Tag: #openaccess

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First thoughts on the Finch Report: Good steps but missed opportunities

The Finch Report was commissioned by the UK Minister for Universities and Science to investigate possible routes for the UK to adopt Open Access for publicly funded research. The report was released last night and I have had just the chance to skim it over breakfast. These are just some first observations. Overall my impression is that the overall direction of travel is very positive but the detail shows some important missed opportunities.

The Good

The report comes out strongly in favour of Open Access to publicly funded research. Perhaps the core of this is found in the introduction [p5].

The principle that the results of research that has been publicly funded should be freely accessible in the public domain is a compelling one, and fundamentally unanswerable.

What follows this is a clear listing of other potential returns. On the cost side the report makes clear that in achieving open access through journal it is necessary that the first copy costs of publication be paid in some form and that appropriate mechanisms are in place to make that happen. This focus on Gold OA is a result in large part of the terms of reference for the report that placed retention of peer review at its heart. The other excellent aspect of the report is the detailed cost and economic modelling for multiple scenarios of UK Open Access adoption. These will be a valuable basis for discussion of managing the transition and how cost flows will change.

The bad

The report is maddeningly vague on the potential of repositories to play a major role in the transition to full open access. Throughout there is a focus on hybrid journals, a route which – with a few exceptions – appears to me to have failed to deliver any appreciable gains and simply allowed publishers to charge unjustified fee for very limited services. By comparison the repository offers an existing infrastructure that can deliver at relatively low marginal cost and will enable a dispassionate view of the additional value that publishers add. Because the value of peer review was baked into the report as an assumption this important issue gets lost but as I have noted before if publishers are adding value then repositories should pose no threat to them whatsoever.

The second issue I have with the report is that it fails to address the question of what Open Access is. The report does not seek to define open access. This is a difficult issue and I can appreciate a strict definition may be best avoided but the report does not raise the issues that such a definition would require and in this it misses an opportunity to lay out clearly the discussions required to make decisions on the critical issues of what is functionally required to realise the benefits laid out in the introduction. Thus in the end it is a report on increasing access but with no clear statement of what level of access is desirable or what the end target for this might look like.

This is most serious on the issue of licences for open access content which has been seriously fudged. Four key pieces of text from the report:

“…support for open access publication should be accompanied by policies to minimise restrictions on the rights of use and re-use, especially for non-commercial purposes, and on the ability to use the latest tools and services to organise and manipulate text and other content” [recommendations, p7]

“…[in a section on instituional and subject repositories]…But for subscription-based publishers, re-use rights may pose problems. Any requirement for them to use a Creative Commons ‘CC-BY’ licence, for example, would allow users to modify, build upon and distribute the licensed work, for commercial as well as non-commercial purposes, so long as the original authors were credited178. Publishers – and some researchers – are especially concerned about allowing commercial re-use. Medical journal publishers, who derive a considerable part of their revenues from the sale of reprints to pharmaceutical companies, could face significant loss of income. But more generally, commercial re-use would allow third parties to harvest published content from repositories and present them on new platforms that would compete with the original publisher.” [p87]

“…[from the summary on OA journals]…A particular advantage of open access journals is that publishers can afford to be more relaxed about rights of use and re-use.” [p92]

“…[from the summary on repositories]…But publishers have strong concerns about the possibility that funders might introduce further limits on the restrictions on access that they allow in their terms and conditions of grant. They believe that a reduction in the allowable embargo period to six months, especially if it were to be combined with a Creative Commons CC-BY licence that would allow commercial as well as non-commercial re-use, would represent a fundamental threat to the viability of their subscription-based journals.” [p96]

As far as I can tell the comment on page 92 is the only one that even suggests a requirement for CC-BY for open access through journals where the costs are paid. As a critical portion of the whole business model for full OA publishers it worried me that this is given almost a brief throw away line, when it is at the centre of the debate. But more widely a concern over a requirement for liberal licensing in the context of repositories appears to colour the whole discussion of licences in the report. There is, as far as I have been able to tell, no strong statement that where a fee is paid CC-BY should be required – and much that will enable incumbent subscription publishers to continue making claims that they provide “Open Access” under a variety of non-commercial licences satisfying no community definition of either “Open” nor “Open Access”.

But more critically this fudge risks failing to deliver on the minister’s brief, to support innovation and exploitation of UK research. This whole report is embedded in a government innovation strategy that places publicly funded knowledge creation at the heart of an effort to kick start the UK economy. Non-commercial licences can not deliver on this and we should avoid them at all costs. This whole discussion seems to revolve around protecting publishers rights to sell reprints, as though it made sense to legislate to protect candle makers from innovators threatening to put in an electric grid.

Much of this report is positive – and taken in the context of the RCUK draft policy there is a real opportunity to get this right. If we both make a concerted effort to utilise the potential of repositories as a transitional infrastructure, and if we get the licensing right, then the report maps out a credible route with the financial guidelines to make it through a transition. It also sends a strong signal to the White House and the European Commission, both currently considering policy statements on open access, that the UK is ready to move which will strengthen the hands of those arguing for strong policy.

This is a big step – and it heads in the right direction. The devil is in the details of implementation. But then it always is.

More will follow – particularly on the financial modelling – when I have a chance to digest more fully. This is a first pass draft based on a quick skim and I may modify this post if I discover I have made errors in my reading.

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25,000 signatures and still rolling: Implications of the White House petition

The petition at 25,000 signatures

I’m afraid I went to bed. It was getting on for midnight and it looked like another four hours or so before the petition would reach the magic mark of 25,000 signatures. As it turns out a final rush put us across the line at around 2am my time, but never mind, I woke up wondering whether we had got there, headed for the computer and had a pleasant surprise waiting for me.

What does this mean? What have John Wilbanks, Heather Joseph, Mike Carroll, and Mike Rossner achieved by deciding to push through what was a real hard slog? And what about all those people and groups involved in getting signatures in? I think there are maybe three major points here.

Access to Research is now firmly on the White House (and other governments’) agenda

The petition started as a result of a meeting between the Access2Research founders and John Holdren from the White House. John Wilbanks has written about how the meeting went and what the response was. The US administration has sympathy and understands many of the issues. However it must be hard to make the case that this was something worth the bandwidth it would take to drive a policy initiative. Especially in an election year. The petition and the mechanism of the “We the people” site has enabled us to show that it is a policy item that generates public interest, but more importantly it creates an opportunity for the White House to respond. It is worth noting that this has been one of the more successful petitions. Reaching the 25k mark in two weeks is a real achievement, and one that has got the attention of key people.

And that attention spreads globally as well. The Finch Report on mechanisms for improving access to UK research outputs will probably not mention the petition, but you can bet that those within the UK government involved in implementation will have taken note. Similarly as the details of the Horizon2020 programme within the EU are hammered out, those deciding on the legal instruments that will distribute around $80B, will have noted that there is public demand, and therefore political cover, to take action.

The Open Access Movement has a strong voice, and a diverse network, and can be an effective lobby

It is easy, as we all work towards the shared goal of enabling wider access and the full exploitation of web technologies, to get bogged down in details and to focus on disagreements. What this effort showed was that when we work together we can muster the connections and the network to send a very strong message. And that message is stronger for coming from diverse directions in a completely transparent manner. We have learnt the lessons that could be taken from the fight against SOPA and PIPA and refined them in the campaign to defeat, in fact to utterly destroy, the Research Works Act. But this was not a reaction, and it was not merely a negative campaign. This was a positive campaign, originating within the movement, which together we have successfully pulled off. There are lessons to be learnt. Things we could have done better. But what we now know is that we have the capacity to take on large scale public actions and pull them off.

The wider community wants access and has a demonstrated capacity to use it

There has in the past been an argument that public access is not useful because “they can’t possibly undertand it”, that “there is no demand for public access”. That argument has been comprehensively and permanently destroyed. It was always an arrogant argument, and in my view a dangerous one for those with a vested interest in ensuring continued public funding of research. The fact that it had strong parallels with the arguments deployed in the 18th and 19th centuries that colonists, or those who did not own land, or women, could not possibly be competent to vote should have been enough to warn people off using it. The petition has shown demand, and the stories that have surfaced through this campaign show not only that there are many people who are not professional researchers who can use research, but that many of these people also want, and are more than capable, to contribute back to the professional research effort.

The campaign has put the ideas of Open Access in front of more people than perhaps ever before. We have reached out to family, friends, co-workers, patients, technologists, entrepreneurs, medical practitioners, educators, and people just interested in the world around them. Perhaps one in ten of them actually signed the petition, but many of them will have talked to others, spreading the ideas. This is perhaps one of the most important achievements of the petition. Getting the message and the idea out in front of hundreds of thousands of people who may not take action today, but will now be primed to see the problems that arise from a lack of access, and the opportunities that could be created through access.

Where now?

So what are our next steps? Continuing to gain signatures for the next two weeks is still important. This may be one of the most rapidly growing petitions but showing that continued growth is still valuable. But more generally my sense is that we need to take stock and look forward to the next phase. The really hard work of implementation is coming. As a movement we still disagree strongly on elements of tactics and strategy. The tactics I am less concerned about, we can take multiple paths, applying pressure at multiple points and this will be to our advantage. But I think we need a clearer goal on strategy. We need to articulate what the endgame is. What is the vision? When will we know that we have achieved what we set out to do?

Peter Murray-Rust has already quoted Churchill but it does seem apposite. “…this is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

We now know how much we can achieve when we work together with a shared goal. The challenge now is to harness that to a shared understanding of the direction of travel, if perhaps not the precise route. But if we, with all the diversity of needs and views that this movement contains, we can find the core of goals that we all agree on, then what we now know is that we have the capacity, the depth, and the strength to achieve them.

 

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Send a message to the Whitehouse: Show the strength of support for OA

The Whitehouse
The Whitehouse - from Flickr User nancy_t3i

Changing the world is hard. Who knew? Advocating for change can be lonely. It can also be hard. As a scholar, particularly one at the start of a career it is still hard to commit fully to ensuring that research outputs are accessible and re-useable. But we are reaching a point where support for Open Access is mainstream, where there is a growing public interest in greater access to research, and increasingly serious engagement with the policy issues at the highest level.

The time has come to show just how strong that support is. As of today there is a petition on the Whitehouse site calling for the Executive to mandate Open Access to the literature generated from US Federal Funding. If the petition reaches 25,000 signatures within 30 days then the Whitehouse is committed to respond. The Executive has been considering the issues of access to research publications and data and with FRPAA active in both houses there are multiple routes available to enact change. If we can demonstrate widespread and diverse support for Open Access, then we will have made the case for that change. This is a real opportunity for each and everyone of us to make a difference.

So go to the Access2Research Petition on whitehouse.gov and sign up now. Blog and tweet using the hashtag #OAMonday and lets show just how wide the coalition is. Go to the Access2Research Website to learn more. Post the site link to your community to get people involved.

I’ll be honest. The Whitehouse petition site isn’t great – this isn’t a 30 second job. But it shouldn’t take you more than five minutes. You will need to give a real name and an email address and go through a validation process via email. You don’t need to be a US citizen or resident. Obviously if you give a US Zip code it is likely that more weight will be given to your signature but don’t be put off if you are not in the US. Once you have an account signing the petition is a simple matter of clicking a single button. The easiest approach will be to go to the Open Access petition and sign up for an account from there. Once you get the validation link via email you will be taken back to the petition.

The power of Open Access will only be unlocked through networks of people using, re-using, and re-purposing the outputs of research. The time has come to show just how broad and diverse that network is. Please take the time as one single supporter of Open Access to add your voice to the thousands of others who will be signing with you. And connect to your network to tell them how important it is for them to add their voice as well.

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Some notes on Open Access Week

Open Access logo, converted into svg, designed...
Image via Wikipedia

Open Access Week kicks off for the fourth time tomorrow with events across the globe. I was honoured to be asked to contribute to the SPARC video that will be released tomorrow. The following are a transcription of my notes – not quite what I said but similar. The video was released at 9:00am US Eastern Time on Monday 18 October.

It has been a great year for Open Access. Open Access publishers are steaming ahead, OA mandates are spreading and growing and the quality and breadth of repositories is improving across institutions, disciplines, and nations. There have problems and controversies as well, many involving shady publishers seeking to take advantage of the Open Access brand, but even this in its way is a measure of success.

Beyond traditional publication we’ve also seen great strides made in the publication of a wider diversity of research outputs. Open Access to data, to software, and to materials is moving up the agenda. There have been real successes. The Alzheimer’s Disease Network showed what can change when sharing becomes a part of the process. Governments and Pharmaceutical companies are releasing data. Publicly funded researchers are falling behind by comparison!

For me although these big stories are important, and impressive, it is the little wins that matter. The thousands or millions of people who didn’t have to wait to read a paper, who didn’t need to write an email to get a dataset, who didn’t needlessly repeat and experiment known not to work. Every time a few minutes, a few hours, a few weeks, months, or years is saved we deliver more for the people who pay for this research. These small wins are the hardest to measure, and the hardest to explain, but they make up the bulk of the advantage that open approaches bring.

But perhaps the most important shift this year is something more subtle. Each morning I listen to the radio news, and every now and then there is a science story. These stories are increasingly prefaced with “…the research, published in the journal of…” and increasingly that journal is Open Access. A long running excuse for not referring the wider community to original literature has been its inaccessibility. That excuse is gradually disappearing. But more importantly there is a whole range of research outcomes that people, where they are interested, where they care enough to dig deeper, can inform themselves about. Research that people can use to reach their own conclusions about their health, the environment, technology, or society.

I find it difficult to see this as anything but a good thing, but nonetheless we need to recognize that it brings challenges. Challenges of explaining clearly, challenges in presenting the balance of evidence in a useful form, but above all challenges of how to effectively engage those members of the public who are interested in the details of the research. The web has radically changed the expectations of those who seek and interact with information. Broadcast is no longer enough. People expect to be able to talk back.

The last ten years of the Open Access movement has been about how to make it possible for people to touch, read, and interact with the outputs of research. Perhaps the challenge for the next ten years is to ask how we can create access opportunities to the research itself. This won’t be easy, but then nothing that is worthwhile ever is.

Open Access Week 2010 from SPARC on Vimeo.

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