Open access publishing - what is it, why do I want to do it and how should I do it?

1. Open access
publishing
UK / Plymouth Uni
BGC Seminar
2014-03-12
Based on a seminar developed with C. de Jonge, E. Svensson (NIOZ)
Sabine Lengger

2. How does/did academic publishing work?
Universit
y /
Institute
Researcher
= Author
Article Journal
Publishing
company
Society
funds
pays produce given to
belongsto
pays
pays
pays
review

3. Academic publishing since 1665
- Quick
- Necessary (actual print!
- Affordable

4. What happened?
 Cost explosion
 Internet
 Funding sources
 Boycott

5. What is open access?
 Accessibility
 Free, as in ―a free beer‖
 Copyright
 Free, as in ―free speech‖
Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge

6. Benefits of open access
Authors
Readers Teachers &
Students
Libraries
Universities
Journals and
publishers
Funding
agencies
Governments
Citizens
REF 2020

7. Types of OA
 OA journals (gold OA)
 OA archives or repositories (green OA)

8. GOLD open access
Universit
y /
Institute
Researcher
= Author
Article Journal
Publishing
company
Society
funds
pays produce given to
belongsto
pays
pays
review

9. GOLD open access
 Journals
 Publication fees
 Article processing
 Or free
 Non-profit / Profit
 PLoS
 BMC
 Many hybrid journals
 Offer both!
 Peer review

10. How to publish in GOLD open access
 http://doaj.org
Directory of open access journals (no hybrid journals!)
 Charges … > £1000
 UKRC
 Gives a block grant to universities
based on how much UKRC funding
they attracted
 45 – 75 % of publishing costs
 University expected to match this
 Plymouth University
 Distributes to schools in proportion of UKRC grants (£41k)
 Non-UKRC projects: use their own funds
 EU funding (Horizon 2020)
 Costs during the project lifetime can be accounted for in the grant
 Costs afterwards: European Research Infrastructures Work Programme
 PU Intranet: https://intranet.plymouth.ac.uk/pearl/intranet.htm

11. GREEN open access
 OA repositories – self archiving
 Do not perform peer review
 Types
 Preprints
 Postprints
 Data repositories
 Indexed and google searchable!

12. Preprint servers
 Manuscript before peer-review
 Directories of repositories
 http://www.opendoar.org/
 http://roar.eprints.org/
 http://www.openoasis.org/
 Be careful – pre-published!
 Ingelfinger rule
  ACS journals, Science
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_academic_journals_by_preprint
_policy

13. Postprint servers
 Manuscript after peer-review
 Pre-copy editing
 Post-copy editing
Plymouth: PEARL
http://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk
http://elements.plymouth.ac.uk
Directory of open access repositories
http://www.opendoar.org/search.php
 Nicola Cockarill
Higher Education Institution repository (HEI)

14. Which journals allow self-archiving?
 Postprints (and pre-prints):
Elsevier, Hindawi, Springer, …
 Pre-prints only: Wiley, post-prints after 12 months
 None: American Chemical Society
 Check on: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/

15. Data repositories
Open lab notebook –
http://schamberlain.github.com/scott/blog.ht
ml
http://www.carlboettiger.info/2012/09/28/Wel
come-to-my-lab-notebook.html

16. Problems with open access
 Who pays?
 REF2020
 Predatory publishers
 http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/
 Preprints: Peer review

17. Who‘s afraid of peer review?
Bohannon (2013), Science 342, 60-65.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.342.6154.60
Beall’s list: http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/

18.  http://rcsproject.wordpress.com/oa-answers/ = provided by a
project funded by JISC, a HEFCE and Government funded
organisation which supports HE in it’s use of digital
technologies
 http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/documents/15concerns.html =
provided by Sherpa, which is based at the Centre for
Research Communications at the University of Nottingham.
Sherpa is a consortium of research-led universities with
experience of running repositories.
 http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/ = provided by a
team at the University of Southampton, who have developed
an open source repository software product called E-Prints
and are strong supporters of Open Access.
 Email: n.cockarill@plymouth.ac.uk
Further reading
Slide: N. Cockarill

19. So? Open access summary.
 Purpose: ... the purpose of OA is not to punish or
undermine expensive journals, but to provide an
accessible alternative and take full advantage of new
technology —the internet— for widening distribution
and reducing costs. Moreover, for researchers
themselves, the overriding motivation is not to solve
the journal pricing crisis but to deliver wider and
easier access for readers and larger audience and
impact for authors.
 http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm

20. What can you do?
 Use available open access funds
 Check journal policies before submission
 Deposit preprints on servers
 Deposit postprints on PEARL or other HEI repositories
 Share data
 Link on networking sites to
posters, presentations, data, …