Presentation given by Heather Piwowar on Open Access panel at NEDCC's "The Tectonics of Digital Curation: A Symposium on the Shifting Preservation and Access Landscape" conference in May 2010. I had just graduated with my PhD earlier that month, and gave this presentation wearing my mortarboard.

1. http://www.flickr.com/photos/linkwize/926334421/

2. 8 things
many grad students
(and profs!)
don’t know about
open access
Heather Piwowar
Department of Biomedical Informatics
University of Pittsburgh

3. They don’t know how many people
can’t read subscription journals
• small schools, govn’ts, companies
• developing countries
• big schools! prestigious schools!
without that domain focus
• big schools! prestigious schools!
with that domain focus
• their future selves

4. They don’t know there are high quality
open access journals
• spectrum, just like subscription
• increasingly more high-impact
options
• increasing ways to represent article-
level impact rather than journal
impact
important

5. They don’t know that publishing open
access has personal advantages
• more visibility
• more citation, reuse?
• shows they are willing to take risks,
break new ground
• often more cutting edge, web 2.0
• being part of the solution feels good

6. They don’t know that publishing open
access may help their libraries
• idea that subscription rates, in
theory, are lowered to reflect
author-pays income

7. They don’t know they can afford it
• many open access journals are free
• many offer discounts or waivers
• ask twice!
• many grants, departments, or
institutions have money available
• institutional repositories are free

8. They don’t know there are many kinds
of “open access”
• OA gold journals
• OA options in traditional journals
• “OA options” in traditional journals
• institutional repositories
• lab or personal websites
• preprint servers like Nature
Precedings

9. They don’t know that all kinds of
open access are not equal
• definitive version
• discoverability
• convenient access
• long term preservation
• openness for commercial uses
• openness for reuse

10. They don’t know how to initiate the
conversation with collaborators
• props as conversation starts
• department sponsored seminars
• success stories

11. They don’t know how to help advocate
• offer learning lunches for dept
• contribute to online catalogs of
journal policies
• organize/participate in OA week
• liaison for institutional IRs?
• help with OA policies in institutions?
important

12. What can we do?
• education
• before first paper written
• during first paper decision-making
• after first paper published
• expertise
• direction for enthusiasm

14. Scholarly publication is changing. Options, policies,
tools, opportunities, evidence are changing.
Many scholars aren’t keeping up.
One way to address this is to educate our grad
students. If they know the latest and greatest, then
they can bring these voices into collaborations.
Unfortunately, I think training programs don’t know
where to add formal coverage of these issues, and
don’t know feel they have the expertise.
We in this room can help.

15. Hi everyone. Today I’m going to make some brief comments about open access by thinking about grad
students. I think if we want open access to continue growing as an idea and a practice, if we want it to
continue gaining traction, one approach is to focus on grad students.
Why grad students? Because there are so many of them! They are everywhere!
They are supposed to be trumpeting weird and threatening ideas
They get excited and passionate
While they may not be the decision makers on most publication decisions today, they will be the decision
makers ten years from now.
And if we keep our OA education of grad students up to date, in the techtonic, plate shifting reality that
is OA, the new ideas will keep seeping in to collaborations.
Finally, They aren’t supposed to know everything yet. They are willing to admit they don’t know
everything yet, and they are willing to learn.
In that vein, I think they also serve as a useful foil for others in out institutions and disciplines and
domains who are less willing to admit they don’t know things, and haven’t been keeping up.
So let’t do a quick runthrough of