Open Access: Understanding the New Environment, University of Kent, 23 October 2013

Dr Steven Hill, Head of Research Policy, HEFCE

Outlined HEFCE’s current approach to Open Access for the REF after 2014.

He explained that the REF principles were to:

·         Maximise access to outputs

·         Sustain scholarly communication

·         Continue to evaluate the approach to Open Access

The current position is that outputs submitted to the post-2014 REF should be Open Access

However, “the challenge is in the detail, not the overall aims”

Consultation about this detail has just ended http://www.hefce.ac.uk/whatwedo/rsrch/rinfrastruct/oa/

Decisions need to be made about:

1.       The proposed criteria for open access.  How do we judge whether an output is Open Access? HEFECE proposes that to be Open Access an output should be:

 Accessible through a UK HEI repository

Available as the final peer-review text as a minimum

Does not need to be publicly available at the time of the REF deadline but en route to be so

May have embargo periods

Should allow manual and automatic search and re-use of content including downloading and text-mining

2.       The definition of the research outputs to which the criteria will apply. HEFCE proposes these will be:

Journal articles

Conference proceedings

Not monographs (Professor Geoffrey Crossick, University of London, leading investigations into monographs)

A two year notice period of the OA requirement will apply

 

3.       The proposed approaches to allowing exceptions from the open-access requirement. These are EITHER that this could be on a case by case basis with 100% as the target OR that different percentage targets are set for each panel.

Professor Rosemary Hunter, Professor of Law, Kent Law School

Talked about her experiences establishing an Open Access journal feminists@law

She wished to dispel the myth that free online journals are vanity publishing.  In her opinion the benefits of “Diamond” or “Platinum” publishing via a free open access online journal (neither Gold, nor Green but in-between) are:

·         No Article Processing Charges (APCs)needed

·         Citation statistics prove that OA articles are more frequently cited

·         Free Open Source journal software can be used

·         Less well–endowed institutions who cannot afford to pay APC’s can produce OA articles

Business model/Design

Open Journal System software used (flexible and with a good back end for referencing, editing, admin work)

Hosted in USA at a cost of £500 a year (financed by Information Services at University of Kent)

“Free” academic labour for review, editing, proof reading

Kent therefore has an established model for hosting open access journals. See http://www.kent.ac.uk/library/research/open-access/index.html?tab=oa-journals

 Kevin Ashley, Director, Digital Curation Centre

Talked about Research Data Management for Open Access

“Because good research needs good data”

RCUK Common Principles on Data Policy http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/Pages/DataPolicy.aspx

Digital Curation Centre provides training, guidance, overview of funders’ data policies, example data management plans http://www.dcc.ac.uk/about-us

Also Digital Curation Centre/University of Cambridge/University of Glasgow Incremental project - Really useful resources and guidance on research data management and open access http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/dataman/

See Carly Strasser’s blog Data Pub California Digital Library http://datapub.cdlib.org/

Dr Michael Jubb, Research Information Network

Open Access – where are we now?

Explained the background to the 2012 Finch Report http://www.researchinfonet.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Finch-Group-report-FINAL-VERSION.pdf which was followed by the RCUK policy on Open Access http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/documents/documents/RCUKOpenAccessPolicy.pdf

Finch committee met a few weeks ago and a 2^nd Finch report is coming out.

RIN have published a report on how universities are coping with implementing the RCUK Open Access requirements http://www.researchinfonet.org/publish/rcuk-oa-requirements/

Lively debate has followed the Finch report including two parliamentary debates.  See the Sep 2012 House of Commons Select Committee on Business, Innovations and Skills report on Open Access publishing http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmbis/99/9911.htm

Among other things, this recommends that more weight be given to the Green route and that funding should not be given for APCs for hybrid journals because this effectively means that funders/universities are paying twice: once for publication and once for subscription.  Unresolved tension exists between the Gold and the Green route.