Open Access, Nijmegen, Centrum voor Ethiek, 22-6-2012 Open Access to scientific results easy in principle – hard in practice 1 Jos Engelen Netherlands.

Open Access, Nijmegen, Centrum voor Ethiek, 22-6-2012

Open Access to scientific resultseasy in principle – hard in practice

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Jos EngelenNetherlands Organisation for Scientific Research

andUniversity of Amsterdam - NIKHEF


Open Access

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Publications; Data (collected as part of the research project)Open Access = free access to all scientific publications (qc-ed)Why?

– eases access; takes away obstacles to inter/multidisciplinary reseach; a comprehensive ‘corpus’ of scientific results allows novel, dedicated search engines to ‘read’ an unlimited number of papers for you, drawing your attention to those that possibly are particularly relevant for your own research

– eases access for private sector (cf economic top area policy)– publicly funded research has been paid for already, its results should be

freely available. If you read about them in the Newspaper, you should be allowed to read the original article

• ‘A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic in Stead of Phospherous’ (Science Express)• ‘Navigating the Anthropocene: Improving Earth System Governance’ (Science)• Observation of Xi-star sub b particle (OA?)• Antarctic ice sheet loss driven by basal melting of ice shelves (Nature; 32$)• H5N1 (stopped by authorities; released; Science)


Business Model

Scientific publishing of publicly funded research requires professional publishers; it has a cost

– quality control; quality assurance; editorial board; distribution; storage; archiving (role of libraries; SURF)

– publishers and ‘subscribers’ should establish this cost (transparant; fair)

– ‘author pays’ is a possible business model; research funding should take this into account. Budget shift from Library budget to the budget of the ‘research funder’...

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Existing Journals – New Journals

Preference: successful, established journals change business model– green road, golden road (preferred) (hybrid: not preferred)

Create new OA journals ‘from scratch’ – reputation; initial impact factor = 0 (topical meeting on this in

Rotterdam, next October)– successful examples, e.g. BMC (Springer Open)

Availability of (high quality) OA journals for your research field?– dedicate couple of hours to this during (large) conferences; NWO

has reserved funds for sponsoring such sessions

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Existing Journals – an example

Nature (have a look at their website and count the number of titles: a huge industry!) ..\..\..\Desktop\index_npg.html

– editorial policy? News, views, advertisements; scientific results accepted for publication according to which criteria? ‘Regional spread’?

– An anecdote (‘Nature ready to go OA for 10,000 £ per article’)

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Concensus on OA

The research (funding) organisations (in Europe organized through Science Europe) are in favorThe European Commission is in favor (Kroes; Geoghegan Quinn)

(How) can ‘we’ stimulate/enforce the transition to Open Access?

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NWO

MissionIncentive fund (5 million Euro)

– ‘pay’ for ‘author pays’ journals– ‘pay’ for journals offering it as an option– help new OA initiatives (including OAPEN: books)– sponsor conference sessions (awareness)

Example of initiative in high energy physics SCOAP3 (see scoap3.org)

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How to achieve OA

Funding organizations (NWO, DFG, etc.) can (and will) make OA publishing a condition for granting research proposalsThe same is true for the European Commission

– Horizon 2020 (2014-2020)

Researchers, in particular the ‘established’ ones (Spinoza; Nobel Prize) should ‘vote with their feet’ (Henk, Anne, Heino, Carl, Peter, Mike, Ieke, Theo go OA!)

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Data

collecting data as (part of) research effortavailability for (re)usetechnical issues (DANS)data management plan as part of grant application

This topic is more ‘involved’ and more important and deserves a seminar of its own. (Cultural) differences between disciplines.

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Conclusions

Open Access will be the standard for scientific publishing; new business models are needed and under developmentResearch Funding Orgaisations, including European Commission, will push for this and make it a requirement

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OA also discussed at European Science Open Forum, Dublin, July 2012. I will participate in panel discussionwith, among others, Nature’s EIC

Open Access, Nijmegen, Centrum voor Ethiek, 22-6-2012 Open Access to scientific results easy in principle – hard in practice 1 Jos Engelen Netherlands.

Documents

research project open

conclusions open access

research eases access

centrum voor ethiek

free access

scientific research

science slide

new oa journals