1. Open Access to Research in the United Kingdom Organic.Edunet Conference, Budapest Jackie Wickham Open Access Adviser Centre for Research Communications University of Nottingham
2. Presentation Outline What is open access? UK landscape Attitudes to OA in the UK Role of the Repositories Support Project
3. What is Open Access “Open Access (OA) means that scholarly literature is made freely available on the internet, so that it can be read, downloaded, copied, distributed, printed, searched, text mined, or used for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal or technical barriers, subject to proper attribution of authorship.” Research Information Network, June 2010
4. Routes to OA - Gold Image by Warren Pilkington, zawtowers, Flickr
5. Routes to OA - Green Some text details of that Some more text Another idea More stuff detail 1 detail 2 Image by Rojabro, Flickr
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7. Why it’s important Access in the developing world Increased readership and citation http://www.ifla.org/files/hq/papers/ifla75/101-kousha-en.pdf Quicker dissemination Secure storage Better discoverability (indexed by Google) Encourages collaboration
9. Repositories in the UK Some text details of that Some more text Another idea More stuff detail 1 detail 2
10. OA and agriculture research 16 universities and research centres in UK All but one provide some form of OA Institutional repository Subject repository e.g. OpenFields, Organic Eprints Web pages Caveat –in repositories some items are metadata only.
11. Mandates Research Councils UK supports principle of OA (but does not mandate) BBSRC requires research to be deposited at the “earliest available opportunity”. UK PubMed Central – practically all public funded biomedical and health research has to be OA within 6 months of publication. 18 HE institutions have a mandate in the UK (Source ROARMAP 5/08/10)
12. Researchers attitudes “If your employer or research funder REQUIRED you to deposit copies of your articles in an open archive, what would be your reaction? (Response from agriculture authors) Swan, A and Brown, S. (2005) Open Access self-archiving: An author study (Key Perspectives Limited, Cornwall, UK), http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10999/1/jisc2.pdf
13. Researchers attitudes “Open access and open source – like students of other ages, Generation Y researchers express a desire for an all-embracing, seamless accessible research information network in which restrictions to access do not restrain them. However, the annual report demonstrates that most Generation Y students do not have a clear understanding of what open access means and this negatively impacts their use of open access resources, so this is an area to be followed up in the next year.” Researchers of tomorrow – Annual Report 2009/2010, June 2010 (JISC/British Library 3 year study)
14. Economic case for Open Access Savings for HE – £115 million per year Increased returns on investment in R & D up to £170 million Impact agenda Houghton et al (2009) Economic implications of alternative scholarly publishing models: exploring the costs and benefits http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/rpteconomicoapublishing.pdf Swan, A. (2010) Modelling scholarly communication options: Costs and benefits for universities http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/442/2/Modelling_scholarly_communication_report_final1.pdf
15. Repositories Support Project - Objectives more repositories in higher education institutions in England, Wales and Northern Ireland more content in existing repositories more types of content in existing repositories closer integration of repositories into institutional information systems promotion of best practice and standards investigation of the new role of institutions in research output curation and access
16. What we do – information and communication Website Blog Briefing papers
20. UKCoRRUK Council of Research Repositories - www.ukcorr.org A group for repository managers by repository managers An independent professional body to allow repository managers to share experiences and discuss issues of common concern To give repository managers a group voice in national discussions and policy development independent of projects or temporary initiatives To grow together as a community and learn from each other’s experiences Mailing list. 215 members (August 2010)
21. Links Centre for Research Communications http://crc.nottingham.ac.uk Repositories Support Project www.rsp.ac.uk RoMEO www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/ JULIET www.sherpa.ac.uk/juliet/ OpenDoar www.opendoar.org JISC www.jisc.ac.uk UKCoRR www.ukcorr.org
Key goals have been defined:Declaration of the Budapest Open Access Initiative in 2002Bethesda Statement on Open Access PublishingBerlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in 2003
Two routes to OA – forgive me if I’m teaching grandma to suck eggs!Publishing articles in open access journals, ‘author pays’. Usually paid for by institution or included in research grant. Increasingly, UK Universities have established publication funds e.g. Nottingham and Birmingham.Two types:Open Access publishers (PLOS, BioMedCentral, Hindari)Traditional publishers with OA option (Nature, Elsevier, Springer) – Hybrid.
Self archiving in a repository of published research (plus others conference papers etc)– Subject e.g Organic E-Prints, PubMedCentral, arXiv, RepecOr Institutional – a way for universities to showcase their research and to preserve it.Usually (if not completely) in addition to publishing in a journal – OA, hybrid, subscription only.Publisher could impose embargo.
How many people publish research papers, conference papers?How many people make their research open access – paper on their website, in an open access repository, publish in an open access journal?How many people have ever searched on Google and found some really useful references and then found that they don’t have access to them?
You’ll probably be aware of the well rehearsed benefits of OA:Access in the developing worldIncreased readership and citation – research evidence is conclusive. Recent study presented at IFLA in 2009 showed this citation advantage specifically for agricultural research articles “The citation impact of OA agricultural research: a comparison between OA and non-OA publications http://www.ifla.org/files/hq/papers/ifla75/101-kousha-en.pdfQuicker disseminationSecure storage etc
It’s getting increasingly possible to make things open access, and free via self-archiving.
UK has 177 repositories in total. Most UK HE institutions and research centres have one.But the issue is getting content – not yet part of researchers workflows. Estimates of the proportion of full text records (as proportion of total university output) vary from 15%-30%. (Harnad, 2009). Many metadata only records.Drivers such as Research Excellence Framework are changing this. Universities have to collect and demonstrate their research output. OA can be built into this easily.Internationally – new repositories have been established at a rate of more than one per working day over the last 3 years. (A.Swan Ch8 Institutional repositories – now and next.
UKPubMED Central (who allocate an amount in research grants for OA publication) – estimates 40% full text. But growing.
Two types of mandate – funders and institutionalUK Pub Med Central funded by Arthritis Research Council, BBSRC, British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Chief Scientist Office, NHS National Institute for Health Research, MRC, Wellcome Trust.Compliance is a big issue. UKPMC issues figures for 2009 which showed 44% compliance.
Agriculture authors response
Gut reaction is for OA but there is confusion – traditional scholarly communication is still the norm Recent RIN report on Web 2.0 “Researchers place the highest value on well established channels of communication”Needs to be embedded into workflow – integrated systems
Background of “serials crisis” library subscriptions have spiralled e.g. Nearly 4 x inflation rate http://www.unc.edu/scholcomdig/whitepapers/panitch-michalak.htmlNote - Costs of traditional publishing include academic time spent on peer review, editing etc as well as searching for and accessing researchSuccess in academia is directly linked to an institutions funding. In the past success has been judged on research outputs. In the future, it’s not just the number of outputs that will matter but the impact of that research. In a number of areas – here are a few. Public bodies, companies etc must have access to the research to be able to benefit from it – OA is fundamental to impact.Research funders require evidence of impact – e.g. University of Glasgow has an integrated repository and research information system. Allows funder/project to be linked to publication, stats can be gathered about downloads and use of publication. Therefore, it’s easy to report to funders on impact (very time consuming to track this before).
All free to anyone, anywhere – no charge for downloading.Briefing papersBlogChecklistsPodcasts
Events - As the repository scene matures in the UK, the focus for events has correspondingly changed. Originally, it was very much about technical set up and establishing a presence in the institution. Now issues such as increasing content and forging integration with other institutional initiatives and systems are more prevalent. Increasing content in repositories is one of the major challenges facing managers – Advocacy, preservation, copyright and dealing with publishers, metadata standards. For UK HE.
Support service by e-mail and telephoneConsultancy visits – 25 since January this year.Tailor made to individual requirements. One typical example might involve a member of the team attending a project steering group, meeting with Directors of Research, advising project sub-groups on IPR and copyright or promotion and advocacy
What has Shakespeare got to do with it!Romeo – database of publishers showing their policies on self archivingJuliet – database showing the requirements regarding open access (publication or self archiving) of research funders.