Green or gold: What will Open Access mean for the LSE?

Green or gold: What will open access mean for the

LSE?

8 May 2013

LSE Impact of Social Science blog/LSE Library event

LSE Library Services

Understanding Open Access : Background & Context

Martin ReidHead of Academic ServicesLSE Library

[email protected] 7955 7616

What is Open Access?

The process of making research outputs freely available online to anyone with an internet connection, in agreement with the author and/or copyright holder.

Involves removing price and permission barriers to access and reuse of research

Benefits for: • Authors: Greater exposure for work; increased citations; broader audience

• Institutions: Improved knowledge exchange and impact; enhanced reputation

• Society: Transparency and accountability; more effective use of research funding; more innovation and return on investment

Routes to Open Access

Gold• Publication in an Open Access journal: peer reviewed text is immediately

available free of charge – no subscriptions• Publication costs (+ profits) met in other ways: fees for publication –

Article Processing Charge (APC); but also subsidies

Green• Deposit of authoritative version of research in online institutional or

subject repository (e.g. LSE Research Online)• Publication possible in pay-for-access journal at the same time• Can involve delay in making text available in repository - embargos

Finch Report

• Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings chaired by Janet Finch - Report published June 2012

• Aim to finds ways of expand access to published research without:• undermining scholarly publishing industry and learned societies• affecting standards of peer review and quality of UK research• imposing unsustainable costs on universities

• Reconcile conflicting interests: researchers, funders, publishers

• Identify Gold Open Access as most effective means of achieving aims as final peer reviewed text available immediately

• Recognize change has to be made gradually – UK part of global scholarly communication system – transitional funding required

Finch Report - Recommendations

Key• Policy direction to support publication in open access journals funded by APCs as

main vehicle for research• RCUK and public funders to establish effective arrangements to meet costs of

publishing in open access journals• Support for open access publication to be accompanied by policies to minimise

restrictions on use and re-use

Other• Develop repositories to concentrate on complementary areas: research data,

digital preservation, grey literature• Extended licensing • Negotiation on journal pricing• Investigation of open access publication of monographs• Avoid undermining valuable journals not funded by APCs

Finch Report - Recommendations

For universities• Establish mechanisms to enable universities to meet costs of APCs• Establish publication funds within universities• Establish arrangements for payment of APCs, minimising transaction

costs• Develop policies and procedures in relation to open access publishing

and how it is funded • Develop infrastructure of repositories and enhance interoperability to

provide:• effective access routes for reports, working papers, other grey literature , and theses• mechanism for enhancing links between publication and associated research data• preservation service

Green or gold: What will open access mean for the LSE?

The School’s response

David Coombe

Director of the Research Division

[email protected]

8 May 2013

RCUK open access policy

• Step-change from 2005 policy• Applies to (all) RCUK-acknowledged peer-

reviewed articles and conference proceedings only

• RCUK prefers Gold; allows Green• 5-year ‘journey’: 45% compliance (Gold or

Green) in year 1; 75% Gold by year 5• Supported by block grant (£63k)

RCUK open access policy #2

• Compliant if journal offers Gold (with CC BY licence) or Green (with CC BY NC) within 12 months for AHRC/ESRC (24 months if funding not available)

• Compliance will be monitored• RCUK policy will be reviewed in 2014

School response

• Support OA for all publications – LSERO• Journal choice: ensure quality and impact

– ie highest quality journals• Institutional publication fund for RCUK

Gold APCs where Green is not allowed• Monitoring and influencing HEFCE REF

2020 policy

Issues – sector/institution

• Problems with the business model: eg publishers’ ‘double-dipping’

• Costs of compliance:– Not supported by block grant nor project

funding– Opportunity cost: research funding– Reporting costs

• International competitors

Issues – institution/individual

• Potential constraints on publication strategies:– Undermines commitment to world-leading

research– Spectre of managing publication strategies

• Legal/IP: terms of licensing

Issues – institution/individual

• Effects on early career researchers• Implications for collaborative research• Other outputs, eg books• Research material, eg data• Acknowledging RCUK funding• Embargo periods

OPENING UP YOUR RESEARCH

JANE TINKLER

• Use facilities that the School already provides to open up your research by making it more visible

• Blog about your findings on one of the LSE’s academic blogs

• Put all of your publications and other outputs into LSE Research Online

• Create an Experts page as well as a Google Scholar Citations profile

Increased open access won’t happen overnight, in the meantime why not . . .

• Yes.

• Using social media such as academic blogging to disseminate your publications increases their visibility, which in turn increases their readership.

• Placing your work in LSE Research Online means that when people search for you or your work, they find full-text articles to download.

• LSE Research Online works with both LSE Experts and Google Scholar Citations to allow all of your full-text publications to be held in one place.

Will this really make a difference?

Academic blogging can have a significant effect onthe number of readers for your research

A team from the World Bank looked at the influence of economic academic blogs and showed an increase in readership figures for both abstract views and article downloads

Twitter can be a useful dissemination tool to raise the visibility of recent publications

A team from the National Centre for Research Methods compared twitter to other communication channels like an email bulletin and a newsletter for its affect on the number of downloads a paper had

You don’t need to do all this yourself,the School provides these services already

The readership of PPG’s four academic blogs have grown significantly over the last year, reaching approx 150K readers a month.

The team edits blog posts and suggests changes to make them more accessible, we disseminate via twitter, facebook and pintrest and archive posts in LSE Research Online.

LSE Research Online: some key facts

Over5.7 million

Downloads from 164 countries

5.7 million downloads of full-text articles since May 2007 of 36,000 articles

Most visitors come from search engines so are likely to be searching for you or your research area

In March 2013, publications were downloaded from 164 countries – repositories often reach different audiences to traditional subscription journal content

75% traffic comes from

search engines

Year 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Number of Visits 215,000 469,000 443,000 605,000 691,000

2008 2009 2010 2011 20120

100,000

200,000

300,000

400,000

500,000

600,000

700,000

800,000

Number of Visits

• The number of visitors to LSERO has steadily increased between 2008 and 2012

• There are over three times as many visitors to the site in 2012 as there were in 2008

• Only a quarter of LSERO’s holdings are full text articles

• Not all LSE’s Departments are equally represented in LSERO

Download numbers have been increasing, but morefull-text publications are needed

1Academic sends articles, conference papers, reports, podcasts to LSE Research Online

2The LSE RO team in the Library check copyright issues and then upload outputs to the database

4LSE Experts pulls in information from LSE RO so that the Experts pages are as up to date as possible

3These publications are then freely available to download and are also linked to by Google Scholar

Your LSE Research Online publications then link to LSE Experts

And full text publications can also be found by Google Scholar Citations

The School is encouraging all academics to create a GSC profile and over 300 have done so already. It collects all your publications together in one place and links to co-authors