1. Open-access publishing and
copyright
Catriona MacCallum
Public Library of Science
www.plos.org
European Editorial Office
7 Portugal Place
Cambridge
CB5 8AF, UK
+44 (0)1223 463342
cmaccallum@plos.org

3. IF=13.9

4. STM publishing is changing - the
promise of the internet
• Reduced costs, global
distribution (one copy serves
all who connect)
• Potential for Archiving and
Searching new and old
literature (Google Scholar)
• Improved format for data
presentation, opportunities
for other novel features
• Text- and data-mining
• ZooBank…

5. What is open access?
• Free and unrestricted access online
• Readers/users are licensed to download,
print, copy, redistribute, etc.
• Author retains copyright (Creative
commons Licence -
http://creativecommons.org/)
• Papers are deposited in a public online
database
Based on the Bethesda Principles, April 2003

7. SUMMARY OF THE CREATIVE COMMONS
ATTRIBUTION LICENSE
• to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
• to make derivative works
• to make commercial use of the work
Under the following conditions:
Attribution. You must give the original author
credit.
– For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to
others the license terms of this work.
– Any of these conditions can be waived if you get
permission from the author.
Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above.
You are free:

8. • Copyright: © 2004 Moorthy et al. This is
an open-access article distributed under
the terms of the Creative Commons
Attribution License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is properly cited.

9. Noncommercial
You let others copy, distribute,
display, and perform your work —
and derivative works based upon it
— but for noncommercial purposes
only
http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/

10. Researcher
Publisher
Reader
£
£
Pay-per-view
£
Subscription
£
Library
Subscription journals
Gov
Funders
Institutions
£

11. Open access journals
Publishing
is the final
step in a
research
project
Researcher
Publisher
Reader
£
Public
Digital
Library
Gov
Funders
Institutions
£
Fees are waived for those without access to funding

12. Transition state economics
Open accessSubscription-
based
?

13. Barriers to open access
• Publishers - commercial success
• Societies - publishing supports them
• Libraries – uncertainties about funding
• Funding agencies - don’t fund publishing
• Authors - submitting to a new journal

14. Catalysts for change
• New publishers
– Biomed Central, Public Library of Science
• Existing publishers
– Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
– Oxford University Press, Company of Biologists, Blackwell
• Societies
– Entomological Society of America
• Funding agencies
– Wellcome Trust, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
• UK inquiry, European Commission
• Institutions, libraries, scientists and physicians
• Developments in the UK…

15. Wellcome Trust (Oct 1, 2005)
• Papers must be deposited in PMC
• Must be publicly accessible within 6
months
• Establishing UK PMC
• Provides additional funds for authors
whose work is published in OA journals
• OA agreement with Blackwell, Springer
and OUP
– Wellcome “approves” these OA options as PMC
compliant
– Money is available for authors from their institution
– Wellcome has deposited £30,000 at the “top 30” UK
institutions
– money is made available direct to other institutions
Wellcome Trust FAQ on OA -
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD018855.html#P178_16179

16. Key features of proposed RCUK
policy (2005)
• Mandate deposition of accepted articles
into Institutional Repositories
– “subject to copyright and licensing arrangements”
• Grants (awarded after Oct 1st
, 2005) can
include the costs of publishing for OA
journals
but…
publishers and some societies have been lobbying
hard against the RCUK policy

17. Publisher Initiatives - Hybrids
• Blackwell
– 665 Societies, 805 journals
– Online Open (80 journals)
– $2500 publication fee
• Oxford University Press
– 180 journals (2/3 with societies)
– Nucleic Acids Research fully OA from 2005
– Oxford Open (42 journals and rising)
– $2800 publication fee
• Springer
– Open Choice (all 1200+ journals)
– $3000 publication fee
• Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences
- Open Access Option: $1000 plus page and colour
charges; $750 with site license

18. Int’l Funding Agencies that
Support OA (from BioMedCentral)
Canadian Institutes of Health Research (Canada)
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France)
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (Spain)
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (Italy)
Danmarks Grundforskningsfond (Denmark)
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Germany)
Fondazione Telethon (Italy)
Fonds zur Forderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung
(Austria)
Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Belgium)
Health Research Board (Ireland)
Howard Hughes Medical Institute (US)
International Human Frontier Science Program Organization
(International)
Israel Science Foundation (Israel)
National Health Service (UK)
National Institutes of Health (US) National Science Foundation
(US)
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek
(Netherlands)
Rockefeller Foundation (US)
South African Medical Research Council (South Africa)
Suomen Akatemia (Finland)
Swiss National Science Foundation (Switzerland)
Vetenskapsrådet (Sweden)
Wellcome Trust (UK)

19. PLoS and ZooBank
• PLoS will require authors to submit copies
of relevant articles/print resolution figures
etc to ZooBank on publication [online]
• New Launch 2006-2007
– High volume
– Cost efficient
– Fast
– Peer-reviewed
– An open access venue for all scientific literature
– Including species descriptions

20. Authors Licensing and Collecting
Society
• Jane Carr of ALCS read out a typical copyright
agreement, telling us that "the practice of assignment
by some publishers takes away all the rights of an
author, if I can quote 'Without limitation, any form of
electronic exploitation, distribution or transmission, not
known or invented in the future, all other intellectual
property rights in such contributions…' and so on".
• Quote from an ALCS member who had reported that
"'the only journal I challenged over assigning copyright
agreed to assign it to me as long as I understood that
they would not publish me again. Academic publishing
is, from an author's perspective, a complete rip-off'".
From House of Commons Report 2004