National licence negotiations advancing the open access transition – a view from the UK

Author: Liam Earney

Jisc Collections has had agreements with open access (OA) publishers since the mid-2000s. In 2014, following the UK government’s response to the Finch Report, it started to target hybrid OA via ‘offsetting agreements’ that covered both subscriptions and article processing charges for OA.

This article will provide a status update on OA negotiations in the UK in the context of the UK’s progress towards OA. It will look at some of the concerns about the progress of OA in the UK, how negotiations have evolved in response, and will look at prospects for their future direction.

URL : National licence negotiations advancing the open access transition – a view from the UK

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.413

National licence negotiations advancing the open access transition – a view from Sweden

Authors : Anna Lundén, Camilla Smith, Britt-Marie Wideberg

The National Library of Sweden (NLS) has been working on advancing open access (OA) to scholarly output since 2006. In 2017 the NLS received an appropriation directive from the Government to act as a national co-ordinating body in the effort towards a transition to immediate OA for all research output by 2026.

As a consequence, the NLS has included this objective in its vision for 2025: to lead the work moving from subscription-based to immediate openly accessible research publications. As part of this objective, the Bibsam Consortium negotiates journal licence agreements including OA components in order to help achieve a rapid and sustainable transition to OA.

URL : National licence negotiations advancing the open access transition – a view from Sweden

DOI : http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.413

Open Data Maturity in Europe 2016 : Insights into the European state of play

Authors : Wendy Carrara, Margriet Nieuwenhuis, Heleen Vollers

This report is the second in a series of annual studies and explores the level of Open Data Maturity in the EU28 and Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein – referred to as EU28+. The measurement is built on two key indicators Open Data Readiness and Portal Maturity, thereby covering the level of development of national activities promoting Open Data as well as the level of development of national portals.

In 2016, with a 28.6% increase compared to 2015, the EU28+ countries completed over 55% of their Open Data journey showing that, by 2016, a majority of the EU28+ countries have successfully developed a basic approach to address Open Data.

The Portal Maturity level increased by 22.6 percentage points from 41.7% to 64.3% thanks to the development of more advanced features on country data portals. The overall Open Data Maturity groups countries into different clusters: Beginners, Followers, Fast Trackers and Trend Setters.

Barriers do remain to move Open Data forward. The report concludes on a series of recommendations, providing countries with guidance to further improve Open Data maturity.

Countries need to raise more (political) awareness around Open Data, increase automated processes on their portals to increase usability and re-usability of data, and organise more events and trainings to support both local and national initiatives.

URL : Open Data Maturity in Europe 2016 : Insights into the European state of play

Alternative location : https://www.europeandataportal.eu/sites/default/files/edp_landscaping_insight_report_n2_2016.pdf

Open access availability of scientific publications

Author : Science-Metrix Inc.

This report details population-level measurements of the open access (OA) availability of publications indexed in two bibliometric databases—the Web of Science (WoS) by Clarivate Analytics and Scopus by Elsevier. This was achieved by matching the bibliometric database populations to the 1science database to determine the availability of the papers in OA form.

A comparative analysis of the recall and precision levels of the 1science database was performed using Scopus and the WoS. This helped to characterize the 1science database. Two policy-relevant indicators were selected for in-depth analyses: country affiliation of authors on publications, and scientific disciplines. These indicators were selected because they are very frequently used in bibliometric studies, including those performed by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and they appear in the NSF’s Science and Engineering Indicators.

URL : http://www.science-metrix.com/sites/default/files/science-metrix/publications/science-metrix_open_access_availability_scientific_publications_report.pdf

The Dutch Approach to Achieving Open Access

Authors : Maria A.M. Heijne, Wilma J.S.M. van Wezenbeek

In this paper, the authors – both of whom are library directors and involved in the contract negotiations with the bigger scientific publishers – present the conditions that formed the Dutch approach in these negotiations.

A combination of clear political support, a powerful delegation, a unique bargaining model and fidelity to their principles geared the Dutch to their success in achieving open access. The authors put these joint license and open access negotiations in the perspective of open science and show that they are part of the transition towards open access.

URL : https://edoc.hu-berlin.de/handle/18452/19356

 

Monitoring the transition to open access: December 2017

The studies on which this report is based were undertaken by a team led by Michael Jubb and comprising Andrew Plume, Stephanie Oeben and Lydia Brammer, Elsevier; Rob Johnson and Cihan Bütün, Research Consulting; Stephen Pinfield, University of Sheffield.

Following the Finch Report in 2012, Universities UK established an Open Access Coordination Group to support the transition to open access (OA)  for articles in scholarly journals. The Group  commissioned an initial report published in 2015 to gather evidence on key features of that transition.

This second report aims to build on those findings, and to examine trends  over the period since the major funders of research in the UK established new policies to promote OA.

URL : Monitoring the transition to open access: December 2017

Publications en libre accès en biologie–médecine : historique et état des lieux en 2016

Auteurs/Authors : Christophe Boudry, Manuel Durand-Barthez

L’apparition du mouvement « open access » (libre accès, LA) et des archives ouvertes a bouleversé (et bouleverse encore) l’économie et l’accès aux publications scientifiques. L’objectif de cet article est de réactualiser et compléter les résultats des études antérieures qui ont tenté de quantifier l’importance du LA dans le domaine de la biologie/médecine, par le biais d’un focus sur la base de données bibliographiques PubMed.

Une analyse des publications en LA dans PubMed en fonction de l’origine géographique des auteurs a également été menée (pays et continents) et un certain nombre de paramètres liés au LA (évolution du nombre de journaux en LA, nombre de mandats et d’archives ouvertes par pays et continents) ont également été étudiés et mis en perspective. Les résultats mettent en évidence que les pourcentages d’articles dont le texte intégral et disponible en LA ne cessent de progresser et concernent en 2015, 39,1 % des articles disponibles dans PubMed.

L’analyse géographique des 25 pays les plus productifs et des continents montre une grande variabilité concernant le pourcentage d’articles en LA (de 21,9 % pour l’Italie à 42,08 % pour les États-Unis et de 22,80 % pour l’Océanie à 40,84 % pour l’Amérique du Nord).

Par ailleurs, nos données montrent que le nombre de mandats et d’archives ouvertes n’est pas corrélé de manière significative au pourcentage d’articles en LA au niveau national et continental, confirmant ainsi que les politiques publiques successives ou les mandats relatifs au LA n’ont eu qu’une influence, sinon secondaire, du moins inférieure aux attentes.

La mise en place de mandats plus coercitifs parviendra peut-être à obtenir des effets plus significatifs à plus ou moins long terme. L’augmentation régulière du nombre de journaux en LA, concomitante à l’augmentation avérée du nombre de citations des articles en LA, amplifiera certainement encore l’attrait des auteurs pour le LA.

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jemep.2017.02.021