This document summarizes a presentation on open access given at the University of Queensland. It discusses how open access provides immediate, free access to peer-reviewed research and data. Open access benefits authors through increased visibility, usage, impact, and personal profiling of their work. It also benefits universities by improving research monitoring and demonstrating societal return. Open access is not a fad as funder and institutional policies are increasingly requiring it.

1. Open Access seminar
University of Queensland, Brisbane, 30 October 2013
Is Open Access just another fad?
Alma Swan
Director, Advocacy Programmes, SPARC Europe
Director, Key Perspectives Ltd
Convenor, Enabling Open Scholarship

2. The shape of this presentation
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Open Access
Benefits to authors
Benefits to universities
Benefits to society
Society’s response (the political context)

3. Open Access

4. Open Access
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Immediate
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Free (to use)
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Free (of restrictions)
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Access to the peer-reviewed literature (and data)
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Not vanity publishing
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Not a ‘stick anything up on the Web’ approach
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Moving scholarly communication into the Web Age

5. Open Access – Why?
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Research moves faster and more efficiently
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Greater visibility and impact
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Better monitoring, assessment and evaluation of
research
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Enables new semantic technologies (text-mining and
data-mining)
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Publicly-funded research should be freely available to the
‘public’

6. Open Access: how
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Open Access journals (www.doaj.org)
Open Access repositories
Open Access monographs

7. Open Access journals
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Content available free of charge online
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In many cases, free of restrictions on use too
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Some charge at the ‘front end’
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More than half do not levy a charge at all
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Around 8500 of them
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Listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals
(DOAJ: www.doaj.org)

8. Open Access repositories
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Digital collections
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Most usually institutional
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Sometimes centralised (subject-based)
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Interoperable
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Form a network across the world
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Create a global database of openly-accessible
research
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Currently c2500
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Supplement subscription-access publishing

9. Here’s one

10. What’s in it for authors?

11. Author advantages from Open Access
• Visibility
• Usage
• Impact
• Personal profiling and marketing

12. Visibility

13. An author’s own testimony on open
access visibility
“Self-archiving in the PhilSci Archive has
given instant world-wide visibility to my
work. As a result, I was invited to submit
papers to refereed international
conferences/journals and got them
accepted.”

14. Professor Martin Skitmore
School of Urban Design, QUT
“There is no doubt in my mind that ePrints [QUT’s Open Access
repository] will have improved things – especially in developing
countries such as Malaysia … many more access my papers
who wouldn’t have thought of contacting me personally in the
‘old’ days.
While this may … increase … citations, the most important
thing … is that at least these people can find out more about
what others have done…”

15. Usage

16. University of Liege repository:
authors deposit

17. And the material gets used

18. Individual article usage

19. University of Salford: USIR
8930 records

20. Impact

21. Citation impact
Range = 36%-200%
(Data: Stevan Harnad and co-workers)

22. Engineering
Data: Gargouri & Harnad, 2010

23. Clinical medicine
Data: Gargouri & Harnad, 2010

24. Social science
Data: Gargouri & Harnad, 2010

25. Profiling and marketing

29. Melissa Terras (UCL)

30. For institutions?

31. Institutional and funder advantages
from Open Access
• Visibility, usage
• Impact
• Profiling and marketing
• Outreach to the public: demonstrating social
return
• Economic benefits

32. Management information
“I am asked how many articles my
researchers publish each year, and I
have to say ‘I have no idea!’”
Professor Bernard Rentier, Rector, University of
Liege, Belgium, explaining one of the reasons why
he has built an institutional Open Access repository
and introduced a mandatory policy on Open Access

33. Reach: MIT’s repository usage

34. Impact: Webometrics

35. Outreach: the public
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Independent researchers
Education sector
Professional community
Practitioner community
Interested ‘lay’ public
Business sector, including innovative SMEs

36. PubMed Central
• 2 million full-text articles
• 420,000 unique users per day:
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25% universities
18% government and others
40% citizens
17% companies

37. Economic implications in Denmark
• Access to research articles is very/extremely important: 48%
• 79% have access difficulties
• Difficulties in searching/accessing articles: €73m per year to
researchers in Danish firms
• Average delay to product or process development without
access to academic research: 2.2 years
• For new products: €4.8 million per company
Houghton, Swan & Brown, 2011

38. EU CIS studies

40. Senior Lecturer, Design, QUT
“Just last week, the General Manager of
Sustainable Development from an Australian
rural industry called me – based on reading one
of my research papers in ePrints.
He loved what he read ..... and we are now in
discussion about how we can help them
measure their industry’s social impacts.”

41. “The case for Open Access within a university
is not simply political or economic or
professional.
It needs to rest in the notion of what a
university is and what it should be .... It is
central to the university’s position in the
public space”
Professor Martin Hall, Vice Chancellor of the University of
Salford, UK

42. Mandatory policies

43. The effect of a mandatory policy

44. Funder policies

45. Institutional policies

46. So, no fad
• Benefits will impel you
• Policies will require you
• Choose your weapon

47. Open Access: how
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Open Access journals (www.doaj.org)
Open Access repositories
Open Access monographs

48. Open Access through your repository
• Prepare your paper and submit it to your journal of choice
for peer review
• Make any changes required as a result of the peer review
process
• Submit the final version to the journal
• Deposit that same final version in your repository
• Do it right then
• This complements the dissemination achieved by the
journal
• Your repository staff may check journal copyright
conditions on your behalf, or you may do so yourself
using the SHERPA RoMEO service at
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/
Key Perspectives Ltd

49. Retaining copyright
• Is this necessary for OA?
– Not in most cases
• What to do in the other cases:
– Deposit immediately and respect an embargo
– Use an Author Addendum
– Use a Licence to Publish
• Remember, once you click through a CTA, you
have signed over your IP
• Irretrievably, irreversibly, and forever

50. Open Access books
• Lots of developments
• Australia in the vanguard
• University presses, scholar-led and
commercial publishers
• OA helps sales!
• New business models
• Considerable interest from research funders
• ARC policy includes monographs

51. No fad, not even new thinking
“It is one of the noblest duties of a
university to advance knowledge and to
diffuse it, not merely among those who
can attend the daily lectures, but far and
wide.”
Daniel Coit Gilman
First President, Johns Hopkins University

52. Thank you for listening
aswan@talk21.com
www.sparceurope.org
www.keyperspectives.co.uk
www.openscholarship.org