Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

Open Access Policy

2015

Falk Reckling

Strategy – Analysis

(Sources and further information are hyperlinked)

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Economics of the academic

publishing system

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taxes and fees fund researchers

researchers produce for publishers as authors, editors and reviewers free of charge

publishers produce and advertise

tax payers fund but have only limited access to publications

publishers sell to libraries

researchers consumepublications they have produced

But it‘s the economy too, stupid !

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Dysfunctional Publication Market

every publication is a monopoly and cannot be substituted

the price service relation of publications are not transparent for researchers which creates a tragedy-of-commons-problem

big publishers sell bundles of journals (big deal) with intransparent pricing (non-disclosure clauses)

dominance of some oligopolists with operating profits from 35% to 42% (revenue of ~ Ø $ 4-5.000 per article)

publishers hold copyright which are the basis for high profitable value added services (e.g. bibliometric and bibliographic databases) new information giants in science arise

Luxury Journal Effect: research careers are often determinated by the branding of the publication venue and not by the publication but see counter movements as the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (signed by the FWF)

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Price factors of commercial vs. non-commercial academic journals per citation (Source: http://www.journalprices.com/)

Agriculture

Biology

Business

Chemistry

Computer Science

Economics

Education

Engineering

Geology

History

Humanities

Mathematics

Medicine

Physics

Psychology

Social Science

All

3.32

4.62

3.21

4.34

2.52

3.36

4.68

3.10

6.04

2.72

3.96

2.86

8.06

5.17

3.01

3.33

4.75

Law: 17,55

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What is Open Access?

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What is Open Access?

Main Principle free access to scholarly publications and research data via the Internet

Author rights Authors hold the copyright and may post any version to any repository or website

Reuse all publications shall be published under an open licence, preferably the Creative Commons Attribution CC BY . In any case, the licence applied should fulfill the requirements defined by the Berlin Declaration.

Machine Readiblity Publication full text, metadata, supporting data, citations and the status of the publication as Open Access have to be made available in a machine-readable form via open standards.

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Why Open Access ?*

Technical the digitalisation and the Internet offer new publication formats new potentials for searching, cross-linking and filtering of knowledge

(e.g. text and data mining)

Scholarly improvement of knowledge exchange and higher citation rates better reproducibility of research results reduction of research costs through Open Access

Societal economic and moral claim of tax payers new transfer of knowledge into society (e.g. doctors, teachers, SME,

journalists, public administration, interested laymen)

* see testimonials more than 40 outstanding researchers

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FWF Scientists Survey 2013

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State of the Art

The two biggest funding agencies in basic research for the

Austrian research institutions, the EU (Horizon 2020 +

ERC) and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), require and

support all project leaders and project staff members to

make their peer-reviewed research results freely available

through the Internet.

Open Access to research data is recommended but not

yet mandated.

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Carlos Moedas EU Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation

“Public investment in research and innovation should have

the greatest social and economic benefits possible: improving

the public relationship with our science systems and opening

research results to new innovation and business

opportunities … Expensive fees for publically funded

research results, that could be of benefit to citizens, must

end, and new business models put in place … “

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International Developments

European Commission (July 2012) Recommendation to member states: 60% Open Access in 2016

Danemark (July 2014) 80% Open Access in 2017 and 100% in 2022

Germany (July 2014) the government plans a comprehensive strategy for Open Access and Open Data

Sweden (February 2015) 100% Open Access in 2025

UK (March 2014) from 2016 the Research Excellence Framework accepts Open Access

publications only + offsetting deals with publishers

Netherlands (December 2014) 60% Open Access in 2016 and 100% in 2024 + full OA deals with publishers

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Open Access Policy and Funding

of the FWF

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Option I: Green Open Access

FWF Policy = self-deposition of the author’s accepted manuscript (after peer-review

but prior to publishers copy editing and production) in any sustainable subject or

institutional repository after a period of no longer than 12 months.

almost 700 institutions recommend/require to make publications OA in nearly 4000 repositories

more than 1200 publishers allow OA self-archiving of articles published in subscription journals

Caveats ! preprints or working papers are not Open Access, only peer-reviewed versions in most cases not the orginial version of record but only the accepted manuscript

can be archived different embargo policies (0 to 48 months) with the tendency of extension (see

Elsevier) rights for authors and users are still very restricted no influence on publishers pricing policies so far

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Option II: Gold Open Access

FWF Policy = publication in an Open Access venue using the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY). Costs are additionally covered by the FWF via the programme Peer-Reviewed Publications up to three years after the end of the project.

out of 10.000 OA journals 3.000 are indexed in bibliometric databases + some models for books

~ 65% of OA journals work without author fees. If author fees are requested, Ø € 800 per article but high variance: € 100 - € 4.000

~ 20% of all indexed articles are Gold Open Access

Caveats !

Since most OA journals are very young, they still lack reputation and therefore are unattractive for younger researchers

high disciplinary variance of renowned OA journals lack of funding for author fees Discredits by faux journals or predatory publisher

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1. PLOS ONE 11. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS

2. NEW JOURNAL OF PHYSICS 12. ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS

3. OPTICS EXPRESS 13. BIOGEOSCIENCES

4. NUCLEIC ACIDS RESEARCH 14. BIOMEDICAL OPTICS EXPRESS

5. PLOS GENETICS 15. FRONTIERS IN HUMAN NEUROSCIENCE

6. PLOS PATHOGENS 16. HYDROLOGY AND EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCES

7. ANNALES GEOPHYSICAE 17. MICROBIAL CELL FACTORIES

8. BMC GENOMICS 18. ACTA CRYSTALLOGRAPHICA E

9. BMC EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY 19. ACTA PROTOZOOLOGICA

10. ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF COMBINATORICS

20. NATURE COMMUNICATION

20 most used OA journals of FWF funded authors

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Option III: Hybrid Open Access

FWF Policy = payment for OA of a single article in a subscription venue using the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY). Costs are additionally covered by the FWF via the programme Peer-Reviewed Publications up to three years after the end of the project.

prices per article vary enormously € 900 to € 4.000

Hybrid OA offers publishers a possibility of switching journals from subscription to Open Access

Caveats !

„Double Dipping“ despite of official communiques publishers pocket often twice

only 2% to 3% of all articles are Hybrid Open Access,

only few real transition models from subscription to Open Access exist

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FWF OA funding in a nutshell

2001: coverage of OA author fees via Peer-Reviewed Publication

OA Policy: recommendation since 2004, mandate since 2008

2009: one of the first OA book funding programmes (~ € 1 Mio./year) FWF E-Book Library (now 280 OA Books)

2010: funder of Europe PubMedCentral

2013: initiator of the Open Access Network Austria (OANA)

2013: funder of arXiv

2013: co-funder of the Austrian share for SCOAP³

2013: initial funding of eight journals from social science and humanities

2013: ~ € 3,0 Mio (1.5% of the overall budget)

2014: study Developing an Effective Market for Open Access Article Processing Charges together with Wellcome Trust, Research Councils and others published)

2014: together with the Austrian Library Consortium first offsetting models with IOP Publishing, RCS, Taylor & Francis

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News in 2015

Publication Costs price caps (Gold Open Access fees = € 2,500 per article, Hybrid Open Access

fees = € 1,500 per article) ceases to make additional payments for any publication costs for subscription

journals (e.g. colour figures, page charges and submission fees) Offsetting deal for Hybrid Open Access with publisher Taylor & Francis

Stand-Alone Publications extension to new digital Open Access publication formats (e.g. apps, wikis,

software, databases, audio, video, animation), funding up to € 18,000

Open Research Data Applicants for research grants are explicitly asked to budget funds for processing,

archiving and re-using open research data (see 2.6. “Other Costs”)

Compliance From 2016 onwards, final reports require that all publications are OA

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For more informations

FWF Open Access Policy

FWF Open Access News

FWF Open Access on Twitter