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

V Gardner, Open Access Publisher Taylor & Francis / Routledge

[email protected]

@TandFOpen

The Open Dichotomy

   • 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 between subjects)

What about IP?

licensing and reusability (variance

What about permissions for 3 rd party content and CC BY?

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Open Access economics

• • • • 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

$2,670 in STM – vs

Why the difference?

58% in STM – typical HSS article is 19 pages, STM is 12 pages; rejection rate 89% in HSS,

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

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

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/openacce ss/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”

Researchers in the I work in Education where there is little humanities mostly do not 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.

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.

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.

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.

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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. ..

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.

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.

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Authors’ Views on OA

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Authors’ Views on Peer Review “

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

Authors’ Views on Re-use

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Authors’ Licences Preferences

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The Way Forward

• 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

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• • • • •

Open Access at T&F

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 Science Cogent Biology Cogent Engineering Cogent Education Cogent Humanities Cogent Medicine Cogent Physics

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

http://www.cogentoa.com

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@CogentOA 15