Policy Change from 2018

ObjectivesAcademical and not-for-profit research funders are increasingly requiring that the research they fund must be published open access, with some insisting on publishing with a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)...

NIHR Open Access Policy Review Stakeholder Survey Report

The Plan S Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) requires authors who are submitting to subscription journals to inform publishers that the author accepted manuscript (AAM) will be made available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. The laudable stated aim of the RRS is to achieve immediate open access to research outputs, while preserving journal choice for authors. However, proponents of the RRS overlook the significant administrative and legal burdens that the RRS places on authors and readers. Even though compliance with existing green open access (self-archiving) policies is poor at best, the RRS is likely to rely on authors to successfully execute the CC licensing of their work in the face of publisher resistance. The complexity of copyright law and CC licensing gives many reasons to doubt the legal validity of an RRS licence grant, which creates legal risk for authors and their institutions. The complexity of RRS CC BY licensing also creates legal risk for readers, who may not be able to fully rely on the reuse rights of a CC BY licence on the AAM. However, cOAlition S has released no legal advice that explains why the RRS is valid and legally binding. Publishers of legacy subscription journals have already begun implementing strategies that ensure they can protect their revenue streams. These actions may leave authors having to choose between paying publication fees and complying with their funding agreements. The result is that the RRS increases the complexity of the copyright and licensing landscape in academic publishing, creates legal risk and may not avoid author fees. Unless increased complexity and conflict between authors and publishers drives open access, the RRS is not fit for its stated purpose as an open access strategy.

AAAS misses opportunity to advance open access

Ensuring open access for publicly funded research

Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica (AOGS): Coming-of-age to embrace open science.

Reports an error in "A grain of truth in the grain size effect: Retrieval practice is more effective when interspersed during learning" by Hilary J. Don, Shaun Boustani, Chunliang Yang and David R. Shanks (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2024[Nov], Vol 50[11], 1791-1810). In the article, the copyright attribution was incorrectly listed, and the Creative Commons CC BY license disclaimer was incorrectly omitted from the author note. The correct copyright is "2024 The Author(s)," and the omitted disclaimer is present as: Open Access funding provided by University College London: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0; https://creativecommons .org/licenses/by/4.0). This license permits copying and redistributing the work in any medium or format, as well as adapting the material for any purpose, even commercially. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2025-46535-001). Retrieval practice is a powerful method for consolidating long-term learning. When learning takes place over an extended period, how should tests be scheduled to obtain the maximal benefit? In an end-test schedule, all material is studied prior to a large practice test on all studied material, whereas in an interim test schedule, learning is divided into multiple study/test cycles in which each test is smaller and only assesses material from the preceding study block. Past investigations have generally found a difference between these schedules during practice but not during a final assessment, although they may have been underpowered. Five experiments confirmed that final assessment performance was better in students taught using interim than end tests in list (Experiments 1, 2, and 5) and paired associate (Experiments 3 and 4) learning, with a meta-analysis of all available studies (k = 19) yielding a small- to medium-sized effect, g = 0.25, 95% confidence interval [0.09, 0.42]. Experiment 5 finds that the higher level of practice retrieval success in interim tests contributes to the grain size effect, but the effect is eliminated if these tests are too easy. Additional analyses also suggest that the forward testing effect, in which tests promote subsequent learning, may be a major cause of the grain size effect. The practical and theoretical implications of these demonstrations of robust grain size effects are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Reports an error in "One thought too few: An adaptive rationale for punishing negligence" by Arunima Sarin and Fiery Cushman (Psychological Review, 2024[Apr], Vol 131[3], 812-824). In the original article, the copyright attribution was incorrectly listed, and the Creative Commons CC BY license disclaimer was incorrectly omitted from the author note. The correct copyright is "© 2024 The Author(s)," and the omitted disclaimer is present as: Open Access funding provided by University College London: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0; http://creativecommons.org/li censes/by/4.0). This license permits copying and redistributing the work in any medium or format, as well as adapting the material for any purpose, even commercially. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2024-74001-001). Why do we punish negligence? Some current accounts raise the possibility that it can be explained by the kinds of processes that lead us to punish ordinary harmful acts, such as outcome bias, character inference, or antecedent deliberative choices. Although they capture many important cases, these explanations fail to account for others. We argue that, in addition to these phenomena, there is something unique to the punishment of negligence itself: People hold others directly responsible for the basic fact of failing to bring to mind information that would help them to avoid important risks. In other words, we propose that at its heart negligence is a failure of thought. Drawing on the current literature in moral psychology, we suggest that people find it natural to punish such failures, even when they do not arise from conscious, volitional choice. This raises a question: Why punish somebody for a mental event they did not exercise deliberative control over? Drawing on the literature on how thoughts come to mind, we argue that punishing a person for such failures will help prevent their future occurrence, even without the involvement of volitional choice. This provides new insight on the structure and function of our tendency to punish negligent actions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The SCOAP3 (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics) initiative is an international partnership to convert to Open Access the published literature in the field of High-Energy Physics (HEP). It has been in operation since January 2014, and since then has covered over 4,000 articles per year. Originally initiated by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and now counting partners representing 44 countries and 3 intergovernmental organisations, SCOAP3 has successfully converted to Open Access all, or part of, 6 HEP journals previously restricted to subscribers. It is also supporting publication of articles in 4 existing Open Access journals. As a “Gold” Open Access initiative, SCOAP3 pays Article Processing Charges (APCs), as publishers’ source of revenue for the publication service. Differentiating itself from other Open Access initiatives, SCOAP3 set APCs through a tendering process, correlating quality and price, at consistent conditions across participating publishers. The APCs determined by the SCOAP3 tendering process are compared with those charged in both Gold Open Access and hybrid markets, the latter referring to the piecemeal conversion to Open Access of individual articles in subscription journals. If the journals’ “Impact Factor” is used as a proxy for quality, the results indicate that the SCOAP3 APCs align with, or slightly improve upon, those of the service-based Gold Open Access journals. The SCOAP3 APCs vastly improves upon the price levels of what appears to be a less-functional hybrid publication market, in general and for the field of Physics in particular. The SCOAP3 tendering process included mechanisms to cap yearly expenditures in any single publishing outlet. Based on articles published in the 2014-2015 period (8,757 articles), the average APC effectively paid by SCOAP3 through its first two years was €1,100. This is among the best value-for-money in the Open Access marketplace. © The Authors. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License 1 Also at HEC Paris, Jouy en Josas, France. 2 Also at Hochschule Niederrhein, Krefeld, Germany.

Traditionally, there have been two important media of academic publishing: scholarly journals and scholarly books. The first scholarly journal, the Journal des Sçavans, was founded by Denis de Sallo, appeared already in January 1665 in Paris, reappeared after the French Revolution as the Journal des Savants, and still exists as a leading journal in the humanities. Only a few weeks later, Henry Oldenbourg, the first secretary of the Royal Society of London, established a second scholarly journal, the Philosophical Transactions, with a focus on science. The purpose of these journals was to formalize the extensive correspondence between philosophers and scientists.1 In the 18th and the 19th century, more specialized journals gained in importance, most of which were published by learned societies. At the end of the 19th century, university presses too began to publish scholarly journals. Another traditional means of academic publishing are the various types of scholarly books, in particular monographs, edited volumes, reference works (specialist dictionaries, encyclopedias, and specialty reference manuals), and technical handbooks.2 A narrow definition of academic works would exclude textbooks and books for the broader public. Shavell (2010, 337–39) employs four criteria to determine whether a journal or book is academic in nature: (1) the authors and/or the publisher are usually academics; (2) the readers are mainly academics; (3) the content is academic in character; (4) only low royalties are paid, if any. As of today, scholarly journals are the preferred mode of academic publishing in particular in the sciences and some social sciences (e.g., economics), whereas scholarly books still play an important role in the arts, the humanities, and part of the social sciences. Whereas scholarly books are published by a large number of small national publishers in a multitude of languages, the most important scholarly journals are typically in English language and published by a few large commercial publishers. Until the mid-20th century, the most important journals were published by learned societies, before commercial publishers began to enter the academic publishing market in the 1960s and 1970s by launching new titles or acquiring existing ones. This development has led to a significant concentration of (commercial) publishers in the academic journal market.3 It is difficult to say for sure how many scholarly journals are available around the world. Some sources speak of more than 100,000, others of 87,000 or 73,000.4 In August 2018, Ulrich's Web Directory listed 33,119 active scholarly peer-reviewed English-language journals with about 3 million articles a year, complemented by an additional 9,372 journals in other languages. As an important subset, 11,655 journals with 2.2 million articles were included in the Clarivate Analytics' Journal Citation Reports (STM, 2018, 25–26). The Web of Science (WoS) database counted almost 12,500 journals in 2019 (see below, Section 2.2.1). With the mass expansion of academic education and the increasing size of faculty after World War II, publications in peer-reviewed, highly ranked journals have become an important precondition for academic careers in many disciplines, in particular in the sciences, economics, and partly in the other social sciences. In 1964, Eugene Garfield launched the Science Citation Index to calculate the impact factors of journals in science, medicine, and technology. This index was later followed by the Social Sciences Citation Index in 1973, the Arts & Humanities Citation Index in 1978 (Regazzi, 2015, 86–88), and the Emerging Sources Citation Index in 2015. These indices led to the development of the Journal Impact Factor (JIF), a metric that serves to rank a scholarly journal based on the number of citations to articles in that journal by articles in other indexed journals within a certain time period. During the same time, commercial publishers have increased their market shares to the detriment of non-for-profit publishers, such as learned societies and universities, becoming the dominant players in the market for scholarly journals. Today, the "big five" commercial academic publishers—Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, and Sage—cover more than half of the market for scholarly journals. Since the 1980s, we have seen a sharp increase not just in the number of journals but in particular also in journal subscription prices, forcing many academic libraries to cancel serials subscriptions and to cut back on new monographs (the so-called serials crisis, cf. Eger & Scheufen, 2018, 23–29). These developments induced an increasing number of scholars, initially in the United States, to promote open access (OA) to scholarly articles as a replacement of or an addendum to the subscription model. After some individual initiatives in the late 1980s, the early 2000s saw the emergence of a global movement by scholars, librarians, and research sponsors, resulting in the "Budapest Open Access Initiative" (February 2002), the "Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing" (June 2003) and the "Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities" (October 2003).7 Two roads to OA can be distinguished8: First, gold OA refers to electronic journals with OA for all readers, often based on creative commons licenses. The publishers' costs are covered not by subscription fees but from other sources, such as article-processing charges (APCs)9 paid by authors, libraries, learned societies, or research sponsors, or subsidies from learned societies and other sources. Hybrid OA journals, whose numbers are rising fast, allow the authors to choose between paying an APC, thereby granting the reader OA, or not paying an APC and requiring the reader to pay for access to the article.10 A special branch of gold OA is mega-journals, the first one of which, PLOS One, was first published in 2006. In these journals, the peer review is restricted to examining only the soundness of the submitted articles but not their broader interest or impact. Also, mega-journals are not oriented towards a specific subject matter. The second road, green OA, refers to authors self-archiving pre-prints or post-prints of their papers on so-called OA repositories, potentially in addition to publication in traditional subscription-based journals. OpenDOAR listed 5,713 repositories in July 2021, of which 5,073 were classified as institutional repositories managed by universities, faculties, or other academic institutions, 364 as disciplinary (subject) repositories which aggregate research papers in specific disciplines (e.g., PubMed Central, arXiv, SSRN, and RepEc), 138 as aggregating repositories (including Academia and Scielo), and 139 as governmental repositories.11 Whereas institutional and disciplinary repositories generally respect the authors' or publishers' copyright, so-called Robin Hood or Pirate OA repositories do not. The most prominent example is Sci-Hub, founded in 2011 by Alexandra Elbakyan, a young scholar from Kazakhstan, which made over 60 million journal articles publicly available. Due to complaints by academic publishers, Sci-Hub had to switch domains several times.12 Recent years have seen the emergence of academic social networks such as Research Gate and Mendeley, as well as a stream of new forms of disseminating scientific content, including blogs, podcasts, and Facebook posts by prominent scholars. Regarding OA books, the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) in June 2021 listed 43,036 academic peer-reviewed books from 621 publishers.13 The number of academic journals, as listed in the WoS database, has been growing steadily over the past two decades, from around 5,000 in 2000 to almost 12,500 in 2019 (Figure 1).14 Source: Author's calculations based on data from Web of Science (2021) The academic journal market is dominated by a few large commercial publishers, with the "big five" accounting for more than half of the academic journals listed by the WoS in 2019: Elsevier (1,754 journals), Springer (1,406), Wiley Blackwell (1,242), Taylor & Francis (1,199), and Sage (642).15 However, due to a downturn by Elsevier that began around 2006, this dominance has declined from around 60% in 2000 to around 51.7% in 2019 (Figure 2). Source: Author's calculations based on data from Web of Science (2021) Coupled with the advent of the internet and the concurrent increasing digitization of academic works, which through the bundling of different journals and/or formats ("big deals") facilitated second-degree price discrimination, this dominance has led to a drastic increase in subscription prices since the early 1990s (Bergstrom, 2013; Eger & Scheufen, 2018; Ramello, 2010). The resulting serials crisis—with academic libraries having to cut their journal portfolio—gave rise to a new publishing regime that offers OA to journal content. The share of pure (i.e., non-hybrid) OA journals as listed by the Directory of Open Access Journals (2021) has been increasing steadily, from around 3% of all WoS-listed journals in 2000 to more than 10% in 2019 (Figure 3). Source: Author's calculations based on data from Web of Science (2021) and DOAJ (2021) Interestingly, pure OA journals also gained ground in terms of quality. Figure 4 shows boxplots of the impact factors16 of closed access (CA) versus OA journals over time. While CA journals enjoyed an impact factor advantage over OA journals for a long time—all location scales of the impact factor for CA journals being above the ones for OA journals—OA journals are nowadays of the same quality, notwithstanding considerable differences between disciplines (see the contribution by Eger et al. to this issue). In 2019, impact factor distributions of both OA and CA journals are at the same level. Thus, advancing both in quantity and in quality, OA journals are becoming ever more relevant. The literature has identified the following advantages of an OA regime for academic works: (1) OA publications are likely read and therefore (2) cited more widely,17 which in turn (3) raises the incentives for academic authors to publish their research results as citations increase their reputation. These observations led to a broad discussion in academia as to whether the copyright regime may impede the evolution towards a universal OA regime, with very different conclusions being drawn regarding the impact of OA from a social welfare perspective (Scheufen, 2015; Shavell, 2010). Source: Author's calculations based on data from Web of Science (2021) and DOAJ (2021) The growing relevance of academic OA publishing warrants a closer look at the development of pure OA journals as the gold road towards OA. Figure 5 shows the number of newly launched OA journals from 2002 to 2020. Following relatively slow growth from 2002 to 2014, with fewer than 500 new OA journals per year (except 2013), the number has exceeded 1,000 in every year since, peaking in 2017, when more than 2,000 new OA journals were added to the DOAJ database. Today, the DOAJ database counts more than 16,000 OA journals in many different fields of research, published in 80 languages by publishers from 126 countries.18 Source: Author's calculations based on data from DOAJ (2021) Notwithstanding this impressive development, the relevance of OA journals varies substantially across academic disciplines (Figure 6).19 The research field with the largest attributed number of OA journals is Social Sciences (3,817), followed by Health Sciences (2,785), Technology and Engineering (1,416), and Language and Literature (1,153). By contrast, the natural science fields of Mathematics & Statistics (341), Physics & Astronomy (274), and Chemistry (181) feature only few OA journals.20 Source: Author's calculations based on data from DOAJ (2021) Remarkable differences also exist regarding a variety of OA journal characteristics (Table 1).21 Most (52%) OA journals leave the copyright of published works with the author, whereas the traditional CA regime demands that the exploitation rights are transferred to the publisher. Moreover, only around 28% of all OA journals charge APCs—a remarkable finding, as the OA regime implies the transition from a "reader pays" to an "author pays" model. Other fees (e.g., a submission fee to cover the review process) are charged by only around 2% of all OA journals. Nevertheless, author fees may constitute a significant obstacle for authors to publish in an OA venue, especially for non-tenured researchers seeking to publish in highly ranked journals, which are most likely to charge APCs (Budzinski et al., 2020). This obstacle also applies in particular to many researchers from developing countries, whose institutions rarely cover such costs. Yet 18% of OA journals provide for the possibility to waive such author fees. OA publishing may indeed be considered a form of development aid, for two reasons: First, few institutions in the developing world have so far been able to subscribe to academic journals. The OA regime can thus promote scientific participation and thereby foster the global evolution of science as a "trial and error" process. Free or cheaper access to literature for researchers in the developing world tends to increase both their output (number of publications) and input (number of references) (Mueller-Langer et al., 2020). Second, an OA regime grants access to the latest results in science for groups who were previously excluded because they are not "club" members of a university library. This includes, e.g., corporate researchers, physicians, or farmers. Notwithstanding all the changes discussed above, scholarly journals remain the most important medium of communication in many disciplines. For more than 300 years, they have been fulfilling the four key functions of registration (attribution), certification of articles (peer review), dissemination (distribution, access), and preservation (scholarly memory and permanent archiving). In recent decades, a fifth function must be added: the evaluation of researchers and their institutions.22 The increasing importance of OA articles in scholarly journals has triggered some controversial discussions, in particular regarding the questions as to whether OA negatively affects the quality of journal articles, whether OA improves the dissemination of research results, and how OA affects the competition between academic publishers as well as the distribution between academics and non-academics, between poor and rich universities, and between poor and rich countries. We shall discuss each of these questions and some related points in more detail below. In times when "alternative facts" tend to trump sound research results, academia must provide the public with reliable information. The users of this information should be sufficiently certain that the results are based on proper methods, reflect the state of science in the specific field, and were obtained independently, e.g., of any political or commercial interests.23 For that reason, strict and continuous quality control of research results is a "conditio sine qua non" for academic publishing. Facilitating the communication of content from authors to readers, the academic journal market may be characterized as a two-sided market (Rochet & Tirole, 2003). While readers look for the most important research results in their fields by top authors, the latter are interested in the journal's reputation, in wide readership, and in citations. Thus, journals with high impact factors hold the greatest attraction to both sides. With this in mind, the crucial question arises what effect, if any, OA is likely to have on the quality of academic articles. Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado in Denver, is very skeptical regarding the quality of OA articles, especially those that are financed by APCs: "By adding a financial component to the front end of the scholarly publishing process, the open-access movement will ultimately corrupt scholarly publishing and hurt the communication and sharing of novel knowledge" (Beall, 2013, 590). A weak form of "corruption" would to OA publishers' incentives to peer review and to more submitted papers in to increase from However, the commercial publishers' incentives to increase the number of articles to the detriment of the journal's quality at the the quality the APCs that the journal is able to as well as A form of "corruption" refers to the of some OA journal publishers have been to in particular young and who on publications for their or to allow authors to publish articles in OA journals, by articles with or peer academics on their the or of journals, and so In established a of publishers, which was in January in to not only from the publishers but also from OA who that the to to OA. this quality to be a one which exists only in some disciplines (e.g., economics), whereas in other disciplines, such as some OA journals are the ranked journals and there is of a quality researchers their and if academic institutions and research to the APCs for articles by journals, this is to A by is that OA may new and will new and of their will remain (Beall, 2013, 590). However, this is a of the process, of whether the was submitted to a traditional or an OA and many prominent which that articles are generally more likely to the review than and creative but ones. In their contribution to this special & in a two-sided that OA can be a feature of journals. The have seen an increasing both of data on any subject and of that serves to that data almost there has been a of articles in every For such articles, the peer for quality A can be made between pure the same data and the same are as in the and scientific which (1) different data but the same (2) the same data but new methods, or (3) new data and new A to a on (1) the of an or in previously published (2) the impact of the (3) the of and (4) the of to publish Whereas some years when data were on the of mainly of technical copyright and data are the of Regarding the first journals in have already been including an OA journal by University with a focus on Technology and and the Journal for in by Springer the years or a number of in several disciplines have that the results of many when published in highly ranked journals, not be many academics to speak of a The is to the quality of research by access to data so as to be able to results of and or the incentives to the in the first Another important question is whether digitization and the internet have facilitated the quality of of their scholarly and and of their the quality of academic researchers and of is based on which were to provide a metric for journals with each 2019, being a of the citations to all articles in a journal but not of the citations to the individual articles. In a few articles are cited and many articles are not cited at Moreover, an may also many citations for being and citations are 2018, For some journals the authors of submitted papers to related papers that were previously published in the same journal have this by the of several journals this focus on and their to their and the of to these and to with for the quality of research & in with a a to be a (STM, 2018, are induced to the but the The on research which from the on Science and Technology in 2014, is of the existing to research output and to research evaluation in the et al., the question whether the new and the and (OA) of academic publishing to and their Some authors the in OA publishing with a broader of readers and open For of the in the focus on a small number of highly ranked journals, for a all articles that a journal's criteria should be published and made financed by APCs or other This is the of mega-journals such as PLOS a who the 2000 in and & the between of publications in the top journals in and of in a of the top which over the the crucial question is how to articles at low especially in a OA the of available articles to choose journal of costs to some However, the of the as a of quality has been Thus, an important to academic publishing is to provide reliable on the quality of journal articles that are of the journal that published the the internet and for research evaluation also how research results are Regarding scholarly by other researchers, there is an discussion as to whether OA articles more or fewer citations than those with a to that is in the by & and by Eger et al. to this special Regarding by the broader the mainly is being complemented with which on or in the social reference such as and Mendeley, scholarly blogs, and In the transition from traditional subscription journals to OA, the crucial question is how to the between two the one high subscription fees may be with high journal publishers have to their to the or research the other low APCs may not for publishers to cover their and to a to publish journals. The is to competition to journal publishers to articles of quality at and and to the interested public. The of competition not on the and of OA publishing. there were only pure OA journals, publishers would for all authors had to cover the APCs from their the APCs would tend towards a that the publishers to However, in the publishers of pure OA journals, OA journals and CA journals with OA repositories, and APCs may be by or research these different to foster OA will have specific on the of are some (1) green OA is or an to as has been the in since January 2014, publishers of subscription journals difficult to increase their fees. This also the publishers of OA journals from increasing their In any a must be is too will the publishers' to publish the journal in the first if is too the on subscription fees will be A for gold OA by research the of the publishers of OA journals and thereby increase (2) the of new OA journals, this foster competition publishers of OA journals for Yet this the that many years to a and to Until the new journal will have on the fees of the journals. (3) of academic libraries can constitute a to the journal publishers, potentially the of example is the in which so far two between a of most academic libraries in on the one and Wiley and Springer as publishers of scholarly journals in all disciplines on the other is a controversial discussion whether such impede competition on the journal market to the detriment of small publishers or indeed In any such to promote the of traditional CA journals OA OA publishing may several and the from "reader pays" to "author pays" can for researchers, for in developing countries. As we have 18% of OA journals APC for such Second, or to foster OA, such as the above, may to the of researchers who to the detriment of those who do not. Moreover, publishers may be to papers from researchers from that author fees specific e.g., by authors an of gold and/or green OA may due to that from incentives such as the in science or especially for non-tenured researchers, gold OA may their careers in fields OA with and CA example for due to may be the e.g., in the field of In this a green OA publication may with a publication of a in a journal since the that a journal works that have been published In the transition to OA journals implies that authors or their pay for the of readers from all over the world to access the articles. This may be poor authors for rich the global that is available to academic articles is in which the transition to OA may the number of articles The is when many of the readers are of we can that whose faculty publish many articles also for a large share of the readership, in which any between authors and readers their as a of the transition to OA should be A number of and developments since the second half of the have the academic publishing market and triggered about the very of academic publishing. journals, which in most disciplines to be the most important medium of academic are by commercial publishers, with the top publishers more than of all journals. and the advent of the internet have these publishers to in "big with academic libraries, of which the libraries to access a wide of journals at a price per As a journal subscription prices and academic on academic journals have been increasing to the detriment of publishers and on books with these a number of national and initiatives triggered the development towards OA, a new of academic publishing. Today, a growing number of pure and OA journals are financed by subscription fees but by publication fees paid by the authors or their Moreover, institutional and disciplinary OA repositories have been established and the traditional of academic communication have been with social blogs, Another of digitization and the internet has been the facilitated and of research in many disciplines. The of this development is an increasing number of the results of be this would with copyright and and academic authors to in The discussion as to how these developments the quality control of academic journal articles, the evaluation of and their institutions, and the size and of financial means for academic publishing. This special to the discussion a of articles with some of including the evaluation of by indices & welfare of open access & the impact of OA & & access to research data & to OA in and the to OA in & We would to for The authors also open access by

Critical Care's move to fund open access

Obama Signs Act to Make More Federally Funded Research Open Access: NIH Requirement Extended to Other Agencies

Open letter to the Society for Neuroscience

<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>

Open Access Papers Have a Greater Citation Advantage in the Author-Pays Model Compared to Toll Access Papers in Springer and Elsevier Open Access Journals