Presentation for the ISMTE Annual European Conference, 18 October 2011, Oxford.

1. The Case for Open Access
Caroline Sutton
Co-founder, Co-Action Publishing
President, OASPA
www.oaspa.org

2. Co-Action Publishing is an international open access
scholarly publisher, with a growing portfolio of peer-
reviewed scholarly journals spanning different
scientific disciplines. The company is registered as a
limited liability company in Sweden, and is wholly-
owned by the three founding partners.
www.co-action.net

3. Established October 2008 by:
 BioMed Central
 Co-Action Publishing
 Copernicus Publications
 Hindawi Publishing Corporation
 Journal of Medical Internet Research (Gunther
Solomon)
 Medical Education Online (David Solomon)
 Public Library of Science (PLoS)
 SAGE Publications
 SPARC Europe
 Utrecht University Library (Igitur)

4. Background
 OA publishers lacked a voice in public debates
about scholarly communications and Open
Access
 Open Access had become an established part of
the publishing landscape; it was time to address
practical issues
 Need to develop uniform standards and best
practices
 Need to bring together the Open Access
publishing community
 Need to share information and work collectively
 OASPA represents both professional publishing
organizations as well as scholar publishers and
welcomes other organizations whose work

5. OASPA Mission
To support and represent the interests of Open
Access (OA) journal publishers globally in all
scientific, technical, and scholarly disciplines.
To accomplish this mission, the association will:
 Exchange information
 Set standards
 Advance models
 Advocate for OA publishing
 Educate
 Promote innovation

6. OPEN ACCESS
= Free Access + Re-use

7. Creative Commons Licenses
Most common:
 Attribution 3.0
(CCBY or CCAL)
 Attribution-
Noncommercial 3.0
(CCBY-NC)
8/16/2012

8. Copyright Notice
Authors contributing to Global Health Action agree to
publish their articles under the Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported
license, allowing third parties to share their work
(copy, distribute, transmit) and to adapt it, under the
condition that the authors are given credit, that the work is
not used for commercial purposes, and that in the event of
reuse or distribution, the terms of this license are made
clear.
Authors retain copyright of their work, with first
publication rights granted to Co-Action Publishing.
However, authors are required to transfer copyrights
associated with commercial use to the Publisher. Revenues
from commercial sales are used to keep down the
publication fees. Moreover, a major portion of the profits
generated from commercial sales is placed in a fund to
cover publication fees for researchers from developing
nations and, in some cases, for young researchers.

9. The ”Green Road”
 Achieving Open Access through the self
archiving of peer-reviewed journal articles.
 Different publishers have different policies on
deposition of articles.
 List and policies available at SHERPA-RoMEO
(www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo)

10. The changing landscape of
arguments

11. The financial argument
“Serials Crisis”

12. The financial argument
“Tax payer access”

13. The funder argument
“Maximize investment in research”
30 Europe
10 United States & Canada
7 Internationally

14. The new arguments:
Open Access as key to innovation and economic growth
2010 Communication from the Commission on the
Innovation Union :
“In 2012, the Commission will propose a European
Research Area Framework and supporting measures
[...]. They will notably seek to ensure through a
common approach to [...] dissemination, transfer
and use of research results, including through open
access to publications and data from publicly funded
research”.
The Commission “[...]will promote open access to
the results of publicly funded research. It will aim to
make open access to publications the general
principle for projects funded by the EU research
Framework Programmes [...]”.
COM (2010) 546.

15. The arguments you don’t
hear

16. The changing landscape beyond academic publishing:
”living in a free world”
Chris Anderson – Free: The Future of a Radical
Price

17. Image: Chris Anderson, http://thelongtail.com/about.html

19. The changing landscape beyond academic publishing:
”Wikinomics”
”A new kind of business is emerging – one that opens its
doors to the world, innovates with everyone (especially
customers), shares resources that were previously
guarded, harnesses the power of mass
collaboration, and behaves not as a multinational but as
something new: a truly global firm.”
Don Tascott & Anthony D. Williams, Wikinomics. How mass
collaboration changes everything

20. The next stage for OA
publishing

21. Growth in submissions and
Publications at PLoS
25000
20000 Submissions
Publications
15000
10000
5000
0
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Thanks to Mark Patterson, PLoS for sharing this slide and
the next two slides.

22. Growth in OA
BMC
18000
PLoS
16000
Hindawi
14000
12000
Copernicus
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
Thanks to Mark Patterson for sharing the slide and to
0
BMC, Hindawi and Copernicus for 2005 2006 data. 2008 2009
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 sharing 2007 2010

23. Growth in OA articles:
BMC, PLoS and Hindawi
35000
30000
25000
20000
15000
10000
Thanks to Mark Patterson, PLoS for sharing this slide.
And to Matt Cockerill, BMC; Paul Peters, Hindawi.
5000

24. Understanding knowledge
as a network (vs. property)
Knowledge as an
infrastructure
”A social network diagram”, Screenshot taken
by Darwin Peacock, accessed through
Wikimedia; distributed under a CCL 3.0.

25. THANK YOU!
Caroline.Sutton@co-action.net
info@oaspa.org