessible at no cost on a journal website or in a repository
committed to long-term archiving
 available for all to read, download, print, copy, share, etc.
(attribution always required, of course)
Many kinds of documents can be made OA: journal articles,
textbooks and other kinds of books, data sets, dissertations,
instructional modules, conference presentations, and much more.

How to Achieve OA: Go Gold
Gold Open Access
“Gold OA” means publishing with publishers
that automatically and immediately make
the work available online to all at no cost.
Most gold OA publishers are journal publishers,
but a few book publishers make their books OA.
More about gold OA later…

How to Achieve OA: Go Green
Green Open Access
“Green OA” refers to works that,
regardless of where else they appear,
are made available online in an OA repository
committed to long-term preservation.
Journals are called ―green‖ if they permit authors
to self-archive their articles in OA repositories.
Most journals do allow self-archiving,
but most authors don’t know that!
More about green OA later…

Finding OA Materials
 OA materials are available at no cost online, either on an
OA journal site or in some kind of OA repository.
 Therefore, OA materials are easily findable via Google,
Google Scholar, and other web search tools.

 In addition, library databases index many OA journals.
(Of course they do!)
 Upshot: You will find OA materials naturally when you do
research.

Who Benefits from OA?
Readers:
More content is available to everyone, regardless of
institutional affiliation or ability to pay
Students:
Students have access to the literature they need to
master their fields, no matter what college/university
they attend

Who Else Benefits?
Authors:
Increased availability
 More readers
 More scholarly citations, impact in the field

Easy to link to
 More mentions/links in news, blogs, etc.
 Broader awareness in the world
Greater control over own work
 No need to relinquish copyright to publishers
 Publishers don't dictate copying, sharing, etc.

The Colbert Bump
―the curious phenomenon whereby
anyone who appears on this program
gets a huge boost in popularity‖
— Stephen Colbert
Colbert Report, 6/21/07
Photo by David Shankbone

The Open Access Bump
Similarly, open access boosts the impact of articles:
easier to access  read more  cited more
It makes intuitive sense, but it’s also been proven.
Lawrence, S. (2001). Free online availability substantially
increases a paper's impact. Nature, 411(6837), 521.
Harnad, S. and Brody, T. (2004). Comparing the Impact of Open
Access (OA) vs. Non-OA Articles in the Same Journals. D-Lib
Magazine, 10(6).
Annotated bibliography of articles on the OA advantage:
http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html

My OA Advantage
All of my recent works are OA. What’s happened as a result?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

More readers (stats from repository)
More sharing (blog posts, tweets)
More publicity (Library Link of the Day, etc.)
Inclusion in course syllabi
Emails from readers
Invitations to write, talk
Satisfaction of having my work read & appreciated

Without a doubt: This is all because the articles are OA.

What Benefits from OA?
Libraries:
As OA become increasingly prevalent, libraries will be no
longer be hamstrung by astronomical journal prices.
Institutions:
Institutions no longer pay twice for research:
researchers’ salaries + journal subscriptions

In the case of public institutions, the tax-paying public
no longer pays three times for research:
salaries + research grants + journal subscriptions

What Else Benefits?
Fields of Study:
Greater access to information
 More informed research
 Better research
Articles made OA before they appear in journal
 Ends reliance on journal publication cycles
 Allows others to respond more quickly
 Speeds innovation

And What Else?
The Public:
Greater access to information
 Better informed doctors, teachers, journalists, etc.
 Better informed individuals, voters, etc.
 Healthier, better educated people living in
a cleaner, safer, more evidence-based world

Put Differently…

“Closed access means people die.”
— Peter Murray-Rust, University of Cambridge

Read more at:
http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2011/10/23/
open-research-reports-what-jenny-and-i-said-and-why-i-am-angry/

But Publishers Say…
―Most people involved in scientific research and in
need of scientific information already have access
to the articles in journals through library
subscriptions at their affiliated institutions.‖
— Association of American Publishers
http://www.publishers.org/issues/5/8/

Oh, Really?
What about…
patients
high school students
college and graduate alumni
independent researchers
citizen scientists
etc.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/
Jack-Andraka-the-Teen-Prodigy-of-Pancreatic-Cancer-179996151.html

Video: http://youtu.be/G55hlnSD1Ys

More about Gold OA
Reminder:
“Gold OA” means publishing with publishers
that automatically and immediately make
the work available online to all at no cost —
i.e., journals that are ―born‖ open access

Respectability of Gold OA Journals?
OA = anyone can read the journal
OA ≠ anyone can publish in the journal
OA journals are real journals. Publishing in an OA journal is not
self-publishing or vanity publishing!
OA journals earn respectability the same way other journals
do: through the quality of their articles and the prominence of
the people they attract as authors, editors, etc.
Of course: Just as some non-OA journals are better than others,
some OA journals are better than others.

Peer Review & Gold OA Journals?
A journal's peer review practices are
independent of its openness.

Most scholarly journals,
open access and subscription-based,
are peer reviewed.
(Some open access journals are not peer reviewed;
some subscription-based journals are not peer reviewed.)

Impact of OA Journals?
Many OA journals are highly respected; some have very high impact
factors (according to Journal Citation Reports).
Some OA journals with high impact factors:
•
•
•
•
•

PLoS One
PLoS Biology
BMC Evolutionary Biology
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
and many more…

Of course, impact factor is not equally relevant to all disciplines,
and there are also other measures of importance and influence
(altmetrics).

Finding Gold OA Journals
Directory of Open Access Journals
http://www.doaj.org

Browse or search for 9900+ open access journals!

Business Models
If OA journals are free to read, how do they cover costs?
There are many business models for OA journals:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Volunteers & institutional subsidies
Advertising
Fees for print or premium editions
Endowments & donations
Publication fees
Institutional memberships
A combination of the above
For more information, see:
http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/OA_journal_business_models

Publication Fees?!
Yes, some OA journals charge publication fees.
Some do not.

(Some subscription-based journals charge publication fees!)
Fees are not necessarily paid from researchers' pockets:
Some institutions pay fees for their employees.
Grants can be used to pay publication fees.
Some journals waive fees for those who cannot afford them.
(C’mon CUNY, let’s make a fund to cover publication fees!)

Publication Fees ≠ Vanity Publishing
Some people worry:
Are publication fees tantamount to vanity publishing?

NO!
At reputable journals, fees have no bearing
whatsoever on whether an article is accepted.

What about Disreputable Journals?
Predatory Open Access Publishers
"Predatory" = unscrupulous, unserious, spamming

Examples: Academic Journals, Inc.,
Academia Publishing, Modern Scientific Press,
Scientific Journals International
More info: Beall’s List of Predatory Publishers
http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/
Of course, low-quality journals are
not unique to open access publishing!

Open Access Scholarly Publishers Assoc.
•
OASPA supports OA publishers, promotes best practices
for OA, advances workable business models for OA, etc.

• OASPA holds its members to a Code of Conduct:
http://www.oaspa.org/conduct.php
• OASPA endeavors not to include predatory OA publishers

Bad OA Does Not Invalidate All OA
―To suggest . . . that the problem with scientific publishing
is that open access enables internet scamming is like saying
that the problem with the international finance system is that
it enables Nigerian wire transfer scams.

There are deep problems with science publishing. But the way
to fix this is not to curtail open access publishing. It is to fix
peer review.‖
— Michael Eisen, University of California professor and
Public Library of Science co-founder
Source: http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2013/10/04/open-access-is-not-the-problem/

Independent Variables
Cell
Nature
Journal of Finance
Philosophical Review

Just about every field has some
bottom-of-the-barrel
subscription-based journals…

x-axis: openness
y-axis: quality
(impact, rigor of peer
review, etc.)

PLoS Biology
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
Philosophers’ Imprint
College & Research Libraries

Low-quality and ―predatory‖
OA journals

Gold OA: The Takeaway
Don’t let the predatory publishers scare you off!
Open access is a viable and sustainable publishing model.
Some journals are better than others, but the model is sound.
Traditional scholarly journal publishing:
restrictive, expensive, outmoded, and sometimes exploitative
Gold OA can and should be:
author-friendly, reader-friendly, research-friendly

Hybrid Journals
• Subscription-based journals that give authors the option
to pay a fee to make their individual articles permanently
OA — e.g., Taylor & Francis’s ―Open Select‖ option,
Springer’s ―Open Choice‖ option
• A given issue is a combination of OA and non-OA articles

• Double dipping! Publishers receive money twice!
• Some publishers decrease the subscription price based on
how many authors pay to go OA. Perhaps a way to
transition to OA.

More about Green OA
Reminder:
“Green OA” refers to works that,
regardless of where else they appear,
are made available online in an OA repository
committed to long-term preservation.
Putting one’s own work into an OA repository
is called “self-archiving.”

Where to Self-Archive?
Subject Repositories
arXiv.org
PubMed Central
Research Papers in Economics (RePEc)
Social Science Research Network (SSRN)
E-Prints in Library & Information Science (E-LIS)
Curious if there's a repository for a certain field?
http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Disciplinary_repositories
Note: Not every field has a subject repository.

Institutional Repositories
An institutional repository (IR) is an online database
offered by an institution to collect, preserve,
and make freely available scholarly journal articles
and other works created by that institution’s community.
Of course, self-archiving in an institutional repository
is possible only at institutions with a repository.

Institutional Repositories
Open access institutional repositories can “serve as
tangible indicators of a university’s quality” and
“demonstrate the scientific, societal, and economic
relevance of its research activities, thus increasing the
institution’s visibility, status, and public value.”
— Raym Crow, ―The Case for Institutional
Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper‖
http://scholarship.utm.edu/20/

Who has an IR?
MIT, Harvard, U of California, and many, many others
Directory of Open Access Repositories
http://www.opendoar.org/
Who doesn't?
CUNY
Problem: Where can people from CUNY whose fields
do not have subject repositories self-archive their work?

CUNY Needs an
Institutional
Repository!

Is a Journal Green OA? Easier!
SHERPA/RoMEO
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/
Search by journal/publisher to learn
its copyright and self-archiving policies

Prevalence of Permission?
Of the 18,000+ journals covered by SHERPA/RoMEO as of
November 2011:
•
•
•
•

87% allow immediate self-archiving of some version of article
60% allow immediate self-archiving of post-refereed version
16% allow immediate self-archiving of published PDF
Allowing for embargoes (usually 6 to 24 months), 94% allow
self-archiving of post-refereed versions
For more information:
http://romeo.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2011/11/24/

Can I Negotiate My Contract?
Sometimes.
Your best shot is the
Scholar’s Copyright Addendum Engine:
http://scholars.sciencecommons.org/

Advice to Authors
1. Research any journal/publisher you’re considering.
(Quality? Peer reviewing process? Copyright policy?)
2. If you have the right to self-archive, exercise that right.
1. If you don’t have the right to self-archive, request it.
1. Choose the best publishing venue for you and your career…
2. …but also think about the system you’re contributing to and
the system you want to contribute to.

Know your rights to what you write!

Who Thinks OA Is Important?
A growing number of universities have OA policies:
Harvard, MIT, Rutgers, UCSF, U of Kansas, Duke, Utah State,
Princeton, Emory, Oberlin, Bucknell, etc. (C’mon, CUNY!)
Some funding agencies have OA mandates:
National Institutes of Health, Gates Foundation, MacArthur
Foundation, Wellcome Trust, Research Councils UK (though
theirs is problematic…), etc.
Some states and countries have OA policies!
E.g., Illinois, Ireland

Coming soon: More federal agencies!
 Massive expansion of NIH policy: The Obama administration
has directed all federal agencies with $100M+ in research
expenditures to develop policies to make resulting research
articles open access within 12 months of publication.
 This includes NASA, NSF, DoD, CDC, Smithsonian, etc.
 Taxpayers are entitled to the research they pay for!

Coming soon: New York State?
 Taxpayer Access to Publicly Funded Research (TAPFR) Act
would make all state-funded research (>$50M/year) open
access.

 Commercial publishers lobbied heavily against it, stirring up
confusion and threatening major job losses.
 Didn’t pass in 2013 but there’s hope for 2014!

Dishonest Lobbying
The arguments for OA are unassailable — support is spreading.
Some publishers are experimenting with new models.
Some are getting ugly.
Example: American Chemical Society
―Their unspoken crusade is to socialize all aspects of science, putting
the federal government in charge of funding science, communicating
science, and maintaining the archive of scientific knowledge.‖
— Rudy M. Baum, Editor of Chemical & Engineering News
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/editor/8238edit.html
―Public access equals government censorship.‖
Lobbying campaign proposed by AAP consultant

Are They Just Denying the Inevitable?
The Inevitability of Open Access
by David W. Lewis
―This article argues that Gold OA, where all of the articles of a
journal are available at the time of publication, is a disruptive
innovation as defined by business theorist Clayton Christensen.
Using methods described by Christensen, we can predict the
growth of Gold OA. This analysis suggests that Gold OA could
account for 50 percent of the scholarly journal articles sometime
between 2017 and 2021, and 90 percent of articles as soon as
2020 and more conservatively by 2025.‖
Lewis, D. W. (2012). The inevitability of open access. College & Research
Libraries, 73(5), 493-506. http://crl.acrl.org/content/73/5/493.full.pdf+html

Whether Inevitable or Not…
OA is growing dramatically!
Heather Morrison (U of Ottawa) tracks OA growth on her blog
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics.
Highlights from her December 2012 round-up (with updates):
•
•
•

The Directory of Open Access Journals included 8,461 journals,
up by 1,133 since the end of 2011. (Now over 9900!)
The Registry of Open Access Repositories listed 3,032 repositories,
up by 449 since 2011. (Now over 3500!)
PubMed Central included a whopping 2.6 million OA articles,
up by 300,000 since 2011. (Now over 2.8 million!)

Source: Van Noorden, R. (2013, August 20). ―Half of 2011 papers now free to read." Nature.
http://www.nature.com/news/half-of-2011-papers-now-free-to-read-1.13577

Which side are you on?
Are the articles you read among the half?
What about the articles you write?
Are the journals to which you submit open-access friendly?
What about the journals for which you peer review?
Are there any reasons why the public should not have access to
the results of taxpayer-funded research?

Coming Soon!
To Catch a Predator:
How to Recognize Predatory Journals and Conferences
November 15, 2013 – 10am-noon
Spring 2014 Events
Open Educational Resources
Dissertations & Open Access

Credits
This slideshow is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Specific graphics may have different licenses:
Philosophical Transactions image from
http://www.ansp.org/explore/online-exhibits/stories/the-philosophical-transactions/
―What Is the Problem?‖ graphic,
content by Jill Cirasella / graphic design by Les LaRue, http://www.leslarue.com/,
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
Octopus image is adapted from
http://www.flickr.com/photos/luca-beanone-barcellona/4776886666/
Profit margin graph from Nick Shockey, SPARC/Right To Research Coalition
Stephen Colbert photo by David Shankbone
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stephen_Colbert_2_by_David_Shankbone.jpg

Thank you!
Questions?
Jill Cirasella
The Graduate Center, CUNY
jcirasella@gc.cuny.edu
Slides at: http://tinyurl.com/OAwhichside

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