Open Access – views from the (SSAH) Learned Society and Author Perspective

V Gardner, Open Access Publisher Taylor & Francis / Routledge

Victoria.gardner@tandf.co.uk @TandFOpen

The Open Dichotomy

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• Most authors, learned societies and editors agree that openness and public access to content are strongly to be desired

• Our surveys show that although Open Access to research is a strong core value among many academic and scientific communities, there are concerns, especially around:

economic and financial impacts quality and peer review

standards licensing and reusability

(variance between subjects)

What about IP?

What about permissions for 3rd party content and

CC BY?

Open Access economics

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• National Humanities Alliance Report, July 2009, based on 8 large US society Humanities and Social Science journals

• $9,994 average cost to publish an HSS article in 2007 – vs $2,670 in STM

• Why the difference? – typical HSS article is 19 pages, STM is 12 pages; rejection rate 89% in HSS, 58% in STM

• Conclusion: OA ‘author pays’ model is not financially viable in Humanities and Social Sciences

However, there are a significant

number of (platinum) OA

journals in SSAH

http://www.nhalliance.org/bm~doc/hssreport.pdf

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Learned Society Concerns• Loss of income

– Reduced ability to mentor researchers, subsidise conference and networking events, offer grants and bursaries, and so on.

• “What about early career researchers?”• Quality

– Concerns about a need to increase throughout to remain viable

• The Embargo and Hybrid debates• Resource

– complex issues around OA, APC systems…• BUT, public access to research is

desirable

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T&F 2013 Open Access Survey: Method

• E-mail inviting participation sent to 83k authors

• 14,769 respondents – 19% response rate

• 95% assurance that any result from survey lies within 1% of the view of the T&F author community

• http://www.tandfonline.com/page/openaccess/opensurvey

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SSAH Author Concerns• A cultural chasm

– Green OA the default for SSAH– ‘research less important’ than in

e.g. biomedicine• Funding funding funding!

– diverted to APCs– Given to the most research

intensive HEIs• Academic freedom

– Further (internal) review of research

– funders are clear that publication outlet choice is down to the researcher

– “it won’t affect me”

“I think Open Access is

fundamental to accountability for

huge public funding … and to socially transfer our emerging

knowledge .. costs … are prohibitive for early career staff who need

publications to get funding of any kind

..”

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“Open Access is unworkable for the Humanities”I work in Education where there is little

funding available and I have never heard of a funder paying for publication

of the funded research results in an open access journal, I think that any

such cost will need be met by academics and their departments and, as such, is a completely unsustainable

model.

Researchers in the humanities mostly do not have institutional funds to pay author

charges. If such charges are required for publication, there will be a significant

drop in the usefulness of research in the

humanities.

Open Access is particularly unsuited to research in humanities subjects, which is often not grant-funded. It is a model for science which is being

crudely applied everywhere, where it will do considerable damage and bring very few

benefits.

Pay to publish is a serious risk to the diversity of academic work - in the Humanities there is a significant push to support OA in

theory, but absolutely no money to do so. Pay to publish fees will make the engines of scholarship and tenure available only to

those with resources.

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“Open Access is the future”I am strongly in favor of OA. It is more fair to

those from small institutions or without formal affiliation, and it increases visibilty

and spread of research. .. Although I think that open access/electronic publication is the way of the future, there is

ambivalence about how articles published in this way "count" towards tenure and promotion. Hence my (and

others) reluctance to submit to them now.

The sooner the control that a very few people exercise over the dissemination of research

ceases to exist, the better.

My issue is that my work is paid for through tax and should be

available freely to tax payers as a result. However, what format

this is in (online only subscription article; abridged full access

version; 1000 word blog post) may determine how OA shapes

up.

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Authors’ Views on OA

Authors’ Views on Peer Review

“When publishing open access, I would find the following kinds of peer review suitable for my research:”

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Authors’ Views on Re-use

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Authors’ Licences Preferences

The Way Forward

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• Advocacy and Education– correct misunderstandings but discuss valid

concerns• Consultation and Compromise

– One size does not fit all– Academy of Social Sciences / ESRC (UK)

Learned Societies Project• Value of Learned Societies

– Stewards of Early Career Researchers– Conferences aid networking– Grants, bursaries, etc– Promote scholarship and knowledge

exchange

Open Access at T&F

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• Pure Open Access – Gold OA option• Hybrid Open Access

– Gold OA option– Green OA option

• Waivers offered to developing country authors

• Author choice emphasised, as well as funder compliance facilitated

• CC BY, CC BY-NC and T&F OA LTP (based on CC BY-NC-ND with TDM permitted)

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Introducing….

Coming soon:Cogent Behavioral ScienceCogent BiologyCogent EngineeringCogent EducationCogent HumanitiesCogent MedicineCogent Physics

@CogentOAhttp://www.cogentoa.com/

Cogent OA benefits from the resources and experiences of a major publisher, but otherwise operates autonomously.