Transcript The Challenges for Research Libraries

Bringing the
emphasis back to
OA
David C Prosser
Executive Director
RLUK
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Who we are
Membership organisation of 32 libraries
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27 university libraries
3 national libraries
Wellcome and V&A
Vision:
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The UK should have the best research library
support in the world
Budapest Open Access Initiative
Two complementary strategies:
• Self-Archiving: Scholars should be able to deposit their
refereed journal articles in open electronic archives which
conform to Open Archives Initiative standards
• Open-Access Journals: Journals will not charge subscriptions
or fees for online access. Instead, they should look to other
sources to fund peer-review and publication (e.g., publication
charges)
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/
The Purpose of an IR Eric van der Velde
Release hidden information
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• Rein in journal prices
• Archive an institution’s scholarly
record
• Enable fast research communication
• Provide free access to authorformatted articles
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http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com/2011/10/open-access-doubts.html
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The Purpose of an IR Eric van der Velde
Release hidden information
Rein in journal prices
Archive an institution’s scholarly record
Enable fast research communication
Provide free access to author-formatted articles
Aid research management
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http://scitechsociety.blogspot.com/2011/10/open-access-doubts.html
Providing free access to
(author-formatted) articles
Have we failed over the past
ten years to convince
authors that archiving their
papers is in their interests?
Providing free access to
articles
• The key drivers for authors:
• Access problems
• Citation
• Mandates
• (And a barrier – uncertainty over
rights)
Access problems
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The growth of the OA movement coincided with
a massive growth in online access:
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Big deals - bringing access to previously
unsubscribed titles
Archives - free and purchased through backfile deals
Already a disconnect between researcher as
‘reader’ and researcher as ‘author’
Harder to convince authors that there is an
access problem when they have access to
‘everything’!
Access problems Becoming more acute?
• Even with access to ‘everything’, a
third of researchers have access
problems ‘very’ or ‘quite’ often
(PEER Behavioural Research http://www.peerproject.eu/fileadmin/media/reports/PEER_D4_final_report_
29SEPT11.pdf)
• Budget cuts mean that libraries are
now cancelling subscriptions
Budgets are Falling
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Fall in value of Sterling has impacted UK Libraries
Library purchasing power reduced by 16% in 2008-2009,
leaving shortfall of up to £400,000 for some RLUK members
in 2009
Even optimistic estimates of income from students shows
teaching income flat over the next few years (after an initial
dip).
STEM research funding flat - real-term cuts
Libraries, in line with all parts of HE, are facing real-term
cuts
Implications will be felt in the library for years to come
Prices are Rising
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In the UK, journal prices rose 158% between 1991 and 2001
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over five times the level of CPI inflation
Prices of the “Big Deals” for Elsevier and Wiley-Blackwell journals rose
by more than double the rate of CPI inflation in the six years from 2004
to 2010
With exchange-rate fluctuations this has translated to cost increases of
over 50% in the last four years
Some big deals now cost the institution over £1m per year
Arbitrary ‘list prices’ for individual journal titles mean breaking the big
deals could actually be more expensive for institutions
A Solution?
"The only way for universities to save
money is to make people redundant”
Graham Taylor, Publishers Association
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=414106
The Only Way?
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HE spends ~£190m per year on journals and databases
Roughly 10% of total QR funding
Each 1% price rise costs us £1.9m
How do we find those multiples of £1.9m?
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Cut services (opening hours?)
Cut monograph purchasing (even further)
Cut textbook purchasing
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Cut non-big-deal journals - often smaller, society journals
Or start to cut big deals
Is the ‘golden age’ of subscription access
over?
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We know that institutions in the UK and abroad are beginning
to cut some of their big deals
Researchers will see a reduction in the number of titles
(papers) they can access
Libraries will attempt to minimise the effect by cancelling lowuse titles first - but there will be an effect
Will this feed into an understanding that researchers can
improve the dissemination of the own papers by selfarchiving?
Even if yes, this could be a long process as we sign-up to
more multi-year big deals
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The Promise of
Citations
We OA advocates were very clear:
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Self-archiving will lead to
Greater discoverability, leading to
Greater usage, leading, inevitably, to
Increased citations
The Promise of
Citations - Fulfilled?
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It is clear that OA increases downloads
But the evidence on citations less clear-cut
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Especially once all other possible effects are
taken into account (early citations, authorbias, etc)
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The Promise of
Citations - Fulfilled?
Perhaps greater usage does not inevitably lead to
increased citations
Do researchers cite what they read and read what
they cite?
If not, then greater access will not have an effect
on citations
Until we can unequivocally promise a citation effect
we do not have a strong message to researchers
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The Growth in
Mandates
One area of unequivocal advocacy success is
the growth in the number of OA mandates and
policies at the level of:
• Research groups
• Universities
• Research centres
• Funding bodies
• Governments
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The Growth in
Mandates
But have we seen the effects of these mandates in our
repositories?
Publisher-mediated, funder-paid deposit (eg,
Wellcome’s agreement with publishers) appears to be
the most successful to date
Why low compliance with mandates?
• Lack of awareness
• Lack of carrot or stick
• Time lag (mandates applied to new grants)
The Role of the REF?
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Could repository deposit be seen as sign of
attempts at engagement and ‘impact”?
Could future REFs be based on OA outputs?
OA and the Reward
Structure
“All it takes is a few minutes of political courage
and let their research community know that
any author's refereed, corrected, accepted final
draft of any refereed journal article that is not in
the Institutional Repository will be disregarded
in any performance assessment within the
University.”
Bernard Rentier, Rector, Université de Liège
European Commission
Pilot Project
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EC pilot launched in August 2008 to give OA to results from approximately 20% of projects
from the 7th Research Framework Programme (FP7) - especially in health, energy,
environment, social sciences and information and communication technologies.
Grantees required to:
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deposit peer reviewed research articles or final manuscripts resulting from their FP7
projects into an online repository, with either six or twelve month embargo
(depending on subject area).
The European Research Council (ERC)
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In December 2007 the ERC issued Guidelines for Open Access and the ERC Scientific
Council has established the following interim position on open access:
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All peer-reviewed publications from ERC-funded research projects be deposited on publication
into an appropriate research repository where available and subsequently made Open Access
within 6 months of publication.
The ERC is keenly aware of the desirability to shorten the period between publication and
open access beyond the currently accepted standard of 6 months.
Open Access – A Policy Issue
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We see a growing consensus between funders and university
administrators on the need for OA mandates
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Funders see dissemination as part of the research process and
publication costs as research costs
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Administrators see repositories as a key tool to support research
and learning
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This leads to a growth in the number of OA mandates being
adopted
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The mandates in place should result in a significant number of
papers being made OA over the next few years.
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We are fast approaching the point where it will be unusual for any
leading institution or funder not to have a mandate!
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These policies and high-level support will underpin work on
institutional repositories
The key drivers for authors
• Access problems
• Will get worse - this may work in favour
of IRs
• Citation
• Evidence may prove conclusive benefit
- would work in favour of IRs
• Mandates
• Need to be strengthened and/or applied
- again, would work in favour of IRs
A Pragmatic Approach to
Idealism!
“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,
1878 (on the university press)
“ An old tradition and a new technology have converged to
make possible an unprecedented public good. ”
Budapest Open Access Initiative, Feb. 14, 2002