the state of open access in usa | ensuring quality
TRANSCRIPT
The State of Open Access; Ensuring Quality
Dom MitchellCommunity Manager
DALS /OSEL Information Session 28 April 2015
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Overview
The State of Open Access
What is the DOAJ?
What is our aim?
Browsing and Searching
Our metadata
Ensuring quality
Volunteer for us
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The State of OA
“After a decade of often fierce debate over whether the public should have free access to the scientific papers produced by their tax dollars, advocates for so-called open access celebrated a notable victory last month: The National Science Foundation (NSF) unveiled a plan to require its grantees to make their research freely available. NSF's move meant that the federal agencies that provide the bulk of the nation's basic and applied research funding have now complied with a 2013 White House order to make the peer-reviewed papers they fund freely available within 12 months of publication.”
Science Magazine, April 10 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6231/167.full
5Picture by gambit http://www.comicvine.com/profile/gambit474/
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The story began...
In 1991, the world's first free scientific online archive is created: arXiv.org http://arxiv.org/
In 1997, the NLM makes Medline freely available as PubMed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
Three cornerstones of open access:
− In 2002 the Budapest Open Access Initiative is signed by 'leaders of the open access initiative'. http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/participants
− In Apr 2003, the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing is signed by representatives in North America. http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htm
− In Oct 2003, the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities is created. http://openaccess.mpg.de/Berlin-Declaration
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Today...
Of 1.1 million articles included in a study in 2014, 80% were available in some open access formatLaakso, M. (2014). Green open access policies of scholarly journal publishers: a study of what,when, and where self-archiving is allowed. Scientometrics. In press.http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11192-013-1205-3
In a study of Scopus, open access journals made up only 12% of all journalsDavid J. Solomon, Mikael Laakso, Bo-Christer Björk, Journal of Informetrics Volume 7, Issue 3, July 2013, Pages 642–650
In 1,370 journals that published 100,697 articles in 2010, the average APC was 906 US Dollars (USD) calculated over journalsA study of open access journals using article processing charges. David J. Solomon, Bo-Christer Björk, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Volume 63, Issue 8, pages 1485–1495, August 2012
Follow the Dramatic Growth of Open Access series of blog posts by Heather Morrison
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In The USA In April 2008, NIH's policy for 'mandated' open access
to publicly funded research came into effect.
In 2012, the NIH announced it would enforce its Public Access Policy by blocking the renewal of grant funds to authors who don't follow the policy
Petition requesting free access to research gathers 64000 signatures in 2012 https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/increasing-public-access-results-scientific-research
3rd time lucky: the White House (OSTP) announces an open access policy in 2013 http://blogs.nature.com/news/2013/02/us-white-house-announces-open-access-policy.html
The last of the Federal agencies to do so, the NSF announces its policy in April 2015
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What does this mean for you?
Funded research: may be mandated that a copy be available in an open access repository such as PubmedCentral
You can choose whether to publish in a wholly open access journal or a journal that offers paid open access options (Gold OA)
Many traditional publishers offer hybrid journals that allow a mixture of open access and closed access options
You can also make a copy of your paper available in a [institutional] repository: self-archiving (Green OA).
Speak to your librarian!
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What does this mean for the researcher?
It's a minefield!
− Publishers cash in on Gold OA
− Dense, unclear licensing terms with conflicting copyright terms
− Author services: depositing copies but which copy?
− Complicated subscription models with different embargoes
Watch out! Gold OA model is abused: spam; scams; fake journals, articles, editorial boards; no peer review; poor quality
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What is DOAJ?
A curated database listing high quality, peer-reviewed open access journals
No hybrid journals
A whitelist not a blacklist
Journals from ALL disciplines & all languages
A hub for the collection & distribution of metadata to 3rd parties
Developed & hosted on standards-based, open-source software by Cottage Labs(www.cottagelabs.com)
FREELY available to anyone, anywhere (CC BY-SA)
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What is our aim?
To be the starting point for all searches for open access journals or articles
To increase awareness around open access issues
To increase visibility and awareness of quality open access journals
− Online: social media, online learning environments, collaboration spaces
− Offline: in the labs, in the libraries, conferences, presentations
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What is our aim? To increase our transparency through regular
comms:
DOAJ News Service http://doajournals.wordpress.com
Public consultations Social media
@doajplus
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Our metadata Uploaded by the publishers
Freely available to use, reuse, copy, distribute in accordance with our Creative Commons license (CC BY-SA).
Available via the following methods:
− Downloadable CSV file
− Spidering/crawling (Major search engines; Google Scholar)
− OAI-PMH
− OpenURL
All major aggregators, library databases, journal databases.http://doaj.org/faq#metadata
Coming soon: API, metadata harvester
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Ensuring Quality
DOAJ's new application form focusses on 3 different themes:
− Quality
− Openness
− The delivery or technical quality
Publishers must provide answers to 55 compulsory questions to be indexed
Applications are reviewed and assessed using a three-tier process
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Ensuring Quality It is impossible to measure the quality of a journal or its
publishing program
DOAJ uses standards, best practices and industry-recognised tools to build a picture
9500 journals in DOAJ will reapply to remain indexed
The DOAJ Seal shows exceptional best practice and adherence to standards
We encourage the use of DOI, archiving and preservation, Creative Commons licenses, ISSNs, non-restrictive copyright, open access
Through education and review, we try to help publishers achieve and maintain high standards.
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Ensuring Quality
Unfortunately journals disappear, links rot, journals change publishers, formats become redundant
The community (librarians, aggregators, users) informs us when it finds broken links or incorrect information.
http://www.loc.gov/aba/pcc/conser/issues/Open-Access-Project.html
Ensuring the quality of peer-review is something that is outside our means.
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BUT interest groups are coming together to tackle this problem
Communities are getting involved with open access
DOAJ uses a crowdsourcing model: we have over 155 volunteers reviewing journals and applications
We are always looking for volunteers, especially multi-lingual ones: find out more and apply!
Open access: open to everyone
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Thanks to all the Consortia, Universities, Libraries and Publishers,
and to our Sponsors for their supporthttp://doaj.org/supportDoaj