Introduction to Open Access (Post Finch Report). Part 1 of a series of short 2-3 minute presentations

1. Why is Open Access
important?
Part 2 of “Open Access: What, why,
how and recent developments”
james.bisset@durham.ac.uk

2. why?

3. the public
funding
argument

4. Ethical argument for OA“the results of
research that has
been publicly
funded should be
freely accessible
in the public
domain.”

5. the financial
argument

6. ... in many cases...
• a researcher does the research
• a researcher writes the output
• a researcher offers their services for peer
review…. for free

7. ... in many cases...
• a researcher does the research
• a researcher writes the output
• a researcher offers their services for peer
review…. for free
• the publisher offers some proofing and
formatting and then puts it on the web.

8. ... in many cases...
• the publisher then charges the
researchers* to access the research they
have conducted, written and peer-
reviewed.
* (through library budgets or pay-to-view charges)

9. “journal prices have risen four
times faster than inflation since
the mid-1980's”
Peter Suber, Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College and Director of the
Harvard Open Access Project, quoting research conducted from ARL Statistics 2005-
06, Association of Research Libraries, Washington, D.C.

10. According to The Economist,
Elsevier made $1.1 billion in profit
in 2010 for a profit margin of 36%.
Taylor & Francis’s reported their
own profit margin of 25% in their
2010 Annual report
“The Price of information” Economist Feb. 4th 2012 .
http://www.economist.com/node/21545974
p19 of Taylor and Francis’s annual report and financial statement 2010,
http://www.informa.com/documents/INF2570%20AR10%20cover%20AW05.pdf

11. 2010 Operating Profit Margins
“Why have so many academics decided to boycott Elsevier”
http://www.slideshare.net/scottsne/ecvp2012symposiumslideshare
Tesco 5%
News Corp 7%
BMW 12%
Coca Cola 22%
Apple 35%
Elsevier 36%

12. Journal price inflation

13. What about scholarly societies?
• Many scholarly societies rely on a significant proportion
of their income from their journal subscriptions.
• This money is then used to support initiatives such as
postdoctoral fellowships.
• These are good causes – but not publishing costs.
• In effect, these causes are subsidised through student
fees and research funding via library budgets.
• This is a question of rethinking the business model of how
scholarly societies are funded, and should not be about
restricting access to research.
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2013/03/12/making-open-access-and-the-uks-
scholarly-society-work/

14. the
technology & innovation
argument

15. technology enables...
...unrestricted online
dissemination...
... opens up potential of
access and re-use...

16. ... increasing
visibility, reducing barriers
to usage...

17. ... increasing visibility,
reducing barriers to usage...
... maximising potential
impact.

18. “Open Access enlarges your audience
and citation impact… Studies in many
fields show a correlation between OA
and citation-count increases.”
Peter Suber, Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College and Director of the
Harvard Open Access Project

19. the stick

20. Many funders, including the UK
Research Councils, the
Wellcome Trust and the
European Commission require
research outputs are made
open access as a condition of
funding.

21. HEFCE are consulting with the
academic and publishing
communities on requiring
outputs submitted to the REF
post-2014 to be Open Access.

22. Image Credits
[4] Via Flickr Creative Commons, and by WhatDaveSees: Original
available here
[3] Via Flickr Creative Commons, and by Carol VanHook: Original
available here
[5] Via Flickr Creative Commons, and by Richard Cocks: Original
available here
[11] Via Flickr Creative Commons, and by Photo Extremist: Original
available here
[10] Created using http://photofunia.com/
[16] Via Flickr Creative Commons, and by Creative Tools: Original
available here