Open Access and Impact: Raising Researcher Visibility

Heather Joseph Executive Director, SPARC

Université Laval, Quebec City, Canada

October 1, 2014

Our Mission:

Expand the distribution of the

results of research and scholarship in a way that leverages digital

networked technology, reduces financial pressures on libraries, and

creates a more open system of scholarly communication.

Why a New System?

We have a unique opportunity to optimize the system underpinning

how scholars share their work.

The Internet.

New Venues to Share Work.

2. Digital Deluge.

Manolio, Brooks, Collins, J Clin Invest 2008; 118:1590-625. .

2005 2006 2007 first quarter 2007 second quarter 2007 third quarter 2007 fourth quarter 2008 first quarter

A New Era in Medicine: Explosion in Scientific Discovery

Second quarter 2008

3. Prohibitive Costs

Price Barriers

www.righttoresearch.org

Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20050828210650/libraries.mit.edu/about/scholarly/expensive-titles.html

Library budgets & journal prices

-50%

0%

50%

100%

150%

200%

250%

300%

350%

400%

1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Perc

enta

ge C

hang

e

Year

MIT Libraries Materials Purchases vs. CPI % Increase 1986-2006

Consumer Price Index % + Serial Expenditures % + # Serials Purchased % +

# Books Purchased % + Book Expenditures % +

Journal expenditure

Inflation

“The annual revenues generated by STM journal publishing are estimated at $9.4 billion U.S. in

2011…”

The STM Report, http://www.stm-assoc.org/2012_12_11_STM_Report_2012.pdf

Prohibitive costs mean scholarship is available to the few – not the

many.

16

“By open access, we mean the free availability of articles on the public

internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute,

print, search or link to the full text of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to

software or use them for any other lawful purpose…”

- The Budapest Open Access Initiative – February 14, 2002

Open Access = Access + Full Reuse

Theory is that the more people who can access your article the

more who will read, cite and build on your work resulting in:

Expected Outcomes of OA • Faster and more efficient research

• Greater visibility and impact of outputs

• Access to more content, license to do more with content

• Better monitoring, assessment and evaluation of research

• Enabling new semantic technologies (i.e., text-mining and data-mining)

Two Major Enabling Strategies: Journals and Repositories

1. Open Access Journals

A true Open Access Journal is one that allows immediate, free access

to all articles, with unrestricted reuse rights.

Open Licenses

The editorial, peer review, copy editing and quality control processes are the same as

traditional subscription access journals.

Wide variety of business models support Open Access journals

www.doaj.org

More than 9,000 OA Journals

2. Digital Repositories

Open Access Repositories are essentially digital collections;

usually institutional-based, that contain digital articles.

Here’s one example:

Ideally, Open Access repositories are interoperable, and form a

network across the world, creating a global database of openly-

accessible research

www.arl.org/sparc 33

Open Access Repositories

FEDERATION

So - does it work?

OA Journal Article Impact

Range = 36%-200% (Data: Stevan Harnad and co-workers)

Clinical medicine Ci

tatio

ns

Data: Gargouri & Harnad, 2010

Engineering

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2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

OANon-OA

Data: Gargouri & Harnad, 2010

Cita

tions

Social science Ci

tatio

ns

Data: Gargouri & Harnad, 2010

<QUT citation advantage>

www.sparc.arl.org Source: “OA Policy Development and Implementation at Queensland University of Technology,” Professor Tom Cochrane, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Delivered November 2012): http://www.berlin10.org/images/ws2cochrane.pdf

www.sparc.arl.org Source: “OA Policy Development and Implementation at Queensland University of Technology,” Professor Tom Cochrane, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Delivered November 2012): http://www.berlin10.org/images/ws2cochrane.pdf

www.sparc.arl.org Source: “OA Policy Development and Implementation at Queensland University of Technology,” Professor Tom Cochrane, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Delivered November 2012): http://www.berlin10.org/images/ws2cochrane.pdf

But of course, there’s more to impact than just citations…

• Increased Usage

• Higher visibility of works

• Greater “Impact”

• Higher personal profile

• More opportunities to build community/collaborations

Article Level Metrics provide mechanism to begin to measure

these things.

ALM’s are granular, and let you dig into the aspect of impact you want

to explore…

As a Researcher…

….I wonder who is reading my work..

As an administrator or evaluator….

I wonder if this research is having an effect on outcomes I care

about…

Monitoring progress: WT’s key indicators

Outcomes Key indicators of progress

Discoveries

Applications Engagement

Research leaders Research environment

Influence

1. significant advances in the generation of new knowledge 2. contribute to discoveries with tangible impacts on health

3. contribute to the development of enabling technologies, products and devices

4. uptake of research into policy and practice

5. enhanced level of informed debate in biomedicine 6. significant engagement of key audiences & increased reach

7. develop a cadre of research leaders 8. evidence of significant career progression among those we

support

9. key contributions to the creation, development and maintenance of major research resources

10. contributions to the growth of centres of excellence

11. significant impact on science funding & policy developments 12. significant impact on global research priorities and processes

What do I know about the reach of my research?

Geographically…..

Reach: MIT’s repository usage

Our outside of traditional journals…..

New ways to see who is using our work, where it is used, and even

little about how it is being used...

…and also to put metrics about use and reach of articles into context.

The Open Digital Environment shows promise for extending and

redefing the the visibility and impact of research outputs.

Thank You for Listening.

Heather Joseph Executive Director, SPARC

heather@arl.org www.arl.org/sparc

Thanks to Nick Shockey, SPARC NA and Alma Swan, SPARC EU, Kevin Dolby, Wellcome Trust and Jennifer Lin, PLOS for sharing slides for this

presentation.