Open-access scientific publishing is gaining ground

At the beginning of April, Research Councils UK, a conduit through which the government transmits taxpayers’ money to academic researchers, changed the rules on how the results of studies it pays for are made public. From now on they will have to be published in journals that make them available free—preferably immediately, but certainly within a year.

In February the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy told federal agencies to make similar plans. A week before that, a bill which would require free access to government-financed research after six months had begun to wend its way through Congress. The European Union is moving in the same direction. So are charities. And SCOAP³, a consortium of particle-physics laboratories, libraries and funding agencies, is pressing all 12 of the field’s leading journals to make the 7,000 articles they publish each year free to read. For scientific publishers, it seems, the party may soon be over.

Read More!

Open access explained

Read More!

The Downside of Open-Access Publishing

Over the past couple of years, many people involved in scientific research and publishing have received increasing numbers of emails with invitations to submit papers to newly established journals, join their editorial boards, or even apply to serve as their editors-in-chief. Personally, I have been alternately amused and annoyed by these messages. A glance at the journal's name or the associated website has told me that these simply are not serious publications. But the establishment of new journals and publishers at a rapidly increasing pace should be taken seriously, since it affects the scientific record as a whole.
Read More!

Creative Commons and the Openness of Open Access

The Internet has inspired multiple movements toward greater openness — most prominently, open access, open data, open science, and open educational resources. None of these is based on the belief that there should be such a thing as a free lunch, but each recognizes that the Internet changes the economics of publication and digital-resource sharing so that changes can feasibly be made to traditional practices that are in some ways “closed,” requiring payment for access to information or prohibiting myriad reuses of accessible information. The quality of “openness” applies to both the terms of access and the terms of use. Advocates in each movement — and I am one, serving on the boards of directors of two organizations promoting open access, Creative Commons and the Public Library of Science (PLOS) — share an understanding that an open resource is freely accessible over the Internet. Opinions vary about the terms of use necessary for a resource to be open.

Read More!

For the Sake of Inquiry and Knowledge — The Inevitability of Open Access

It's difficult to have a measured conversation about open access — the term widely used to refer to unrestricted online access to articles published in scholarly journals. People who believe that free and unrestricted access to peer-reviewed journal articles will undermine the viability of scholarly journal publishing disagree sharply with those who believe that only open access can expedite research advances and ensure the availability of that same scholarly literature. Arguments for and against open access tend to focus on implementation details, ignoring the powerful motivations underlying the phenomenon.

Read More!

Analysis of funder Open Access policies around the world

We have analysed 51 mandatory funder polices listed in the ROARMAP registry (http://roarmap.eprints.org) according to which routes to OA the policy specifies. The results at 10 February 2013 are shown below.

Green (repository-based) OA required	Gold (journals) required where available	Either Green or Gold routes satisfy policy requirements
36	1	14

Funders permitting Gold OA article processing fees to be paid from research grant, or by a request to the funder = 20

Green (repository-based) Open Access required: 36 funders

Argentina	Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación Productiva
Australia	Australian Research Council
Australia	National Health and Medical Research Council
Belgium	FWO (Flanders Research Office)
Canada	Canadian Institutes of Health Research
Canada	National Research Council
Canada	International Development Research Centre
China	National Science Library Chinese Academy of Sciences
Denmark	Council for Independent Research, the Danish National Research Foundation, the Danish Council for Strategic Research, the Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation, and the Council for Technology and Innovation (joint policy)
European Union	European Research Council
EU Member States	EUR-OCEANS Consortium on Ocean Ecosystem Analysis
France	Agence Nationale de la Recherche
France	INSERM
France	INRIA
France	IFREMER
Ireland	Science Foundation Ireland
Ireland	Health Research Board
Ireland	Irish Research Council
Italy	Telethon
Norway	Norwegian Research Council
Spain	Government of the Principality of Asturias
Spain	Madrid Autonomous Community
Spain	General State Administration
Ukraine	Parliament of Ukraine
UK	Arthritis Research UK
UK	British Heart Foundation
UK	Cancer Research UK
UK	Chief Scientist Office Scotland
UK	Department of Health
UK	Dunhill Medical Trust
UK	Multiple Sclerosis Society
UK	Wellcome Trust
USA	National Institutes of Health
USA	Howard Hughes Medical Institute
USA	Autism Speaks
USA	Institute of Education Sciences

Gold (journal-based) Open Access required: 1 funder

UK	Research Councils UK

Either Green or Gold routes satisfy policy requirements: 14 funders

Austria	FWF (Fonds zur Foerderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung)
Canada	Ontario Institute of Cancer Research
Canada	Fonds de recherche du Québec
Canada	Canadian Health Services Research Foundation
Canada	Heart and Stroke Foundation
European Union	European Commission
EU Member States	CERN
Hungary	Academy of Sciences
Hungary	Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA)
Iceland	Rannis
India	Council of Scientific and Industrial Research
Sweden	Swedish research Council Formas
Sweden	Swedish Research Council Vetenskapradet
Switzerland	Swiss National Science Foundation

The list will be updated as new policies are implemented.  Further analysis of policy requirements is also to be undertaken. Examples of future analyses include policy effectiveness and the kind of deposit requirements specified by Green policies.

Link to database: Funder open access policy analysis SPARC Europe 10 February 2013

Read More!

Policy on Open Access in Biomedical Research in Europe

Read More!

Beall's List of Predatory Publishers or Beall's Predatory Business at the expenses of Publishers

We have received this email:
--

To whom it may concern

I was surprised when one of our editors told me that the name of Ashdin Publishing is found in the list of "Beall's List: Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers" (http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/) and I was surprised because of the following reasons:

1. The author did not just mention the criteria for determining predatory open-access publishers, but he insisted on mentioning the full names and details of the publishers as well.
2. Some of these criteria, for determining predatory open-access publishers, can be applied on a huge number of publishers (include some of the large and famous ones), but he did not mention any of them.
3. Some of the publishers names are removed from this list without saying the reasons for this removal.

After I received the e-mail below, I am not any more surprised. Now, I am sure that the author, irrespective the good reasons he may has for preparing this list, wants to blackmail small publishers to pay him. 

I invite all of you to read what people say commenting on his article (http://www.nature.com/news/predatory-publishers-are-corrupting-open-access-1.11385):

Dr Gillian Dooley (Special Collections Librarian at Flinders University):

Jeffrey Beall's list is not accurate to believe. There are a lot of personal biases of Jeffrey Beall. Hindawi still uses heavy spam emailing. Versita Open still uses heavy spam emailing. But these two publishers have been removed in Jeffrey Beall's list recently. There is no reason given by Jeffrey Beall why they were removed. Jeffrey Beall is naive in his analysis. I think some other reliable blog should be created to discuss more fruitfully these issues. His blog has become useless.

Mark Robinson (Acting Editor, Stanford Magazine):

It is a real shame that Jeffrey Beall using Nature.com's blog to promote his predatory work. Jeffrey Beall just simply confusing us to promote his academic terrorism. His list is fully questionable. His surveying method is not scientific. If he is a real scientist then he must do everything in standard way without any dispute. He wanted to be famous but he does not have the right to destroy any company name or brand without proper allegation. If we support Jeffrey Beall's work then we are also a part of his criminal activity. Please avoid Jeffrey Beall's fraudulent and criminal activity.

Now a days anyone can open a blog and start doing things like Jeffrey Beall which is harmful for science and open access journals. Nature should also be very alert from Jeffrey Beall who is now using Nature's reputation to broadcast his bribery and unethical business model.

Now, I invite all of you in order to take all precautions and not being misled by this blackmailer.

Ashry A. Aly
Director
Ashdin Publishing
http://www.ashdin.com

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	Open Access Publishing
Date:	Mon, 03 Dec 2012 17:39:18 +0000
From:	Jeffrey Beall
To:	info@ashdin.com

I maintain list of predatory open access publishers in my blog
http://scholarlyoa.com

Your publisher name is also included in 2012 edition of my predatory open
access publishers list. My recent article in Nature journal can be read
below

http://www.nature.com/news/predatory-publishers-are-corrupting-open-access-1.11385

I can consider re-evaluating your journals for 2013 edition of my list. It
takes a lot my time and resources. The fee for re-evaluation of your
publisher is USD 5000. If your publisher name is not in my list, it will
increase trustworthiness to your journals and it will draw more article
submissions. In case you like re-evaluation for your journals, you can
contact me.

Cordially
Jeffrey Beall

Read More!