Open Access News from the RSP team

"This is a comment on Richard Poynder's interview on Emerald's "fading" Green OA policy.

Both the perverse effects of the UK's Finch/RCUK policy and their antidote are as simple to describe and understand as they were to predict: The Perverse Effects of the Finch/RCUK Policy: Besides being eager to cash in on the double-paid (subscription fees + Gold OA fees), double-dipped over-priced hybrid Gold bonanza that Finch/RCUK has foolishly dangled before their eyes, publishers like Emerald are also trying to hedge their bets and clinch the deal by adopting or extending Green OA embargoes to try to force authors to pick and pay for the hybrid Gold option instead of picking cost-free Green."

"These resources have been developed to help learned societies review options and take decisions about Gold Open Access publishing. You can navigate them by clicking on the relevant resource in the simple flowchart below. You can also find out more about the resources and the process:"

"Readers will I am sure be aware of the different manifestations of Open Access (OA) – Green and Gold – the future of which is now the subject of debate.

To be clear: Gold OA is delivered through journals, which may be completely OA or hybrid, where some articles are OA and others are available only to subscribers; Green OA is delivered through self-archiving – authors’ deposit of manuscripts in repositories, which may be institutional or disciplinary."

"Simon Chaplin: The humanities matter. Books matter. Through open access, they can reach a wider audience than ever before. A policy requiring open access to academic books? Surely that's asking for trouble? After all, it was only a few months ago that many humanities researchers were up in arms when Research Councils UK (RCUK) implemented its new policy on open access to journal articles. Although such measures are broadly accepted in the sciences, the RCUK policy was criticised by the Royal Historical Society, among others, for being a blunt instrument, insensitive to the differences that mark out historians from histologists.

Given the anguish that RCUK's policy caused, the announcement last week that the Wellcome Trust – a major funder of biomedical research – has now extended its open access policy to include books and book chapters might seem a little, well, insensitive. After all, the Trust's long-standing policy on open access to journal articles was seen by many as having beaten the path for RCUK's approach. So why books, and why now?"

"Open Access Empowers 16-year-old to Create Breakthrough Cancer Diagnostic: An Interview with Jack Andraka and Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health

Jack Andraka is a perfect example of the power of Open Access, the free availability of all academic research articles online with full reuse rights. Only 16 years old, Jack discovered a breakthrough pancreatic cancer diagnostic using carbon nanotubes. Jack’s test costs $0.03 and takes 5 minutes to run with nearly 100% accuracy so far, making it 26,667 times cheaper, 168 times faster, and 400 times more sensitive than the current test commonly used for pancreatic cancer. Jack went on to win the 2012 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. His story would not be possible without Open Access"

"Since July 2012, the UK has been undergoing an organized transition to open access. As of 01 April 2013, revised open access policies are coming into effect. Open access implementation requires new infrastructures for funding publishing. Universities as institutions increasingly will be central to managing article-processing charges, monitoring compliance and organizing deposit. This article reviews the implementation praxis between July 2012 and April 2013, including ongoing controversy and review, which has mainly focussed on embargo length."

"During the period preceding 1st April the researchers from IT Services attached to the OAO project explored Oxford researchers’ existing awareness of, and attitudes towards, Open Access. We spoke with nine individuals in research roles – PIs of research teams and individual researchers – and a small number of doctoral students. However, in this blog post I also draw from our conversations with librarians and research facilitators where these provided additional insights into academics’ perspectives"

"The wide range of activities reported on the gold oa blog illustrate the priority now given to APC-funded gold OA by Government and other Establishment agencies in the UK, and the second-class status being given to repositories and other green OA developments by those same agencies. After many protests following the Finch Report, the role of repositories has been given greater recognition in the policies of RCUK and HEFCE, but this welcome recognition cannot disguise the fact that within the UK Establishment repositories are now not to be encouraged."

"A group of research funding organizations from around the world today put its weight behind open access (OA) to the scientific literature but stopped short of making concrete policy recommendations for its members. The landscape for research and publishing is too varied to come up with general solutions, leaders of the Global Research Council (GRC) said today at the end of the group's second annual meeting in Berlin."

UNESCO will make its future and past publications free for all to access

"As several speakers at SSP’s recent annual conference commented, Open Access is now a given. In the first six months of this year alone, we have seen a memorandum on OA from the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), a request for information from the Higher Education Funding Council of England (HEFCE), the introduction of the Research Councils UK (RCUK) mandate, a position statement from Science Europe, and an Action Plan towards Open Access to Publications from the Global Research Council (GRC). Like rock and roll, OA is here to stay but, as with rock and roll, it doesn’t always live up to its own hype"

"Nature Publishing Group and Nanjing Agricultural University today announce the 2014 launch of Horticulture Research. The open access journal will launch on nature.com in January 2014, and will begin accepting submissions later in 2013. The new partnership was announced at the launch of the Macmillan Science & Education office in Shanghai this week, at an event at the Shanghai Science Hall.

Horticulture Research will publish original research articles and reviews and mini-reviews on novel discoveries focusing on all major horticultural crops, including fruits, vegetables, ornamental trees and flowers, herbs, and tea trees, both in preharvest and postharvest stages. The journal will primarily focus on basic and fundamental research with broad international and disciplinary interests. Its scope will cover genetics, breeding, “-omics” and evolution, origination and domestication horticultural crops, biotechnology, biochemistry, physiology, cellular and molecular biology, and environmental biology including interactions with other organisms."

"Science ministers from the G8 group of the world’s richest countries have jointly endorsed the need to increase access to publicly-funded research.In a joint statement proposing “new areas” of scientific collaboration for the countries, the ministers say they “recognise the potential benefits of immediate global access to and unrestricted use of published peer-reviewed, publicly funded research results. We share the intention, therefore, to continue our cooperative efforts and will consider how best to address the global promotion of increasing public access to the results of publicly funded published research including to peer-reviewed published research and research data," the statement says."

"We are proud to join this year’s ASAP!  The Accelerating Science Award Program recognizes individuals who have used, applied, or remixed scientific research — published through Open Access — to make a difference in science, medicine, business, technology or society as a whole.

Do you know someone who has used Open Access to innovate or impact society? Someone making a difference in any field? Are you?  Nominate a fellow researcher, student or yourself before June 15th."

"Transition is both desirable and inevitable, Gabriel Egan argues. 

We continue to witness a lot of back and forth between publishers and open-access advocates about the merits of Research Councils UK’s open-access policy - but where does it leave journal editors?

Some have echoed the publishers’ fears that open access will ruin their business models or undermine journal quality by scaring off top international authors. But not all editors share this view."

The government would like to see more publishers take up schemes that waive open access publishing fees for researchers from universities that subscribe to its journals, a senior civil servant has said.

"Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. , a not-for-profit organization and leading provider of licensing and Open Access solutions, has joined the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association"