Open Access to your work: why, how, and what it will do for you (and ULancaster)

Open Access to your work: why, how, and what it will do for you

(and ULancaster)

Alma Swan

Key Perspectives Ltd

Truro, UK

Stevan Harnad (USouthampton)


‘Old’ paradigms

Use of proxy measures of an individual scholar’s merit is as good as it gets

It is a publisher’s responsibility to disseminate your work

Printed article is the format of record Other scholars have time to search out

what you want them to know


‘New’ paradigms Rich, deep, broad metrics for measuring

the contributions of individual scholars Effective dissemination of your work is

now in your hands (at last) The digital format will be the format of

record (is already in many areas) Unless you routinely publish in Nature or

Science, ‘getting it out there’ is up to you


Why researchers publish their work

0 20 40 60 80 100

% respondents

Communicate results to peers

Advance career

Personal prestige

Gain funding

Financial reward


Open Access: What is it?

Online Immediate Free (non-restricted) Free (gratis) To the scholarly literature that authors

give away Permanent


Open Access: Why should we have it?

Benefits to researchers themselves Benefits to institutions Benefits to national economies Benefits to science and society


New niches

Open Access journals (www.doaj.org)

Open Access repositories (author ‘self-archiving’)


Repositories: interoperable

Show their content in a specific form Harvested by search engines Form a database of global research Freely available Publicly available Permanently available


Open Access repositories

circa 900 worldwide, including… Lancaster’s Eprints repository



Open Access repositories

circa 900 worldwide, including… Lancaster’s Eprints repository


158 items

Why we should have Open Access

Greater impact from scholarly endeavour More rapid and more efficient progress of

scholarship Better assessment, better monitoring,

better management of research Better information-creation using new

and better technologies


Open Access increases citations

0 50 100 150 200 250

% increase in citations with Open Access

BiologyEconomics

Political SciHealth SciBusiness

EducationManagement

LawPsychology

SociologyPhysics


Range = 50%-200%(Data: Stevan Harnad and co-workers)

“Self-archiving in the PhilSci Archive has given instant world-wide visibility to my work. As a result, I was invited to submit papers to refereed international conferences/journals and got them accepted.”


An author’s own testimony on open access visibility

Lost citations, lost impact

Only around 15% of research is Open Access….

….. so 85% is not ….. and we are therefore losing 85% of

the 50% increase in citations (conservative end of the range) that Open Access brings (= 42.5%)


What this means to ULancaster 2005: 504 articles Number of citations: 1183 If all had been OA, there would have been

(42.5% more) 1685 citations Since Lancaster invested £19.5m in

research in 2004 ….. This means lost impact worth £8.28m to

the university


And for individual scientists…. Diamond, A M (1986) What is a citation worth?

J. Human Resources 21, 200 (www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v11p354y1988.pdf)

Marginal value of one citation is 50-1300 USD (depending on field and number of citations: an increase from 0 to 1 citation is worth more than from 30-31 citations)

Update for inflation (170%) = 86-2227 USD (say, $1000)

Convert to sterling = £460 Now let’s look at one Lancaster author’s

situation….


http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v11p354y1988.pdf

Bob Jessop (Sociology)


Bob Jessop

460 citations Would have been 42.5% lower

without OA = 264 citations Bob has gained 196 citations Each citation is worth £460 Bob is richer by = £90,160!


Smyth, M M


Mary Smyth

42 articles, 720 citations Could have been 42.5% higher (or

more) = 1026 citations ‘Lost’ citations = 326 Each citation is worth £460 Value of lost impact = £149,960 Conservatively!!!


The USouthampton conundrum…


Why is Southampton so strong?

Strong research base TBL et al Mandatory deposit of research output in

ECS repository for 4 years (c11K items) University repository actively managed

and now to have mandatory deposit All = Strong web presence


The RAE

Move to ‘metrics’ “Correlation between RAE ratings and

mean departmental citations +0.91 (1996) and +0.86 (2001) [Eysenck & Smith, 2002]

Now an RAE plug-in for the EPrints software


Science is faster, more efficientTime taken to be cited for articles in the arXiv database

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

8000

9000

10000

-6 0 6

12

18

24

30

36

42

48

54

60

66

72

78

84

90

96

Months from publication

Nu

mb

er

of

art

icle

s

1991199319951997199920012003


Farseeing authors, quick off the mark…


Measure, assess, and manage science more effectively Assess individuals, groups, institutions, on the

basis of citation analysis Track downloads, citations, patterns of use Trends: predict impact, usage, direction of

science and influences on research Latency, longevity Hubs, authorities ‘Silent’ ‘unsung’ authors identified by semantic

analysis


Track usage and citation history


Follow the citing trail …


New machine technologies

Text-mining, data-mining New information creation from otherwise

disparate information sources Example: Neurocommons (Find this on the ScienceCommons

website: www.sciencecommons.org)


An institutional repository provides researchers with:

Secure storage (for completed work and for work-in-progress)

A location for supporting data that are unpublished

One-input-many outputs (CVs, publications)

RAE


Publisher permissions (by journal)

70%

24%

6%

'Green' (postprints) 'Pale green' (preprints) 'Grey' (neither yet)


Publisher permissions

92% of journals permit self-archiving

SHERPA/RoMEO list at:

www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php

Or at: http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php


http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php

Author readiness to comply with a mandate

0 20 40 60 80 100

% respondents

Would complywillingly

Would complyreluctantly

Would notcomply

81%

14%

5%


Institutions with a mandate already

University of Southampton School of Electronics & Computer Science (since 2003) (90+% compliance already)

CERN (2003) (90% compliance already) Queensland University of Technology (2004)

(40%+ compliance and growing) University of Minho, Portugal (2005) Indian Inst Technology; UZurich; UTasmania…


Funders

Wellcome Trust (mandate) MRC (mandate) BBSRC (mandate) ESRC (mandate) PPARC (mandate) NERC (mandate) CCLRC (‘strong encouragement’)


“Clunk Click, every trip”

Public information film: 1972 In ten years, this campaign raised seatbelt

wearing to: 37% of drivers 39% of front seat passengers

Law passed 1982: seatbelts now compulsory 2005: seatbelts worn by:

93% of drivers 94% of front seat passengers


Why we should have Open Access

Greater impact from scholarly endeavour More rapid and more efficient progress of

scholarship Better assessment, better monitoring,

better management of research Better information-creation using new

and better technologies


Thank you for listening

[email protected]

www.keyperspectives.co.uk/OpenAccessArchive/


mailto:[email protected]

http://www.keyperspectives.co.uk/OpenAccessArchive/

Open Access to your work: why, how, and what it will do for you (and ULancaster)

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citation worth

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impact worth

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better monitoring

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