Publishing & Open Access

mike nason, open scholarship & publishing librarian | unb libraries

For the Impatient or Hurried I

Open Access

Its context and your place in it.

Evolutions in/of Scholarly Publishing

Publishing has changed dramatically in the last two decades. It is never going to go back to how it used to be.

Exercising Agency

There's no single route to OA. Your participation depends on your wants, needs, and requirements.

For the Impatient or Hurried II

Untangling the Types of Open Access

From gold to green to diamond and other such alchemy.

The APC and Unpacking Your Options (coming soon)

Most of the time, you do not need to pay an APC to support open access.

Open Access Outside the Article (coming soon)

Discussing OA with monographs, reports, proceedings, and grey literature.

For the Impatient or Hurried III

Examples (coming soon)

Suppositions and use cases.

Resources

Links, docs, and other bookmarkables.

Thanks in Advance

We are, all of us, too busy. Things will not "slow down soon". I appreciate your attention. Contact me if you have questions or need support. (mnason@unb.ca)

Open Access

Open access is, broadly speaking, a very straightforward idea...

Access to knowledge is a public good.

But, you know, we live under capitalism. Things are a little more complicated.

Paid in $$

In the world of monographs (books), textbooks, or other publications, some authors get to make money! For their work! Imagine!

As a musician, this is a very cute idea to me.

Publishers take a cut for their service. Sure! And/or platforms do.

Paid in Prestige

In the world of academic publishing (journals, in particular), the production of research is just part of the job.*

Authors aren't typically paid a portion of profits! Authors want and need to share their work to advance their careers.

Publishers take the whole cut.

Major academic publishers are for-profit businesses.

“Academic publishers reap huge profits as libraries go broke…

5 companies publish more than 50 percent of research papers, study finds.” (CBC News, 2015)

Even still, for a long time, this really wasn't a huge problem.

Until the "serials crisis"!

I should note here that this is one of the most powerfully boring phrases you may ever see, but it was/remains a big deal.

Not only were prices rising at a startling pace, this period is also characterized by the increasing ubiquity of the modern internet.

Boundless possibilities and technophilic naïveté!

Lots of people believed the internet could revolutionize how we share information (they weren't wrong) and could make knowledge more equitable (uhhh, we're doing our best, I guess).

And so...

In 2002, a heap of passionate scholars met in Budapest and drafted a statement on open access. They called it the Budapest Open Access Initiative.

It's still a thing!

"The public good [the internet] make[s] possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds. Removing access barriers to this literature will accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge."

https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read/

"For various reasons, this kind of free and unrestricted online availability, which we will call open access, has so far been limited to small portions of the journal literature. But even in these limited collections, many different initiatives have shown that open access is economically feasible, that it gives readers extraordinary power to find and make use of relevant literature, and that it gives authors and their works vast and measurable new visibility, readership, and impact."

https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read/

Access to knowledge is a public good.

Access to knowledge benefits the commons.

Access facilitates faster, broader, and more diverse knowledge exchange.

win / win / win

Twenty-one years later, you're probably aware that everything isn't open access.

But it's not all bad!

I suppose it is possible that you may feel OA is something of an imposition. I think it's important that we understand how we got here.

Now that you have a bit of a sense about how open access got started as a movement, let's talk about how OA has changed publishing.

OA has come a very long way. Preprint servers allow for expedient transfer of research and changed the ways some whole disciplines publish. Research data is more available than ever.

And mandates, like them or not, have provided public access to publicly funded research.

Evolutions in/of Scholarly Publishing

Things used to be pretty straightforward, right?

Where to publish?

• Is this a good journal?
  • Does it have a good reputation in my field?
  • Will my community of practice read it?
  • Will it be well-cited?
  • Am I in good company?
  • Is this a publisher of good repute?
• A presumption of access...
  • The people who are interested in this research will be able to see it.
  • The best journals in my field are generally available for this research community to read.

But, obviously, it's more complicated than that!

Where to publish?

How to publish?

What to publish?

Where to publish?

• Is this a good journal?
  • Does it have a good reputation in my field?
  • Will my community of practice read it?
  • Will it be well-cited?
  • Am I in good company?
  • Is this a publisher of good repute?
• A presumption of access...
  • The people who are interested in this research will be able to see it.
  • The best journals in my field are generally available for this research community to read.

Where to publish?

• Is this a real journal?
  • How many retractions does it have? Scandals?
  • Is it "predatory"?
  • Is the journal kind of ok but the PUBLISHER isn't?
  • Are APC fees normal or bad?
  • Wait, why am I paying for publishing?
• A presumption of access...
  • Is this journal published by someone a whole entire country/state/school stopped working with?
  • How accessible do I want my work to be? For whom?
  • If I share a link, who hits a paywall?

How to publish?

• Open Access?
  • Is this journal open access or not?
  • What does "hybrid OA" mean?
  • Am I under an OA mandate?
  • Why am I paying for publishing?
  • Do I actually need to pay for publishing?
• A presumption of access...
  • What works can we find where?
  • How on top of all this do I need to be?
  • If I share a link, who hits a paywall?
  • How accessible do I want my work to be? For whom?

What to publish?

• Which versions am I sharing?
  • Preprints on a preprint server like arxiv?
  • Accepted manuscripts in our institutional repo?
  • Links to publisher PDFs I paid an APC to open up?
  • Links to publisher PDFs that most people can't read?
  • Subsets of my research data?
  • All of my research data?
• A presumption of access...
  • What am I allowed to share?
  • Which versions of things are open, and which aren't?
  • How open should my data be? Does it need to be?

These decisions are non-trivial and, maybe, overwhelming!

These changes didn't happen because a bunch of librarians and pushy nerds bullied publishers.

These changes have happened because human communication evolved rapidly, and access to knowledge is inequitable. 

You, generally, have agency.

Exercising Agency

It is, I think, important that you publish with intention.

Where and how you share your research affects the "impact" your work has on your research community and the public.

"Intention" means considering every place the products of your research will go before you even submit to a specific journal.

What are your needs?

• reputable journal
• reputable publisher
• high-impact factor
• appropriate scope
• good for career

What are your needs?

• reputable journal
• reputable publisher
• high-impact factor
• appropriate scope
• good for career

• reputable journal
• reputable publisher
• high-impact factor
• appropriate scope
• good for career

• has a path for mandated oa
  • is the journal oa?
  • self-archiving option?
  • apc option / discount?
• immediate or delayed oa?

• work available to community?
  • is the journal free to read?
  • can I put a version in a repo?
• can I (or do I) need to share data?
• are my co-authors from Quebec?
• co-authors from mandated unis?
  • do they need to self-archive?

Bonus Round

• how expensive is this journal?
• who can't read my work?

What are your needs?

This is a vital part of engaging with open access that doesn't always get discussed.

Your reason for choosing to publish open will have an impact on the methods or paths you take to do so.

This is the agency part.

• are you under mandate?
• is access to your work essential for practitioners, policy-makers, or the public?
• is your work especially timely, or can OA wait for 12–24 months?
• do you want more eyes on your research?
• do you have a specific journal in mind already? what's their policy?
• are you trying to save money?

Untangling Open Access

Open Access Types

Broadly speaking, you'll hear a handful of terms thrown around in this space. I'm going to focus on four of them, and then go into a little more detail.

They're listed from least problematic to most.

Doesn't Cost You Money to Publish

• Diamond Open Access
• Subscribe to Open
• Hybrid Open Access via...
  • Green Open Access*

Does Cost You Money to Publish

• Gold Open Access
• Hybrid Open Access for immediate OA or if self-archiving isn't possible.

Publisher Types

Because OA has come down to money, it's useful to remember that types of open access are often tethered to the financial model of the publisher.

For Profit Publishing

• Gold Open Access
• Hybrid Open Access
• Green Open Access*
• Closed/Private Access

Not for Profit Publishing

• Diamond Open Access
• Gold Open Access
• Green Open Access*
• Closed/Private Access

Diamond 💎

Diamond Open Access is the platonic ideal of OA. A Diamond OA journal has no publishing fees and no subscription fees. Instead, they have found some alternative funding model to support their operational costs.

• no author processing charges
• no subscription fee
• alternative funding for costs
• highly likely you'll retain copyright of your manuscript

Green 💚

Green OA is more of a method for providing access to a version of a work that was not published in an OA venue. It is also often referred to as self-archiving.

A journal wouldn't identify as "green". Instead, you would meet a mandate requirement or facilitate open access by self-archiving a version of the work that is not the final, version of record.

• a method for open access that avoids author processing charges
• access to the version you self-archive is free for readers

• is an option for the majority of hybrid OA journals
• likely also an option for more traditional publishers who are subscription-only

Green 💚

If you post a preprint to a preprint server, that's green OA.

If you post an accepted manuscript (the version of a work after peer review and before copyediting / layout), that's green OA.

If you publish in any venue where your work is OA and you don't have to pay money for that to happen, that's green OA.

Green OA is a bit of a compromise.

• no cost for the author, but...
• more work for the author to keep track of article versions and deposit to repositories
• releasing a less polished version of the article may be objectionable (hugely dependent on discipline and publishing cultures)

Self-Archiving 👀

I've used the phrase a lot in this presentation. Self-archiving is when you take a version of your work and make it available in a repository (institutional or disciplinary).

Usually, this isn't the final version of record. It's typically the "accepted manuscript", which is the version after peer review but before copy editing.

Self-archiving is usually cost free, but even paid journals allow for it. The idea is not just facilitating OA in one location, but multiple. This increases access.

If you give me an accepted manuscript to self-archive in our institutional repository, this will meet your tri-agency OA requirements.

Gold 💰

Gold OA is when you have to pay an APC to publish your work in a journal.

Gold OA journals are always free for users to read, and most of their funding for operations come from author processing charges.

PLOS is a good example of a Gold OA publisher.

• typically requires an APC*
• you are more likely to retain copyright
• free for readers
• often allow self-archiving, but you still need to pay $$

• however, some gold OA titles have negotiated deals with institutions where a blanket fee is paid and then APCs are waived.

Hybrid 💚💰

Hybrid OA is increasingly common. These are journals that operate like traditional subscription journals that also offer the possibility paying an APC to facilitate immediate open access.

Hybrid OA is controversial, in particular, because these journals collect both subscription revenue and APC revenue. This is "double dipping".

• an APC for immediate OA
• delayed OA via self-archiving

• these journals are the most likely to offer APC discounts for immediate OA.
• they are also the most likely to allow self-archiving options so you don't need to pay anything.

Decisions, Decisions

I don't want to spend money to publish! A flowchart.

Selecting for Open Access

gold-oa journal

unb has apc waiver

free

$

unb has apc discount

no apc support

$$

hybrid journal

unb has apc waiver

free

$$

unb has apc discount

no self-archiving

free

allows self-archiving

$

no apc support

require immediate oa

I don't want to spend money to publish! Another flowchart.

Selecting for Open Access

diamond oa

subscribe to open

free

Resources

Bookmarkables

UNB Libraries Supporting OA
Documentation and general support.

UNB Libraries APC Discounts
Guides to APC Discounts for UNB.
 

UNB Scholar Research Repository
Deposit your work! Self-archive!
 

UNB Scholar Deposit Form
Send us your publications.
 

SHERPA/RoMEO (publisher policies)
Check publisher policies.

UNB Libraries Publishing Support Form
We can help sort out policies/options.

Meeting Tri-Agency Requirements
My deck for ORS grant workshops.