Open Access
An outline with links for the April 29, 2008 Open Access forum. By Rebecca Harner and Steve Lawson.
Harvard Mandate
Harvard faculty voted in February on a policy that requires them to deposit copies of their scholarly journal publications into an online repository making them available world-wide for free.
- The Case for Open Access: an opinion piece by Harvard’s Robert Darnton.
- Harvard press release on the mandate
What is Open Access?
Two main points
- The copyright holder grants all users free access and license to use, copy and distribute the work.
- A complete electronic version of the work and any supplementary materials are deposited in a repository supported by an academic institution, government agency, scholarly society or other established organization.
Other points
- Not free of charge, but free to users.
- How are costs recovered? Author’s fees, fees paid by institutions or other funding agency.
- Supporting evidence that Open Access articles are seen and cited by more people.
- Focusing on royalty-free literature allows the author to consent to open accessibility without losing revenue.
For a more thorough overview, see Peter Suber’s Open Access Overview
What does Open Access look like?
“Gold” journals are those that make the articles freely available at the point of publication. PLoS Biology is a well-known example.
“Green” journals allow the author to self-archive preprints or postprints. SHERPA RoMEO is an online directory of green publishers, as well as blue, yellow, and white publishers.
Scholars who publish in green journals can “self-archive” by putting their articles in an institutional repository like the one Harvard is setting up. George Mason’s Mason Archival Repository Service is just one example. You can find others at the Directory of Open Access Repositories
Aside from institutional repositories, there are disciplinary repositories such as arXiv.org for Physics and related fields and the Social Science Research Network.
And some scholars maintain their own web pages for themselves or their department or lab, or to document a particular project.
Important events, or a very brief history of Open Access
- The “Crisis” in Scholarly Communication.
- June, 1998. SPARC – The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition is an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to correct imbalances in the scholarly publishing system.
- May, 2006. FRPAA – Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006.
- August, 2007. PRISM – Partnership for Research Integrity in Science & Medicine launched by Association of American Publishers/Professional & Scholarly Publishing Division to lobby against governmental Open Access policies.
- January, 2008. The NIH Public Access Policy “On January 11, 2008, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a revision to its Public Access Policy. The policy now requires eligible researchers to deposit copies of final manuscripts upon acceptance into a peer-reviewed journal so that they may be made publicly available within 12 months of publication. This policy applies to any journal articles resulting from research supported in whole or in part by direct funds from NIH. The manuscript is defined as the final version accepted for journal publication and includes all modifications from the publishing and peer-review process.”
- February, 2008. Harvard Mandate.
- April, 2008 and beyond. Colorado College??
CC support of Open Access:
- President Celeste signed the Oberlin Group “Presidents’ Letter” (link to PDF) in support of the FRPAA – Federal Research Public Access Act.
- Tutt Library subscribes to major Open Access initiatives:
- BioOne
- The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- PLoS – Public Library of Science (Because we subscribe, there are reduced author fees for our faculty members wishing to publish.)
- Open Access journals are listed in TuttLinks, Tutt Library’s link resolver and journal finder.
- CC is participating in the Alliance Digital Repository, an online archive created by the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (the people who maintain Prospector). Currently there isn’t much to see there as they move from a test version to the production version.
What can faculty do?
- Consider publishing your scholarly article in a peer-reviewed Open Access journal. Consult DOAJ for lists of appropriate journals.
- When publishing in a non-OA journal, retain the right to place pre- and post-prints into an institutional or disciplinary repository. Enlist the aid of the SPARC Addendum.
- Keep current of Open Access issues and news. For instance, Open Access News is the place to go for current news on the OA front. The only problem is keeping up with the many updates per day.
- For encouraging OA at the College level see the new white paper Open Doors and Open Minds: What faculty authors can do to ensure open access to their work through their institution
from SPARC and Science Commons.
Further Reading
- Periodicals Price Survey 2008: Embracing Openness: Global initiatives and startling successes hint at the profound implications of open access on journal publishing. (From Library Journal)
- Citation Advantage of Open Access Articles Eysenbach G, PLoS Biology Vol. 4, No. 5, e157 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0040157