Universal Open Access Research Articles

Copyright and Open Access to Scientific Publishing

The internet has broadened the communication of digitized journals and books among scholars and the perception that academic commercial publishers use copyright law to restrict the free circulation of scientific knowledge. Open access is changing the business model of academic publishing to the extent that copyright law is increasingly being viewed as needing to be balanced against the right to benefit from science. Some have called for copyright law to be revised to promote open access to academic publishing. The question of just how copyright law should be revised to achieve this is today more topical than ever. However, there is a need to clarify and question the role that copyright law should play and there is much to be gained from consideration of the role that competition law can play. Additionally, initiatives to implement open access have been taken by stakeholders (academic authors, publishers, universities, libraries, and research funding agencies) such as open access policies and the new “read and publish” agreements between publishers and universities’ libraries. But the transition towards sustainable universal open access will be a long, complex process since the interaction between these stakeholders can lead to conflicts of interest. This article also evaluates these initiatives and suggests the best approach.

CORE: A Global Aggregation Service for Open Access Papers

This paper introduces CORE, a widely used scholarly service, which provides access to the world’s largest collection of open access research publications, acquired from a global network of repositories and journals. CORE was created with the goal of enabling text and data mining of scientific literature and thus supporting scientific discovery, but it is now used in a wide range of use cases within higher education, industry, not-for-profit organisations, as well as by the general public. Through the provided services, CORE powers innovative use cases, such as plagiarism detection, in market-leading third-party organisations. CORE has played a pivotal role in the global move towards universal open access by making scientific knowledge more easily and freely discoverable. In this paper, we describe CORE’s continuously growing dataset and the motivation behind its creation, present the challenges associated with systematically gathering research papers from thousands of data providers worldwide at scale, and introduce the novel solutions that were developed to overcome these challenges. The paper then provides an in-depth discussion of the services and tools built on top of the aggregated data and finally examines several use cases that have leveraged the CORE dataset and services.

Two decades of Open Access Campaigns

At the start of this century, the Open Access movement gained momentum, largely fuelled by the Budapest (2002), Berlin (2003), and Bethesda (2003) declarations. The past two decades further witnessed several advocacy campaigns that challenged excessive profiteering through scientific publication, and advocated for revolutionising the scholarly publication system. Several attempts have been made to raise a voice for researchers’ rights that have been swallowed by the commercial publishing model. This study aims to give an overview of some major campaigns and organisations advocating for open access and analyses their efforts through the lens of their objectives, outcomes, opportunities, challenges and achievements. The assessment reveals some missing pieces that require careful consideration especially for current and future advocacy campaigns, as they are key building blocks of the Open Science movement. Such a mapping and understanding is crucial for sketching effective strategies needed to accelerate the progress towards achieving genuine and universal open access.

ChemElectroChem is Becoming Fully Open Access

<i>ChemElectroChem</i> is Becoming Fully Open Access

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

Open Sesame? Open access priorities, incentives, and policies among higher education institutions in the United Arab Emirates

Higher education institutions (HEIs) have an instrumental role in the move towards Open Access (OA) by shaping the national strategies, policies, and agendas. This study sets out to explore the role of HEIs in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) OA uptake and reflect on the ongoing international initiatives pushing for universal OA to research. The study is based on an online survey targeted at UAE higher education institutions research management units. In order to measure the institutional views, only one response was solicited from each institution. A total of 19 valid responses were received, making up 47% of HEIs included in the population of organisations. Our results suggest that there is low commitment to OA among UAE HEIs as attested by the low number of OA policies, scarce OA funding, limited proliferation of institutional repositories, perceived lack of urgency to migrate from current access models, and little consideration of OA for promotion purposes. The study is the first of its kind in the UAE, Arab and Middle Eastern countries, providing rare insight into a growing phenomenon that is global, yet most vocally discussed from a western perspective and context. The study contributes to the debate on the role of HEIs in the transition to OA and in shaping national and regional OA policies, as well as informing international initiatives about the current status of OA in the region.

实现中低收入国家研究人员 向“开放获取”的公平过渡 (Achieving an Equitable Transition to Open Access for Researchers in Lower and Middle-Income Countries)

Chinese Abstract: 本白皮书的起源可以追溯到2019年年中的一场讨 论，在一些学术出版商和 Research4Life 的出版商 协调员（该职位由STM协会 STM Association 提供 财政支持）之间展开的。这些对话者表示关切的 是，发达国家的出版界和研究界在全球开放获取 （Open Access）这一基于“付费出版”模式的行动 上正取得稳步和积极的进展，但较不发达的中低 收入国家（通常被称为“南营”）的出版和研究界却 被排除在这些讨论之外。2019年夏季STM董事会 讨论之后，成立了一个由出版商和其他利益相关 方组成的非正式工作组，以探讨如何让向“开放获 取”的过渡更加公平，避免出现新模式只是将障碍 从一个地方转移到另一个地方的情况。至关重要 的是，基于“开放获取”，所有产出的研究交流过程 不应比目前的模式更具排他性。 English Abstract: The origins of this White Paper can be traced to a discussion started in mid-2019 between a number of scholarly publishers and the Publisher Coordinator for Research4Life. These interlocutors voiced concern that while the publishing and research communities in the developed world were making steady and positive progress towards universal Open Access based on a ‘pay to publish’ model, those same communities in the less developed lower and middle-income countries (often referred to as the “Global South”) were being excluded from these discussions. An informal Task Force of publishers and other interested parties was set up to explore ways in which a transition to Open Access could be made more equitable, avoiding a situation in which the new model would simply shift the barrier from one place to another. The Task Force agreed that the first step towards addressing these challenges was to gather evidence about the progress already made towards Open Access in less advantaged regions, using the Research4Life country list as a proxy, and about the obstacles preventing it from progressing more rapidly. The International Centre for the Study of Research at Elsevier offered to carry out this analysis and to make the result widely available as a basis for further discussion and analysis. This paper presents those results and captures the conclusions from a workshop held at the 2020 Researcher to Reader Conference, at which the data formed the basis for debate over how to make an Open Access publishing system more equitable. The English language version is available here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3624782

Achieving an Equitable Transition to Open Access for Researchers in Lower and Middle-Income Countries [ICSR Perspectives

The origins of this White Paper can be traced to a discussion started in mid-2019 between a number of scholarly publishers and the Publisher Coordinator for Research4Life. These interlocutors voiced concern that while the publishing and research communities in the developed world were making steady and positive progress towards universal Open Access based on a ‘pay to publish’ model, those same communities in the less developed lower and middle-income countries (often referred to as the “Global South”) were being excluded from these discussions. An informal Task Force of publishers and other interested parties was set up to explore ways in which a transition to Open Access could be made more equitable, avoiding a situation in which the new model would simply shift the barrier from one place to another. The Task Force agreed that the first step towards addressing these challenges was to gather evidence about the progress already made towards Open Access in less advantaged regions, using the Research4Life country list as a proxy, and about the obstacles preventing it from progressing more rapidly. The International Centre for the Study of Research at Elsevier offered to carry out this analysis and to make the result widely available as a basis for further discussion and analysis. This paper presents those results and captures the conclusions from a workshop held at the 2020 Researcher to Reader Conference, at which the data formed the basis for debate over how to make an Open Access publishing system more equitable. The Chinese language version is available here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3914547

Movie Review: Paywall: The Business of Scholarship

Movie Review: Paywall: The Business of Scholarship

Open+: Versioning Open Social Scholarship

Advocates of the Open Access (OA) movement have been fighting for free and unfettered access to research output since the early 1990s. Open access is a crucial element of a fair, efficient scholarly communication system where all are able to find, interpret, and use the results of publicly-funded research. Universal open access is more possible now than ever before, thanks to networked technologies and the development of open scholarship policies. But what happens after access to research is provided? In this paper I argue that versioning scholarship across varying modes and formats would move scholarly communication from a straightforward open access system to a more engaging environment for multiple communities.

If Research Libraries and Funders Finance Open Access: Moving Beyond Subscriptions and APCs

Following the examples of SCOAP3, in which libraries fund open access, and eLife, in which funding agencies have begun to directly fund open access scholarly publishing, this study presents an analysis of how creatively combining these two models might provide a means to move toward universal open access (without APCs). This study calculates the publishing costs for the funders that sponsor the research and for the libraries that cover unsponsored articles for two nonprofit biomedical publishers, eLife and PLOS, and the nonprofit journal aggregator BioOne. These entities represent a mix of publishing revenue models, including funder sponsorship, article processing charges (APC), and subscription fees. Using PubMed filtering and manual-sampling strategies, as well as publicly available publisher revenue data, the study found that, in 2015, 86 percent of the articles in eLife and PLOS acknowledge funder support, as do 76 percent of the articles in the largely subscription journals of BioOne. Such findings can inform libraries and funding agencies, as well as publishers, in their consideration of a direct-payment open access model, as the study (a) demonstrates the cost breakdown for funder and library support for open access among this sample of X articles; (b) posits how publishing data-management organizations such as Crossref and ORCID can facilitate such a model of funder and library per-article open access payments; and (c) proposes ways in which such a model offers a more efficient, equitable, and scalable approach to open access across the disciplines than the prevailing APC model, which originated with biomedical publishing.

The Academic Library in the Face of Cooperative and Commercial Paths to Open Access

This paper sets out the place of the academic library within the digital-era developments of open access to research and scholarship. It analyzes how this development, now that open access is becoming a scholarly norm and common goal for scholarly publishing, is taking two forms, both of which are about making the move, if not a flip, from the subscription model for the circulation of journals to that of open access. The paper sets out the terms and instances of the two paths to open access. The one is a commercialization of open access publishing dominated by the large corporate academic publishers that are pursuing open access on their own terms through the article processing charge (APC) and in relation to the acquisition and development of scholarly communication infrastructure. The other, older tradition, if still on a smaller scale, is one of cooperation and collaboration, growing out of the commons that the library has always represented, involving libraries, journals, and archives, as well as open source tool and platform development. There is some crossover between the two paths, between library consortia and corporate publishers, and this paper encourages librarians to consider how they might take advantage of the market for publishing services that the two paths are creating amid the move to universal open access as a scholarly norm.

Optimizing Open Access Policy

This overview of the current status of Open Access (OA) to peer-reviewed research describes the steps that need to be taken to achieve universal OA. Policy initiatives by universities and funding agencies as well as adaptations by publishers have resulted in some progress toward universal OA, but a significant portion of research remains inaccessible to its would-be users because of subscription barriers. Institutions are forced to support both journal subscriptions and “Gold OA” author publication fees; this is not affordable or sustainable. More and stronger OA mandates will accelerate the provision of universal “Green OA” (author self-archiving) and an eventual transition to affordable, sustainable Gold OA, in which author fees replace institutional subscription fees to cover the remaining essential costs of journal publication. To accelerate progress, more institutions and funders need to adopt effective OA mandates. All universities and funders should require: (1) institutional deposit (2) deposit final draft immediately on acceptance for publication; and urge (but not require): (3) immediate OA, (4) author rights-retention, (5) minimization of allowable embargo length, (6) implementation of the copy-request Button, (7) provision of rich usage and citation metrics, and (8) having the repository deposit of publications be the locus for institutional performance review as well as funding applications and renewals.

Creación y mantenimiento del conocimiento compartido: contribución de la &lt;i&gt;University of Southampton&lt;/i&gt;

Historical overview of the significant contributions the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton has made to promote open access (OA), leading this movement worldwide. The advantages and disadvantages of the so-called greenway (self-archiving in repositories) and golden road (author pays) are presented. An analysis is made of the historical mistake of promoting the golden road to open access, instead of the green road. The different policies to achieve universal OA to science are discussed.

Open access journals: Why are we not there yet? (!)

Open access journals: Why are we not there yet? (!)

Gold Open Access Publishing Must Not Be Allowed to Retard the Progress of Green Open Access Self-Archiving

Universal Open Access (OA) is fully within the reach of the global research community: Research institutions and funders need merely mandate (green) OA self-archiving of the final, refereed drafts of all journal articles immediately upon acceptance for publication. The money to pay for gold OA publishing will only become available if universal green OA eventually makes subscriptions unsustainable. Paying for gold OA pre-emptively today, without first having mandated green OA not only squanders scarce money, but it delays the attainment of universal OA.

Waking OA's “Slumbering Giant”: The University's Mandate To Mandate Open Access

Universities (the universal research-providers) as well as research funders (public and private) are beginning to make it part of their mandates to ensure not only that researchers conduct and publish peer-reviewed research (“publish or perish”), but that they also make it available online, free for all. This is called Open Access (OA), and it maximizes the uptake, impact, and progress of research by making it accessible to all potential users worldwide, not just those users whose universities can afford to subscribe to the journal in which it is published. Researchers can provide OA to their published journal articles by self-archiving them in their own university's online repository. Students and junior faculty—the next generation of research providers and consumers—are in a position to help accelerate the adoption of OA self-archiving mandates by their universities, ushering in the era of universal OA.

Does the arXiv lead to higher citations and reduced publisher downloads for mathematics articles?

An analysis of 2, 765 articles published in four math journals from 1997 to 2005 indicate that articles deposited in the arXiv received 35% more citations on average than non-deposited articles (an advantage of about 1.1 citations per article), and that this difference was most pronounced for highly-cited articles. Open Access, Early View, and Quality Differential were examined as three non-exclusive postulates for explaining the citation advantage. There was little support for a universal Open Access explanation, and no empirical support for Early View. There was some inferential support for a Quality Differential brought about by more highly-citable articles being deposited in the arXiv. In spite of their citation advantage, arXiv-deposited articles received 23% fewer downloads from the publisher’s website (about 10 fewer downloads per article) in all but the most recent two years after publication. The data suggest that arXiv and the publisher’s website may be fulfilling distinct functional needs of the reader.