Study into licences used by Open Access journals

The Knowledge Exchange Licensing Expert Group has commissioned a study which examined which licences or licence provisions are being used by open access and hybrid publishers when making their publications available in open access. The study intended to identify a ‘best practice’ licence model framework and to formulate recommendations with respect to an OA licence structure, taking into account the commercial and non-commercial needs of authors as well as the publishers. The study was undertaken by Maverick Outsource Services Ltd. This led to the following recommendations for an optimum licence in an open access journal: The author retains copyright; The author or rightholder grants to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to the work, and besides a licence to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works in any digital medium for any reasonable purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship; A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository. This includes the permission as stated under 2, in a suitable standard electronic format; The copyright holder can retain the right to restrict commercial use if they wish; The copyright holder provides the publisher with permission to publish, subject to open accessibility of the work in online published form.

Meeting on Provisions in Licensing Incorporating new developments in daily licensing practice: Setting conditions for open access, patron driven access, and data & text mining

Following the workshop on new developments in daily licensing practice in November 2011, we brought together fourteen representatives from national consortia (from Denmark, Germany, Netherlands and the UK) and publishers (Elsevier, SAGE and Springer) met in Copenhagen on 9 March 2012 to discuss provisions in licences to accommodate new developments. The one day workshop aimed to: present background and ideas regarding the provisions KE Licensing Expert Group developed; introduce and explain the provisions the invited publishers currently use;ascertain agreement on the wording for long term preservation, continuous access and course packs; give insight and more clarity about the use of open access provisions in licences; discuss a roadmap for inclusion of the provisions in the publishers’ licences; result in report to disseminate the outcome of the meeting. Participants of the workshop were: United Kingdom: Lorraine Estelle (Jisc Collections) Denmark: Lotte Eivor Jørgensen (DEFF), Lone Madsen (Southern University of Denmark), Anne Sandfær (DEFF/Knowledge Exchange) Germany: Hildegard Schaeffler (Bavarian State Library), Markus Brammer (TIB) The Netherlands: Wilma Mossink (SURF), Nol Verhagen (University of Amsterdam), Marc Dupuis (SURF/Knowledge Exchange) Publishers: Alicia Wise (Elsevier), Yvonne Campfens (Springer), Bettina Goerner (Springer), Leo Walford (Sage) Knowledge Exchange: Keith Russell The main outcome of the workshop was that it would be valuable to have a standard set of clauses which could used in negotiations, this would make concluding licences a lot easier and more efficient. The comments on the model provisions the Licensing Expert group had drafted will be taken into account and the provisions will be reformulated. Data and text mining is a new development and demand for access to allow for this is growing. It would be easier if there was a simpler way to access materials so they could be more easily mined. However there are still outstanding questions on how authors of articles that have been mined can be properly attributed.

The impact of Open Access outside of European Universities

The Open Access movement has encouraged the availability of publicly-funded research papers, data and learning content for barrier-free use of that content without payment by the user. The impact of increasing availability of content to researchers in European universities is understood in terms of easier access to previous research and greater exposure for new research results, bringing benefits to the research community itself. A new culture of informal sharing is evident within the teaching and learning communities and to some extent also within the research community, but as yet the growth in informal sharing has not had a major effect upon the use of formal publication choices. This briefing paper explores the impact of open access upon potential users of research outputs outside the walls of research-led European universities, where the economic value of open access may be even greater than the academic value within universities. The potential impact of open access is understood in many communities but requires a greater volume of open access content to be available for the full potential to be realised. More open access content will become available as the opportunities in open, internet-based digital scholarship are understood. This briefing paper was written in cooperation with SPARC Europe. All links provided in footnotes in this Briefing Paper are to studies available in open access.

Submission Fees - A Tool in the Transition to Open Access?

Knowledge Exchange examined different routes in achieving the vision of 'having a layer of scholarly and scientific content openly available in the internet'. One of these routes involves exploring new developments in the future of publishing. Work is being undertaken investigating interesting alternative business models which could contribute to the transition to open access. In this light KE has commissioned a study investigating whether submission fees could play a role in a business model for Open Access journals. The general conclusion of the report bearing the title ‘Submission Fees a tool in the transition to open access?', written by Mark Ware, is that there are benefits to publishers in certain cases to switch to a model in which an author pays a fee when submitting an article. Especially journals with a high rejection rate might be interested in combining submission fees with article processing charges in order to make the transition to open access easier. In certain disciplines, notably economic and finance journals and in some areas of the experimental life sciences, submission fees are already common. Overall there seems to be an interest in the model but the risks, particularly those involved in any transition, are seen by the publishers to outweigh the perceived benefits. There is also a problem in that the advantages offered by submission fees are often general benefits that might improve the system but do not provide publishers and authors with direct incentives to change to open access. To support transition funders, institutions and publication funds could make it clear that submission fees would be an allowable cost. At present this is often unclear in their policies. Author acceptance of submission fees is critical to its success. It is an observable fact that authors will accept them in some circumstances. Author acceptance would require further study though. Based on the interviews and the modelling in the study one model in particular is regarded as the most suitable way to meet the current requirements (i.e. to strengthen open access to research publications). In this model authors pay a submission fee plus an Article Processing Fee and the article is subsequently made available in open access. Both fees are set at levels that balance acceptability with the author community with securing a meaningful mix of revenues for the Publisher.

Practical challenges in moving to Open Access: a focus on research funders and universities

At the Berlin7 conference in Paris on 3 December 2009 Knowledge Exchange provided a workshop on the practical challenges to be addressed in moving to Open Access. Presentations where provided by John Houghton and Alma Swan discussing the outcomes of studies on the costs and benefits of Open Access for institutions and the society as a whole. These were followed by presentations by two funding agencies on the results of financing publication costs both at an institutional and national level in Germany. Also the results of the Springer deal in the Netherlands where presented. The third section was focused on the results of implementing mandates both by funding bodies and institutions.

Costs and Benefits of Open Access

In June 2009 a study was completed that had been commissioned by Knowledge Exchange and written by Professor John Houghton, Victoria University, Australia. This report on the study was titled: "Open Access – What are the economic benefits? A comparison of the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Denmark." This report was based on the findings of studies in which John Houghton had modelled the costs and benefits of Open Access in three countries. These studies had been undertaken in the UK by JISC, in the Netherlands by SURF and in Denmark by DEFF. In the three national studies the costs and benefits of scholarly communication were compared based on three different publication models. The modelling revealed that the greatest advantage would be offered by the Open Access model, which means that the research institution or the party financing the research pays for publication and the article is then freely accessible. Adopting this model could lead to annual savings of around EUR 70 million in Denmark, EUR 133 million in The Netherlands and EUR 480 in the UK. The report concludes that the advantages would not just be in the long term; in the transitional phase too, more open access to research results would have positive effects. In this case the benefits would also outweigh the costs.

Sustainability of Open Access Services: Phase 4 Workshop report

Phase 4: Review of the conditions under which individual services and platforms can be sustained On Tuesday 1 October 2013, in Bristol, United Kingdom, Knowledge Exchange brought together a group of international Open Access Service providers to discuss the sustainability of their services. A number of recurring lessons learned were mentioned; Though project funding can be used to start up a service, it does not guarantee the continuation of a service and it can be hard to establish the service as a viable entity, standing on its own feet. Research funders should be aware that if they have policies or mandates for making research outputs available they will eventually also be responsible for on-going support for the underlying infrastructure. At present some services are used globally but the costs are only covered by a limited geographic spread, sometimes only a number of institutions or only one country. Finding other funding sources can be challenging. Various routes were mentioned including commercial partnerships, memberships, offering additional paid services or using a Freemium model. There is not one model that will fit all. As more services turn to library sponsorship to sustain them, one strategy might be to bundle the requests and approach a group of research and infrastructure funders or institutions (and others) with a package rather than each service going through the same resource consuming process of soliciting funding. This will also allow the community to identify gaps, dependencies and overlap in the services. The possibility of setting up an organisation to bundle the services was discussed and a number of risks were identified.

Preparing for the Research Excellence Framework: Examples of Open Access Good Practice across the United Kingdom

This article concerns how higher education institutions across the United Kingdom are implementing systems and workflows in order to meet open access requirements for the next Research Excellence Framework. The way that institutions are preparing is not uniform, although there are key areas which require attention: cost management, advocacy, systems and metadata, structural workflows, and internal policy. Examples of preparative work in these areas are taken from institutions who have participated in the Open Access Good Practice initiative supported by Jisc.

Open Access Repositories & Scholarly Publication

This presentation briefly covers some of the issues around Open Access as it pertains to institutional repositories in the UK higher educational sector. It includes an overview of the current activities of SHERPA, along with the benefits, concerns and potential resolutions of issues in the open access sector. Some speculation as to future trends and developments in scholarly publishing and open access is included. The presentation is in no way comprehensive, and is intended to give an overview of the subject to a general audience who will be engaged with academic and scholarly publishing on a variety of levels.

A Wel(l)come development: research funders and open access

This paper discusses the implications of the Wellcome Trust agreement with Blackwell, OUP and Springer in which authors of accepted papers are able to pay an open-access publication charge to make their article freely available online. In bringing together flexible licence terms and clear funding streams, the agreement has the potential to be used as a way of migrating towards possible new business models for journal publishing. It also has the potential, if implemented more widely, to deliver greater open access in such a way as to work in the interests of a broad range of stakeholders.

Rumours, Bargains and Lies: How to advocate Open Access repositories more successfully

In this workshop seminar delivered twice at the CoFHE/UCR 2006 conference the author explored aspects relating to successful advocacy of Open Access and repositories. Areas covered included preconceptions on the part of academics and support staff, as well as models of implementation of an advocacy programme. A large portion of the material pulls together experience and narrative evidence from the SHERPA Consortium partners and repository administrators; with a particular focus on their successes and failures and the lessons that have been learned.

Fachliche Publikationskulturen und Open Access. Fächerübergreifende Entwicklungstendenzen und Spezifika der Erziehungswissenschaft und Bildungsforschung

Open Access zu öffentlich geförderten wissenschaftlichen Publikationen ist unter dem Vorzeichen der „Openness“ Teil einer zunehmend bedeutsamen globalen Entwicklung mit strukturellen Folgen für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Bildung. Dabei bedingen die jeweiligen fachkulturellen Ausgangslagen und ökonomischen Interessenskonstellationen sehr stark, in welcher Weise, mit welcher Reichweite und Akzeptanz sich das Open-Access-Paradigma konkret materialisiert. Die vorliegende Arbeit geht dieser Frage am Beispiel des inter- bzw. pluridisziplinären Feldes der Erziehungswissenschaft/Bildungsforschung nach. Zum einen werden die fachlichen und soziokulturellen Konstellationen des Publizierens im disziplinären Feld, die verlagswirtschaftlichen Marktkonstellationen sowie die informationsinfrastrukturellen Bedingungen des Fachgebietes analysiert und ein differenziertes Gesamtbild erstellt. Gestützt auf eine Online-Befragung der Fachcommunity Erziehungswissenschaft/Bildungsforschung werden weitergehende Erkenntnisse über vorhandene Open-Access-Erfahrungen im Fachgebiet und Hemmnisse bzw. Anforderungen an das neue Publikationsmodell aus der Sicht der Wissenschaftler/innen selbst – sowie explorativ aus Sicht der Studierenden und der Bildungspraxis - ermittelt. Wesentliche Faktoren bei der Betrachtung der Potenziale und Effekte von Open Access im Fachgebiet bilden die Faktoren akademischer Status und Funktion, Interdisziplinarität und fachliche Provenienz sowie das Verhältnis von Bildungspraxis und akademischem Sektor. (DIPF/Orig.)

Libraries and open access: the implications of open-access publishing and dissemination for libraries in higher education institutions

This chapter discusses the consequences of open-access (OA) publishing and dissemination for libraries in higher education institutions (HEIs). Key questions (which are addressed in this chapter) include: 1. How might OA help information provision? 2. What changes to library services will arise from OA developments (particularly if OA becomes widespread)? 3. How do these changes fit in with wider changes affecting the future role of libraries? 4. How can libraries and librarians help to address key practical issues associated with the implementation of OA (particularly transition issues)? This chapter will look at OA from the perspective of HE libraries and will make four key points: 1. Open access has the potential to bring benefits to the research community in particular and society in general by improving information provision. 2. If there is widespread open access to research content, there will be less need for library-based activity at the institution level, and more need for information management activity at the supra-institutional or national level. 3. Institutional libraries will, however, continue to have an important role to play in areas such as managing purchased or licensed content, curating institutional digital assets, and providing support in the use of content for teaching and research. 4. Libraries are well-placed to work with stakeholders within their institutions and beyond to help resolve current challenges associated with the implementation of OA policies and practices.