Open Access: An evolving alternative or a maturing threat?

University of Hawaii - ManoaOctober 22, 2012

lorraine j haricombe

Outline

• Brief history• Definition: Open Access?• Progress report of evolving initiatives• Actions at the national level• Actions at the global level • Measures of impact• Milestones• A maturing threat?• Barriers to OA• Possible scenarios• Agents of Change• How can librarians advance OA?

Brief History

• Purpose of scientific journal in 1665– Share work quickly and widely– Establish priority for researchers in the field – Generate visibility for their work

• Provides intrinsic reward

• Intellectual commodity

Scientific publishing fast forward ….

• Scientific publishing as commercial commodity

• Serials crisis– Increased costs– Profit seeking publishers

The Internet: A game changer

• Arxiv

• PubMed Central

• SPARC

• NIH

• PLOS

• BMC

Advancing Open Access: Three Bs

• Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002)

• Berlin Declaration on open Access (2003)

• Bethesda Statement (2003)

Budapest Open Access Initiative

• 10 years old

• Articulates two ways to accomplish Open access:– New generation of OA journals (gold) – Self-archiving (green)

Open Access: What is it?

Essentials of the three initiatives include: •Immediate and free availability of scholarship on the public Internet

•Dissemination of knowledge for the public good

•No barriers to access

OA Policies and Progress in Higher Education

Early adopters in North America:

2008-2009: Harvard, MIT, Stanford

2009 and 2010: University of Kansas, first public institution

For a more comprehensive view of global institutions with Open Access Repositories Mandatory Archiving Policies see ROARMAP at http://roarmap.eprints.org/

ROARMAP

Organizing….

• 2011: COAPI (Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions)

• Initiated on July 19, 2011 with 22 institutions in north America

• Currently 46 participants

• Goal: • Share best practices; implementation strategies • Advocacy role at the national level

• COAPI Activities 2011-2012:• 1st meeting at Berlin 9 (November 2011)• Responded to OSTP’ s request for information (December 2011) • Developed COAPI-listserve• 2nd meeting at SPARC’s OA Conference in Kansas City (March 2012)

OA at the national level

• NIH OA policy 2008• FRPAA introduced 2009• BERLIN 9 Conference 2011• RWA withdrawn 2011• OSTP’s RFI 2012 • FRPAA reintroduced 2012• Petition for FRPAA 201225,000 signatures to help drive home the importance of this

issue at a critical time. Reached 25K signatures in less than two weeks.

Revolutionizing Open Access

• Wellcome Trust; Howard Hughes, Max Planck M: April 2012.

• Finch Report: June 2012

• Research Councils in UK (RCUK) July 2012 ( 1 April 2013)

• World Bank: July 2012.

• SCOAP3- OA Initiative: October 2012.

• Global Research Council (GRC); 2012

Publishing

• Subscription-based journals

• Open access journals. See: http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=byCountry&uiLanguage=en

Growth of Open Access Journals

• Sherpa/Romeo – Of the 1165 publishers in the Romeo/Sherpa database 67%

allow some form of self-archiving

Images retrieved from: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/statistics.php?la=en&fIDnum=|&mode=simple

Growth of OA Repositories

Image retrieved from: http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2012/10/thank-you-open-access-movement.html

OA Author Funds

• Pure OA

• Hybrid OA

• Compact for Open Access Equity (COPE)

OA Scholarly Publishers

• OASPA launched in 2008

• Include AIP; American Phys, Society; BMC; Hindawi; PLOS; SAGE.

• Wiley Open Access launched an OA journal program in 2011

Impact of Open Access

• Alma Swan report (2010)http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/268516/2/Citation_advantage_paper.pdf

– 27 found a positive open access citation advantage

– 4 found no open access citation advantage (citation disadvantage)

Significant Milestones

• More OA policies in HE

• Major journals implement a variety of OA features (OASPA)

• Major orgs endorse OA

• APCs implemented at many institutions

Milestones…

• APCs implemented at many institutions

• FRPAA reintroduced

• 25K signatures to support FRPAA

• OA articles have citation advantage

• Awareness among faculty/researchers

A maturing threat?

• Not so fast >>>>

• STEM profit margins remain high

Typical profit margins

• For 2010-2011– Elsevier: 36.0%– Springer: 33.9%– John Wiley: 42.0%– Informa: 32.4%

http://svpow.com/2012/01/13/the-obscene-profits-of-commercial-scholarly-publishers/

Possible scenarios

• Publishers will– resist forces of OA – continue to experiment with OA models

(gold/green road initiatives)

• OA advocates will persist in their work

• Mixed models of publishing will co-exist simultaneously for a while

Change: the only constant

Some change is inevitable, lots of work

How?

FRPAA

Business models

OA challenges persist

• OA repositories grow, deposits are slow

• APCs may cause affordability problems

• Faculty do not like fees for OA publishing

• More outreach/education required

Agents of change

• Gladwell: Tipping point

• Minor changes carefully conceived and adeptly enacted, can produce major consequences for individuals, organizations and communities.

The law of the few

• Pareto’s principle (80/20)

– Connectors: Bring people together– Mavens: Info specialists. People who know– Salesmen: persuaders/charismatic w

powerful negotiation skills

How can we advance OA?

• Librarians are uniquely positioned to advance the success of any possible solution

• OA publishing needs skilled and responsible management

• Be the connectors, mavens and the salespeople to support the ultimate goal of OA

THANK YOU!

QUESTIONS?