Some are talking about the shift of academic maxims from “publish or perish” to “visible or vanished” in today’s digital and open access environments. The transformation is part of the ongoing evolution of scholarly communication. Academics today are governed by both maxims in practice, which means new opportunities as well as more challenges. Individual academics need to develop “smart” strategy to publish in an evolving landscape of academic publishing. See blog article on this presentation at http://wp.me/p3G9Y7-u

1. Open Access and Researchers
Dr Xiang Ren

2. What is Open Access
By “open access” to [peer-reviewed research literature], we
mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting
any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search,
or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for
indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any
other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical
barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to
the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and
distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain,
should be to give authors control over the integrity of their
work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

3. Why Open Access?
Financial sustainability Research article access/impact

4. Financial sustainability

5. Research article access/impact
• 1.8 million articles published
each year, 50% are read only
by their authors and journal
editors; more than half are
never cited.
• Citation advantage of open
access publications and even
open data

6. Gold Open Access and
Green Open Access
What is Green Open Access? Researchers can deposit
a version of their published work into a subject-based
repository or an institutional repository. Every
university in Australia has a repository for this
purpose.
What is Gold Open Access? Alternatively researchers
can publish in an open access journal, where the
publisher of a scholarly journal provides free online
access. Business models for this form of OA vary. In
some cases, the publisher charges the author’s
institution or funding body an article processing
charge (APC). All Public Library of Science (PLoS)
journals use this model.
AOASG

7. Open Access Policies
• Access (mandates)
• The US: NIH Public Access
Policies, Presidential Policy
Memorandum
• The UK: RCUK, Wellcome Trust
• The EU: Horizon 2020, 60% by
2016
• Australia: ARC and NHMRC
• China: CAS and NSFC OA
mandates
• …
• Impact (redefine)
• NHMRC: Do not use journal-based
metrics, such as Journal Impact Factors, …
consider the value and impact of all
research outputs (including datasets and
software) in addition to research
publications, and consider a broad range
of impact measures including qualitative
indicators of research impact, such as
influence on policy and practice
• RCUK: change from Impact Plan to
Pathways to Impact: “What will be done
to ensure that potential beneficiaries have
the opportunity to benefit?”

8. Engage Stakeholders and Public
• Open Access widens
public access to research
scholarship
• Willinsky: research
scholarship should be
openly available “… to
all who are interested in
it and all who might
profit by it”

9. Research Impact: Altmetrics
• Article-level and
immediate metrics
• Assess the uses of
scholarship
comprehensively
• Reflect the benefits of
research for wider
communities

10. Two Maxims in Academia
• “Publish or perish"
• “Visible or vanished"

11. Choose Right OA Journals

12. http://www.nature.com/news/price-doesn-t-always-
buy-prestige-in-open-access-1.12259

15. Publish with Hybrid or
Non-OA Journals
• You need to consider:
APCs
JIF
Non-OA journals: embargo period
Copyright issues
Suitability
…

16. Self-archive and Self-promote

17. Dr. Xiang Ren
E: xiang.ren@usq.edu.au
T: @renxiangcn