INTRODUCTION TO SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATIONS AND OPEN ACCESS

April 24, 2010

Lisa Spiro Fondren Library, Rice University

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dunechaser/567753250/

Why Did You Decide to Become a Librarian?

  To help people find the information they need

  To develop and share your technical expertise

  To contribute to the greater good of a literate society

  To lock up and control access to information

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My Argument: Open Access Is Good for Scholars and Librarians

  Both libraries and scholarship aim to support the diffusion of knowledge

  Open access supports this goal by enabling:   Researchers to share their research more quickly,

build their reputations and discover relevant work   Librarians to provide rich, long-term access to

information   The public to have equal access to knowledge

Road Map for Today’s Talk

  Explore the relationship between open access and scholarly communication

  Examine the rationale for open access

  Describe challenges facing open access

  Suggest how librarians can support open access

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What Is Open Access to Scholarly Literature?

  “free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself” --Budapest Open Access Initiative (emphasis added)

Image: http://flickr.com/photos/furiousgeorge81/177926979/

Open Access Is Sharing

“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.” (Thomas Jefferson)

What is scholarly communication?

created

evaluated

disseminated

preserved

the system through which research and other scholarly writings are…

ACRL

The (Bizarre) Economics of Scholarly Publishing

  Faculty and grad students (paid by universities and grant funds) perform and write up the research

  Faculty serve as (unpaid) peer reviewers and members of journal editorial boards

  Publishers package and distribute the content, then sell it to libraries

  So universities are paying to produce and peer review research, then buying it back. For example:   2.2% of journal articles published by Elsevier were authored by

U of California (UC) faculty (Ivy Anderson)   Elsevier’s UC-related revenue: $31 million, with $9.8 million as

profit

Creation of Knowledge

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ricephotos/438517506/

Opening up the Research Process: Open WetWare

“Share Your Science”

Share Lab Protocols

“Recipe” for experiments

Supports:

•  Transparency

•  Replicability

http://openwetware.org/wiki/Arabidopsis_gDNA_isolation

http://www.flickr.com/photos/naturewise/1174298274/

Evaluation

Opening Up Peer Review

  Peer review is central to evaluating and filtering scholarship

  But it can be   Slow   Secretive   Biased

  OA does not undermine peer review

  But OA is linked to experiments with peer review   Post-publication peer review

  Open peer review: revealing names of reviewers & making reports public

Post-publication Peer Review: PLoS ONE

  “PLoS ONE will rigorously peer-review your submissions and publish all papers that are judged to be technically sound. Judgments about the importance of any particular paper are then made after publication by the readership (who are the most qualified to determine what is of interest to them).”

The New Metrics of Scholarly Authority: Be Visible

  Information abundance = shift in establishing scholarly authority

  Old model: scholarly credentials, peer review, # of citations

  Web 3.0 model: “algorithmic filtration” of authority based on…   Prestige of publisher & author,   Links to article   Discussions in blogspace, etc.   Nature of the language in comments   Inclusion of a document in lists of

"best of," in syllabi, indexes   Etc.

Michael Jensen, “The New Metrics of Scholarly Authority” http://chronicle.com/free/v53/i41/41b00601.htm

Dissemination

Repositories (Green) Publishing (Gold)

Open Access Repositories

  Can contain   pre- and post-prints  white papers   dissertations   presentations   digitized objects

  Can be   Institutional, e.g. Rice, MIT   Disciplinary, e.g. ArXiv for physics, RePEc for economics, E-

LIS for library & information science

HAM-TMC’s Institutional Repository

http://digitalcommons.library.tmc.edu/

Rice’s Institutional Repository

http://scholarship.rice.edu/

Model Disciplinary Repository: arXiv

About arXiv

  Focused on physics, math, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance and statistics

  Founded in 1991 by Paul Ginsparg

  Contains over half a million e-prints, which are commonly read and cited by scientists

  Grigori Perelman, who was awarded the Fields Medal for solving Poincare’s Conjecture, shared his results only on arXiv

Works in arXiv are cited frequently and rapidly

Open Access Journals

  There are now 4966 OA journals indexed by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

  OA Journals include PLoS Biology, D-Lib, First Monday, Journal of Electronic Publishing, etc.

Preservation

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bluefootedbooby/333349592/

The Challenges of Digital Preservation for Scholarly Communication

  Changes in formats, e.g. WordStar to Word to ?   Changes in devices, e.g. floppy disks to USB memory sticks   Responsibility for preservation, thousands of libraries with

copy of print journal vs. one publisher with digital copy   How do we preserve more ephemeral/ informal scholarly

content, such as:   Blogs  Wikis  Online forums

Open Access May Facilitate Preservation

  OA enables replication & re-use of content (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe)

  Software for OA repositories (e.g. DSpace, Fedora) often includes preservation services

  Initiatives such as MetaScholar and DuraCloud preserve repository content

•  Good for scholarship •  Good for scholars •  Good for society •  Good for libraries

The Argument for Open Access

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OA Benefits Scholarship

  Speeds the research cycle   Fosters multidisciplinary

collaborations

  Opens up data to be mined and mashed-up

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wakingtiger/3156792001/

OA Benefits Scholars

  Makes their research more visible   Increases the impact of their work

 OA scientific articles are cited more frequently than non-OA (debated point)

  Possible reasons for higher citation of OA articles:  More accessible  Released earlier  Written by more influential authors

http://www.flickr.com/photos/visualogist/3202396970/

OA Benefits Society

  Improves education by providing access to latest research

  Makes access to research more equitable

  Makes knowledge available to taxpayers & policymakers

  Benefits research in developing countries

http://vimeo.com/1921500

OA Is Good for Libraries

  Libraries are key players in providing access to and preserving OA resources

  OA aligns with librarian values of:  Access   Lifelong learning   The public good

• Participation • Intellectual property • Economics

Open Access Challenges

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Researcher Participation in OA Low

  Fairly low rates of self-deposit in institutional repositories (varies by discipline)  Only about 20% of articles are deposited in OA

repositories

  What matters to faculty:   Tenure & promotion   Prestige of journal

It Costs Money to Publish Scholarship

Total annual cost per journal: $313,612 Figures from 2007

Type of Journal Average Cost Per Article

Top Humanities Journals $9,994

Science/ Tech/ Math Journals

$2,670

Business Models for Open Access

  Institutional subsidies (university, funding agency, etc)   Re-direction of funds (SCOAP 3)   Publication fees (typically paid by authors)

  Hybrid OA: some articles are OA, others require subscriptions

  Endowments

Copyright Concerns? Most Journals Allow Self-Archiving

95% of journals allow some form of self-archiving Source: Sherpa ROMEO, http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/

Author Rights

  Although authors hold copyright, they often transfer rights to the publisher.

  Authors thus limit their own ability to reuse and redistribute their work

  A scholar giving up copyright is like "giving birth and taking care of a baby for nine months, and then giving the baby over to the midwife at the end of the process.” (Emma Hil)

  But can negotiate author rights http://www.flickr.com/photos/thedepartment/110775662/

How Libraries Can Unlock the Gates to Global Information

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Educate about Open Access

  Raise awareness of the open access publishing model   Advise faculty & teachers on

 Author rights   Fair use  Open access mandates (e.g. NIH)

Help Promote Open Access Mandates

  Open access mandates require faculty to share research   Examples of mandates:

  Funding agencies:  NIH  Wellcome Trust

  By universities:  Harvard Faculty of Arts & Sciences  University of Kansas  MIT  Duke

Open Access Mandates Are Increasing

http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/

Support Federal Research Public Access Act 2010

http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/issues/frpaa/frpaa_action/10-0416.shtml

Steer Patrons Towards OA Content

  Even if your institution lacks funding for big databases, you can still access cutting-edge research

  Around 20% of articles are OA, depending on field

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Find OA Works via Google Scholar

•  If free access is available, it shows up on right (with format) •  Or you can select “All [x] versions” to discover OA versions

Find OA Works via OAIster

Now administered by OCLC as part of WorldCat.org

Provide the Infrastructure for OA

  Establish an institutional repository   Publish open access journals

  Examples of library-supported OA journals include First Monday, Journal of Electronic Publishing, Journal of Digital Information, etc.

 Many use the Open Journal publishing system   Libraries are partnering with the university press

 Michigan  U of California  Utah State

Librarians Have Work to Do

“Scholars have to clear new and higher hurdles as they bump up against copyright and fair-use issues, open-access mandates, and a baffling array of publication and dissemination models….. Where can researchers find a guide to lead them through this 21st-century obstacle course? The library, of course.” (Jennifer Howard)

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Bibliography (I)

  Hahn, Karla L. “Talk About Talking About New Models of Scholarly Communication.” Journal of Electronic Publishing 11, no. 1 (Winter 2008).

  Suber, Peter. “A field guide to misunderstandings about open access (SPARC).” http://www.arl.org/sparc/publications/articles/openaccess_fieldguide.shtml.

  Swan, Alma. “Open Access and the Progress of Science » American Scientist.” http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/open-access-and-the-progress-of-science.

Bibliography (II)

  “The effect of open access and downloads ('hits') on citation impact: a bibliography of studies.” http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html.

  Van de Sompel, Herbert, Sandy Payette, John Erickson, Carl Lagoze, and Simeon Warner. “Rethinking Scholarly Communication.” D-Lib Magazine 10, no. 9 (9, 2004). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september04/vandesompel/09vandesompel.html.

  Wilbanks, John. “The Control Fallacy: Why OA Out-Innovates the Alternative,” April 17, 2008. http://precedings.nature.com/documents/1808/version/1.

  Wiley, David “The Parable of the Inventor and the Trucker” http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3855/david-wiley-the-parable-of-the-inventor-and-the-trucker.

Useful Web Sites & Blogs

  CreateChange.Org: http://www.createchange.org/   SPARC: http://www.arl.org/sparc/   ARL Office of Scholarly Communication:

http://www.arl.org/sc/   ACRL Scholarly Communication Toolkit:

http://www.acrl.ala.org/scholcomm/   Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.org/   Peter Suber’s Open Access News Blog:

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html   Charles Bailey’s DigitalKoans Blog:

http://digital-scholarship.org/digitalkoans/