OA Landmarks & Bookmarks

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Alycia Sellie

Lots of things have been moving recently surrounding open access. Here are just a few bits of news we’re excited about, many of which were brought to our attention and celebrated by our fellow CUNY librarians:

Thanks to our colleagues for emailing and sharing all of this OA news!

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Explaining Open Access Journals with the Language of Math (for Those Who Like that Sort of Thing)

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Jill Cirasella

In my experience, the #1 confusion about open access journals (that is, “gold” open access journals, or journals that are made fully and immediately open access by their publishers) is the meaning of the word “open.”  Some mistakenly think that “open” has to do with how easy it is to publish in those journals.  But that is decidedly not the case.  No, the “open” in “open access journals” means that the journals make their content freely available online for all to read.  Put differently:

open access = anyone can read the journal
open access ≠ anyone can publish in the journal

This is hugely important: open access publishing is not self-publishing or vanity publishing!  Of course, just as some non-OA journals are higher quality and more selective than others, some OA journals are higher quality and more selective than others.  Before submitting an article to any journal, take a close look at its articles, authors, and editors!

So, I like to use those two pseudo-equations to clarify open access, and I’m finding that a Cartesian graph comes in handy too, to explain that the openness of a journal is completely independent of the journal’s quality or rigor.

Imagine a graph with an x-axis and y-axis, where the x-axis is level of openness, and the y-axis is the quality or rigor or prestige. There are journals in all four quadrants: excellent subscription-based journals, excellent open access journals, crappy subscription journals, and crappy open access journals.

Cartesian graph - openness and quality

I’m an advocate for open access publishing, so I wish I could say that all open access journals are high quality.  But I can’t.  Unfortunately, wherever there is a chance for a profit, there will be profiteers.  And recently there has been an explosion of “predatory” open access journals whose mission is profit, not the dissemination of scholarly information.  It’s not that they publish scholarship and happen to have fees to cover expenses.  No, it’s that they charge fees to make a profit and happen to publish some articles, many of questionable quality. For more about predatory open access journals, see Jeffrey Beall’s List of Potential, Possible, or Probable Predatory Scholarly Open-Access Publishers.  Unfortunately, by having shady practices, these journals put the reputation of open access more generally at risk.  But don’t let these predatory journals turn you against open access.  Remember, there are also very excellent (top-tier, high-impact, etc.) open access journals!

So what’s the upshot of all this?  We must carefully evaluate all journals – print or electronic, subscription or open access!

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Advocate for OA in New York State!

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Alycia Sellie

The New York State Higher Education Initiative (NYSHEI) is calling for your help in conveying the importance of open access to New York representatives in Albany. The NYSHEI-drafted bill, TAPFR – Taxpayer Access to Publicly Funded Research (A.180/S.4050), will be presented to the state legislature shortly.

NYSHEI’s TAPFR Policy Paper describes the goals of this bill:

  • each researcher funded totally or partially by New York State taxes submit an electronic copy of a manuscript that has been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal;
  • that the manuscript is preserved digitally in a repository that provides free public access and long-term preservation; and,
  • free, online access is publicly available no later than six months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

NYSHEI is asking that anyone who has an interest in open access write to their representatives. They are also providing a sample TAPFR Letter of Support that you could use as a spring board for your own letter.

New York, by becoming the first among states to adopt an open access policy, would give its research and researchers an advantage over colleagues in other states.  Making discovered knowledge more available leads to greater influence as the work is more available for citations.  Additionally students, faculty, and the academic institutions themselves will benefit through lower costs and more access to peer-reviewed scholarship.

Please help NYSHEI and New York and show your support for openness and public access to publicly-funded work!

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Event Announcement: “Open, Connected, Accessible: Navigating the Road to Digital Scholarship”

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Jill Cirasella

“Open, Connected, Accessible: Navigating the Road to Digital Scholarship”

Date: Thursday, April 18, 2013
Time: 2:30-4pm
Location: 6304.01, Psychology Department, Graduate Center
Hashtag: #DigitalGC

How are digital technologies changing how we, as academics, do our jobs? What are the implications for faculty, for graduate students, and those in between? This conversation will highlight the most crucial issues in higher education and offer guideposts about how to navigate the road to scholarship in the digital era.

Publishing & Open Access in the Digital Era

  • Jill Cirasella, Assistant Professor, Library Department, Brooklyn College (for a few more weeks) & Graduate Center (in a few weeks), @jillasella

Networked Scholarly Collaboration and the CUNY Academic Commons

  • Matthew K. Gold, Associate Professor, English, City Tech, @mkgold

Tools for Making Scholarship Accessible

  • Joan Greenbaum, Professor Emerita, City University of New York, @Ashanda100
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Interview with Peter Suber

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Madeline Cohen

Peter Suber: The Imperative of Open Access

Project Information Literacy, “Smart Talks,” no. 14, March 27, 2013

http://projectinfolit.org/st/suber.asp  Text of interview

“Peter Suber, Director of the Harvard Open Access Project, is the undisputed authority on open access. He is also the unofficial, though widely acknowledged, leader of the worldwide movement to make published scholarly works—books and journals—open access…

We interviewed Peter in February 2013. We discussed what open access means to scholarly communication, students, and libraries, and the work that lies ahead.”

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The Clarion Covers Open Access — Not Once, Not Twice, but Three Times!

Posted on March 16, 2013 by Jill Cirasella

In the past few months, the Clarion, the newspaper of the PSC-CUNY, has published three in-depth articles about open access to scholarly literature and textbooks.

  • “Open Access Comes to CUNY” by Nancy Scola summarizes the big Open Access Week 2012 event at the Graduate Center and introduces many key open access concepts and tools: open access journals, institutional repositories, subject repositories, SHERPA/RoMEO, the advantages for faculty and CUNY of open access, and efforts at CUNY toward creating an institutional repository.

Three is great, but they’re not done yet!  The Clarion also welcomes us to send letters to the editor and/or article ideas about open access to their editor, Peter Hogness, phogness [at] pscmail.org.

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Teaching about Open Access Without Saying “Open Access”

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Jill Cirasella

Do you know anyone who, full of misconceptions about open access, has a knee-jerk negative reaction to discussions of open access?  I certainly do.  Correcting the misconceptions that float around CUNY (and everywhere) about open access (e.g., the mistaken notion that “open access” means “vanity publishing,” the fear that open access leads to more plagiarism, the failure to realize that openness and rigorous peer review are completely independent issues) will take years of patient instruction.  One tactic to try now is teaching about open access without actually uttering the phrase “open access.”  I decided to give that approach a whirl in Brooklyn College’s upcoming newsletter for faculty; here is what I wrote:

After a journal accepts your article, you have to sign a copyright agreement — usually long, dense, and difficult to understand.  What exactly are you agreeing to when you sign that document?  Historically, you were signing away all rights to your article — only the publisher could copy, distribute, and republish your work.  Often, the agreement even prohibited you from sharing copies of your article with colleagues or students.  But you signed because you had to, because that’s what people who wanted tenure did.

Now, the vast majority of journals have more author-friendly agreements.  Some journals let authors retain copyright and simply ask for a license to the work.  Some journals still claim copyright but then give authors back a variety of rights, including the right to post the article online on a personal website, a disciplinary repository (e.g., arXiv, SSRN, RePEc), or an institutional repository (coming soon to CUNY, we hope!).  Some journals allow authors to self-archive the pre-refereed version of the article; some journal allow authors to self-archive the post-refereed version; some journals even allow authors to self-archive the final, formatted PDF version!  More specifically, according to SHERPA/RoMEO, a tool that summarizes journals’ copyright and self-archiving policies:

  • 87% of scholarly journals allow immediate self-archiving of some version of the article
  • 27% of scholarly journals allow immediate self-archiving of the pre-refereed version of the article
  • 44% of scholarly journals allow immediate self-archiving of the post-refereed version of the article
  • 16% of scholarly journals allow immediate self-archiving of the final, published PDF
  • After the expiration of embargo periods (usually 6 to 24 months), 94% allow self-archiving of the post-refereed or PDF version of the article

So, chances are that you have the right to make most of your articles freely available online.  Take advantage of your rights!  If you do, more readers will find your work, and more researchers will cite your work!  Learn more at the presentation about authors’ rights on Faculty Day (May 22)!

Yes, that blurb is entirely about green open access.  Nope, I didn’t use the phrase “open access” once.  If you know any open access naysayers, give this tactic a try.  And, of course, feel free to use (or improve upon!) my language.

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Viewpoints from NEJM on Open Access

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Madeline Cohen

These articles might be of interest, especially to science faculty:

For the Sake of Inquiry and Knowledge — The Inevitability of Open Access Ann J. Wolpert, M.L.S. N Engl J Med 2013; 368:785-787February 28, 2013DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1211410

Open but Not Free — Publishing in the 21st Century Martin Frank, Ph.D. N Engl J Med 2013; 368:787-789February 28, 2013DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1211259

The Downside of Open-Access Publishing Charlotte Haug, M.D., Ph.D. N Engl J Med 2013; 368:791-793February 28, 2013DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1214750

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Does the White House OA directive make FASTR irrelevant?

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Jill Cirasella

If you’ve been following the national open access news, you probably noticed that the White House’s directive to federal agencies to implement open access policies was announced very shortly after the FASTR open access bill was introduced.  And you probably wondered about the relationship of the directive to FASTR. Does the directive make FASTR irrelevant? Does FASTR make the directive unnecessary? No, says open access expert Peter Suber: “The two approaches complement one another.”

Here are a few highlights from Suber’s excellent clarification of the relationship between the directive and FASTR:

  • “FASTR does not make the White House directive unnecessary. FASTR may never be adopted. And if it is adopted, it will be after some time for study, education, lobbying, amendment, negotiation, and debate. By contrast, the White House directive takes effect today.”
  • “Similarly, the White House directive does not make FASTR unnecessary. On the contrary, we need legislation to codify federal OA policies. The next president could rescind today’s White House directive, but could not rescind legislation.”
  • “Both ask a wide range of federal funding agencies to require OA for the results of the research they fund. But the new directive applies to more agencies. . . . FASTR applies to about 11 agencies and the directive to about 19. Among the agencies omitted by FASTR but covered by the directive are USAid and the Smithsonian Institution.”
  • “Both put a limit on permissible embargoes, but the directive allows longer embargoes. FASTR caps embargos at six months, and the directive caps them at 12 months.”
  • “FASTR is silent on data, but the White House directive requires OA for articles (Section 3) and OA for data (Section 4).”

On its own, the White House directive is fantastic.  Combined with FASTR, it can be much, much better.

So, no, they don’t make each other irrelevant.

And, yes, please keep doing everything you can do to increase FASTR’s chances of success.  The Alliance for Taxpayer Access explains how.

 

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Obama + OA = ObamA!

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Jill Cirasella

OA advocates now have a major new ally: the Obama administration!

Remember that “We the People” petition in support of open access I urged you to sign? Well, it (along with other efforts) worked!  The White House responded yesterday with the following statement.  (The TL;DR version: The administration is directing all federal agencies that fund more than $100M in research to develop plans to make resulting research articles open access within 12 months of publication.  In other words: a huge expansion of the NIH open access mandate.  Also: almost exactly what FASTR asks for!)

Increasing Public Access to the Results of Scientific Research

By Dr. John Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

Thank you for your participation in the We the People platform. The Obama Administration agrees that citizens deserve easy access to the results of research their tax dollars have paid for. As you may know, the Office of Science and Technology Policy has been looking into this issue for some time and has reached out to the public on two occasions for input on the question of how best to achieve this goal of democratizing the results of federally-funded research. Your petition has been important to our discussions of this issue.

The logic behind enhanced public access is plain. We know that scientific research supported by the Federal Government spurs scientific breakthroughs and economic advances when research results are made available to innovators. Policies that mobilize these intellectual assets for re-use through broader access can accelerate scientific breakthroughs, increase innovation, and promote economic growth. That’s why the Obama Administration is committed to ensuring that the results of federally-funded scientific research are made available to and useful for the public, industry, and the scientific community.

Moreover, this research was funded by taxpayer dollars. Americans should have easy access to the results of research they help support.

To that end, I have issued a memorandum today (.pdf) to Federal agencies that directs those with more than $100 million in research and development expenditures to develop plans to make the results of federally-funded research publically available free of charge within 12 months after original publication. As you pointed out, the public access policy adopted by the National Institutes of Health has been a great success. And while this new policy call does not insist that every agency copy the NIH approach exactly, it does ensure that similar policies will appear across government.

As I mentioned, these policies were developed carefully through extensive public consultation. We wanted to strike the balance between the extraordinary public benefit of increasing public access to the results of federally-funded scientific research and the need to ensure that the valuable contributions that the scientific publishing industry provides are not lost. This policy reflects that balance, and it also provides the flexibility to make changes in the future based on experience and evidence. For example, agencies have been asked to use a 12-month embargo period as a guide for developing their policies, but also to provide a mechanism for stakeholders to petition the agency to change that period. As agencies move forward with developing and implementing these polices, there will be ample opportunity for further public input to ensure they are doing the best possible job of reconciling all of the relevant interests.

In addition to addressing the issue of public access to scientific publications, the memorandum requires that agencies start to address the need to improve upon the management and sharing of scientific data produced with Federal funding. Strengthening these policies will promote entrepreneurship and jobs growth in addition to driving scientific progress. Access to pre-existing data sets can accelerate growth by allowing companies to focus resources and efforts on understanding and fully exploiting discoveries instead of repeating basic, pre-competitive work already documented elsewhere. For example, open weather data underpins the forecasting industry and provides great public benefits, and making human genome sequences publically available has spawned many biomedical innovations—not to mention many companies generating billions of dollars in revenues and the jobs that go with them. Going forward, wider availability of scientific data will create innovative economic markets for services related to data curation, preservation, analysis, and visualization, among others.

So thank you again for your petition. I hope you will agree that the Administration has done its homework and responded substantively to your request.

Hungry to learn more?  Here’s an article from the New York Times and a reaction from SPARC.  And my inarticulate Saturday morning reaction: !!!!!!!!!!

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