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Scare campaigns, we have seen a few

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In a sister post, I identified the latest scare offensive in the ongoing discussions around open access as: ‘restricting choice of publication’. In this, there is an implied threat from editorial boards and publishers that if the UK Scholarly Communication Licence (UKSCL) were to be in place, then these journals would refuse to publish articles from affected researchers.

In this post I want to look at other threats that have been or are lurking in the shadows in the open access debate. The first is tied fairly closely to the ‘restricting choice of publication’ threat.

The new scare – threats to ‘Academic Freedom’

The term ‘Academic Freedom’ comes up a fair bit in discussions about open access. In his tweet sent during  the Researcher to Reader conference*, one of my Advisory Board colleagues Rick Anderson tweeted this comment:

“Most startling thing said to me in conversation at the #R2RConf:
“I wonder how much longer academic freedom will be tolerated in IHEs.” (Specific context: authors being allowed to choose where they publish.)

In this blog I’d like to pick up on the ‘Academic Freedom’ part of the comment (which is not Rick’s, he was quoting).

Academic Freedom, according to a summary in the Times Higher Education is  primarily that “Academic freedom means that both faculty members and students can engage in intellectual debate without fear of censorship or retaliation”.

This definition was based on the American Association of University Professors’ (AAUP) Statement on Academic Freedom which includes, quite specifically, “full freedom in research and in the publication of results”.

Personally I read that as meaning academics should be allowed to publish, not that they have full freedom in choosing where.

Rick has since contacted the AAUP to ask for clarification on this topic. Last Friday, he tweeted that the AAUP has declined to revisit the 1940 statement to clarify the ‘freedom in publication’ statement in light of evolution of scholarly communication since 1940.

The reason why the Academic Freedom/ ‘restricting choice of publication’ threat(s) is so concerning to the research community has changed over time. In the past it was essential to be able to publish in specific outlets because colleagues would only read certain publications. Those publications were effectively the academic ‘voice’. However today, with online publication and search engines this argument no longer holds.

What does matter however is the publication in certain journals is necessary because of the way people are valued and rewarded. The problem is not open access, the problem is the reward system to which we are beholden. And the commercial publishing industry is fully aware of this.

So let’s be clear. Academic Freedom is about freedom of expression rather than freedom of publication outlet and ties into Robert Merton’s 1942 norms of science which are:

  • “communalism”: all scientists should have common ownership of scientific goods (intellectual property), to promote collective collaboration; secrecy is the opposite of this norm.
  • universalism: scientific validity is independent of the sociopolitical status/personal attributes of its participants
  • disinterestedness: scientific institutions act for the benefit of a common scientific enterprise, rather than for the personal gain of individuals within them
  • organized scepticism: scientific claims should be exposed to critical scrutiny before being accepted: both in methodology and institutional codes of conduct.

If a publisher is preventing a researcher from publishing in a journal based on their funding or institutional policy rather than the content of the work being submitted then this is entirely in contravention of all of Robert Merton’s norms of science. But the publisher is not, as it happens, threatening the Academic Freedom of that author.

While we are here, let’s have a quick look at some of the other threats to researchers invoked in the last few years.

Historic scare 1 – Embargoes are necessary for sustainability

In the past the publishing industry has tried to claim research on half-life usage of research articles as ‘evidence’ for the “green open access = cancellations” argument. This sounds plausible except for the lack of any causal link between green open access policies and library subscriptions. The argument here is that embargoes are necessary for the ‘sustainability’ (read profit) of commercial publishers.

We should note the British Academy’s own 2014 finding that “libraries for the most part thought that embargoes for author-accepted manuscripts had little effect on their acquisition policies” and that any real cancellation issue was “the rising cost of journals at a time of budgetary constraint for libraries. If that continues, journals will be cancelled anyway, whether posted manuscripts are available or not.”

My debunking of this claim dates back to 2015 although it did raise its head again loudly in 2017 during discussions around the UKSCL. It is not uncommon for a researcher to express concern about their chosen journal’s viability because of open access. The message has been successfully pushed through to the research community.

Historic scare 2 – The need for full copyright

Copyright is supposed to protect the content creator. The argument I hear repeatedly about why publishers need authors to sign their copyright over to publishers is so they can ‘protect the author’s rights’. But when people sign their copyright away to another entity, copyright becomes a purely economic tool for financial exploitation by that entity.

There is no doubt publishers protect their own copyright. Indeed owning it allows maximum freedom to make money from the content (and prevent anyone else from doing so). But strangely whenever I have asked for examples of publishers stepping in to protect an author’s rights as the result of a copyright transfer agreement, there has been no response.

However it is not uncommon for a researcher to tell you that this is one of the protections that publishers offer them. I defer to Lizzie Gadd here who has published thoughts around the distinctions between copyright culture and scholarly culture. She notes how many academics have been led by publishers to believe that the current copyright culture supports scholarly culture to a far greater extent than it actually does.

Historic scare 3 – Press embargoes

The HEFCE open access policy requires the collection and deposit of work within three months of acceptance (although the first two years of the policy pushed this timeline out to three months from publication).  This means that work is deposited into repositories, and the metadata that exists – the title, the authors, the intended journal and the abstract – is made available before publication. The work itself (and we are talking about the Author’s Accepted Manuscript, not the final Version of Record) is under an infinite embargo which will be set when the work is published. This process has its own problems, discussed elsewhere.

In 2016 there was a blow up about the metadata about an article being in the public domain before publication. Our office received multiple concerned calls by researchers asking us to remove records from the repository until publication because of fear that having that metadata available was in contravention of the embargo rules. They were concerned the journal would refuse to publish their paper. When we investigated, not only was this not publisher policy but if anyone had been threatened in this manner the publishers we contacted requested we forward the information so they could follow up.

It demonstrates how spooked academics can be by their editors/journals/publishers.

Exhausting

This latest ‘restricting choice of publication’ threat is just another in a long line of implied threats that the scholarly communication community is having to manage. Each time a new one looms we need to identify the source, develop evidence and information to counter the threat and try and work with our research community to reassure them.

Between this, and the huge amount of time we have to spend identifying dates of publication or managing publisher and funder policies or keeping track of the funds that are being spent in this space, we are exhausted.

But perhaps that’s the point?

Published 15 March 2018
Written by Dr Danny Kingsley
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* Note: In the past two years I have written a precis up about the Researcher to Reader event with summaries, see: ‘It is all a bit of a mess’ Observations from Researcher to Reader conference and ‘Be nice to each other’ – the second Researcher to Reader conference. Time pressure means I may not be able to do that this year, but see the Twitter hashtag for the event.

The ‘restricting choice of publication’ threat

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When you work in the open access space, language matters. It is very easy to distract the academic community from the actual discussion at hand and we are seeing an example of this right now. The emerging narrative seems to be that open access policies, and specifically the UK Scholarly Communication Licence (UKSCL), are going to threaten academics’ ability to choose where they publish.

The UK-SCL Policy Summary is explicitly “an open access policy mechanism which ensures researchers can retain re-use rights in their own work, they retain copyright and they retain the freedom to publish in the journal of their choice (assigning copyright to the publisher if necessary)”.

Let’s keep that in mind when considering the following examples of the ‘restricting choice of publication’ argument that have crossed my path recently.

Sowing the seed 1

In January Elsevier sent an email to their UK editors (and some non UK editors) about the UKSCL.  It was written in a friendly tone expressing ‘concerns’ about the UKSCL. The ‘choice of publication’ argument appeared three times in this letter:

  • [The UKSCL] …“we believe may have a negative effect on UK research and may impact whether and how researchers publish in your journal”.
  • Elsevier fully supports the need for research institutions to use the articles published by their researchers, but further discussion is needed to ensure the SCL does not compromise the sustainability of academic journals or restrict researchers’ ability to publish quickly and easily in journals of their choice.
  • A key concern is that the SCL may restrict a UK researcher’s ability to choose where they publish (given there is no guarantee a copyright waiver will be granted) and ultimately threaten the publication of UK-based papers.

Note that this letter was inaccurate at best, and not just on this point. Under the UKSCL, copyright remains with the author and is free to be assigned to the publisher. The UKSCL is not restricting publisher or journal choice. Only the action of the publisher would achieve this.

Sowing the seed 2

On 26 and 27 February I attended the Researcher to Reader conference which attracts a mixture of publishers, library and administrative staff and some researchers. During the event one of my Advisory Board colleagues, Rick Anderson tweeted this comment:

“Most startling thing said to me in conversation at the #R2RConf: “I wonder how much longer academic freedom will be tolerated in IHEs.” (Specific context: authors being allowed to choose where they publish.)

Rick was quoting someone else, but he ended up in something of a Twitter argument over this tweet, including from Matt Ruen who asked: “Is there any evidence that researchers are actually being prevented from publishing what & where they want? Or is it just that if you want to get certain grants (or tenure/promotion), you have to play by the rules of funders/institutions? Because it has always been so.”

It seems the ‘restricting choice of publication’ message has been clearly disseminated. It is now coming back out from the academic community. Here are two examples that have happened very recently.

The British Academy

On 27 February, I also attended a meeting at the British Academy to discuss the UKSCL. The British Academy is considering their position on open access. They last published something on this in 2014 – see “Open Access journals in the Humanities and Social Science” – and they are consulting with their community to see if the position has moved. I applaud them for this and there is no criticism of the British Academy in what is described here. They are not creating this narrative, they are passing it on.

In preparation for their discussions, the British Academy recently surveyed their membership about the UKSCL. Amongst other questions the survey included the ‘restricting choice of publication’ bogeyman in the context of journals that have longer embargoes. One question was “Opinion of 12 month embargo impact on choice of journal”. The options included:

  • “I would strongly oppose not being able to place the article in the journal that I preferred” and
  • “I would regret not being able to place the article in journal that I preferred”

What is surprising about the result of this question is that only 55% of fellows and 48% of post doctoral fellows chose the first statement.

The problem here is that the ‘restricting choice of publication’  was invoked as an option for an outcome of a 12 month embargo. It is very unclear under what circumstances the ‘restricting choice of publication’ situation would occur in these conditions. Indeed, the number of respondents that chose the option ‘I think the situation is unlikely to arise’ was 14% of fellows and 7% of post doctoral fellows.

The Royal Historical Society

Then in the same week as the Researcher to Reader conference and the British Academy meeting, the Royal Historical Society released “The UK Scholarly Communications Licence: What it is, and why it matters for the Arts & Humanities”. I won’t go into this document in detail – that needs a more comprehensive discussion. But I will pick up on one of the points in the paper.

This document invoked the ‘restricting choice of publication’ argument under the heading: “(D) UK researchers’ continued access (as authors) to non-UK scholarly journals”. This section made the point:

“In addition, the editorial boards of several established non-UK and UK published journals (e.g. the American Historical Review and Past & Present) have indicated that they are unlikely to agree to publish an article which has already been published via an institutional repository.” Note that both named journals are published by Oxford University Press.

Ah, there it is. The first identifiable threat.

So it seems this ‘restricting choice of publication’ argument is striking fear into the hearts of many researchers.

Hang on…

Shall we consider the statement by those editorial boards for a moment?

Green open access works with the Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM), not the Version of Record (VoR). The AAM is placed in a repository with an embargo – 12 months in the case of the UKSCL for Humanities and Social Sciences journals.

This ‘indication’ by those editorial boards highlights two an issues:

  1. The embargoed AAM will only be available before the final VoR is published if the journal’s publishing processes are very slow, meaning there is a period of more than 12 months between an article being accepted for publication and it being published CORRECTION 13 March: The 12 month embargo kicks in once the work is published. This makes this point moot in the context here but further underlines the second point.
  2. By their own admission, these journals provide such little value add between the AAM and the VoR that having the AAM available in an institutional repository 12 months after publication means there is apparently no subsequent point publishing the work in the first place.

Neither of these points This does not paint those journals in very good light.

Who is the bad guy here?

I personally consider this simply another in a long series of scare campaigns. But for the sake of argument, let’s observe who is at fault if this restriction were to occur.

If an editorial board is by its own admission prepared to make arbitrary decisions about what they will publish based on people’s location and their policy requirements rather than the quality of the work, does this not fly in contravention of the idea that the ‘best’ research is published in that journal? It points directly to editorial decisions being made on economic  or political grounds.

The problem in this scenario is not open access, it is not funders, it is not the UKSCL. The problem is with the editorial boards and publishers. Why are researchers not pushing back on them and demanding that editorial decisions be made solely on the basis of the work?

Published 13 March 2018
Written by Dr Danny Kingsley
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In Conversation with the Wellcome Trust – sharing & managing research outputs

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In July 2017, the Wellcome Trust updated their policy on the management and sharing of research outputs.  This policy helps deliver Wellcome’s mission – to improve health for everyone by enabling great ideas to thrive.  The University of Cambridge’s Research Data Management Facility invited Wellcome Trust to Cambridge to talk with their funded research community (and potential researchers) about what this updated policy means for them.  On 5th December in the Gurdon Institute Tea Room, the Deputy Head of Scholarly Communication Dr Lauren Cadwallader, welcomed Robert Kiley, Head of Open Research, and David Carr, Open Research Programme Manager, from the Wellcome’s Open Research Team. 

This blog summarises the presentations from David and Robert about the research outputs policy and how it has been working and the questions raised by the audience.

Maximising the value of research outputs: Wellcome’s approach

David Carr outlined key points about the new policy, which now, in addition to sharing openly publications and data, includes sharing software and materials as other valued outputs of research.

An outputs management plan is required to show how the outputs of the project will be managed and the value of the outputs maximised (whilst taking into consideration that not all outputs can be shared openly).  Updated guidance on outputs management plans has been published and can be found on Wellcome’s website.

Researchers are also to note that:

  • Outputs should be made available with as few restrictions as possible.
  • Data and software underlying publications must be made available at the time of publication at the latest.
  • Data relevant to a public health emergency should be shared as soon as it has been quality assured regardless of publication timelines.
  • Outputs should be placed in community repositories, have persistent identifiers and be discoverable.
  • A check at the final report stage, to ensure outputs have been shared according to the policy, has been introduced (recognising that parameters change during the research and management plans can change accordingly).
  • Of course, management and sharing of research outputs comes with a cost and Wellcome Trust commit to reviewing and supporting associated costs as part of the grant.

Wellcome have periodically reviewed take-up and implementation of their research outputs sharing and management policy and have observed some key responses:

  • Researchers are producing better quality plans; however, the formats and level of detail included in the plans do remain variable.
  • There is uncertainty amongst stakeholders (researchers, reviewers and institutions) in how to fulfil the policy.
  • Resources required to deliver plans are often not fully considered or requested.
  • Follow-up and reporting about compliance has been patchy.

In response to these findings, Wellcome will continue to update their guidance and work with their communities to advise, educate and define best practice.  They will encourage researchers to work more closely with their institutions, particularly over resource planning.  They will also develop a proportionate mechanism to monitor compliance.

Developing Open Research

Robert Kiley then described the three areas which the dedicated Open Research Team at Wellcome lead and coordinate: funder-led activities; community-led activities and policy leadership.

Funder-led activities include:

  • Wellcome Open Research, the publishing platform launched in partnership with F1000 around a year ago; here Wellcome-funded researchers can rapidly and transparently publish any results they think are worth sharing. Average submission to publication time for the first 100 papers published was 72 days – much faster than other publication venues.
  • Wellcome Trust is working with ASAP-Bio and other funders to support pre-prints and continues to support e-Life as an innovative Open Access journal.
  • Wellcome Trust will review their Open Access policy during 2018 and will consult their funded researchers and institutions as part of this process.
  • Wellcome provides the secretariat for the independent review panel for the com (CSDR) platform which provides access to anonymised clinical trial data from 13 pharmaceutical companies. From January 2018, they will extend the resource to allow listing of academic clinical trials supported by Wellcome, MRC, CRUK and Gates Foundation.  Note that CDSR is not a repository but provides a common discoverability and access portal.

Community-led activities

Wellcome are inviting the community to develop and test innovative ideas in Open Research.  Some exciting initiatives include:

  • The Open Science Prize: this initiative was run last year in partnership with US National Institutes of Health and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. It supported prototyping and development of tools and services to build on data and content.  New prizes and challenges currently being developed will build on this model.
  • Research Enrichment – Open Research: this was launched in November 2017. Awards of up to £50K are available for Wellcome grant-holders to develop Open Research ideas that increase the impact of their funded research.
  • Forthcoming: more awards and themed challenges aimed at Open Research – including a funding competition for pioneering experiments in open research, and a prize for innovative data re-use.
  • The Open Research Pilot Project: whereby four Wellcome-funded groups are being supported at the University of Cambridge to make their research open.

Policy Leadership

In this area, Wellcome Trust engage in policy discussions in key policy groups at the national, European and international level.  They also convene international Open Research funder’s webinars.  They are working towards reform on rewards and incentives for researchers, by:

  • Policy development and declarations
  • Reviewing grant assessment procedures: for example, providing guidance to staff, reviewers and panel members so that there is a more holistic approach on the value and impact of research outputs.
  • Engagement: for example, by being clear on how grant applicants are being evaluated and committing to celebrate grantees who are practicing Open Research. 

Questions & Answers

Policy questions

I am an administrator of two Wellcome Trust programmes; how is this information about the new policy being disseminated to students? Has it been done?

When the Wellcome Open Research platform was announced last year, there was a lot of communication, for example, in grants newsletters and working with the centres.

Further dissemination of information about the updated policy on outputs management could be realised through attending events, asking questions to our teams, or inviting us to present to specific groups.  In general, we are available and want to help.

Following this, the Office of Scholarly Communication added that they usually put information about things like funder policy changes in the Research Operations Office Bulletin.

Regarding your new updated policy, have you been in communication with the Government?

We work closely with HEFCE and RCUK. They are all very aware about what we aim to do.

One of the big challenges is to answer the question from researchers: “If we are not using a particular ‘big journal’ name, what are we using to help us show the quality of the research?”.

We have been working with other funders (including Research Councils) to look at issues around this.  Once we have other funders on board, we need to work with institutions on staff promotion and tenure criteria.  We are working with others to support a dedicated person charged with implementing the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and identify best practice.

How do you see Open Outputs going forward?

There is a growing consensus over the importance of making research outputs available, and a strong commitment from funders to overcome the challenges. Our policy is geared to openness in ways that maximise the health benefits that flow from the research we fund.

Is there a licence that you encourage researchers to use?

No. We encourage researchers to utilise existing sources of expertise (e.g. The Software Sustainability Institute) and select the licence most appropriate for them.

Some researchers could just do data collection instead of publishing papers. Will we have future where people are just generating data and publishing it on its own and not doing the analysis?

It could happen. Encouraging adoption of CRediT Taxonomy roles in publication authorship is one thing that can help.

Outputs Management Plans

How will you approach checking outputs against the outputs management plan?

We will check the information submitted at the end of grants – what outputs were reported and how these were shared – and refer back to the plan submitted at application. We will not rule out sanctions in the future once things are in place. At the moment there are no sanctions as it is premature to do this.  We need to get the data first, monitor the situation and make any changes later in the process.

What are your thoughts on providing training for reviewers regarding the data management plans as well as for the people who will do the final checks? Are you going to provide any training and identify gaps on research for this?

We have provided guidance on what plans should contain; this is something we can look at going forwards.

One of the key elements to the outputs management plan is commenting on how outputs will be preserved. Does the Wellcome Trust define what it means by long term preservation anywhere?

Long term preservation is tricky. We have common best practice guidelines for data retention – 10 years for regular data and 20 years for clinical research. We encourage people to use community repositories where these exist.

What happens to the output if 10 years have passed since the last time of access?

This is a huge problem. There need to be criteria to determine what outputs are worth keeping which take into account whether the data can be regenerated. Software availability is also a consideration.

Research enrichment awards

You said that there will be prizes for data re-use, and dialogue on infrastructure is still in the early stages. What is the timeline? It would be good to push to get the timeline going worldwide.

Research enrichment awards are already live and Wellcome will assess them on an ongoing basis. Please apply if you have a Wellcome grant. Other funding opportunities will be launched in 2018. The Pioneer awards will be open to everyone in the spring and it is aimed for those who have worked out ways to make their work more FAIR.  The same applies to our themed challenges for innovative data re-use which will also launch in the spring – we will identify a data set and get people to look at it.  For illustration, a similar example is The NEJM SPRINT Data Analysis Challenge.

Publishing Open Access

What proportion of people are updating their articles on Wellcome Open Research?

Many people, around 15%, are editing their articles to Version 2 following review. We have one article at Version 3.

Has the Wellcome Trust any plans for overlay journals, and if so, in which repository will they be based?

Not at the moment. There will be a lot of content being published on platforms such as Open Research, the Gates platform and others. In the future, one could imagine a model where content is openly published on these platforms, and the role of journals is to identify particular articles with interesting content or high impact (rather than to manage peer review).  Learned societies have the expertise in their subjects; they potentially have a role here, for example in identifying lead publications in their field from a review of the research.

Can you give us any hints about the outcome of your review of the Wellcome Trust Open Access policy? Are you going to consider not paying for hybrid journals when you review your policy?

We are about to start this review of the policy. Hybrid journals are on the agenda. We will try to simplify the process for the researcher.  We are nervous about banning hybrid journals.  Data from the last analysis showed that 70% of papers from Wellcome Trust grants, for which Wellcome Trust paid an article processing charge, were in hybrid journals.  So if we banned hybrid journals it would not be popular.  Researchers would need to know which are hybrid journals.  Possibly with public health emergencies we could consider a different approach.  So there is a lot to consider and a balance to keep.  We will consult both researchers and institutions as part of the exercise.  There is also another problem in that there is a big gap in choice between hybrid and other journals.

If researchers can publish in hybrid journals, would Wellcome Trust consider making rules regarding offsetting?

That would be interesting. However, more rules could complicate things as researchers would then also need to check both the journal’s Open Access policy and find out if they have an approved offset deal in place.

Open Data & other research outputs

What is your opinion on medical data? For example, when we write an article, we can’t publish the genetics data as there is a risk that a person could be identified.

Wellcome Trust recognise that some data cannot be made available. Our approach is to support managed access. Once the data access committee has considered that the requirement is valid, then access can be provided. The author will need to be clear on how the researcher can get hold of the data.  Wellcome Trust has done work around best practice in this area.

Does Open Access mean free access? There is a cost for processing.

Yes, there is usually a cost. For some resources, those requesting data do have to pay a fee. For example, major cohort studies such as ALSPAC and UK Biobank have a fee which covers the cost of considering the request and preparing the data.

ALSPAC is developing a pilot with Wellcome Open Research to encourage those who access data and return derived datasets to the resource, to publish data papers describing data they are depositing.  Because the cost of access has already been met, such data will be available at no cost.

Does the software that is used in the analysis need to be included?

Yes, the policy is that if the data is published, the software should be made available too. It is a requirement, so that everybody can reproduce the study.

Is there a limit to volume of data that can be uploaded?

Wellcome Open Research uses third party data resources (e.g. Figshare). The normal dataset limit there is 5GB, but both Figshare and subject repositories can store much higher volumes of data where required.

What can be done about misuse of data?

In the survey that we did, researchers expressed fears of data misuse. How do we address such a fear? Demonstrating the value of data will play a great role in this.  It is also hard to know the extent to which these fears play out in reality – only a very small proportion of respondents indicated that they had actually experienced data being used inappropriately.  We need to gather more evidence of the relative benefits and risks, and it could be argued that publishing via preprints and getting a DOI are your proofs that you got there first.

Published 26 January 2018
Written by Dr Debbie Hansen
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