Open Access Publishing: A Literature Review

Within the context of the Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy (CREATe) research scope, this literature review investigates the current trends, advantages, disadvantages, problems and solutions, opportunities and barriers in Open Access Publishing (OAP), and in particular Open Access (OA) academic publishing. This study is intended to scope and evaluate current theory and practice concerning models for OAP and engage with intellectual, legal and economic perspectives on OAP. It is also aimed at mapping the field of academic publishing in the UK and abroad, drawing specifically upon the experiences of CREATe industry partners as well as other initiatives such as SSRN, open source software, and Creative Commons. As a final critical goal, this scoping study will identify any meaningful gaps in the relevant literature with a view to developing further research questions. The results of this scoping exercise will then be presented to relevant industry and academic partners at a workshop intended to assist in further developing the critical research questions pertinent to OAP

Open access to scholarly communications: advantages, policy and advocacy

The Open Access (OA) movement regards OA modes of disseminating research as the unequivocal future of scholarly communication. Proponents of the open access movement itself have, over the last ten years, carried out systematic research to show how OA can tangibly benefit researchers, institutions and society at large. Even so, the number of research papers being uploaded to OA institutional repositories remains relatively low, frequently based on concerns which often contradict the facts. Policies for OA have been introduced to encourage author uptake, and these are also discussed here. Briefly delineating aspects of these phenomena, this paper will then move on to outline and discuss advocacy for OA in organisations, and whether this should be “downstream”, in the form of informational campaigns, or “upstream”, in the form of top-down change management. This paper seeks to make a contribution to these issues in the OA sphere, by brining into the debate strands from the literature of the sociology of science and management science that will hopefully elucidate aspects of author reactions to OA, and the perceived changes that its adoption gives rise to

Open access institutional repositories: A requirement for academic libraries in the 21st century. A case study of four African universities

The paper highlights the importance and expectation of a global access to information, open access institutional repositories as a requirement for academic and research libraries. The paper further investigated the challenges faced by four African universities in implementing their open access repositories. A literature review method was adopted by way of questionnaire and observation using ProQuest/Serial solutions summons which was a web scale discovery tool that indexes a wide variety of databases. Population of study comprises of four selected African universities; Ahmadu Bello University(ABU), Zaria, Kaduna State, Nigeria; Kwame Nkrumah University of science and Technology, Ghana; Durban University of Technology (DUT) South Africa; Uganda Christian University (UCU), Uganda. The data collected were analysed using Stellenbosch’s best practices guide, “SUNScholar/practical guidelines for starting an institutional repository (IR)” (Gibson). Findings revealed that; KNUST have both institutional policy and open access policy that currently in draft form and no embargo on open access policy. DUTIR implemented their policy in 2009 without embargo on open access. ABU and UCU have drafted their policy but yet to be implemented. Only 2 KNUST space has documented a formal long term preservation policy as part of their IR policy. Based on research findings, the researchers are not willing to devote time to ensure that their research work is archived, while institutions seem unwilling to commit financially to ensure the sustainability of their repositories. It was recommended that libraries should take proactive steps to make their repositories more successful

Synthèse sur les politiques institutionnelles de libre accès à la recherche

En matière d'archives ouvertes, les politiques strictement incitatives se sont avérées relativement peu efficaces (environ 15% de dépôts plein texte volontaires). Par contraste, les mandats institutionnels, dont le principe est de rendre ce dépôt plus ou moins obligatoire, permettent d'augmenter significativement la participation des chercheurs. Diverses enquêtes ont d'ailleurs montré qu'une majorité d'auteurs seraient disposés à archiver leurs travaux si un tel mandat les y contraignait. Depuis 2003, les mandats essaiment à travers le monde, particulièrement aux États-Unis, mais également en Europe, où l'Université de Liège fait désormais figure de modèle. L'Union européenne, qui via son 8e PCRD (Horizon 2020) devrait rendre obligatoire le libre accès à toute recherche qu'elle finance, recommande l'adoption de mandats à ses États membres. De son côté, le Royaume-Uni semble privilégier la voie dorée, au détriment de la voie verte, avec pour conséquence probable l'envolée des coûts de publication, à la charge des universités. En France, les mandats, défendus par le CNRS et dont l'efficacité a été reconnue et approuvée à un niveau officiel, sont encore plutôt le fait d'organismes nationaux que d'universités. L'adoption et la mise en œuvre d'une politique institutionnelle est un processus de longue haleine : pour qu'elle soit comprise et acceptée par la communauté scientifique, il faut en méditer soigneusement la formulation, l'expliquer aux chercheurs de manière à éviter tout risque d'interprétation erronée, l'accompagner par des actions de soutien et de suivi, proposer des services à valeur ajoutée en rétribution aux efforts d'auto-archivage. Il peut s'avérer stratégiquement judicieux de limiter dans un premier temps l'application du mandat à des laboratoires-relais, dont l'exemple peut avoir un effet incitatif