Presentation at the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) Centenary Conference, held at Nanyang Executive Centre, Singapore, 14-15 Mar 2013

1. ISSUES & CHALLENGES OF OPEN ACCESS
Choy Fatt Cheong
University Librarian
Presentation at the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) Centenary
Conference, “Pushing the Research Frontier : Long Term Vision of Research
Policy” held at Nanyang Executive Centre , Singapore, 14-15 Mar 2013

2. To make all scholarly articles
freely available online
GOAL OF OPEN ACCESS

3. Libraries
Universities & Institutions
Scholars
Free
Provide access
OPEN ACCESS
ARCHIVES
GREEN ROUTE
Articles freely
available in > 2,200
repositories –
discoverable on
the Internet
Inelastic supply
Increase disciplines & therefore titles –small base
Profiteering?
DUE TO :
NTU LIBRARY – 2 Jun 2008 Rev 12 Apr 2013
SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION CRISIS OPEN ACCESS
Articles freely
available in 8,622
peer review
journals
OPEN ACCESS
JOURNALS
GOLD ROUTE
Publishers
Sign over copyright
Peer review

4. GOLD GREEN
Remove ACCESS / PRICE barrier
Delivered by journals Delivered by repositories
hosted by institutions
Free access to articles in
journals
Free access to articles in
repositories – discoverable
through Internet
Cost of publishing
covered by authors,
subsidies, etc.
Availability of articles
depends on self-archiving
policies of publishers

5. GRATIS LIBRE
Remove PERMISSION barrier
FREE TO ACCESS & FREE OF SOME OR
ALL COPYRIGHT & LICENSING
RESTRICTIONS
CC-0
CC-BY
CC-BY-NC
CC-BY-SA
etc.
FREE BUT ONLY PERMIT
Online access, Reading,
Linking, Downloading,
Printing, Storing, Harvesting,
Indexing
Credit source
!

6. GOLD ROUTE
Advantages
Free access to articles published in journals that are funded by
author fees, subsidies and other means
Examples:
BioMed Central (commercial), Public Library of Science
PLOS (not-for-profit), IOP (mix of pure & hybrid, CC-BY)
Free access by readers immediately upon publication – no
embargo
No additional effort needed by authors in archiving
Allow for libre OA

7. GOLD ROUTE
Challenges
Cost to institutions
Cost to researcher
- APC (Article processing charges) Range $8 – $3,900 USD
Average $904 USD
(Solomon & Bjork, 2010)
Paid out of research funds
Paid out of university allocated funds Introduce new layer
of decision making
Discounts and waivers 10% in PLOS
(Patterson, 2011)
Funds cannot be diverted from library budgets –
subscriptions still need to fulfill most info needs
In the long run, publishers will also seek to maintain
profitability
- Extra funding required (longer than short term)

8. GOLD ROUTE
Growth of predatory OA publishers
Limit publishing for some authors
Challenges
Researchers in less well-off institutions not
able to publish at their optimal ability level
Similarly for researchers in some disciplines
that are not traditionally well funded
Future publications dominated by well-funded
researchers & certain disciplines?
Most prestigious journals are subscription base
OA journals of dubious quality set up with the sole
intention to collect APC (225 in Jeffrey Beall’s list – Dec 2012)

9. GREEN ROUTE
Permission for archiving in repositories
Peer reviewed postprints deposited in open repositories for
access there or via Internet
Types of repositories
Institution based – usually university libraries – may contain
other materials e.g. theses, data files, audio & video files, etc
Discipline based – e.g. DRYAD (Bioscience). PUBMED
Publishers’ self-archiving policies
Author specify to publisher the retention of their rights on
self-archiving (e.g. through author addenda)
Funder’s mandate requirements

10. GREEN ROUTE
Advantages
Challenges
Repositories relatively inexpensive to build and maintain,
therefore sustainable
Repositories using OAI protocol make their content easily
discoverable via Internet
Content include those from prestigious journals
Articles in repository is not the actual published version –
content same, format different (accepted version)
Embargoes imposed by publisher – prevent immediate use

11. GREEN ROUTE
Difficult to implement Libre OA
Challenges
Low deposit rates
Little incentive for researchers to submit
Inconvenience – finding accepted version and submitting
Concern that mandate may adversely impact on
researchers’ ability to published in preferred journals
Low awareness
Dependent on current subscription model of journal
provision (to feed the repositories)

12. OA MANDATES
A policy by institutions and funding agencies that requires
researchers to make available their publications for open
access
NTU Open Access Mandate (2011)
Institutional mandates – 204
Thesis mandates – 98
Funder mandates – 80
ROARMAP – 2013 Mar 13

13. OA MANDATES
ADVANTAGES
Some interesting milestones
Provide strong incentive for researchers to make their
publications open access
National Institute of Health (2007) mandate
First mandate from major US funding agency - Deposit to PUBMED
Central - 12 months embargo - 75% compliance (2012, Poynder)
Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences (2008) mandate
Research grant the university non-exclusive copyright license &
distribute – led to 8 fold increase in number of mandates
Finch Report (2012)
Favours gold route
Research Council UK (RCUK)(2012)
Accept both Gold and Green routes – 6 months embargo

14. Recent developments
FASTR (Fair Access to Science and Technology Research) bill
introduced in both houses of Congress (Feb 2013)
OA MANDATES
Directive from OSTP (White House) to develop OA mandates
within 6 months (Feb 2013)
FASTR OSTP
Green route, silent on Gold Green route, silent on Gold
Require libre OA Require libre OA
Embargo period – 6 months Embargo period – 12 months
Silent on OA for data Require OA for data & metadata
Legislation long term Directive immediate

15. MOVING OPEN ACCESS FORWARD
Not-for-profit publishers needs funding to develop
and sustain Gold OA journals
Mandates from funding agencies necessary for
strong impact in OA – both green and gold routes
Need to create greater awareness among
researchers on Open Access movement
Retain rights on self-archiving when transferring
copyright to publishers
Increase rate of submission to repositories – to increase
its collective value

16. THANK YOU
fcchoy@ntu.edu.sg