Open Access Advocates Research Articles

OA isn’t free, it costs folks like you and me

Despite the framing of open access (OA) as a progressive movement that challenges neoliberalism and champions the public good, academic labour is often left out of these analyses (Eve, 2017). In a bid to liberate academic labour from the neoliberal hands of commercial publishing, advocates of OA have argued that making scholarly work “free” can help to establish an academic commons (de Rosnay, 2021). However initiatives to mandate OA in academia like “Plan S” set the stage for academic labourers to be compelled to give up rights to their intellectual property (Frantzvag & Stromme, 2019). In this essay I argue that the broad acceptance of OA as the liberatory savior of academic publishing is misguided, as it obscures the right-wing libertarian roots of the movement and would see academics voluntarily alienate themselves from their labour (Golumbia, 2016). Drawing on Golumbia’s (2016) Marxist reading of the political economy of OA, I argue that devaluing academic labour by characterizing it as unproductive and immaterial negates the abstract labour that produces scholarly works. Undoubtedly, libraries have an important role to play in the OA “revolution” (Burns, 2018), although not as assenting boosters but as critical voices that advocate for the rights of workers.

Social justice driving open access publishing: an African perspective

The OA movement is generally considered to have been founded for the truly philanthropic purpose of promoting equity and inclusivity in access to scholarship. For Africans, this meant the opening of the research ecosystem to marginalized research communities who could then freely make use of shared research to aid in the socio-economic development and emancipation of the continent. However, this philanthropic purpose has been deviated from, leading instead to the disenfranchisement of the African research community. Through systemic inequalities embedded in the scholarly ecosystem, the publishing landscape has been northernised, with research from the global north sitting at the very top of the knowledge hierarchy to the exclusion of Africa and other parts of the global south. For this reason, progressive open access practices and policies need to be adopted, with an emphasis on social justice as an impetus, to enhance the sharing and recognition of African scholarship, while also bridging the ‘research-exchange’ divide that exists between the global south and north. Furthermore, advocates of open access must collaborate to create equal opportunities for African voices to participate in the scholarly landscape through the creation and dissemination of global south research. Thusly, the continental platform was developed by the University of Cape Town. This platform was developed around the concept of a tenant model to act as a contributor to social justice-driven open access advocacy, and as a disruptor of the unjust knowledge hierarchies that exist.

Economic perspectives on the future of academic publishing: Introduction to the special issue

Economic perspectives on the future of academic publishing: Introduction to the special issue

Beyond Access into Accessibility

Imagine, for the purposes of this Viewpoint, that the dreams of Open Access advocates and organizations like cOAlition S are realized tomorrow and all research articles published anywhere become immediately, freely available to all in a sustainable way. And, let’s imagine this is done in a way that manages to satisfy the needs of all stakeholders, from publishers to librarians to researchers. Even in this possibly utopian scenario, the goal of making scientific research available to all would not be complete because “access” is just the beginning. To make an article truly available to all readers and researchers, we need to move beyond access into accessibility. Accessibility is about ensuring that the greatest number of people not only have access, but also are actually able to use your product or service, including those with impairments or disabilities. In publishing, this is typically considered in terms of making articles and published research consumable by readers with visual impairments or cognitive disorders, such as dyslexia. This is the type of accessibility that Bill Kasdorf discusses in his article “The Important Role of the Editor in Making Science Accessible.” Web technologies, including the increasingly adopted EPUB standard, are making it easier for scientific articles to have accessibility built in from the beginning, especially when compared to the omnipresent (and increasingly antiquated) PDF, but they have not been universally adopted. To make an article truly available to all readers and researchers, we need to move beyond access into accessibility. Somewhat uniquely for scientific publications, […]

Role of Digital Divide in Optimal Zero-Rating Policy

Several Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Content Providers (CPs) have proposed zero-rating plans whereby consumers get access to certain websites without paying for it. While consumer and open-access advocates have decried these plans, arguing that they are anti-competitive and violate the principles of net neutrality, ISPs and CPs have argued that such initiatives enable segments of the world population - especially those in developing economies - to finally join the rest of the world in accessing the Internet. Extant literature on the topic has contributed to this debate by analyzing the optimality of zero-rating policy as an extension of net neutrality. In contrast, our work looks at this issue in the presence of a digital divide. We analyze the ISP's and the CPs' decision-making as well as its subsequent impact on social welfare when a fraction of the population does not have access to the Internet. Thus, the study fills the research gap of analyzing the impact that context (Internet penetration, in particular) may have on different network management strategies, under zero-rating plans. Our research finds that zero-rating plans can enhance social welfare in many cases in the presence of a digital divide. However, Internet regulators need to be vigilant, since the ISPs may sometime deviate from a strategy that maximizes social welfare. The findings have implications for policymakers arguing for their nuanced role in regulating zero-rating policies, rather than indiscriminately allowing or disallowing the practice.

Elsevier deal with France disappoints open-access advocates

Elsevier deal with France disappoints open-access advocates

The Pensoft Data Publishing Workflow: The FAIRway from articles to Linked Open Data

As one of the first advocates of open access and open data in the field of biodiversity publishiing, Pensoft has adopted a multiple data publishing model, resulting in the ARPHA-BioDiv toolbox (Penev et al. 2017). ARPHA-BioDiv consists of several data publishing workflows and tools described in the Strategies and Guidelines for Publishing of Biodiversity Data and elsewhere: Data underlying research results are deposited in an external repository and/or published as supplementary file(s) to the article and then linked/cited in the article text; supplementary files are published under their own DOIs and bear their own citation details. Data deposited in trusted repositories and/or supplementary files and described in data papers; data papers may be submitted in text format or converted into manuscripts from Ecological Metadata Language (EML) metadata. Integrated narrative and data publishing realised by the Biodiversity Data Journal, where structured data are imported into the article text from tables or via web services and downloaded/distributed from the published article. Data published in structured, semanticaly enriched, full-text XMLs, so that several data elements can thereafter easily be harvested by machines. Linked Open Data (LOD) extracted from literature, converted into interoperable RDF triples in accordance with the OpenBiodiv-O ontology (Senderov et al. 2018) and stored in the OpenBiodiv Biodiversity Knowledge Graph. Data underlying research results are deposited in an external repository and/or published as supplementary file(s) to the article and then linked/cited in the article text; supplementary files are published under their own DOIs and bear their own citation details. Data deposited in trusted repositories and/or supplementary files and described in data papers; data papers may be submitted in text format or converted into manuscripts from Ecological Metadata Language (EML) metadata. Integrated narrative and data publishing realised by the Biodiversity Data Journal, where structured data are imported into the article text from tables or via web services and downloaded/distributed from the published article. Data published in structured, semanticaly enriched, full-text XMLs, so that several data elements can thereafter easily be harvested by machines. Linked Open Data (LOD) extracted from literature, converted into interoperable RDF triples in accordance with the OpenBiodiv-O ontology (Senderov et al. 2018) and stored in the OpenBiodiv Biodiversity Knowledge Graph. The above mentioned approaches are supported by a whole ecosystem of additional workflows and tools, for example: (1) pre-publication data auditing, involving both human and machine data quality checks (workflow 2); (2) web-service integration with data repositories and data centres, such as Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD), Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio), Data Observation Network for Earth (DataONE), Long Term Ecological Research (LTER), PlutoF, Dryad, and others (workflows 1,2); (3) semantic markup of the article texts in the TaxPub format facilitating further extraction, distribution and re-use of sub-article elements and data (workflows 3,4); (4) server-to-server import of specimen data from GBIF, BOLD, iDigBio and PlutoR into manuscript text (workflow 3); (5) automated conversion of EML metadata into data paper manuscripts (workflow 2); (6) export of Darwin Core Archive and automated deposition in GBIF (workflow 3); (7) submission of individual images and supplementary data under own DOIs to the Biodiversity Literature Repository, BLR (workflows 1-3); (8) conversion of key data elements from TaxPub articles and taxonomic treatments extracted by Plazi into RDF handled by OpenBiodiv (workflow 5). These approaches represent different aspects of the prospective scholarly publishing of biodiversity data, which in a combination with text and data mining (TDM) technologies for legacy literature (PDF) developed by Plazi, lay the ground of an entire data publishing ecosystem for biodiversity, supplying FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable data to several interoperable overarching infrastructures, such as GBIF, BLR, Plazi TreatmentBank, OpenBiodiv and various end users.

AccessLab: Workshops to broaden access to scientific research.

AccessLabs are workshops with two simultaneous motivations, achieved through direct citizen-scientist pairings: (1) to decentralise research skills so that a broader range of people are able to access/use scientific research, and (2) to expose science researchers to the difficulties of using their research as an outsider, creating new open access advocates. Five trial AccessLabs have taken place for policy makers, media/journalists, marine sector participants, community groups, and artists. The act of pairing science academics with local community members helps build understanding and trust between groups at a time when this relationship appears to be under increasing threat from different political and economic currents in society. Here, we outline the workshop motivations, format, and evaluation, with the aim that others can build on the methods developed.

Predatory Publishing and the Response from the Scholarly Community

abstractPredatory journals are multiplying rapidly, but awareness is increasing in the scholarly community. Publishers, open access advocates, and researchers are exploring new ways to fight back. This column examines different ways members of the research community have chosen to address the problem of fraudulent publishing.

Adoption of Open Access Publishing by Academic Researchers in Kenya

This study investigates Kenyan scholars' adoption of open access (OA). The authors used a questionnaire to collect data from academic researchers at selected Kenyan public universities. The findings of this study indicate that while Kenyan researchers have embraced the concept of OA, challenges such as a lack of mechanisms to guide academic researchers on where to publish, a dearth of funding mechanisms to cover article processing charges, and a lack of accreditation mechanisms for regional and national journals are exposing Kenyan academic researchers to unscrupulous journal publishers and predatory publishing outlets. OA advocates in Kenyan universities need to devise innovative ways of raising awareness about OA, and these universities should provide the environment, infrastructure, and capacity building needed to support OA.

Perceptions, preferences of scholarly publishing in open access routes

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to know the various factors librarians consider while selecting open access (OA) journal for publication, and to know the challenges librarians face with OA journal publishing.Design/methodology/approachOnline questionnaire was designed to collect data using SurveyMonkey software from 335 academic librarians in 57 institutions (Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education) in Nigeria.FindingsThe findings of the study revealed that majority of the academic librarians are aware of the gold and green publishing routes, while the majority of academic librarians are not aware of the diamond publishing route. The study also revealed that when considering where to publish, reputation and impact factor of journal were rated as very important among the factors that inform their choice of OA. The study further revealed that academic librarians have little or no knowledge about the existence of institutional repositories in their institutions, and only a few actual use institutional repositories and ResearchGate to self-archive their publications. The majority of the academic librarians agreed that author fees (Article Processing Charges) and low impact factor of journal are barriers to publishing in OA journals. Training on OA publishing is recommended for librarians to increase their knowledge and confidence to discuss OA with faculty members in future.Practical implicationsKnowledge of authors’ attitude toward OA publishing models will help OA advocates focus on the factors that are meaningful that are raised in this study.Originality/valueThe study is an original research work that investigated academic librarians’ perception and engagement with OA publishing as they lead the OA campaign in their institutions.

What does ‘green’ open access mean? Tracking twelve years of changes to journal publisher self-archiving policies

Traces the 12-year self-archiving policy journey of the original 107 publishers listed on the SHERPA/RoMEO Publisher Policy Database in 2004, through to 2015. Maps the RoMEO colour codes (‘green’, ‘blue’, ‘yellow’ and ‘white’) and related restrictions and conditions over time. Finds that while the volume of publishers allowing some form of self-archiving (pre-print, post-print or both) has increased by 12% over the 12 years, the volume of restrictions around how, where and when self-archiving may take place has increased 119%, 190% and 1000% respectively. A significant positive correlation was found between the increase in self-archiving restrictions and the introduction of Gold paid open access options. Suggests that by conveying only the version of a paper that authors may self-archive, the RoMEO colour codes do not address all the key elements of the Bethesda Definition of Open Access. Compares the number of RoMEO ‘green’ publishers over time with those meeting the definition for ‘redefined green’ (allowing embargo-free deposit of the post-print in an institutional repository). Finds that RoMEO ‘green’ increased by 8% and ‘redefined green’ decreased by 35% over the 12 years. Concludes that the RoMEO colour codes no longer convey a commitment to green open access as originally intended. Calls for open access advocates, funders, institutions and authors to redefine what ‘green’ means to better reflect a publisher’s commitment to self-archiving.

More transparency for clinical trial data: The decision by the European Medicines Agency to make clinical trial reports publicly available could provide a boon for biomedical research.

More transparency for clinical trial data: The decision by the European Medicines Agency to make clinical trial reports publicly available could provide a boon for biomedical research.

Administrator Interest is Perceived to Encourage Faculty and Librarian Involvement in Open Access Activities

A Review of:
 Reinsfelder, T.L., & Anderson, J.A. (2013). Observations and perceptions of academic administrator influence on open access initiatives. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 39(6): 481-487. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2013.08.014 
 
 Abstract
 
 Objective – To better understand the roles and influence of senior-level academic administrators, such as provosts, on open access (OA) activities at the institutional level, including whether librarians perform these activities regardless of administrative interest.
 
 Design – Web-based survey questionnaire combined with multiple regression analysis.
 
 Settings – The research was conducted online using surveys emailed to potential participants at not-for-profit public and private academic institutions in the United States with a FTE of greater than 1000.
 
 Subjects – Academic library directors at selected colleges and universities. 
 
 Methods – Using directory information from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and filtering institutions according to not-for-profit status, size, and special focus, a survey sample of 1135 colleges and universities was obtained. Library websites were used to acquire contact information for library directors. In summer 2012 the 43-item survey questionnaire was distributed to respondents online using Qualtrics. The four primary variables were each comprised of multiple questionnaire items and validated using factor analysis, and the data was explored using multiple regression.
 
 Main Results – The survey received 298 respondents for a 26% response rate, though the number of incomplete responses is not stated. Among four stakeholder groups (faculty, publishers, librarians, and senior academic administrators), library directors perceived librarians as having the greatest influence in regards to the adoption of open access (mean = .7056), followed by faculty (.3792), administrators (.1881), and publishers as having a negative impact (–.3684). A positive correlative relationship was determined between Administrator Attention to Open Access—a key variable operationalized by combining eight questionnaire items—and the variables Librarian Commitment to Open Access, Faculty Commitment to Open Access, and Faculty Proclivity Toward Open Access, with the latter especially the case at lower levels of administrator support. Regarding institution size, library directors perceived a higher likelihood of faculty adherence and librarian commitment to OA at large institutions (over 20,000). A given institution’s public or private status and geographic region were not significant predictors of faculty or librarian commitment or adherence to open access.
 
 Conclusions – The study finds that academic library directors perceive librarians to have the strongest influence upon adoption of open access, and senior academic administrator attention to open access is positively linked to the OA activities of faculty and librarians. Larger institutions are considered to have greater commitment to OA, potentially due to differing missions according to institution type. The authors recommend that open access advocates consider administrator roles and target administrator support when seeking to increase participation in OA.

Open-access advocates find Energy Department plan "vague and disappointing"

Nature, Science, and the Washington Post report reactions to the first major development under a 2013 White House directive.

Reactionary Rhetoric Against Open Access Publishing

In 2013, Jeffrey Beall published an attack on the open-access scholarship movement in tripleC: “The Open-Access Movement Is Not Really About Open Access”. This article examines the claims and arguments of that contribution. Beall’s article makes broad generalizations about open-access advocates with very little supporting evidence, but his rhetoric provides good examples of what Albert O. Hirschman called the “rhetoric of reaction”. Specifically, it provides examples of the perversity thesis, the futility thesis, and the jeopardy thesis in action. While the main argument is both unsound and invalid, it does show a rare example of reactionary rhetoric from a librarian.

The Future of Scholarly Communication , edited by Deborah Shorley and Michael Jubb (review)

Reviewed by: The Future of Scholarly Communication, edited by Deborah Shorley and Michael Jubb Jeffrey Beall The Future of Scholarly Communication, ed. Deborah Shorley and Michael Jubb. London: Facet Publishing, 2013. 188 pages. $80.00 (ISBN 978-1-85604-817-0) The thirteen essays in The Future of Scholarly Communication are divided into two parts called Changing Researcher Behavior and Other Players: Roles and Responsibilities. They cover most of the hot topics in scholarly communication, including open access, institutional repositories, data mining, and the future roles of libraries in the scholarly communication ecosystem. A better title might have been The Past, Present, and Possible Future of Scholarly Communication, as few of the authors really make any definite predictions; they seem to have the same uncertainty that most of us share regarding scholarly communication’s future and instead primarily identify and describe past and present trends. While the work purports to be about the future, many of the authors spend a large number of words expressing their disdain with the present. An example is David C. Prosser’s chapter titled “Researchers and Scholarly Communications: An Evolving Interdependency.” Much of this chapter actually focuses on the past, and the author bemoans the fact that the Internet has had little impact on the essentials of journal publishing. He seems more interested in forcing change than in analyzing it or letting it occur organically. Similarly, Mark L. Brown’s chapter, “The Role of the Research Library,” is probably the most relevant one for the readers of this journal, but the chapter again focuses disproportionately on the past and present instead of the future. Brown concludes that research libraries are leaders of innovation in scholarly communication, that they serve as centers of experimentation and advocacy, that they work to provide access to all the different types of scholarly communication, and that they generally work in collaboration and as consortia to achieve economies of scale. On the other hand, the book’s final chapter, “The Library User’s View,” presents a perspective that essentially devalues libraries as simple acquisitions departments. Author Roger Schonfeld describes how he believes science faculty experience the library: “The scientist, for whom the experience is indeed frequently seamless, has little recognition that he is using the campus library, other than in its role as a purchasing agent.” (p. 172) Fortunately, the book’s other authors do not share Schonfeld’s [End Page 121] cynical view of academic libraries, instead affirming research libraries’ role as centers of innovation in science communication. Of course, this work’s elephant in the room is the fact that it purports to describe the future of scholarly communication using a technology developed in the fifteenth century—the printed book. Is the future not yet here? Some of the contributors are advocates of open access, yet they allowed their work to be published as a hardcopy monograph. Moreover, most of the discussion revolves around the scholarly article; monographs are largely ignored, so it is ironic that the authors choose to disseminate their work not only in an old technology but also in a form they neglect to even describe as being a part of scholarly communication’s future. Finally, the book is excessively centered on the United Kingdom and insufficiently treats how research libraries are organized and how research is funded in North America. Published in April 2013, this work is already becoming dated. Much of it deals with scholarly open-access publishing, a topic best covered in open-access works themselves—works published in the many new and open scholarly communication venues the book itself describes. Jeffrey Beall University of Colorado Denver jeffrey.beall@ucdenver.edu Copyright © 2013 Johns Hopkins University Press

Observations and Perceptions of Academic Administrator Influence on Open Access Initiatives

Existing literature frequently covers the topic of open access from the perspectives of authors, librarians, or publishers. Investigations into the role of academic administrators, however, remain limited. Because librarians are uniquely positioned in the center of the scholarly communication ecosystem a survey of library directors was conducted to investigate the nature of any relationship between the actions of academic administrators and an institution's commitment to open access, as observed by librarians. Results indicate that, according to the perspective of librarians, as academic administrator attention to open access increases, open access activities of faculty and librarians also increase. Open access advocates should reflect upon the role of academic administrators and consider increasing efforts to gain the support of these individuals.

Open Access—Are the Barriers to Change Receding?

The move from subscription only publishing of scholarly articles to open access has been much slower than previously anticipated by many Open Access (OA) advocates. Despite the many advantages that OA offers, this particular branch of E-commerce imposes several formidable barriers to change. A framework conceptualizing these barriers that was developed over a decade ago was revisited to see if the significance of these barriers has changed. Nowadays, building the IT infrastructure, support from indexing services and finding a sustainable business model are no longer important barriers. For gold OA publishing the academic reward system is still a major obstacle, whereas more marketing and critical mass is needed for both gold OA and green OA. Green OA self-archiving is still also strongly affected by what subscription publishers allow. In the overall balance the situation has nevertheless improved significantly.

Federal Open-Access Mandate

All federal agencies that fund $100 million or more in scientific research must develop plans to make the results of that research freely available, according to a new directive from the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP). The agencies have flexibility in how they develop their plans and can work with publishers on criteria that differ from discipline to discipline, using a 12-month post-publication embargo as a guideline. Open-access advocates are applauding the move, which came just days after Congress introduced legislation that also aims to broaden access to taxpayer-funded research. Publishers, which have long opposed open-access efforts, also support the measure because it is not a one-size-fits-all policy. The directive applies to agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy Office of Science. Currently the National Institutes of Health is the only federal agency with an open-access policy, but that applies only ...