How subversive! And how it takes to subvert ...

Alma SwanSPARC Europe

Key Perspectives Ltd

Enabling Open Scholarship

IGeLU Conference, Oxford, 15-17 September 2014

Spirit or soul

The Subversive Proposal

• 27 June 1994• Recommended authors post their papers

on anonymous ftp sites• arXiv started in 1991 • And still flourishes ...

PROGRESS

What happened next

• World Wide Web

Levels of OA in the UK

Biomed

ical R

es.

Mat

hem

atics

Physic

s

Earth

& S

pace

Biolog

y

ALL D

ISCIP

LINES

Health

Psych

ology

Clinica

l Med

.

Social

Sci.

Engine

ering

& T

ech.

Profe

ssion

al Fiel

ds

Chem

istry

Arts

Human

ities

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80% Delay OA

Gold OA

Green OA

Why so low after 20 years?• Authors:

– Lack of awareness– Lack of understanding– Overdose of misunderstandings– Fear of repercussions– Reward systems in academia entrench

conservative behaviour– Glacial pace of academic adoption of the Web

Why so low after 20 years?

• Publishers (some of them!):– Hindrance– Obstruction– Obfuscation– FUD

Why so low after 20 years?• Libraries:

– Hooked into Big Deals– Budgets frozen – Policy made elsewhere– Varying levels of buy-in to the notion of Open

Access– Preoccupation with irrelevant issues

What have been the drivers?

• Advocacy, including gathering an evidence base of the benefits

• Infrastructure:– Technical (repository networks)– New publishing venues

• Policy

Advocacy• Benefits to authors:

– Visibility, usage, impact– Part of the new modus operandi for the digital scholar

• Benefits to institutions:– Mission– Visibility, usage, impact– Monitoring and assessment– Competitive intelligence– Outreach, ROI– Funding

• Benefits to funders:– Monitoring and assessment– Return on investment

Infrastructure

Infrastructure• Print > electronic• Hyperlinking• Linked open data(?)• Interoperability

– Work in progress– Deposit – ID– Licensing– Preservation– etc, etc

OA infrastructure for EU research

Authors

Institutional repositories

OpenAIRE

Readers

Google, etc

HARVEST

Open Access policies

• 222 institutional policies• 44 sub-institutional policies• 90 funder policies• Europe:

– H2020 Rules have a mandatory OA policy– Recommendation to Member States (2012)

• US: OSTP directive to federal agencies

Open Access policies

PROMISE

Areas of promise• Policy• Books (and the humanities in general)• Data• Institutional responsibility• Author interest and activity

Policy• Growing in number• Mandatory• Supported by good implementation • Convergence, alignment

Humanities• Huge increase in interest• Lots of new developments

– OA journals– OA monographs

Humanities• Huge increase in interest• Lots of new developments

– OA journals– OA monographs

• Funder and institutional initiatives– Institutional publishing (university presses)– Covering costs

• Technical initiatives– e.g hypothes.is

Open Data

• Massive interest• Funders developing policy to support Open

Data implementation• Lots of infrastructure already

Open Data

• Massive interest• Funders developing policy to support Open

Data implementation• Lots of infrastructure already • The basis of open scholarship in the future

POTHOLES

Recent survey of libraries

• Technical problems• Qualitative screening of OA publications• Indexing of OA publications• Management of Open Access costs• Long-term preservation of OA collections • Promotion of Open Access resources

Miriam Lorenz , IFLA WLIC, 2014 [libraries in Germany, UK, USA]

Issues and challenges• Humanities (some areas):

– esp. the future of university presses (and their relationship with libraries)

• Data: – Preservation and curation– Development of appropriate data management

practices• Licensing practices and copyright• Sustaining the new system• Institutional responsibility

Institutional responsibility I: Responsible licensing

• Do not sign agreements with publishers that limit OA or obstruct its aims:

• Govern Green OA: research results belong to the research community, not to service industries

• TDM

Institutional responsibility II: Paying for Open Access

• Manage your APC fund to benefit OA• Encourage author responsibility• Make sure you get value• Don’t let the Big Deal morph into the

Big OA Deal• Encourage attempts to deconstruct the

publishing process and pay for the component services

Institutional responsibility III: Sustaining the Open Access system• Service infrastructure • Many began as projects • Sustainability plans not always robust• May not be workable in the longer term• First steps being taken to address this issue• Libraries (and funders) have roles

“It is one of the noblest duties of a university to advance knowledge and to diffuse it, not merely among those who can attend the daily lectures, but far and wide.”

Daniel Coit Gilman First President, Johns Hopkins University

Thank you

almaswan3@gmail.com

www.spareurope.orgwww.openscholarship.org

www.pasteur4oa.eu