One Nation One Subscription: catalysing transformation in Indian research policy

<b>Recommendations about publishing and publication procurement practices across the health and social care system</b><br /> <br /> November 2020<br /> <br /> An independent report by Information Power<br /> <br /> <b>Introduction</b><br /> This study was commissioned by the Department of Health and Social Care and Health Education England to inform development of Open Access (OA) strategy and policy in the UK health and social care system. OA ensures that research publications, such as journal articles or books, are freely available online to everyone for access to read and re-use. There are new opportunities to embrace OA approaches that have already been developed, tested, and proven effective for medical research funders, by Plan S [link: <a href="https://www.coalition-s.org/">https://www.coalition-s.org/</a>] for example, and for employers, by members of Universities UK [link: <a href="https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/policy-and-analysis/research-policy/open-science/Pages/uuk-open-access-coordination-group.aspx">https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/policy-and-analysis/research-policy/open-science/Pages/uuk-open-access-coordination-group.aspx</a>] for example.<br /> <br /> The NHS in England is undertaking more research than ever before. However, investment on access to research outputs, through library subscriptions, is relatively low. The available data suggests that Arm’s Length Bodies collectively spend under &pound;1m per annum on primary journals and a similar amount per annum on journals in aggregated databases. NHS Trusts collectively spend an estimated &pound;4m per annum on journal subscriptions. Taken together, the combined NHS expenditure is less than a single medium-sized UK university which seems starkly out of alignment with the importance of evidence-based care decisions.<br /> <br /> In addition, NIHR spends a significant amount to publish articles that report on its funded research. We estimate that this figure is in excess of &pound;10m per annum, however the precise figure is unknown because costs are included in grants awarded through a range of programmes, and open access expenditure is not explicitly tracked at present. We analysed 121,915 papers published between 2015 -2019 by authors employed in, or funded through, the UK health and social care system. 85,542 or 70% of the papers were published Open Access (OA) which means they are freely available for anyone in the world to read. 34% of the total articles are immediately available (19% of all papers were published as fully Gold OA, and 15% as hybrid Gold OA) and 36% of the total articles are available after a delay period of six months (19% were published and made available as Green OA, and 17% as Bronze OA).<br /> <br /> Publishing costs have been paid upfront&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <ul> <li>Gold – costs typically paid by author from research grants</li> <li>Platinum – costs typically paid by employer, funder, or another sponsor often with a per-article charge</li> <li>Diamond – costs typically paid by employer, funder, or another sponsor without any per-article charge</li> </ul> <br /> Near-final draft has been shared publicly, after a delay of six months: <ul> <li>Green – a version of the article (either the manuscript as originally submitted or as accepted, or the final published version) is shared via an institutional repository or subject repository</li> <li>Bronze – a version of the article is shared via the publisher’s site</li> </ul> This represents good compliance with the NIHR OA mandate, and there is scope for further improvement. Papers with a co-author affiliated with a higher education university are more likely to be available OA (80% vs. 65%). There is some degree of overlap, of course, as some papers include authors from both sectors. This suggests that looking to good practice in the UK university sector offers insight about good ways forward.<br /> <br /> Our qualitative research suggests that there is support for the principles of Open Access by researchers, research managers, and library and information professionals in the health and social care system. Funding for APCs is the primary barrier to researchers publishing their articles OA, however researchers affiliated to, or collaborating with someone affiliated to, universities have less difficulty making their research outputs available OA. Central funding, for example block grants, would drive beneficial change as would centralised and strengthened engagement with publishers, and more education and training. Finally, OA is essential but not enough in itself as there is a clear need for short, actionable summaries of research outputs to inform clinical practice.<br /> <br /> The following recommendations focus on opportunities to increase value for money to the taxpayer by eliminating elements of double payment in this system (for subscriptions and OA publication), by raising standards through better access to research information, and by ensuring publicly funded research information is opened for wider economic and social gain.<br /> <br /> <b>Recommendations to project sponsors</b><br /> <br /> (1) Develop a shared OA strategy and common policies and principles<br /> <br /> A shared OA strategy across the health and social care system is needed to advance the quality and speed of research, and to enable equitable access to knowledge. By working together across the DHSC, NIHR, and Arm’s Length Bodies it will be possible to best leverage the sector’s scale, align and change practice, avoid duplication of effort, and obtain best value for money. The NIHR Open Access policy and the Concordat for Maximising Digital Knowledge are good vehicles for this, and the recommendations in this report can form the basis of a shared approach.<br /> <br /> Common policy and high-level principles would enable organisations to focus on collaborative action to drive immediate open access for health and social care system research outputs. NIHR’s direction of travel (i.e., immediate open access with no embargos, no barriers to re-use and dissemination, publications freely discoverable, and reasonable costs covered) resonates with stakeholders with whom we engaged.<br /> <br /> A coordination group across the DHSC, NIHR, and Arm’s Length Bodies is needed to align goals and behaviour, to promote mutual understanding, to cut through complexities and obstacles, and to cultivate buy-in and consensus over time.<br /> <br /> (2) Invest in financial, publication, and compliance tracking<br /> <br /> In order to monitor the impact of your strategy and policies, more attention is needed to build a database that will enable you to understand how information is created, accessed, paid for, and used in the health and social care system. More attention to data gathering can also help you to set policies, negotiate with publishers, and make the case to DHSC for funding.<br /> <br /> We recommend that you establish reliable methods for monitoring research publications going forward: <ul> <li>invest in databases such as Dimensions, Scopus, or Web of Science, and/or by implementing CRIS systems so your researchers or librarians can track research outputs. There are costs in terms of both time and money to each approach.</li> <li>ask Dimensions to set up GRID codes for the remaining organisations, to facilitate future tracking; this can be done relatively simply and at no cost.</li> <li>ensure RORs [link: <a href="https://ror.org/">https://ror.org/</a>] are created for each organisation in the health and social care system and consider working with database providers such as Dimensions, Scopus, and Web of Science (and other similar service providers) to give them the identifiers they would need to improve their matching algorithms.</li> <li>ensure researchers in the health and social care system have ORCID [link: <a href="https://orcid.org/">https://orcid.org/</a>] researcher identification numbers.</li> <li>improve data in ResearchFish by encouraging researchers to supply the DOI of the final published version of articles and to ensure correct employer and funder affiliation data is included in their articles.</li> <li>review what instructions are given to these researchers regarding the correct acknowledgment of employer and funder/s in papers, making sure that the text is specific about how NIHR and the Arm’s Length Bodies should be cited.</li> <li>seek information from other funders for insight into best practice in encouraging grant recipients to include correct employer and funder acknowledgments in papers.</li> <li>track all expenditure made with any publisher, both for subscriptions and for OA. The negotiation of more cost-effective agreements with publishers also requires reliable data about the amounts paid for APCs and of all articles written by affiliated researchers.</li> </ul> <br /> To maximize compliance with your open access policies, incentives and sanctions will be needed. Enabling only papers immediately available open access to be entered for hiring and promotion decisions would be a powerful incentive. Ineligibility for further NIHR funding would be a powerful sanction.<br /> <br /> Ensure that all Arm’s Length Bodies and NHS Trusts are accountable for ensuring the research of their staff members is available open access immediately upon publication. Interviews with researchers suggested that they receive little or no organisational support to make their outputs open access unless they are in the privileged position of having a joint appointment to a higher education institution.<br /> <br /> Rather than have OA funding follow the grant and be administered by individual researchers, we recommend you consider ways of channelling OA funding via these employers, for example by using block grants. While there is a different sort of bureaucracy involved with these, by transmitting money to organisations in this way you would create an environment with increased accountability which will drive up compliance with your policies.<br /> <br /> (3) Invest in improved access to research information<br /> <br /> We recommend you explore ways to increase investment to ensure that researchers and clinicians can both access to the best scientific information from around the world and publish their research articles open access. The public contributor workshops carried out by NIHR as part of their OA policy review identified that even if patients and the public do not access primary research themselves, they expect that clinicians and care practitioners do and are making decisions based on the best scientific information.<br /> <br /> The NHS in England is undertaking more research than ever before. However, investment on access to research outputs, through library subscriptions, is relatively low. The available data suggests that Arm’s Length Bodies collectively spend under &pound;1m per annum on primary journals and a similar amount per annum on journals in aggregated databases. NHS Trusts collectively spend an estimated &pound;4m per annum on journal subscriptions. Taken together, the combined NHS expenditure is less than a single medium-sized UK university which seems starkly out of alignment with the importance of evidence-based care decisions.<br /> <br /> Based on pilots already done [link: <a href="https://community.jisc.ac.uk/system/files/515/NHS%20%28Finch%29%20Pilot%20outcomes%20Nov%202016%20and%20Cochrane%20website%20sharing.pdf">https://community.jisc.ac.uk/system/files/515/NHS%20%28Finch%29%20Pilot%20outcomes%20Nov%202016%20and%20Cochrane%20website%20sharing.pdf</a>], we estimate that providing subscription access to the scope of scientific journals available in UK universities would cost an additional of &pound;1-2m / year. This investment could be targeted in various ways, but one approach to consider is targeting on the journals in which researchers linked to DHSC Arm’s Length Bodies and NHS Trusts publish, but to which there is no access. We also encourage continued migration to central discovery platforms and services.<br /> <br /> NIHR spends a significant but unknown amount per annum on APCs for journal articles. In 2019, 27,416 articles were published by researchers linked to DHSC Arm’s Length Bodies and NHS Trusts. While the good news is that 70% are OA, 30% remain behind publishers’ paywalls. Providing financial support to ensure all research outputs are published gold OA could therefore cost an additional of &pound;17.7m [unfunded articles 8256 x average APC &pound;2147 = &pound;17,725,632].&nbsp; This is clearly a significant additional expenditure, but by implementing the other recommendations in this paper it is possible to significantly reduce this figure.<br /> <br /> (4) Centralise and strengthen your negotiations with publishers, ideally in partnership with UK universities<br /> <br /> Currently the journal content available via HEE is acquired through public sector procurement processes. Whilst this helps ensure best value in markets where there is a choice of supplier, it not ideal in a market where publisher’s journal content is unique and cannot be obtained via other providers. Neither are public sector procurement process designed for the detailed discussion and negotiations needed to develop innovative OA journal agreements which cover both accesses to journal content, and publication in those same journals.&nbsp; We encourage you to centralise and strengthen your engagement with publishers.<br /> <br /> We recommend that you implement a system-wide policy to avoid any form of Non-Disclosure Agreement with publishers. We were rather concerned that one of the Arm’s Length Bodies had done so and were therefore unable to share their expenditure information with any other Arm’s Length Body.<br /> <br /> We recommend you explore a collaborative partnership with Jisc Collections so that your negotiating strength and power is coupled with those of UK universities. This leverage is your best option to control costs and secure better publishing agreements from a range of relevant publishers but particularly the largest. Between them Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Wiley publish 54% of NIHR-funded papers.<br /> <br /> Jisc is expert in negotiating cost-effective journal agreements, but does not have deep sectoral knowledge. We therefore recommend the creation of a strong steering group chaired by HEE to guide them.&nbsp; A potential investment could be the appointment or secondment of a member of staff at Jisc to strengthen their understanding of the health sector and medical publishers.<br /> <br /> Where there are publishers who are important for the health and social care system, but not the HEI part of it, then consider strengthening your own negotiations by partnering with the Royal Colleges and strengthening the knowledge and skills of the NICE negotiating team.<br /> <br /> (5) Pivot to Read &amp; Publish agreements with publishers<br /> <br /> In order to maximise value for the public purse, we recommend you bring together your subscription spend with publishers with your expenditure for OA publishing and seek agreements with publishers that support both reading and publishing. This means that affiliated authors can publish OA without paying an APC. PHE has already done some experimentation in securing such agreements with publishers.<br /> <br /> We recommend that you seek OA agreements with small and medium sized publishers as well as large publishers. There is quality content produced by Society and other publishers, and it is essential for cost constraint that there is good competition between publishers for authors.<br /> <br /> In advance of any negotiations, we recommend that any publisher with whom you have an agreement is required to complete and return a data collection template.<br /> &nbsp;<br /> In the absence of such agreements, we recommend that you do not provide funding for OA publications in a publisher’s hybrid titles. This is because your existing subscription expenditure will give you full access to the content in these titles, and additional APC payments do not lead to a transition to full OA, merely boost publisher profits and surplus.<br /> <br /> (5) Retain your copyright and publish under open licences<br /> <br /> A very powerful way to increase your negotiation power with publishers is to encourage or require employees in the health and social care system to retain necessary copyrights. This is already a requirement for Crown Servants. We recommend that as a condition of NIHR funding, or employment with an Arm’s Length Body, researchers should be required to retain sufficient intellectual property rights to comply with their funder and employer OA requirements.<br /> <br /> Attention also needs to be paid to education around, and compliance tracking of, the open licences attached to OA articles published by researchers in the health and social care system. We strongly recommend use of Creative Commons (CC-BY) and Open Government (OGL) licences across the health and social care system, especially as rights need to be retained in order to enable immediate green OA (see next recommendation).<br /> <br /> DHSC, its Arm’s Length Bodies, and NHS Trusts all publish reports and other materials on their websites. The copyright status of these publications is often unclear, and we would encourage you to use a CC-BY or OGL license wherever possible on these publications.<br /> <br /> (7) Immediate green OA for articles not published gold OA<br /> <br /> As the proportion of articles published OA in the health and social care system grows, you need to ensure that any articles published under the subscription model also become immediately available. Including green OA options – specifically the immediate self-archiving of peer reviewed accepted manuscripts in one health-oriented repository such as Europe PMC – should be an essential part of your strategy. Including this requirement in your agreement with publishers will enable you to maximise OA outputs while constraining costs.<br /> <br /> Understandably publishers have been unwilling to agree to immediate green OA, and there is too often little incentive for them to do so. The immediate availability of accepted manuscripts under a CC-BY licence is perceived by publishers as likely to undermine the value of their subscription sales in all other parts of the world. Every new article published OA and brought out in front of their paywall not only erodes the value of subscription sales to other parts of the world, but can also fuel rival online services underpinned by so-called black OA (i.e., content piracy) [link: Gold, green, and black open access by Bo‐Christer Bj&ouml;rk <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/leap.1096">https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/leap.1096</a>].<br /> <br /> The debate around whether there is risk to publishers of short embargo green OA is as heated as it is long standing. We take a pragmatic view: only the test of time will prove whether or not there is a real risk to subscription revenue from short embargo green OA, however publisher perceptions of risk mean few are willing to incorporate short embargo green OA into their transformative (and other OA) agreements. It is in their interest to control costs and therefore pragmatic for the health and social care system to find a way forward.&nbsp;<br /> &nbsp;<br /> Publishers incur new costs to provide new OA services (e.g. adding author and funder metadata, informing authors about terms of agreements, encouraging authors to share articles providing new reports and metadata, etc). Where publishers expect an uplift in price in exchange for uncapped article numbers in a transformative agreement because the level of publishing output is high, and are willing to provide these new OA services, then we recommend modest financial incentives in otherwise cost-neutral agreements to incentivise the inclusion of immediate green OA. This would help the health and social care system secure more affordable transformative agreements and enable researchers to retain a wide choice in where they publish while delivering both full OA and maximising value for money.<br /> <br /> (8) Open sharing platforms<br /> <br /> Shared infrastructure is required to support the cost-effective dissemination of open outputs by your researchers. A collective approach should be part of your strategy to ensure access to research outputs is not fragmented across different organisations and services, and to avoid duplication of costs.<br /> <br /> In developing the common strategy for this infrastructure is important not to reinvent wheels but to explore the utilisation of existing open platforms.&nbsp; NIHR is one of the funders of Europe PubMed Central which is an open-access repository containing millions of biomedical research papers and has potential to serve as a shared repository service for all your affiliated authors.<br /> <br /> Longer term, you may want to consider not only a repository for access to research, but an open shared platform for publishing NHS health and care research. The AMRC (Association of Medical Research Charities) and Wellcome Trust both maintain open research platforms on which all their funded researchers can publish OA any results they think are worth sharing at an extremely low price. Publication is fast, there is transparent peer review and editorial guidance on making all source data openly available. AMRC Open Research publishes other research outputs, for example posters, slides, and documents, reporting any basic scientific, translational, applied, and clinical research studies: we heard at the round table that these types of research output are as important to the health and care sector as scholarly research. Both the AMRC and Wellcome Trust open platforms use technology provided by F1000 Research Limited.<br /> <br /> A shared open platform such as F1000 research could be helpful in decreasing the costs of OA publishing. The list price of publishing a research article on such a platform is only $1350 per article as opposed to nearly $3000 per article in journals.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br /> <br /> (9) More OA education and training<br /> <br /> Our interviews revealed widespread support for the principles of open access, but fragmented understanding of all the flavours of open access and constraints to supporting its delivery in practice. The specific requirements vary by stakeholder group and include: <ul> <li>Libraries – open access models, how to support researchers to publish open access, how to work with publishers to maximise open access outputs and constrain costs for access to research, supporting researchers to share via Europe PMC</li> <li>Researchers – open access models, how to obtain funding to support open access publishing, how to identify and avoid predatory journals, how to correctly use unique identifiers for funders/grants/employers/co-authors</li> <li>Research managers – why a research culture is important to the health and social care section, how to define the impact of research undertaken, why it is important that research outputs are available to all, what open access is, open access models, how to ensure research is immediately available open access</li> </ul> We recommend you develop education and training materials and courses that can be used across the health and social care system to minimise confusion and to provide consistent information and guidance.<br /> <br /> (10) Require overviews of research in plain English, and provide training and support to enable compliance<br /> <br /> Your shared strategy and common policies and principles must consider ’actionable knowledge', as well as open access. Research findings must inform practitioner decisions and practice. Plain English summaries of research outputs will aid busy practitioners who do not have time to read research articles, as well as patients and members of the /> There are already some of good practice in the <ul> NIHR for and is and and sharing them across a stakeholder NIHR guidance to researchers on how to plain English are also available services and which could in this example, [link: <a which is a to researchers, them to their work in plain English, and to their by adding and [link: <a is a service which to create a of research articles.</li> </ul>

Ensuring open access for publicly funded research

The number of Open Access (OA) policies that have been adopted by universities, research institutes and research funders has been increasing at a fast pace. The Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies (ROARMAP) records the existence of 724 OA policies across the world, of which 512 have been adopted by universities and research institutions. The UK is one of the leading countries in terms of OA policy development and implementation with a total of 85 institutional and an estimated 35 funder OA policies. In order to understand and contextualise how OA policies are developed and how they can be effectively implemented and aligned, this brief looks at two areas. The first section provides an overview on the processes evolving around policy making, policy effectiveness and policy alignment. In particular, it summarises the criteria and elements generally specified in OA policies, it points out some of the relevant steps informing the development, monitoring and revision of OA policies, it outlines what OA policy elements contribute to policy effectiveness, and highlights the benefits in aligning OA policies. The second section revisits the issues previously discussed within the context of the UK institutional (universities) OA policy landscape.

Examines SHERPA/RoMEO publisher open access (OA) policy information for 100 publishers over a 13 year period (2004–2016) to consider whether their size, type or country (UK or US) affected the development of their OA policy over time. A publisher’s RoMEO colour code, whether they offered a Gold OA option, and the mean number of restrictions as to when, how and where papers may be self-archived, were all mapped. Kruskal–Wallis tests were run to assess whether the differences between their 2004 and 2016 positions were statistically significant. Finds that the growth of Green and Gold OA policy approaches has not been evenly distributed amongst publishers with some significant differences amongst publishers of different size, types and country (UK and US). Large commercial publishers are more likely to be allocated a RoMEO colour code, but at the same time place a high volume of restrictions as to where and how authors might self-archive. Small publishers are less likely to have a RoMEO green colour code, but the volume of restrictions they place on self-archiving are minimal. University presses appear not to be engaging with either OA agenda to any considerable degree. UK and US publishers’ OA policies appear to be influenced by the national OA policy environment which, considering the global nature of the scholarly journals market, was more pronounced than might have been anticipated.

The adoption of open access (OA) policies that require participation rather than request it is often accompanied by concerns about whether such mandates violate researchers’ academic freedoms. This issue has not been well explored, particularly in the Canadian context. However the recent adoption of an OA policy from Canada’s major funding agencies and the development of the Fair access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR) in the United States has made addressing the issue of academic freedom and OA policies an important issue in academic institutions. This paper will investigate the relationship between OA mandates and academic freedom with the context of the recent OA policy at the University of Windsor as a point of reference. While this investigation concludes that adopting OA policies that require faculty participation at the institutional level should not be an issue of academic freedom, it is important to understand the varied factors that contribute to this tension. This includes misunderstandings about journal based (gold) and repository based (green) OA, growing discontent about increased managerialism in universities and commercialization of research, as well as potential vagueness within collective agreements’ language regarding academic freedom and publication. Despite these potential roadblocks, a case can be made that OA policies are not in conflict with academic freedom given they do not produce the harms that academic freedom is intended to protect.

The number of Open Access (OA) policies that have been adopted by universities, research institutes and research funders has been increasing at a fast pace. The Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies (ROARMAP) records the existence of 733 OA policies across the world, of which 520 have been adopted by universities and research institutions. In order to understand and contextualise how OA policies are developed and how they can be effectively implemented and aligned, this brief overviews the processes evolving around policy making, policy effectiveness and policy alignment. In particular, it summarises the criteria and elements generally specified in OA policies, it points out some of the relevant steps informing the development, monitoring and revision of OA policies, it outlines what OA policy elements contribute to policy effectiveness, and highlights the benefits in aligning OA policies.

from Egypt's 2030 vision for sustainable Development, and the strategicplan for the development of pre-university education and the associatedoperational programs, it is clear that the development of the secondary educationsystem is important, and that the students ' ability to think and innovate isincreased, and with the state's interest in implementing many Infrastructure,construction, roads and new cities projects the Egyptian Knowledge Bank,launched in January 2016, remains one of the most important, sustainable andinfluential projects of the country, and the project's priorities are investment inpeople, not stoneAs is known, the Egyptian Knowledge Bank (EKB) is one of the mainpillars of the initiative of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi "Towards an Egyptiansociety that learns, thinks and Innovates" which was launched on Flag Day 2015,with the aim of spreading science and knowledge, supporting education andscientific research, and improving its output and interest in classifying Egyptianuniversities and support the research capabilities of young researchers and theestablishment of a unified system for the publication of journals and scientificconferences as well as university theses.All agree that secondary education needs the concrete efforts of all theDecision makers, experienced and competent, for reform and development ,hence the importance of this study to know the importance of the Egyptianknowledge Bank and its role in supporting and developing general secondaryeducation in Alexandria. through the survey of teachers at the secondary schoolsin Alexandria Governorate about the Egyptian knowledge Bank and itsusefulness in supporting education and curriculum, and the extent to whichteachers encourage students to use the Egyptian knowledge Bank in teachingand learning processes, as well as The skills needed for teachers to deal with theEgyptian knowledge Bank and benefit from it in education

Purpose The number of open access repositories (OARs) has been growing globally, but faculty members have been reluctant to embrace OAR and submit their work. While there are studies that looked at sociotechnical factors that affect faculty participation in OARs, this study aims to explore how the individual characteristics of faculty might impact faculty willingness to deposit their work in an OAR. Design/methodology/approach The survey was distributed to all faculty at a large public university in the USA who were identified as having their primary job responsibilities in teaching and research. This study used a correlational analysis between faculty individual characteristics (i.e. age, rank, status and academic discipline) and their willingness to deposit their work. Findings The findings show that there is a difference in faculty familiarity with open access (OA) principles and faculty awareness of OA policy based on individual characteristics. Furthermore, these individual characteristics have a significant impact on faculty willingness to participate in OARs. While this study reveals a significant correlation between the faculty intent to deposit and the respondent’s academic discipline, rank and status, there are other factors that affect faculty intent to participate in OAR, such as familiarity with OA principles and awareness of institution’s OA Policy. Research limitations/implications There were no significant responses from the Colleges of Science or Health and Public Service and, therefore, did not yield any statistically significant results. Measuring the university’s promotion system was outside the scope of this research. Practical implications Results of this research can provide insight on how individual characteristics of faculty might impact their willingness to embrace OA publishing in general and OARs in particular. Social implications The findings from this research will be a valuable source of information for librarians and OA staff in developing more effective outreach programs to increase faculty participation in OA and OARs. Originality/value This study reveals that individual faculty traits do have an impact on faculty willingness to participate in OARs. The academic discipline was found to make the most significant difference in faculty intent to deposit their work in an OAR. However, due to the ever-changing landscape of OA publishing and the ongoing outreach efforts by librarians, the faculty members’ perception and participation in OARs is likely to evolve.

PurposeAccess to patent-related information is facilitated in large part by repositories of patents. Additionally, patent repositories support transparency and knowledge exchange, both of which can spark new alliances and collaborations. In addition to serving as a source of inspiration for future inventions, they allow companies, researchers and inventors to look up current patents and prevent infringement. Globally, the scientific and academic communities are becoming increasingly interested in open-access repositories. Countries throughout the world have kept up their repositories because of their significance. A directory of open access repositories (OpenDOAR) is a reliable source with minimally inaccurate or dubious content, having been meticulously chosen and validated. It acts as a global registration hub, enabling the visibility and accessibility of research contributions. Hence, this study aims to look into the current status of open-access repositories for archiving “Patents”, at the global level in OpenDOAR by analysing the different characteristic features of repositories.Design/methodology/approachThe advanced search strategy of the directory of open-access repositories (www.opendoar.org/) is used to extract the data. The data extraction process was carried out on 28th March 2023. The study limited its search to “Patents” only, among the different content types listed in it. A total of 253 repositories were retrieved that contained the selected content type. However, the advanced search feature was combined one by one with other available parameters to retrieve the data. The gathered data was saved in MS Excel for further analysis. Moreover, the open access policies, open archives initiative protocol for metadata harvesting (OAI-PMH) and language interface of repositories were manually looked up from each repository/record information. To present the findings, charts and tables were used to visualize the gathered data effectively.FindingsThe study shows that repositories have increased over the years, with the highest number established in 2022. The UK has emerged as the most prominent country contributing to the development of repositories for archiving patents. The majority of the repositories are institutional, and DSpace is the most commonly used software for their creation. While Web 2.0 tools are not widely used, however, a significant number of repositories have incorporated RSS feeds, Atom and social media. Open access policies play a vital role in managing the content archived in the repositories, and only a small percentage of the repositories were found to be following them. However, the majority of the repositories have shown OAI-PMH compliance. English is the most commonly preferred interface language by repositories for archiving patents. These findings suggest that there is still significant room for improvement in the development and management of repositories, and adherence to open-access policies could play a crucial role in ensuring their sustainability and usefulness in the future.Originality/valueTo the best of the author’s knowledge, the study is the first of its type that examines the global landscape of open-access patent repositories.

Universities can afford to subscribe to only a small percentage of available scholarly journals. Consequently, researchers do not have access to all articles in journals pertinent to their fields of study. The Open Access (OA) movement began in response to wanting to find a solution to this “serials crisis” and the availability of the Internet to disseminate scholarly research in new and innovative ways to a larger, worldwide audience. OA mandates are policies adopted by research institutions, universities, or funders that require researchers to provide free, unrestricted access to their published research by publishing in OA journals, depositing their articles in an OA repository or both. This edition of “In Lay Terms” provides basic information about OA mandates and policies, gives an overview of university and funder OA mandates, discusses geographic differences in policies and compliance rates, and reviews United States federal funding agencies’ OA policies and Plan S.

PurposeThis study aims to analyze Open Access (OA) publishing trends and policy perspectives in India. Different aspects, such as the growth of OA journals digital repositories, the proportion of OA availability to research literature and the status of OA mandates and policies are studied.Design/methodology/approachData for analyzing OA trends were gathered from multiple data sources, including Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), OpenDOAR, SCImago and Web of Science (WoS) databases. DOAJ and OpenDOAR were used for extracting OA journals and digital repository data. SCImago Journal and Country ranking portal and WoS database were used to obtain Indian publication data for assessing the proportion of OA to research literature. ROARMAP was used to study OA mandates and policies adopted by universities, research institutions and research funders in India. OA mandates and policies of major regulatory bodies and funding agencies were also reviewed using secondary sources of information and related websites.FindingsIndia ranks number 15 and 17 globally for OA journals and OA repositories, with 317 journals and 98 repositories. Although India’s proportion to OA publications is 23% (7% below the world average of 30%), the annual growth rate of OA publications is around 18%. Although the governing bodies and institutions have made efforts to mandate researchers to adopt OA publishing and self-archiving, its implementation is quite low among Indian researchers, as only three institutions (out of 18 listed in the ROARMAP) are defined the embargo period. Funding agencies in India do not provide financial assistance to authors for the payment of Article Processing Charges despite mandates that research is deposited in OA repositories. India lacks a national OA policy but plans to implement a “one nation one subscription” formula to provide OA to scientific literature to all its citizens.Research limitations/implicationsThe study has certain limitations. Because much of India’s research output is published in local journals that are not indexed in WoS, the study recommends conducting further analyses of publications using Scopus and other databases to understand the country’s OA publishing proportion better. A further study based on feedback from different stakeholders through a survey may be conducted for formulating a national OA policy.Originality/valueThe study is the first that used multiple data sources for investigating different facets of OA publishing in India, including OA journals, digital repositories, OA research output and OA mandates and policies for publicly funded research. The findings will be helpful for researchers and policymakers interested in promoting OA adoption among researchers worldwide.

The green open access (OA) model, which offers the most economical approach to comply with open access policies, can increase researchers’ audience and scientific outputs impact by delivering wider and easier access. This study examined researchers’ perceptions from STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) and SSH (social sciences, art and humanities) disciplines in order to reveal the types, patterns, motives, and challenges underlying their articles’ self-archiving in the green route to open-access (repositories and institutional repositories) and ASNs (academic social networks). Interviews were conducted with 20 Israeli academic researchers. Half were from STEM and half from SSH disciplines. Interviews were mapped using a bottom-up thematic analysis and follow-up quantitative comparisons. According to the findings, STEM researchers self-archived pre/post-print versions of their articles to subject-based repositories as a part of their discipline norm resulting from their funding grant requirements and as a way to receive recognition and claim priority. SSH researchers post a link to the printed-published article at the publisher’s website in ASNs, and their goal is greater visibility. In addition, findings indicate a lack of awareness, mostly by SSH researchers, regarding copyright issues and OA repositories. The green OA model provides opportunities for researchers to self-archive their work. However, there are differences between the disciplines regarding where, when, why, and how to self-archive, and what is considered a legitimate mode of green OA. This indicates an urgent need to raise SSH researchers’ awareness of the existence of open subject-based repositories and of the terms of self-archiving from publishers.

Measuring the Impact of Gold and Green Open Access

هدفت الدراسة الى اقتراح آلیة لتقییم محتوى المجموعات الرقمیة لمصادر دوریات النصوص الکاملة فى کل من بنک المعرفة المصرى والمکتبة الرقمیة السعودیة وقد استخدم الباحث المنهج الوصفى بادواته المسحیة والمقارنة بالاضافة الى بعض الادوات الاحصائیة للتعامل مع البیانات الضخمة للتعرف على مواطن القوة والضعف فى کل من بنک المعرفة المصرى والمکتبة الرقمیة السعودیة وقد کشفت الدراسة عن وجود بعض المصادر داخل المکتبة الرقمیة السعودیة لا تحمل قیمة کبیرة للمجموعة ویمکن الاستغناء عنها

يهدف البحث إلى تحديد أفضلية إستراتيجية التعلم الإلکتروني (الفردي – الجماعي) القائمة على إستخدام الخرائط الذهنية الرقمية عبر الفيسبوک، وذلک فيما يتعلق بإکتساب معارف ومهارات البحث لطلاب تکنولوجيا تعليم في بنک المعرفة المصري، تم الاعتماد على التصميم التجريبي القائم على مجموعتين تجريبتين. وتضمن التصميم التجريبي متغير مستقل بنمطين هما إستراتيجية التعلم (الفردي – الجماعي) القائمة على إستخدام الخرائط الذهنية الرقمية في الفيسبوک ومتغيرين تابعين وهما معارف ومهارات البحث في بنک المعرفة المصري. تمثلت أدوات البحث في الإختبار التحصيلي وبطاقة ملاحظة الأداء المهارى، تکونت عينة البحث من (52) طالبا وطالبة تم تقسيمهم إلى مجموعتين متساوتين حسب نمط إستخدام الخرائط الذهنية الرقمية، حيث تکونت کل مجموعة (26) طالبا/طالبة. وقد أشارت النتائج إلى فاعلية استراتجيتى التعلم الإلکترونى (الفردي والجماعي) القائمتان على إستخدام الخرائط الذهنية الرقمية في تنمية معارف الطلاب لمهارات البحث في بنک المعرفة المصري، وأظهرت النتائج أيضا أفضلية استراتيجية التعلم الفردي القائم على الخرائط الذهنية الرقمية في تنمية مهارات البحث للطلاب في بنک المعرفة . This research aims to determine the preference of the e-learning strategy (individual - group) based on the use of digital mental maps via Facebook, in order to acquire the knowledge and research skills among educational technology students in the Egyptian Knowledge Bank. This research was based on the experimental design based on two experimental groups. The experimental design included two independent variables, namely the learning strategy (individual - group) based on the use of digital mental maps via Facebook and two dependent variables. The dependent variables include, knowledge and research skills of the Egyptian Knowledge Bank. The research tools consisted of achievement test and skill performance note card. The research sample consisted of (52) male and female students divided into two equal groups according to the pattern of using digital mental maps. Each group consisted of (26) students. The results indicated the effectiveness of e-learning strategies (individual and group) based on the use of digital mind maps in the development of students' knowledge of research skills in the Egyptian Knowledge Bank. The results also showed the preference of an individual learning strategy based on digital mind maps in the development of research skills for students in the knowledge bank.