Tag Archives: open access

Why publishing Open Access should be your first choice: The OA advantage

January 21, 2022Open Research at Cambridge Conferenceopen access, open access publishingadmin

The Open Research at Cambridge conference took place between 22–26 November 2021. In a series of talks, panel discussions and interactive Q&A sessions, researchers, publishers, and other stakeholders explored how Cambridge can make the most of the opportunities offered by open research. This blog is part of a series summarising each event.

In our recent “Why OA should be your first choice” webinar hosted by the Cambridge University Library, attendees heard just how advantageous it is to opt for Gold OA when publishing their research. Backed by data pulled from recent analytics, our guest speakers illustrated the advantages and innovation taking place a Cambridge University Press, while also dispelling OA myths. Despite the challenges that apply to authors (such as funder requirements, national mandates, or differentials of income), there is a clear advantage of publishing open access.

As an non-profit Academic Publisher, we support the dissemination of knowledge and we strive to make OA equitable and sustainable to researchers across different career stages, disciplines, and regions worldwide.

The recording of the session is available here:

OA Advantages for Journal Authors
“ Mounting evidence of and OA advantage – across all disciplines, substantial in scale, material in respect to impact, prolonged over time” – Daniel Pearce, Publishing Director, HSS Journals.

A broader spectrum of authors are able to go OA due to transformative agreements (also known as Read & Publish)
Across our disciplines OA articles receive 3 times more usage within their first year than subscription articles. Gold OA articles receive more citations within two year across HSS and STM in contrast to non-OA articles.
Increase Impact: 61% more mentions on social, 185% more likely to be referenced in new media or blogs, and 52% more likely to be referenced in a policy papers

OA Advantages for Books & Elements Authors

“Flip It Open permits researchers to have the opportunity to get OA and makes research publicly accessible” – Andri Johnston, Digital & OA Projects Editor

Within the first 12 months usage is exponentially higher for OA books and OA Elements since each chapter can be used, shared, and cited
Sharing increases exponentially when all the chapters of a book are OA and OA books usage is 11-66 times higher (depending on the discipline).
Our Flip It Open program flips standard monograph as soon as they reach a specific sales threshold. Revenue for the title is generated thru institutional sales
Downloads for OA Elements gradually grow after 3 months, whereas downloads for non-OA Elements pan out after 4 weeks. Plus, OA Elements usage is 3 time higher than their non-OA counterparts.
OA helps alleviate disparities of foreign currency exchange, differentials of income, intellectual exclusions and makes publicly funded research accessible

OA Myths
“Removing barriers allow research findings to go far beyond siloed departments of research communities, with just internet connection.” – Andrew Sykes, Journals Marketing Director

“There’s no benefit to me”. OA content is freely available online with increased discoverability and higher citation and downloads for your work.
“OA means low quality”. Quality for CUP is paramount importance. All OA articles and book submissions to Cambridge go through the same peer review publication process as non-OA submissions. Predator publishing can be found through the Think Check Submit website to verify validity of journal
“OA is too expensive to me”. CUP has a number of publishing agreements with institutions, which means you may be able to submit your work OA without paying a fee. Cambridge also partners with Research4Life which enables researchers from low- medium income countries to publish as open access.

Learn more here: Open Access at Cambridge University Press

Open Research 101

January 21, 2022Open Research at Cambridge Conferencedata champions, open access, Open Research, research dataSacha Jones

Dr. Sacha Jones and Dr. Samuel Moore, Office of Scholarly Communication, Cambridge University Libraries

As part of the Cambridge Open Research conference, the Office of Scholarly Communication hosted a ‘101’ session on open research, covering the basics and answering queries for the audience on all aspects of open access publication and open data. With over 80 participants, we were thrilled with the response and wanted to recap some of the topics we covered in this post.

Firstly, as we discussed in the session, it is easy to assume that open research is simply an issue for the sciences rather than all academic disciplines. Practices such as open access and open data have been taken up widely in the sciences, although in different ways, and there is a common association with science and openness. This is compounded by the fact that in many European countries Open Science is inclusive of arts and humanities scholarship and so is functionally equivalent to open research. At the OSC, we are keen to support open practices across all disciplines while being sensitive to different ways of working. We are guided by the university’s Open Research Position Statement that requires work to be ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’.

After an introduction to open research, Sam then outlined the key issues in open access, including the different licences for making your research open access, the differences between green and gold open access, and the many and various reasons for making your work open access. Open access allows us to reach new audiences, improve the economics of research access, and reassess knowledge production and dissemination in a digital world. We also learned about open access monographs, the complex policy landscape and the various ways in which you can make your research open access through repositories and journals. The OSC’s Open Access webpages are an excellent set of resources for learning more.

We then moved onto open data – research data shared publicly – and how this fits into open research (see the University’s policy framework on research data). After highlighting that all research regardless of discipline generates or uses data of one kind or another (e.g. text, audio-visual, numerical, etc.), Sacha posed a series of questions with answers, anticipating what the audience might want to know more about. Do I have to share my data? What data do I share – is it meant to be everything from my research? My data contains sensitive information so I can’t share my data, or can I? How do I share my data? I don’t want to be criticised after making my data open, so how can I prevent this? How can I stop someone else from taking my data, using it, and getting all the credit? The OSC’s Research Data website contain information about data management and data sharing, and check out our list of Cambridge Data Champion experts to see if there’s anyone who’s volunteered to be a local source of data-related advice in your department or discipline.

We are always available as a source of support and guidance in all matters relating to open research and encourage you to contact us if you have any questions. The OSC has webpages on open research and sites dedicated to both open access and research data. For general open research enquires, we can be emailed at info@osc.cam.ac.uk, for open access at info@openaccess.cam.ac.uk and for data at info@data.cam.ac.uk. There are also a number of training sessions provided throughout the year and online that relate to the topics covered in this session. If you think that those in your department or institute at Cambridge would like to know more about the topics covered here then please do get in touch as we’d be happy to speak to these and answer any questions you may have.

Open access: fringe or mainstream?

October 23, 2020Uncategorizedgold open access, green open access, hybrid, open access, Plan S, policy, REF, repositoryArthur Smith

When I was just settling in to the world of open access and scholarly communication, I wrote about the need for open access to stop being a fringe activity and enter the mainstream of researcher behaviour:

“Open access needs to stop being a ‘fringe’ activity and become part of the mainstream. It shouldn’t be an afterthought to the publication process. Whether the solution to academic inaction is better systems or, as I believe, greater engagement and reward, I feel that the scholarly communications and repository community can look forward to many interesting developments over the coming months and years.”

While much has changed in the five years since I (somewhat naïvely) wrote those concluding thoughts, there are still significant barriers towards the complete opening of scholarly discourse. However, should open access be an afterthought for researchers? I’ve changed my mind. Open access should be something researchers don’t even need to think about, and I think that future is already here, though I fear it will ultimately sideline institutional repositories.

According to the 2020 Leiden Ranking, the median rate at which UK institutions make their research outputs open access is over 80%, which is far higher than any other nation (Figure 1). Indeed, the UK is the only country that has ‘levelled up’ over the last five years, while the rest of the world’s institutions have slowly plodded along making slow, but steady, progress.

Figure 1. The median institutional open access percentage for each country according to the Leiden Ranking. Note, these figures are medians of all institutions within a country. This does not mean that 80% of the UK’s publications are open access, but that the median rate of open access at UK institutions is 80%.

The main driver for this increase in open access content in the UK is through green open access (Figure 2), due in large part to the REF 2021 open access policy (announced in 2014 and effective from 2016). This is a dramatic demonstration of the influence that policy can have on researcher behaviour, which has made open access a mainstream activity in the UK.

Figure 2. The median institutional green open access percentage for each country according to the Leiden Ranking.

Like the rest of the UK, Cambridge has seen similar trends across all forms of open access (Figure 3), with rising use of green open access, and steadily increasing adoption of gold and hybrid. Yet despite all the money poured into gold and (more controversially) hybrid open access, the net effect of all this other activity is a measly 3% additional open access content (82% vs 79%). Which begs the question, was it worth it? If open access can be so successfully achieved through green routes, what is the inherent benefit of gold/hybrid open access?

Figure 3. Open access trends in Cambridge according to the Leiden Ranking. In the 2020 ranking, 79% was delivered through green open access. This means that despite all the work to facilitate other forms of open access, this activity only contributed an additional 3% to the total (82%).

Of course, Plan S has now emerged as the most significant attempt to coordinate a clear and coherent international strategy for open access. While it is not without its detractors, I am nonetheless supportive of cOAlition S’s overall aims. However, as the UK scholarly communication community has experienced, policy implementation is messy and can lead to unintended consequences. While Plan S provides options for complying through green open access routes, the discussions that institutions and publishers (both traditional and fully open access alike) have engaged in are almost entirely focussed on gold open access through transformative deals. This is not because we, as institutions, want to spend more on publishing, but rather it is the pragmatic approach to create open access content at the source and provide authors with easy and palatable routes to open access. It also is a recognition that flipping journals requires give and take from institutions and publishers alike.

We are now very close to reaching a point where open access can be an afterthought for researchers, particularly in the UK. In large part, it will be done for them through direct agreements between institutions and publishers. Cambridge already has open access publishing arrangements with over 5000 journals, and this figure will continue to grow as we sign more transformative agreements. However, this will ultimately be to the detriment of green open access. Instead of being the only open access source for a journal article, institutional repositories will instead become secondary storehouses of already gold open access content. The heyday of institutional repositories, if one ever existed, is now over.

For me, that is a sad thought. We have poured enormous resource and effort into maintaining Apollo, but we must recognise the burden that green open access places on researchers. They have better things to do. I expect that the next five years will see a dramatic increase in gold and hybrid open access content produced in the UK. Green open access won’t go away, but we will have entered a time where open access is no longer fringe, nor indeed mainstream, but rather de facto for all research.

Published 23 October 2020

Written by Dr Arthur Smith