Open Access Policy: Numbers, Analysis, Effectiveness

“The PASTEUR4OA project is focused on Open Access policy developments and is undertaking a number of activities relating to policy, including mapping policies and policy-related activities, and engaging with policymakers and providing them with information about the general policy picture and what makes a policy effective.
Work Package 3 involved a set of tasks as follows:
  • Describe and enumerate the policy picture in Europe and around the world
  • Rebuild ROARMAP, the registry of OA policies, including the development of a new, detailed classification scheme that describes policy elements
  • Collect data on the levels of Open Access material in institutional repositories around the world
  • Measure policy outcomes and analyse what elements of a policy contribute to its effectiveness
The project sought out policies that exist but had not been registered in ROARMAP, and added more than 250 new entries to the database. The total number of policies globally is now 663 (March 2015), 60% of them from Europe. Of these, approximately two-thirds are institutional policies and about 10% are funder policies. Over half are mandatory, requiring some action rather than simply requesting it and over 60% of these mandatory policies are European.
ROARMAP, the policy registry, has been rebuilt with a new classification scheme for policies that records far more detail about them than before and permits much more extensive search functionality than previously. The scheme includes criteria for deposit and licensing conditions, rights holding, embargo lengths and ‘Gold’ Open Access publishing options.Links to policy documents are provided. Repository managers at policy institutions were contacted to check that we had the correct details for their policy and where necessary corrections were made. As it stands, at the end of this period of concentrated and meticulous work, ROARMAP reflects an accurate and detailed picture of the Open Access policy situation around the world.
The project also examined policy effectiveness. Three main exercises were undertaken. First, deposit rates were measured for articles in the repositories of both mandated and non-mandated institutions, and compared to the total number of articles published from these institutions. The material was identified as Metadata-Only, Full-Text, Open Access and Restricted Access. Open Access and Restricted Access are subsets of Full-Text and together comprise the whole of that category. Restricted Access means full-text articles that are showing only their metadata, with the text itselfclosed off, and are usually in this state for a period of embargo.
Across all institutions, more than three-quarters of published articles are not deposited at all, 8% are Metadata-Only, 3% Restricted Access and 12% Open Access. The rates vary by discipline. Deposit of Open Access material was over four times as high (14%) for institutions with a mandatory policy than for those without (3%). The top 20 institutions (all mandated) in terms of amount of repository content are listed. The top five are the University of Liège (Belgium), Instituto Politecnico de Bragança (Portugal), the National Institute of Oceanography (India), University of Pretoria (South Africa) and the University of Minho (Portugal).

Second, the time lag between publication and deposit of articles (deposit latency, which may be negative if the article is deposited before publication) was measured. Open Access items tend to be deposited later than Restricted Access ones, and latency periods tend to be longer in mandated institutions than in non-mandated ones (though deposits themselves are four times higher), probably because authors who deposit voluntarily are self-motivated and will do it early.
Third, we examined the deposit rate in relation to different policy criteria:
  • Positive correlations were found between Open Access and Restricted Access deposit rates and the following policy criteria: Must deposit, Cannot waive deposit, Link to research evaluation, Cannot waive rights retention, Must make item Open Access
  • Negative correlation was found with Cannot waive Open Access
  • Significant correlation was found between Open Access deposit rate and Must deposit and Cannot waive deposit
Fourth, we examined the correlation between deposit latency (specifically, the latency of deposit within the first year after publication) and different policy criteria. There is positive correlation between early deposit and Mandate age, Cannot waive rights retention and deposit immediately. We found significant correlation between early Open Access deposits and the age of the mandate: that is, the longer a mandatory policy has been in place, the more effective it can become.
As the numbers stand at the moment (March 2015), there are not yet enough OA policies to test whether other policy conditions would further contribute to mandate effectiveness. The current findings, however, already suggest that it would be useful for future mandates to adopt these conditions so as to maximise the growth of OA.
This analysis provides a list of criteria around which we recommend policies should align:
  • Must deposit (i.e. deposit is mandatory)
  • Deposit cannot be waived
  • Link deposit with research evaluation”

URL : https://microblogging.infodocs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/PASTEUR4OA3.pdf

Related URL : http://pasteur4oa.eu/sites/pasteur4oa/files/deliverables/PASTEUR4OA%20Work%20Package%203%20Report%20final%2010%20March%202015.pdf

Performance of Mandated Institutional Repositories

Statut

“More and more Institutional Repositories are developed to promote the Green Open Access of research output (especially peer-reviewed journal articles). Since 2001, some institutions became adopting mandate policies aiming to mandate self-archiving by authors affiliated to these institutions This study was conducted in April, 2014 based on institutional mandates indexed by ROARMAP (the Registry of Open Access Repositories’ Mandatory Archiving Policies). A robot was developed to harvest IRs and check the status of articles (Open Access, Restricted Access or Metadata Only) and to extract the deposit date of article full-texts in IR. This study aims to analyse the performance of mandated institutional repositories from all over the world, especially in terms of deposit rates and deposit latency (difference between date of deposit and date of publication).”

URL : http://icoa2014.sciencesconf.org/38075

Degrees of Openness Access : Restrictions in Institutional Repositories

Statut

“Institutional repositories, green road and backbone of the open access movement, contain a growing number of items that are metadata without full text, metadata with full text only for authorized users, and items that are under embargo or that are restricted to on-campus access. This paper provides a short overview of relevant literature and presents empirical results from a survey of 25 institutional repositories that contain more than 2 million items. The intention is to evaluate their degree of openness with specific attention to different categories of documents (journal articles, books and book chapters, conference communications, electronic theses and dissertations, reports, working papers) and thus to contribute to a better understanding of their features and dynamics. We address the underlying question of whether this lack of openness is temporary due to the transition from traditional scientific communication to open access infrastructures and services, or here to stay, as a basic feature of the new and complex cohabitation of institutional repositories and commercial publishing.”

URL : http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july14/prost/07prost.html

Publisher Support for Self Archiving Laudatory or Predatory…

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Publisher Support for Self-Archiving: Laudatory or Predatory? :

“Most publishers with self-archiving policies in the SHERPA RoMEO database allow authors to deposit their articles in a repository or post them to a website – supporting the green route to open access. Nevertheless, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) enthusiastically endorsed legislation proposed and defeated twice in the United States to prohibit federal agencies from mandating repository deposits of articles reporting on research they funded. The AAP also endorsed the Finch Report issued in the United Kingdom. The Report denigrated repository deposits and elevated open access publishing – the gold route to open access – as the preferred path to expand public access. Given that the green route is more affordable than the gold route (Houghton et al 2009), that the green route exceeds the gold route in growth rate and proportion of articles available open access (Gargouri et al 2012), and that mandates increase repository deposits (Van Noorden 2013, Poynder May 2012), these are puzzling tactics for publishers professing to support self-archiving.
Despite conspicuous progress in providing open access to scholarly articles, there is a steady, unsettling undercurrent stirred by traditional publishers that could undermine the green route to open access. This article examines data and discourse to better understand publisher perspectives on self-archiving and, based on this understanding, urges action from open access advocates.”

URL : http://works.bepress.com/denise_troll_covey/79/

arXiv e-prints and the journal of record: An analysis of roles and relationships

Since its creation in 1991, arXiv has become central to the diffusion of research in a number of fields. Combining data from the entirety of arXiv and the Web of Science (WoS), this paper investigates (a) the proportion of papers across all disciplines that are on arXiv and the proportion of arXiv papers that are in the WoS, (b) elapsed time between arXiv submission and journal publication, and (c) the aging characteristics and scientific impact of arXiv e-prints and their published version.

It shows that the proportion of WoS papers found on arXiv varies across the specialties of physics and mathematics, and that only a few specialties make extensive use of the repository.

Elapsed time between arXiv submission and journal publication has shortened but remains longer in mathematics than in physics. In physics, mathematics, as well as in astronomy and astrophysics, arXiv versions are cited more promptly and decay faster than WoS papers.

The arXiv versions of papers – both published and unpublished – have lower citation rates than published papers, although there is almost no difference in the impact of the arXiv versions of both published and unpublished papers.

URL : http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.3261

The Critical Role of Institutional Services in Open…

Statut

The Critical Role of Institutional Services in Open Access Advocacy :

“This paper examines the development of the Open Access movement in scholarly communication, with particular attention to some of the rhetorical strategies and policy mechanisms used to promote it to scholars and scientists. Despite the majority of journal publishers’ acceptance of author self-archiving practices, and the minimal time commitment required by authors to successfully self-archive their work in disciplinary or institutional repositories, the majority of authors still by and large avoid participation. The paper reviews the strategies and arguments used for increasing author participation in open access, including the role of open access mandates. We recommend a service-oriented approach towards increasing participation in open access, rather than rhetoric that speculates on the benefits that open access will have on text/data mining innovation. In advocating for open access participation, we recommend focusing on its most universal and tangible purpose: increasing public open (gratis) access to the published results of publicly funded research. Researchers require strong institutional support to understand the copyright climate of open access self-archiving, user-friendly interfaces and useful metrics, such as repository usage statistics. We recommend that mandates and well-crafted and responsive author support services at universities will ultimately be required to ensure the growth of open access. We describe the mediated deposit service that was developed to support author self-archiving in Spectrum: Concordia University Research Repository. By comparing the number of deposits of non-thesis materials (e.g. articles and conference presentations) that were accomplished through the staff-mediated deposit service to the number of deposits that were author-initiated, we demonstrate the relative significance of this service to the growth of the repository.”

URL : http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/8.1.84

Incentives Integration and Mediation Sustainable Practices for Populating…

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Incentives, Integration, and Mediation: Sustainable Practices for Populating Repositories:

“There is an active, thriving community of open access repositories worldwide and their visibility is rising as funding agencies and governments implement open access policies. Still, repositories must continue to adopt strategies that demonstrate their value to the wider research community. Therefore COAR has now published the report, “Incentives, Integration, and Mediation: Sustainable Practices for Population Repositories”. It profiles a variety of successful practices for populating repositories from around the world. Aim of thie report is to assist the global repository community in implementing sustainable methods for recruiting content. The profiles were gathered from organizations across the globe, and represent a mixture of approaches involving the introduction of incentives; integration of the repository with other institutional services; and/or mediation of the deposit process. The practices reflect a tradition of innovation and openness in the repository community, and are characterized by creative approaches to staffing, imaginative software developments, and adoption of novel policies.”

URL : http://www.coar-repositories.org/activities/repository-content/sustainable-practices-for-populating-repositories-report/