what can universities do to promote open access? cornell university march 17, 2005 peter suber open...
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What can universities do to promote open access?
Cornell UniversityMarch 17, 2005
Peter SuberOpen Access Project Director, Public KnowledgeResearch Professor of Philosophy, Earlham CollegeSenior Researcher, [email protected]
Open-access literature:
1. Digital 2. Online3. Free of charge for everyone with
an internet connection4. Free of most copyright and
licensing restrictions
Refining the definition• Online
– but compatible with print editions
• Free of charge– but compatible with priced enhancements
• Free of most permission barriers– but flexible about which to remove– Commercial re-use? Derivative works?
• A kind of access, not a kind of business model– Compatible with many business models, not “one
size fits all”
Vehicles of open access• Archives or repositories
– No peer review– Institutional or disciplinary– Preprints and postprints– Interoperable through OAI protocol – Open-source software– Easy to launch, no waiting, low investment
• Journals– Peer review– More difficult to launch or convert
• Other– Personal web sites, ebooks, blogs, wikis, listservs,
P2P, RSS
How can universities help?1. OA repositories
– Launch one and fill it
2. OA journals– Recognize, support, and publish them
3. Copyright – Help faculty understand and control their rights
4. Promotion and tenure criteria– Create incentives to provide OA– Remove disincentives to provide OA
5. Educate faculty about OA and its benefits– OA increases visibility, audience, usage, and citation
impact– Convert real benefits into felt needs
Premise 1: Authors are primary
Authors control:1. Whether to submit their work to an
OA journal2. Whether to deposit their work in an
OA repository3. Whether to transfer copyright
Premise 2: Authors are busy
• Some are too busy to learn much about OA
• Some are too busy to act on what they know
• Authors need:– Education about OA and copyright– Help providing OA to their own work– Incentives to provide OA to their own work
Problem
• Librarians know the most about OA and its benefits.
Problem
• Librarians know the most about OA and its benefits.
• Administrators control many of the incentives.
Problem
• Librarians know the most about OA and its benefits.
• Administrators control many of the incentives.
• But authors don’t listen to librarians or administrators.
Launch an institutional repository (IR)
• Committed to– Open access– Interoperability– Long-term preservation
• Cornell already has two– Cornell Technical Reports– DSpace repository
• And is co-developer of Fedora, a major tool for building OA repositories
Fill the IR (1)• Encourage or require faculty to deposit
their research output in the IR (with reasonable exceptions)– QUT expectation (work “is to be” deposited)– Minho mandate (work “must” be deposited)– Southampton registry, 9 signatories as of 3/05
• How?– Informally: educate and encourage (at least
this)– Formally: tie to promotion and tenure
Fill the IR (2)
Exceptions– QUT: work intended to generate
revenue• If postprint would violate copyright, then
preprint + corrigenda
– Minho: work that would violate confidence or copyright, and work intended to generate revenue• But whenever possible, access for Minho
community
Fill the IR (3)
Help faculty deposit their work– Librarians or student workers– Help with deposit and metadata– Help with digitization and permissions– Examples:
• MIT (wandering FTE’s)• St. Andrews University (email and be
done)
Filling the IR (4)
• Royalty-free research • Publicly-funded research• University-funded research• Theses and dissertations• Raw and semi-raw data for any of the
above• Proceedings of conferences hosted on
campus• Community content: OA journal archives,
regional museums and non-profits• With reasonable exceptions....
Support disciplinary archives
• Host them, like Cornell’s arXiv– The oldest, largest, and most-used open-
access repository in any field• Let deposit in them satisfy the IR policy• Institutional v. disciplinary archives
– Institutional: can nudge authors to deposit • only an advantage if institutions seize the
opportunity– Disciplinary: most faculty more loyal to
their disciplines than their institutions• arXiv as existence proof
– No need to choose if you support both
Support OA journals (1): Fund them
• Buy institutional memberships in PLoS and BMC (Cornell does)
• Pay processing fees for faculty, when funders won’t– Cornell study (8/04, 12/04) – Fund controlled by provost? departments?
libraries?– Worth exploring, experimenting
• Double-payment problem
Support OA journals (2): Publish them
• Like Philosophers’ Imprint from U Michigan
• Like J of Insect Science from U Arizona• Like overlay journal series from U
California and Boston College• Cornell hosts Project Euclid
– Publishes OA and non-OA journals
• Cornell is developing DPubS– For both OA and non-OA journals– Will reduce costs to help OA journals
Support OA journals (3):Recognize them
• Put OA journal records in the library catalogue
• Support faculty in editing and launching them
• Give them due weight in hiring, promotion, and tenure
• But don’t over-recognize them– OA to peer-reviewed research through
repositories is just as good
Copyright issues (1)
• Encourage faculty to retain more rights, transfer fewer – Retain copyright and transfer only right of
first print and electronic publication– Transfer copyright but retain right of OA
postprint archiving and other non-commercial copying and use
– Use retained rights to consent to OA
• SPARC Author’s Addendum– http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/addendum.html
Copyright issues (2)• Faculty: Important to ask
– Many journals will negotiate if asked– They need to know what authors want
• Administrators: Important to recommend, assist, educate– Many faculty don’t understand copyright
issues, sign harmful contracts – Lend the institution’s weight to the faculty
member’s request
Hiring, promotion, and tenure
• Give due weight to all worthy, peer-reviewed work– Regardless of medium or price– Not just a subset– Don’t use criteria that deter publication in
new journals
• Journal articles for consideration should be in the IR– live links from vita
Educate faculty about OA
• OA increases visibility, retrievability, audience, usage, and citation impact
• It’s about career-building• Faculty education about OA:
– Must be viral or peer-to-peer– Must appeal to self-interest
Thank youHomehttp://www.earlham.edu/~peters
OA Overviewhttp://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm
OA Bloghttp://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html
OA Newsletterhttp://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/archive.htm
What you can dohttp://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/lists.htm#do
Peter Suber