UN best practices for open access

11 april 2012 - Open access expert Dr. Alma Swan created a report for the United Nations outlining the importance of free access to research. Policymakers have to build the right framework for which they can follow certain best practices, e.g. making repositories mandatory.

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

1. 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
2. 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
3. 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
4. Content types covered: all policies cover journal articles: policies should also encourage Open Access for books: funder polices are increasingly covering research data outputs
5. 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
6. 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
7. 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
8. 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
9. 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
10. 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
11. '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