Post on 23-Feb-2016
description
Open Access – views from the (SSAH) Learned Society and Author Perspective
V Gardner, Open Access Publisher Taylor & Francis / Routledge
Victoria.gardner@tandf.co.uk @TandFOpen
The Open Dichotomy
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• Most authors, learned societies and editors agree that openness and public access to content are strongly to be desired
• Our surveys show that although Open Access to research is a strong core value among many academic and scientific communities, there are concerns, especially around:
economic and financial impacts quality and peer review
standards licensing and reusability
(variance between subjects)
What about IP?
What about permissions for 3rd party content and
CC BY?
Open Access economics
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• National Humanities Alliance Report, July 2009, based on 8 large US society Humanities and Social Science journals
• $9,994 average cost to publish an HSS article in 2007 – vs $2,670 in STM
• Why the difference? – typical HSS article is 19 pages, STM is 12 pages; rejection rate 89% in HSS, 58% in STM
• Conclusion: OA ‘author pays’ model is not financially viable in Humanities and Social Sciences
However, there are a significant
number of (platinum) OA
journals in SSAH
http://www.nhalliance.org/bm~doc/hssreport.pdf
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Learned Society Concerns• Loss of income
– Reduced ability to mentor researchers, subsidise conference and networking events, offer grants and bursaries, and so on.
• “What about early career researchers?”• Quality
– Concerns about a need to increase throughout to remain viable
• The Embargo and Hybrid debates• Resource
– complex issues around OA, APC systems…• BUT, public access to research is
desirable
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T&F 2013 Open Access Survey: Method
• E-mail inviting participation sent to 83k authors
• 14,769 respondents – 19% response rate
• 95% assurance that any result from survey lies within 1% of the view of the T&F author community
• http://www.tandfonline.com/page/openaccess/opensurvey
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SSAH Author Concerns• A cultural chasm
– Green OA the default for SSAH– ‘research less important’ than in
e.g. biomedicine• Funding funding funding!
– diverted to APCs– Given to the most research
intensive HEIs• Academic freedom
– Further (internal) review of research
– funders are clear that publication outlet choice is down to the researcher
– “it won’t affect me”
“I think Open Access is
fundamental to accountability for
huge public funding … and to socially transfer our emerging
knowledge .. costs … are prohibitive for early career staff who need
publications to get funding of any kind
..”
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“Open Access is unworkable for the Humanities”I work in Education where there is little
funding available and I have never heard of a funder paying for publication
of the funded research results in an open access journal, I think that any
such cost will need be met by academics and their departments and, as such, is a completely unsustainable
model.
Researchers in the humanities mostly do not have institutional funds to pay author
charges. If such charges are required for publication, there will be a significant
drop in the usefulness of research in the
humanities.
Open Access is particularly unsuited to research in humanities subjects, which is often not grant-funded. It is a model for science which is being
crudely applied everywhere, where it will do considerable damage and bring very few
benefits.
Pay to publish is a serious risk to the diversity of academic work - in the Humanities there is a significant push to support OA in
theory, but absolutely no money to do so. Pay to publish fees will make the engines of scholarship and tenure available only to
those with resources.
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“Open Access is the future”I am strongly in favor of OA. It is more fair to
those from small institutions or without formal affiliation, and it increases visibilty
and spread of research. .. Although I think that open access/electronic publication is the way of the future, there is
ambivalence about how articles published in this way "count" towards tenure and promotion. Hence my (and
others) reluctance to submit to them now.
The sooner the control that a very few people exercise over the dissemination of research
ceases to exist, the better.
My issue is that my work is paid for through tax and should be
available freely to tax payers as a result. However, what format
this is in (online only subscription article; abridged full access
version; 1000 word blog post) may determine how OA shapes
up.
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Authors’ Views on OA
Authors’ Views on Peer Review
“When publishing open access, I would find the following kinds of peer review suitable for my research:”
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Authors’ Views on Re-use
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Authors’ Licences Preferences
The Way Forward
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• Advocacy and Education– correct misunderstandings but discuss valid
concerns• Consultation and Compromise
– One size does not fit all– Academy of Social Sciences / ESRC (UK)
Learned Societies Project• Value of Learned Societies
– Stewards of Early Career Researchers– Conferences aid networking– Grants, bursaries, etc– Promote scholarship and knowledge
exchange
Open Access at T&F
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• Pure Open Access – Gold OA option• Hybrid Open Access
– Gold OA option– Green OA option
• Waivers offered to developing country authors
• Author choice emphasised, as well as funder compliance facilitated
• CC BY, CC BY-NC and T&F OA LTP (based on CC BY-NC-ND with TDM permitted)
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Introducing….
Coming soon:Cogent Behavioral ScienceCogent BiologyCogent EngineeringCogent EducationCogent HumanitiesCogent MedicineCogent Physics
@CogentOAhttp://www.cogentoa.com/
Cogent OA benefits from the resources and experiences of a major publisher, but otherwise operates autonomously.