Open access workshop

Developing an action plan to address the key challenges

Nicola PerrinStrategic Planning and Policy Unit

Overview

• Findings of survey• Identifying key issues for

discussion• Breakout groups• Feedback• Next steps

Benefits of open access

1. Raising the institution’s profile nationally and internationally (71%)

2. Disseminating knowledge (46%)3. Increasing citations of work at the institution

(33%)

“Marketing, making our research visible and accessible”Good basis for REF

– OA articles should have greater opportunity to be cited, although more work is needed to see if OA articles

really do have more impact”

Administering OA in practice

OA funding administration is an additional workload… If funders require institutions to work with researchers to help them comply… funding needs to be provided for additional staff time

Need a single national uniform system in dealing with this

It is something we need to get to grips with… one more burden to add to the overload....

From my perspective I feel there is confusion surrounding the whole area

Researchers resent ANY time not spent on core research activity.

Priorities for funders to address

1. Funding arrangements2. Improved communication3. Monitoring compliance4. Better coordination between funders and

publishers

We need consistency in policies, consistency in processes, and clear mechanisms for claiming funds from sponsors

1. Funding

Meeting Open Access Costs

35%

65%

81%

12%

19%

31%

8%

8%

Don’t know

Other

Departmental fund

From pre-paid subscription

From funding received as part of grant award -Through indirect costs

From claiming the costs back from their funder

From funding received as part of their grantaward -Through direct costs

From a block grant awarded to the institution bya funder

Base: All respondents (n=26) Q. How do researchers at your institution meet open access costs?

Which do you prefer?

1. Block grant (55%)2. Direct costs on grant (20%)3. Researcher claims funding at point of

publication (10%)

Incorporating into indirect costs… would enable creation of a central OA publishing fundDirect costs can be difficult if

publication occurs after the close of a grant

Do you have a Central Fund?

Don’t know, 4%

Yes, 23%

Under consideration,

19%

No, 54%

Base: All respondents (n=26) Q. Does your institution have a central fund for processing funds for open access publication costs?

Barriers: Funders

85%

85%

69%

85%

No action taken ifresearchers do not

comply

Differentrequirements/policies

between funders

Lack of clarity abouthow to comply with

funder mandates

Difficult accessingfunding for open

access

Base: All respondents (n=26) Q. Indicate which of these are barriers?Q Which is the most important barrier?

Barriers Most significant barrier

12%

50%

8%

27%

1. Funding

Question: How can we address difficulties accessing funding?

2. Communication

Barriers: Researchers

92%

92%

96%

69%

4%

88%

77%

27%

Other

Deposit in an institutional repository inaddition to UKPMC

Unaw are additional funding is availablefor OA

Don't know how to self-archive papers

Unaw are of benefits of OA

Unaw are of funders’ OA policies

Insuff icient priority given to OA

Lack of know ledge about how to comply

Base: All respondents (n=26) Q. Indicate which of these are barriers?Q Which is the most important barrier?

Barriers Most significant barrier

15%

50%

27%

0%

0%

0%

4%

4%

Communicating with researchers around OA

46%

69%

81%

23%

62%

Other

Meetings/Seminars

Distributing funders'information

OA info oninstitution’s website

Emails/letters toresearchers

Base: All respondents (n=26) Q. Which, if any, of the following activities are undertaken at your institution to help explain to researchers how to comply with open access mandates?)

Examples of existing materials

Question: How can we improve researchers understanding of how to make articles OA?

2. Communication

3. Monitoring compliance

Barriers: Institutions

38%

69%

92%

15%

62%

Other

Difficulties in processingpayments for OA

Lack of priority given to OA bythe institution

Unclear internal policy to dealwith OA

Difficulties to ensureresearchers comply with

OA mandates

Base: All respondents (n=26) Q. Indicate which of these are barriers?Q Which is the most important barrier?

Barriers Most significant barrier

0%

19%

54%

12%

15%

Compliance monitoring: current practice

No, 54%

Under consideration,

23%

Yes, 15%

Don’t know, 8%

Base: All respondents (n=26) Q. Does your institution carry out any analysis to determine compliance with funder mandates?

We would like to be able to devote more time to determining compliance, and to managing compliance with funders’mandates in a more efficient and thorough way, but staff do not have the time to do this

Funders need to start monitoring compliance with OA mandates and where researchers haven’t complied contacting them about this

Compliance monitoring: comments

Ensure there are sanctions for those who do not comply

Funders should place requirements on institutions and researchers to ensure compliance, e.g. monitor compliance and explicitly relate to future funding

Question: How can compliance be monitored most efficiently?

3. Monitoring compliance

4. Publishers

Barriers: Publishers

73%

81%

42%

58%

62%

8%

42%

Other

Difficulties with publishers'payment process

Publishers failing to depositarticles after payment has

been made

Determining if a journal has anUKPMC Funder compliant

policy

Finding publishers’ author-paysoption on website

Publishers not allowing openaccess

Different requirementsbetween publishers

Barriers Most significant barrier

Base: All respondents (n=26) Q. Indicate which of these are barriers?Q Which is the most important barrier?

19%

54%

8%

8%

0%

4%

8%

Myth: publishers don’t allow OA

37%

59%

2%

2%

Did complyCould have compliedCould not complyJournal not in SHERPA

Base: WT associated papers appearing on PubMed and published between September and December 2008 (n=1467)Source: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php, PubMed

Publishers business models

The lack of joined up thinking between the different funders… has allowed publishers to identify an additional funding stream …during the interim phase both the funders and the academic institutions pay twice

Funders should work with publishers to ensure smoother transactions of paymentsSome publishers seem to be

charging excessive amounts for articles.. given Unis provide peer review for free, the business model seems unfairly skewed

towards publishers…

Funders should reach agreements with all publishers…

We are spending too much time sorting out publisher mistakes – ie being chased for payments which we can prove have already been processed, or disentangling alleged duplicate payments which turn out to be publisher’s mistake

Question: what are the main messages we should be giving publishers to make your lives easier?

4. Publishers

Other issues

Institutional Repository mandates

No, 31%

Under consideration,

42%

Yes, 23%

Don’t know, 4%

Base: All respondents (n=26) Q. Does your institution have a mandate whereby researchers are obliged to submit papers to an institutional repository?

Institutional repositories

“Not to insist on availability in UKPMC but to promote use of institutional repositories as a ‘free’ alternative”

Very interested in seeing progress made towards linking institutional repositories and UKPMC

Funders should work with authors to ensure they submit their open access papers to their IRs also

The ideal situation is that we would have our own repository making all our publications OA.

UKPMC / Institutional Repositories

• Benefits:- ‘discoverability’- added functionality- grant reporting- long-term preservation

• We are exploring ways to serve up UKPMC content for harvesting in IRs

Improving mechanisms for OA administration?

• Funders- Clarify how financial support is

provided for researchers to meet author-side payments

• Institutions- Appoint single, senior person to

coordinate management of publication fees

- Establish dedicated budgets to meet OA costs

Breakout group discussions1. How can we address difficulties accessing

funding?

2. How can we improve researchers understanding of how to make articles OA?

3. How can compliance be monitored most efficiently?

4. What are the main messages we should be giving publishers to make your lives easier?

Each group to consider recommended actions for: funders, institutions, researchers publishers