DATE: 10.06 2016

Mapping Open Access

A publisher’s perspective on

the current status- and future

developments of open access

publishing

For questions please refer to Rasmus Andersen – Rasmus@accucoms.com

Mapping Open Access

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1

Table of Contents

Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 2

Approach ...................................................................................................................................................... 3

Results........................................................................................................................................................... 3

Reasons for open access ........................................................................................................................... 4

Cooperation and diversity…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….4

The future of open access - new collaborations ....................................................................................... 5

Survey results ............................................................................................................................................... 7

Summary……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….11

About ACCUCOMS ...................................................................................................................................... 11

Contact us ................................................................................................................................................... 11

Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................................................... 12

Figures

Figure 1 ......................................................................................................................................................... 3

Figure 2 ......................................................................................................................................................... 3

Figure 3 ......................................................................................................................................................... 5

Figure 4 ......................................................................................................................................................... 7

Figure 5 ......................................................................................................................................................... 7

Figure 6 ......................................................................................................................................................... 8

Figure 7 ......................................................................................................................................................... 8

Figure 8 ......................................................................................................................................................... 9

Figure 9 ......................................................................................................................................................... 9

Figure 10 ..................................................................................................................................................... 10

Figure 11 ..................................................................................................................................................... 10

Mapping Open Access

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Introduction

Open access publishing is not a new phenomenon. Academic libraries today store the bulk of their

collections digitally rather than in physical storage rooms. This digital revolution allows research output

to be disseminated wider and stored cheaper than ever before, which has fundamentally changed the

academic publishing environment. Today the publisher is increasingly becoming a ‘service provider’

instead of a publisher in the traditional sense and open access is an attempt to define the role of the

service provider in a digital age. Open access denominates a publishing infrastructure, which takes

advantage of the new digital opportunities.

Open access is an opportunity as well as a challenge to the traditional subscription-based publishers,

whether they are commercial entities or not-for-profit societies. Every publisher is facing technological

developments and they are trying to adapt to the digital era without compromising their scientific

responsibility and ability to facilitate the highest quality research.

Two dominant open access models have emerged above others over the last two decades. The so called

‘green’ and ‘golden’ route to open access. The green route is defined by various formats of self-archiving

and the golden route is an adaption of established subscription based outlets. Whereas green open access

demands large initial investments in setting up repository infrastructure or running costs for an intermediary

to do so, the golden route utilises traditional publishing infrastructures such as topic bound journals.

The green route often circumvents established outlets and traditional quality checks such as double blind

peer-review or post-submission editing. Green repositories have none the less flourished and today it is

standard practice to deposit conference papers, historical documents as well as pre-edited versions of

articles in repositories. Another form of green open access is ‘delayed green’ access. Delayed green access

designates the legal access to paid content through repositories after a predesignated embargo period.

The golden route is essentially an adaption of traditional publishing practices. A gold article is openly

available in a subject specific journal and often the only difference between traditional articles and gold

content is the economic structure of the content. The golden route makes it responsibility of the author(s)

to fund the editing and dissemination of the publication up front, instead of the library paying through

subscriptions afterwards. Gold articles are therefore free at the point of use.

Similar for the two routes is that open access allows the author to be in more control of the license the

article is published under. The creative commons1 licenses make it easier to control exactly how copyright

is organised instead of it automatically becoming the property of the publisher.

In this white paper we hope to cast light on how major society- and commercial publishers are adapting to

the ongoing opening of research. By highlighting how libraries can assist the move toward more open access,

we hope that the white paper will enable librarians and policymakers to better grasp the challenges that

publishers face in relation to open access today.

1 See: http://creativecommons.org/

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Approach

In order to collect

information, we have

contacted a number of

academic publishers

which are, or have

been, collaborating

with ACCUCOMS

International. We have

executed more than 20

telephone interviews

and we have received

more than 50 responses

to a survey sent out per

email. The interviews

have resulted in

substantial qualitative

knowledge and the

survey responses have

related this knowledge

to the market as it is today.

Results

According to the

survey, 96.3% of the

publishers we have

been in contact with

are to some extent

involved with open

access publishing. We

found that 65% of these

offer one or more full

open access journals

and 77% offer open

access to material in

one or more journals.

Apart from these

efforts toward open

access, 80% of the

publishers we have

been in contact with make content freely available within 12 months of its original publication date through

delayed green access. This does not mean that all content is openly accessible, not even that the bulk of the

36% 33% 12% 33% 21%0%5%

10%15%20%25%30%35%40%

The publishers have been asked to tick the fields in which they publish open access content

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

We areengaged withOpen Access

Publishing

Immediateopen access

possible

One or morefull Open

Access Journals

Full OpenAccess

publisher

Delayed OpenAccess only

Current open access commitment

Figure 1 - the 51 respondees are publishing on the following subjects

Figure 2 - Current open access commitment

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content is open access, but it does mean that publishers have formulated open access strategies they

believe respond best to the nature of their specific content, users and authors.

Reasons for open access

When asked why the publishers have made their content openly available, we generally encountered two

answers. The first answer is related to an interest in actively developing new and open structures for

disseminating science effectively. Publishers believe that open structures correspond better to the nature

of the digital space. The second group are responding to the growing demands from funding bodies toward

publishing research openly available at the point of use. Most often it seems that publishers are drawn

toward open access through a combination of the two interests.

Philip Smith from Dove Medical Press stated that when the press launched in 2003, “we were monitoring

and supporting the progress in open access publishing … [and] in 2007 we had faith in the sustainability of

the open access model. It was, and is, the responsible choice.” Bioscientifica informed that it was important

for them to diversify their journal portfolio, in order to be able to adapt effectively to future funding body

policy requests. The important knowledge and publishing acumen collected at Bioscientifica will be lost

without a sustainable long-term method for disseminating research. Publishers are thus adapting to the

current and future requirements of an ever changing research community.

Cooperation and diversity

Several smaller not-for-profit society publishers have shared concerns regarding the changes that open

access publishing means to them. Society publishers are often highly specialised with a narrow audience.

Therefore, they fear that a transition toward open access will mean an end to a sustainable way of serving

the goals of their specific societies. The uncertainty has resulted in reservations against national funding

bodies making policy changes and singular agreements with larger commercial publishers. The smaller

society publishers and university presses fear that the increasing focus on the ‘big sale’ is creeping into the

world of open access publishing and thereby pushing societies out of the market.

Another worry, which was voiced by Scott Delman from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), is

that libraries and policymakers are not recognizing the major differences between the for-profit commercial

publishers and not-for-profit publishers, even though these differences are in fact significant. Delman states

that: "For societies, engineering the transition to a different publication model is more risky than it is for

the large commercial publishers. Since profit is not the motive and we are governed by educational and

scientific missions to serve the best interests of our communities, we tend to price our publications on the

low end of the spectrum and implement policies that prevent or minimize “double-dipping”, and as a result

our margins are considerably lower than those of the commercial publishers."

"Also," Delman continues, "societies tend to be more selective in starting new journals than the large for-

profits and with the rise of OA-based publishing, volume publication translates into increased profits for

those motivated purely by the numbers." This is especially problematic, he argues, because "for many of

the large for-profit publishers, APC-based publishing has created a real boon and as libraries and

policymakers push for a fast transition [to more open access], they risk pushing the thousands of smaller

non-profits out of business or at the very least forcing many of those non-profits to outsource their

publication programs to the handful of large publishing conglomerates."

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Sana Mulla from BMJ Open described the need of cooperation in the following way: "We already use

RightsLink and ScholarOne for our data administration. But we hope that there will be created industry wide

process tools and standards on metadata and how it should be managed. This will minimise the financial

burden of administrating open access."

An example of this form of collaboration between library, public policy and publisher knowhow is the work

of the database publisher Alexander Street. Apart from making historical documents and archive content

available through paid databases, they also collect and set up freely available databases called the

Commons. The Commons are connecting a powerful search engine interface, access to important scientific

material and a community platform. Databases like this allow researchers to easily access large amounts of

content otherwise locked away in internal library databases through a combination of publisher knowledge

and good (meta-) datamanagement. In this cooperative environment knowledge is allowed to develop and

grow naturally instead of running up against (national and library-) boundaries

The future of open access – new collaborations

In figure 2 it is clear that

many publishers have

reservations against the

future of gold open

access, even though

they are often already

engaged with it. 19% do

not believe gold open

access to be a part of

future open access

publishing and 52% are

still evaluating the

payment model. During

the interviews we

learned that publishers

fear that gold open

access will depreciate

the current topic-journal format. In the opinion piece by Francis Pinter and Michael Magoulias “The Small

Academic Press in the Land of Giants” in Insights: the UKSG Journal, the authors pose an important question

regarding the way gold open access can change the economy of publishing. They write that we are seeing

an “increase in the absolute number of poorly cited articles”2 and this development is critical when it is

combined with a system in which publishing content is critical for career advancement.

This is a problem when the publisher is paid per article being published. This can create a situation where

large amounts of articles are published without a significant readership. The combination of an academic

career advancement system and gold open access has already spawned the growing problem of predatory

2 Pinter, F. & Magoulias, M., (2015). The small academic press in the land of giants. Insights. 28(3), pp.56–

61. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.261

52% 19% 29%0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

We are still monitoring thegold open access format:

We do not believe in thegold open access format:

We do believe in the futureof the gold open access

format

Do you have trust in the future of gold open access?

Figure 3 - Trust in the future of open access

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publishers. A predatory journal is a journal that has been created solely to earn money on researchers

desperate for increasing their research output in order to promote their career. Predatory journals do not

offer anything much in terms of editing or peer review and they are often too general to add anything

significant to the research community.

Many publishers, both commercial and not-for-profit, are not convinced of the future of the golden route

to open access. But publishers are in effect engaged in this method of publishing, because it is, as of now,

the most viable method for covering the costs of publishing freely available content at the point of use.

Several publishers we have been in contact with have reported that they do not experience a significant

increase in the usage of their open access content. This poses a problem for the industry as a whole, as the

costs of transferring to open access infrastructures have been significant. These investments are in vain if

the freely available content is not significantly increasing the usage. At the 24th EBLIDA conference in May

2016 in The Hague the lay usage of open access content was on the program. At the conference, the

delegates engaged in a discussion on how public libraries in Europe are to take advantage of the fact that

so much content is now free at the point of use. The point was made, however, that in the public library

space usage is not necessarily a question of accessibility, but rather a question of information literacy. It was

concluded that if the public libraries educate their staff further in helping patrons to access freely available

academic content, there is a large amount of users that will start accessing the content.

The public library associations seem interested in helping the broader public to access academic content.

The positive experiences with Access2Research in the United Kingdom proves that there is a large number

of the general public that does not have access to academic libraries, but still are interested in academic

content. This group can use the public library to gain the information literacy to do so.

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Survey results In the following, we have tried to make the survey results accessible through a number of tables and graphs.

22% 78% 72% 56% 18%0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

For-profitpublishers with noimmediate open

access

For-profitpublishers with

gold open accessoption

For-profitpublishers withone or more full

open accessjournals

For-profitpublishers with

one or morehybrid journals

For-profitpublishers beingfull open access

Open access models at for-profitpublishers:

Figure 4 - Open access models at for-profit publishers

17% 39% 6% 22%0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

<6 Months <12 Months More than 12months

No delayed openaccess

Embargo period on delayed green open access at for-profit publishers:

Figure 5 - embargo period on delayed green open access at for-profit publishers

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53% 59% 47%0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

Expect increasing amount ofhybrid gold articles

Expect increasing amount offull gold journals

Trust the gold open accessmodel for the future

Expectations to the future of open access - for-profit publishers:

Figure 6 - expectations to the future at for-profit publishers

6% 94% 58% 82% 9%0%

10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%

100%

Not-for-profitpublishers withno immediateopen access

Not-for-profitpublishers with

gold open accessoption

Not-for-profitpublishers withone or more full

open accessjournals

Not-for-profitpublishers with

one or morehybrid journals

Not-for-profitpublishers beingfull open access

Open access content at not-for-profitpublishers:

Figure 7 - – Open access models at not-for-profit publishers

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12% 76% 3% 9%0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

<6 Months <12 Months More than 12months

No delayed openaccess

Embargo period on delayed green access at not-for-profit publishers:

Figure 8 - embargo period on delayed green open access at for-profit publishers

62% 27% 18% 21%0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

Expect an increase inthe amount of hybrid

gold articles

Expect an increase inthe amount of full gold

journals

Trust that gold will bethe open access model

for the future

Do not trust that goldwill be the open access

model for the future

Expectations to the future of open access - not-for-profit publishers:

Figure 9 - expectations to the future at not-for-profit publishers

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51% 27% 5% 16%

Amount of articles being published open access in hybrid journals

0-5% 6%-10% 11%-15% Above 15% (Please specify)

Figure 10 - the amount of articles being published open access in hybrid journals

50% 13%

3%

13% 22%

Amount of journals being fully open access

0%-9% 10%-19% 20%-29% More than 30% Everything

Figure 11 - amount of journal portfolio being full open access journals

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Summary The digital revolution is changing the character of academic publishing. New opportunities also bring new

challenges – open access strategies are responses to both political as well as the technological

developments. The main concern for publishers, we have learned, is the effect of more open publishing

structures. We have collected a number of bullet points for the development of the industry.

- An “equal playing field” through centralised and homogenised funding structures is preferred,

without ignoring the heterogeneity of the different entities.

- An in depth discussion on the future of open access publishing and open publishing developments

standards should be opened across borders and across publishing houses.

- Money for open access publications should be made available across the board – also to the

humanities and social sciences for gold open access.

- Gold open access not only changes the economy of publishing, but also the economy of research. It

is therefore necessary to start a broad discussion of publishing practices for (early career)

researchers and a discussion on predatory journals.

- In order to actualise the value that open access research is meant to create, a discussion on usage

and readership has to started.

About ACCUCOMS

ACCUCOMS is a leading provider of sales and marketing services to academic and professional publishers

worldwide with extensive expertise in global representation, telesales and business intelligence services.

Our multilingual staff is operating from our locations in The Netherlands, USA, Latin America, India, South

East Asia, Turkey and the Middle East.

Contact us

ACCUCOMS Headquarters 3e Binnenvestgracht 23-R 2316 WZ Leiden Netherlands T +31-88-4100-400 F +31-88-4100-401 info@accucoms.com www.accucoms.com

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Acknowledgments

The following work is dependent on the cooperation and feedback of a number of publishers. We are grateful

for their help and time.