Open access (OA) to research is high on the agenda for both European and national stakeholders. The controversy surrounding the American Research
Works Act has triggered a debate among scientists all over the
world. Publishers have recognized this issue as well. In an interview with ScienceGuide the commercial
director of Nature Publishing Group, Jason Wilde, described how OA
has established itself as a real alternative.
How to promote OA
Now, Dr. Alma Swan published peer-reviewed report for UNESCO on how to promote OA among
member states. Primary goal is to use the internet to create "a
fully linked, fully interoperable, fully-exploitable scientific
research database available to all".
Two main routes to OA are put forward: the 'gold route' via
digital OA journals and the 'green route' through which material is
stored in repositories. Europe has been particularly successful in
promoting the latter as 47% of all online repositories are found
there. Asia (19%) and North America (20%) are less active in this
respect.
Different disciplines differ particularly with respect to their
readiness to implement OA. Earth Sciences (32,9%), Mathematics
(25,6%), Physics and Astronomy and Social Sciences (both 23,5%)
lead the way.
Swan describes the benefits of OA
as:
- improving the speed, efficiency and efficacy of research
- being an enabling factor in interdisciplinary research
- enabling computation upon the research literature
- increasing the visibility, usage and impact of research
- allowing the professional, practitioner and business
communities, and the interested public, to benefit from
research
She then suggests the following best practices for promoting
OA
- Policy type: policies may request and
encourage provision of Open Access, or they may require it.
Evidence shows that only the latter, mandatory, type accumulates
high levels of material. Evidence also shows that researchers are
happy to be mandated on this issue
- Open Access routes covered: policies
can require 'green' Open Access by self-archiving but to preserve
authors' freedom to publish where they choose policies should only
encourage 'gold' Open Access through publication in Open Access
journals
- Deposit locus: deposit may be
required either in institutional or central repositories.
Institutional policies naturally specify the former: funder
policies may also do this, or may in some cases specify a
particular central repository
- Content types covered: all policies
cover journal articles: policies should also encourage Open Access
for books: funder polices are increasingly covering research data
outputs
- Embargoes: Policies should specify
the maximum embargo length permitted and in science this should be
6 months at most: policies should require deposit at the time of
publication with the full-text of the item remaining in the
repository, but closed, until the end of the embargo period
- Permissions: Open Access depends on
the permission of the copyright holder, making it vulnerable to
publisher interests. To ensure that Open Access can be achieved
without problem, sufficient rights to enable that should be
retained by the author or employer and publishers assigned a
Licence To Publish. Where copyright is handed to the publisher,
Open Access will always depend upon publisher permission and
policies must acknowledge this by accommodating a 'loophole' for
publishers to exploit
- Compliance with policies: compliance
levels vary according to the strength of the policy and the ongoing
support that a policy is given: compliance can be improved by
effective advocacy and, where necessary, sanctions
- Advocacy to support a policy: there
are proven advocacy practices in support of an Open Access policy:
policymakers should ensure these are known, understood, and
appropriate ones implemented
- Sanctions to support a policy: both
institutions and funders have sanctions that can be used in support
of an Open Access policy: policymakers should ensure that these are
identified, understood and appropriate ones implemented where other
efforts fail to produce the desired outcome
- Waivers: where a policy is mandatory
authors may not always be able to comply. A waiver clause is
necessary in such policies to accommodate this
- 'Gold' Open Access: where a funder or
institution has a specific commitment with respect to paying 'gold'
article-processing fees, this should be stated in the policy