Open Access journals: case studies

Iryna Kuchma, eIFL Open Access Program Manager, eIFL.net

Presented at Using Open Access Models for Science Dissemination, the Abdus Salam International Centre

for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste, 14 July 2008

The scholarly communication process

• Registration: the establishment of priority on an intellectual creation (an idea, a concept, or research finding)

• Certification: the validation of the quality of the intellectual effort or of the research finding

(Roosendaal & Geurts, 1998)(From the business of digital repositories, Alma Swan,

A DRIVER’s Guide to European Repositories)

The scholarly communication process

• Certification gives:– Authors – Validation of their work (important for promotion

and grant applications)– Readers – Quality filter

• Journals provide peer review and give a ‘quality stamp’ to research and authors

• Journals should be open access

(Roosendaal & Geurts, 1998)(From the business of digital repositories, Alma Swan,

A DRIVER’s Guide to European Repositories)

The scholarly communication process

• Awareness: the ensuring of the accessibility, availability and dissemination of intellectual and research outputs for others to build upon, and

• Archiving: the storage and preservation or intellectual or research outputs as an intellectual heritage for future users

(Roosendaal & Geurts, 1998)(From the business of digital repositories, Alma Swan,

A DRIVER’s Guide to European Repositories)

Budapest Open Access Initiative

Two complementary strategies: • Self-Archiving: Scholars should be able to deposit

their refereed journal articles in open electronic archives which conform to Open Archives Initiative standards

• Open-Access Journals: Journals will not charge subscriptions or fees for online access. Instead, they should look to other sources to fund peer-review and publication (e.g., publication charges)

http://www.soros.org/openaccess/

Open Access journals

• Tying the costs of publications to the costs of research

• A shift in focus for libraries • From filter global research output – what you

can afford - collector, a gate-keeper• Open Access publishing involves no new costs– (Open access: towards the mainstream, Bryan Vickery, BioMed

Central, UK, presented at the Fourth Nordic Conference on Scholarly Communication NCSC 2008: Openness - trade, tools and transparency, 21-23 April 2008, Scandic Star Hotel, Glimmervägen 5, Lund, Sweden)

What to do?

• Do nothing – continue publishing the journals with 100 copies print-run

• Modify subscription-based journal into Open Access journal

• Develop hybrid model – author’s choice – Open Access or access only to subscribers

PLOS

• Latest impact factors:• PLOS Biology – 13,5• PLOS Medicine – 12,6• PLOS Computational Biology – 6,2• PLOS Genetics – 8,7• PLOS Pathogens – 9,3

PLOS

• PLoS ONE features reports of primary research from all disciplines within science and medicine. By not excluding papers on the basis of subject area, PLoS ONE facilitates the discovery of the connections between papers whether within or between disciplines.

• Each submission is assessed by a member of the PLoS ONE Editorial Board before publication.

PLOS

• This pre-publication peer review concentrates on technical rather than subjective concerns and may involve discussion with other members of the Editorial Board and/or the solicitation of formal reports from independent referees.

• If published, papers will be made available for community-based open peer review involving the addition of online Notes, Comments, and Ratings.

• http://www.plosone.org/home.action

PLOS• The increases in the impact factors for the discipline-based,

community-run PLoS journals also tally with indicators that these journals are going from strength to strength.

• For example, submissions to PLoS Computational Biology, PLoS Genetics and PLoS Pathogens have almost doubled over the past year - each journal now routinely receives 80-120 submissions per month of which around 20-25 are published.

• Another measure of impact is media coverage, and all of PLOS journals routinely attract substantial media attention, which reflects the importance and public interest of much of the work that is published.

The Journal of Medical Research

• Open Access journal - The Journal of Medical Research – ranked #2 in medical information category (our of 20 journals). Impact factor 3.0 – almost the same as JAMIA published by Elseveir (3.1)

• In the ISI/SCI ‘health science and services” category JMIR is ranked #6 out of 57

Bioline International

• The great amount of usage of OA Journals - eg Bioline International recorded 3.5 million full text downloads in 2007 from >70 no-fee journals published in developing countries)

the Indian Journal of Postgraduate Medicine• A case study from the Indian Journal of Postgraduate

Medicine published by Medknow Publishers, which moved from being a locally produced print journal in India to an Open Access journal distributed by Bioline International:

• It now gets 1 million hits a year and the total number of submissions increased from 190 in 2000 to over 800 in 2006.

• The number of submissions from authors outside India rose from less than 10 percent in 2001 to 38 percent (166) in 2003 and 30 percent (189) in 2004.

– (Eve Gray (2007) Achieving Research Impact for Development. Critique of Research Dissemination Policy in South Africa, with Recommendations for Policy Reform: www.policy.hu/gray/IPF_Policy_paper_final.pdf)

– (Barbara Kirsop and Leslie Chan, Transforming Access to Research Literature for Developing Countries, Serials Review 31, Issue 4 (December 2005): 246-255.

https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/4416/1/Kirsop_Chan_SerialsReview.pdf)

the Indian Journal of Postgraduate Medicine• The journal is now being seen as an

international journal capable of reaching a global readership and is attracting a different and wider kind of authorship.

– (Eve Gray (2007) Achieving Research Impact for Development. Critique of Research Dissemination Policy in South Africa, with Recommendations for

Policy Reform: www.policy.hu/gray/IPF_Policy_paper_final.pdf)– (Barbara Kirsop and Leslie Chan, Transforming Access to Research Literature

for Developing Countries, Serials Review 31, Issue 4 (December 2005): 246-255.

https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/4416/1/Kirsop_Chan_SerialsReview.pdf)

Medknow journals, India

• DK Sahu, the Director of Medknow Publishers, speaking at the Bangalore Workshop on Electronic Publishing and Open Access in 2006, reported a similar increase across the range of Medknow journals moved to open access, with a common pattern of improvements in the international profile of authors, higher hit rates indicating wider readership and increased impact factors.– (D.K. Sahu, (2006) Open Access in the Developing World: regaining the lost impact.

Paper delivered at Bangalore Workshop on Electronic Publishing and Open Access, Bangalore, November 2006. http://www.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/OAworkshop2006/presentations/OA_IISc_Nov3.pdf)

Hindawi Publishing Corporation

• On February 21, 2007 the Hindawi Publishing Corporation, Egypt, converted the last of its subscription-based journals to an open access model.

• Hindawi Publishing Corporation is a commercial publisher of STM (Science, Technology, and Medicine) literature. Founded in 1997, Hindawi currently employs more than 250 people, and publishes more than 100 peer-reviewed journals.

Hindawi Publishing Corporation

• Over the past several years, Hindawi has seen an increase of more than 40% per year in the number of submitted manuscripts it receives.

• Since its full conversion to Open Access in February 2007, Hindawi's growth has continued to accelerate, with monthly submission levels growing by more than 100% during 2007.

Hindawi Publishing Corporation

• SAGE-Hindawi Access to Research is a partnership between SAGE Publications and Hindawi Publishing Corporation to jointly publish a collection of open access journals on a variety of subjects in science, technology, and medicine. http://www.sage-hindawi.com/

• 50-100 new journals to be launched this year.

Hindawi Publishing Corporation • One of the experiments - Scholarly Research

Exchange is a peer-reviewed, open access journal that publishes original research articles in all areas of science, technology, and medicine.

• The journal employs a transparent peer review system in which authors and reviewers interact directly. The names of the reviewers and their assessment of the quality of the manuscript will be published alongside accepted manuscripts. In addition, each of the reviewers can opt for publishing a written commentary on the manuscript.

• http://www.syrexe.com/

Hindawi Publishing Corporation • One of the experiments - Scholarly Research

Exchange is a peer-reviewed, open access journal that publishes original research articles in all areas of science, technology, and medicine.

• The journal employs a transparent peer review system in which authors and reviewers interact directly. The names of the reviewers and their assessment of the quality of the manuscript will be published alongside accepted manuscripts. In addition, each of the reviewers can opt for publishing a written commentary on the manuscript.

• http://www.syrexe.com/

Hindawi Publishing Corporation • The final decision as to the acceptance of

an article is based on the evaluations of each of the peer reviewers. In addition to any written comments, each reviewer is asked to rate the manuscript on a scale from zero to five stars: http://www.syrexe.com/faq.html

• In order for a manuscript to be accepted for publication, at least two reviewers must rate the manuscript with one or more stars, and the average ranking of all of the reviewers must be at least one star.

Hindawi Publishing Corporation • Once an under-review manuscript has fulfilled

these requirements, the authors will be able to finalize the review process and have their manuscript published, or they can choose to resubmit a revised version of the manuscript and conduct an additional round of review.

• Once a manuscript has been published, the evaluations made by each of the reviewers will be made public, along with their identities.

• Within the transparent model of peer review that is used by Scholarly Research Exchange, the names and affiliations of each peer reviewer are published along with the final version of an article.

Hindawi Publishing Corporation • When a researcher receives a request to review a

manuscript for Scholarly Research Exchange, they are informed that their review report and identity will be made public.

• Once an article is accepted for publication, the names, affiliations, and evaluations of each reviewer are published along with the final manuscript, regardless of whether or not the reviewer recommended publication of the article.

• This system ensures a greater level of accountability for each of the peer reviewers, and it provides readers with a more detailed evaluation of each manuscript than what the traditional peer review process provides.

Hindawi Publishing Corporation • While the articles published in Scholarly Research

Exchange are open for anyone to read, the ability for a user to comment on, or evaluate, a published article will be limited to members of the scientific research community.

• Before submitting a comment or evaluation of an article to Scholarly Research Exchange, users must first create an account with the journal.

• Once they have created an account, they will be asked to enter the DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) of one or more of their published articles in scholarly journals.

• Comments submitted to Scholarly Research Exchange will be subject to moderation.

The traditional business model• The traditional business model for scientific publishers

relies on restricting access to published research, in order to recoup the costs of the publication process.

• This restriction of access to published research prevents full use being made of digital technologies, and is contrary to the interests of authors, funders and the scientific community as a whole.

• The traditional subscription-based model is also becoming increasingly unsustainable, as increasing amounts of research is being published whilst library budgets remain static.

BioMed Central• In contrast, BioMed Central's open access publishing

model treats publication as the last phase of the research process.

• Article-processing charges (APCs) cover the cost of the publication process to allow free and immediate access to the research articles.

• APCs ensure transparency and allow publishers to compete to provide the best service at the best price.

• By coupling the cost of publication to research budgets, APCs ensure that the journal publishing system can scale to cope with an ever increasing volume of research.

BioMed Central

• 4 most highly cited journal at the top of SCImago’s Nutrition and Diestic category are OA journals from BioMed Central (International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, Nutrition and Metabolism and Nutrition Journal), but due to the timing of tracking decision made by Thomson Reuters, these journals will not receive official Impact Factors until June 2009, 2010 and 2011 respectively

SciELO• Scientific Electronic Library

Online www.scielo.org and http://www2.scielo.org

• The national certified collections were from eight countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Portugal, Spain and Venezuela.

• Over 450 titles of certified journals and more than 130 thousand online full-text articles, including original scientific articles, review articles, editorials and other types of communication.

SciELO

• The collections SciELO Brazil and Chile in the first semester of 2007 had a monthly average of 8.8 and 2.1 million visits, respectively.

• In the Brazilian collection, the visits represented over 7.5 million downloads of articles and other texts.

• Most SciELO Brazil journals that are also indexed at the ISI JCR had a dramatic increase in number of citations received as well as in the impact factor.

• Simultaneously, in the last five years, three journals from the SciELO Chile collection and 10 of the SciELO Brazil collection have been indexed at the ISI Web of Sciences.

SciELO• SciELO is a good model for cooperative electronic publishing in

developing countries and provides an efficient way to assure universal visibility and accessibility to their scientific literature, contributing to overcome the phenomena known as 'lost science'.

• In addition, the SciELO model comprises integrated procedures for the measurement of usage and impact of scientific journals.

• SciELO Model is product of a partnership among FAPESP (http://www.fapesp.br) – the State of São Paulo Science Foundation, BIREME (http://www.bireme.br) – the Latin America and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information, as well as other national and international institutions.

SciELO• A pilot project with ten Brazilian journals from

different subject areas was successfully implemented in 1997-1998 aimed at the development and evaluation of an adequate methodology for electronic publishing on the Internet.

• From June 1998 the full scale project was launched incorporating new journals and expanding its operation to other countries.

• Since 2002 CNPq (http://www.cnpq.br) - Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico supported the project.

SciELO

• The successful development of the SciELO network of Latin America and Caribbean scientific journals made locally generated scientific information widely available increasing its usage among scholars and policy makers.

Croatia

• Hrcak, http://hrcak.srce.hr • 70 % of all science and technical journals

published in Croatia. • Both Hrcak and SciELO proved that

governmental financing to the journal portals results into higher impact of science from transition and developing countries.

South Africa

• In a 2006 report, the Academy of Science of South Africa found that over the past fourteen years, one-third of South African journals have not had a single paper cited by their international counterparts.

• Fewer than one in ten of South Africa's 255 accredited journals has been cited enough to feature in the main international research databases, despite South Africa being the continent's leading publisher of research.

South Africa

• Visibility for research output from South Africa, and other developing countries, must be increased dramatically so that research from developing countries is incorporated into the global knowledge pool, so vital to the resolution of global issues such as climate change or the spread of infectious iseases.– (http://www.scidev.net/quickguides/index.cfm?

fuseaction=qguideReadItem&type=1&itemid=2828&language=1&qguideid=4)

South Africa

• the Academy of Science (ASSAF) Committee on Scholarly Publishing in South Africa (CSPiSA) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST) has dedicated a substantial three-year budget to fund the implementation of ASSAF's recommendations for the development of scholarly publication in South Africa - a 'gold route' Open Access approach to journal publishing in South Africa.

South Africa• Allison Fullard conducted a survey of South African

responses to open access publishing, which showed that the research community already welcomed open access:

• 93,21% of respondents agreed, that open access boosts developing countries’ access to scholarly literature;

• 87,04% - that open access promotes developing countries’ engagement with global science;

• 91,97 – that open access promotes the advance of scientific knowledge; – Allison Fullard, (2007) “South African responses to Open Access publishing: a survey

of the research community”, South African Journal of Libraries and Information Science 73(1): 40-50. http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00010749/

South Africa• 57,4% - that open access provides more accountable

use of publicly funded research; • 70,36% - that open access articles will be read by more

people, and probably cited more often; • 51,85% - that authors retain copyright and are free to

use it as they wish • and 65,43% - that with open access development the

serials crisis facing libraries will be broken. – Allison Fullard, (2007) “South African responses to Open

Access publishing: a survey of the research community”, South African Journal of Libraries and Information Science 73(1): 40-50. http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00010749/

Serbia

• Open Access journals - National library of Serbia http://www.doiserbia.nbs.bg.ac.yu

What Institutions Are DoingSelf-archiving:

– Set-up and maintain institutional repository. – Help faculty deposit their research papers, new & old, digitizing if

necessary. – Implement open-access policies

Open-access journals:– Help promote open access journals launched at their institution become

known externally. – Ensure scholars at their institution know how to find open access

journals and archives in their fields. – Support open access journal ‘institutional memberships’ (e.g.

BioMedCentral, PLoS)– Engage with politicians and funding bodies to raise the issue of open

accesshttp://www.createchange.org/

Thank you!Questions?

Iryna Kuchmairyna.kuchma [at] eifl.net

www.eifl.net