Open access central funds in UK universities …

Open access central funds in UK universities :

“This paper reports on the extent to which higher education institutions in the UK have set up central funds and similar institutionally co-ordinated approaches to the payment of open access article-processing charges. It presents data demonstrating that central funds have only been set up by a minority of institutions and that the number of institutions has not changed significantly between 2009 and 2011. It then explores the barriers to the establishment of such funds and discusses recent developments that might lower these barriers. Finally, it provides a case study of the development of the central fund at the University of Nottingham in the UK and considers the sustainability of such an approach.”

URL : http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/alpsp/lp/2012/00000025/00000002/art00005
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1087/20120205

Online survey on scientific information in the digital…

Online survey on scientific information in the digital age :

“The public consultation ‘Online survey on scientific information in the digital age’ spurred great interest among different categories of stakeholders, with 1 140 responses received. The Commission received responses from 42 countries, including from all Member States except Ireland, Malta, Slovenia and Slovakia, with 37 % of all responses submitted by German respondents.

Respondents were asked if there is no access problem to scientific publications in Europe: 84 % disagreed or disagreed strongly with the statement. The high prices of journals/subscriptions (89 %) and limited library budgets (85 %) were signalled as the most important barriers to accessing scientific publications. More than 1 000 respondents (90 %) supported the idea that publications resulting from publicly funded research should, as a matter of principle, be in open access (OA) mode. An even higher number of respondents (91 %) agreed or agreed strongly that OA increased access to and dissemination of scientific publications. Self-archiving (‘green OA’) or a combination of self-archiving and OA publishing (‘gold OA’) were identified as the preferred ways that public research policy should facilitate in order to increase the number and share of scientific publications available in OA. Respondents were asked, in the case of self-archiving (‘green OA’), what the desirable embargo period is (period of time during which publication is not yet open access): a six-month period was favoured by 56 % of respondents (although 25 % disagree with this option).

As for the question of access to research data, the vast majority of respondents (87 %) disagreed or disagreed strongly with the statement that there is no access problem for research data in Europe. The barriers to access research data considered very important or important by respondents were: lack of funding to develop and maintain the necessary infrastructures (80 %); the insufficient credit given to researchers for making research data available (80 %); and insufficient national/regional strategies/policies (79 %). There was strong support (90 % of responses) for research data that is publicly available and results
from public funding to be, as a matter of principle, available for reuse and free of charge on the Internet. Lower support (72 % of responses) was given for data resulting from partly publicly and partly privately funded research.

Responding to the question asking whether preservation of scientific information is at present sufficiently addressed, 64 % of the respondents disagreed or disagreed strongly. The main barriers signalled in this area were: uncertainty as to who is responsible for preserving scientific information (80 %); the quality and interoperability of repositories (78 %); and the lack of a harmonised approach to legal deposit (69 %).”

URL : http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/survey-on-scientific-information-digital-age_en.pdf

The Inevitability of Open Access Open access…

The Inevitability of Open Access :

“Open access (OA) is an alternative business model for the publication of scholarly journals. It makes articles freely available to readers on the Internet and covers the costs associated with publication through means other than subscriptions. This article argues that Gold OA, where all of the articles of a journal are available at the time of publication, is a disruptive innovation as defined by business theorist Clayton Christensen. Using methods described by Christensen we can predict the growth of Gold OA. This analysis suggests that Gold OA could account for 50% of the scholarly journal articles sometime between 2017 and 2021, and 90% of articles as soon as 2020 and more conservatively by 2025.”

URL : http://crl.acrl.org/content/early/2011/09/21/crl-299.full.pdf+html

Costs risks and benefits in improving access to…

Costs, risks and benefits in improving access to journal articles :

“This paper reports on a study – overseen by representatives of the publishing, library, and research funder communities in the UK – investigating the drivers, costs, and benefits of potential ways to increase access to scholarly journals. It identifies five different but realistic scenarios for moving towards that end over the next five years, including gold and green open access, moves towards national licensing, publisher-led delayed open access, and transactional models. It then compares and evaluates the benefits as well as the costs and risks for the UK. The scenarios, and the modelling on which they are based, amount to a benefit-cost analysis to help in appraising policy options. Our conclusion is that policymakers should encourage the use of existing subject and institutional repositories, but avoid pushing for reductions in embargo periods, which might put at risk the sustainability of the underlying scholarly publishing system. They should also promote and facilitate a transition to gold open access, while seeking to ensure that the average level of publication fees does not exceed c.?2.000; that the rate in the UK of open access publication is broadly in step with the rest of the world; and that total payments to publishers from UK universities do not rise as a consequence.”

URL : http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/alpsp/lp/2011/00000024/00000004/art00002?token=004f18031db1d5e76e586546243138425b20632136702a5f705e4e2663433b393f6a333f2566a11

DINI Certificate Document and Publication Services 2010…

DINI Certificate “Document and Publication Services” 2010 :

“In summer 2010 the DINI working group for Electronic Publishing released the third edition of the DINI Certificate “Document and Publication Services” and by this adapted the well-established criteria catalogue for scholarly repository services to current developments. Now, the English version of the DINI Certificate 2010 has been made available to the public.

The global scientific communication system is subject to a fundamental transition process. Due to new opportunities arising from the internet and other information and communication technologies and also to the changing requirements of scholars and scientists, new means and channels for scientific communication develop. A leading development is the global Open Access movement committed to the idea of freely available scientific and scholarly publications.

To support the numerous developments in Germany and to set common standards for publication infrastructures DINI’s Electronic Publishing working group embraced this topic early on and in 2002 published its first recommendations for “Electronic Publishing in Higher Education”. Based on these documents, the working group formulated criteria and formalized them in the DINI Certificate “Document and Publication Services”. Following the 2004 and 2007 editions, 2010 is the third version of the document. The certificate describes technical, organisational and legal aspects that should be considered in the process of setting up and operating a scholarly repository service and puts considerable interest in Open Access. The aim of DINI is to move forward towards a standardised and interoperable repository landscape to improve the visibility and linkages of scientific publications. During the years the DINI certificate has gained reputation as standard-setting authority for repositories.

The latest edition of the DINI certificate addresses particularly the following aspects:
– The growing importance of the “golden road” to Open Access.
– The increased demand for interoperability with comprehensive services.
– The growing technical virtualization of Document and Publication Services (hosting of services).
– A comprehensive view of the scientific and scholarly research processes.”

URL : https://arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/5803.html

Results of the SOAP Survey: EIFL Partner…

Results of the SOAP Survey: EIFL Partner Countries :

“The SOAP (Study of Open Access Publishing) project has run a large-scale survey of the attitudes of researchers on, and the experiences with, open access publishing. In the SOAP Symposium on 13 January 2011 in Berlin, the results of the SOAP Survey were made publicly available. “Highlights from the SOAP project survey. What Scientists Think about Open Access Publishing” article is available in arXiv presenting preliminary analysis of the survey responses. To allow a maximal re-use of the information collected by this survey, the data were released under a CC0 waiver, so to allow libraries, publishers, funding agencies and academics to further analyse risks and opportunities, drivers and barriers, in the transition to open access publishing.

SURFfoundation made the first overview of the SOAP survey results, tailored to the situation in the Netherlands. Marnix van Berchum and Annemiek van der Kuil selected the questions and the selection should be considered as a first attempt to analyse the SOAP data for the Dutch situation. Further analysis could include different questions, and comparisons with other countries. SURFfoundation also invited others to make use of the SOAP data, to make their own analyses.

We followed the approach of the SURFfoundation and made the first overview of the SOAP survey results, tailored to the situation in 11 EIFL partner countries: Bulgaria, China, Egypt, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa, Thailand and Ukraine.”

URL : http://www.eifl.net/news/results-soap-survey-eifl-partner-countries

Open Access monographic publishing in th…

Open Access monographic publishing in the humanities :

“In recent years, it has become widely recognized that in the case of monographs, the traditional business model for books is losing its sustainability. Academic publishers have been forced to become more selective in the books they publish, and authors, in particular young researchers and first time authors, have found it harder to find a press willing to publish their work. In response to the economic restraints of printed monographs, many publishers and academic institutes, in particular research libraries, have started to experiment with digital and Open Access publication of monographs.

OAPEN is the first international project to develop an Open Access model for publishers and stakeholders in scholarly communication. OAPEN stands for Open Access Publishing in European Networks. It is a 30 month project co-funded by the European Union, to develop and implement an Open Access (OA) publication model for peer reviewed academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS).”

URL : http://iospress.metapress.com/content/l6wg61l0mg6426w8/