Repository Interface for Overlaid Journal Archives: costs estimates and sustainability issues

The RIOJA project (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ls/rioja) investigated the feasibility of an overlay journal model in collaboration with the arXiv and in the scientific domain of astrophysics and cosmology. Scientists in this community are active users of e-prints repositories such as the arXiv. Furthermore, they have the support of Professional Associations and Learned Societies that have been pioneers in adapting to new publishing models and in particular electronic journals. Long term access to information as well as maintaining provision to sustainable systems/services is important to various parties in the scholarly communication system: the creators of information, developers and managers of services, libraries, publishers, funders and also users. Although scientific journals have been in existence since the 18th century (Lawal, 2001), factors such as increased journal subscription prices in the last decades and the emergence of new technologies have triggered discussions on the potential of new business models for publishing research. Furthermore, the advent of the open access movement also contributed to exploration of the issues around free access to information and provision of sustainable services. Exploring aspects of sustainability is something that should be seen over a period of time and whether launching, converting or simply maintaining a new or existing system/service the needs of the community it serves should be taken into account. Scientific journal publishing is a complex process. Besides disseminating scientific knowledge, registration of a claim for new discovery and a quality “stamp” it also facilitates social factors. Besides making research findings available and contributing to the advancement of knowledge, publishing is also a means for measuring quality of the work of scientists, allocating funding, and acknowledging contributions to knowledge. In this report, we will try to provide an overview of a new publishing model, that of the overlay journal. We will discuss the use of the arXiv by scientists in astrophysics and cosmology as well as the role of professional associations and learned societies in the publishing process for this community. We will briefly explain the methods employed to compile this report. We will also briefly present the RIOJA toolkit before we try and identify costs in the publishing process associated with the functions of registration, certification, and awareness and archiving. This report does not aim to provide a comprehensive report of actual journal publishing costings. Despite the fact that there are studies in existence that tried to document costs associated with journal publishing, the information presented there rarely corresponds to the actual costs of individual journal functions. In addition, the interviews with publishers and editors did not reveal any substantial information about costings that have not already been reported in the literature or are available on some publishers' websites. Where appropriate, this report aims to acknowledge studies conducted previously as pointers to further reading and, where applicable, to compare reported findings to observations made during the development and implementation of the RIOJA toolkit (described below). We will conclude this report with some of the issues reported in the literature around sustainability of services and some brief suggestions for further work

Implementing Open Access Policy: First case studies

When implementing open access, policy pioneers and flagship institutions alike have faced considerable challenges in meeting their own aims and achieving a recognized success. Legitimate authority, sufficient resources and the right timing are crucial, but the professionals charged with implementing policy still need several years to accomplish significant progress. This study defines a methodological standard for evaluating the first generation of open access policies. Evaluating implementation establishes evidence, enables reflection, and may foster the emergence of a second generation of open access policies. While the study is based on a small number of cases, these case studies cover most of the pioneer institutions, present the most significant issues and offer an international overview. Each case is reconstructed individually on the basis of public documents and background information, and supported by interviews with professionals responsible for open access implementation. This article presents the highlights from each case study. The results are utilized to indicate how a second generation of policies might define open access as a key component of digital research infrastructures that provide inputs and outputs for research, teaching and learning in real time.</p

Publishing scientific research: is there ground for new ventures?

This paper highlights some of the issues that have been reported in surveys carried out by the RIOJA (Repository Interface for Overlaid Journal Archives) project (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ls/rioja). Six hundred and eighty three scientists (17% of 4012 contacted), and representatives from publishing houses and members of editorial boards from peer-reviewed journals in astrophysics and cosmology provided their views regarding the overlay journal model. In general the scientists were disposed favourably towards the overlay journal model. However, they raised several implementation issues that they would consider important, primarily relating to the quality of the editorial board and of the published papers, the speed and quality of the peer review process, and the long-term archiving of the accepted research material. The traditional copy-editing function remains important to researchers in these disciplines, as is the visibility of research in indexing services. The printed volume is of little interest

Maximizing research impact through institutional and national open-access self-archiving mandates

No research institution can afford all the journals its researchers may need, so all articles are losing research impact (usage and citations). Articles made “Open Access,” (OA) by self-archiving them on the web are cited twice as much, but only 15% of articles are being spontaneously self-archived. The only institutions approaching 100% self-archiving are those that mandate it. Surveys show that 95% of authors will comply with a self-archiving mandate; the actual experience of institutions with mandates has confirmed this. What institutions and funders need to mandate is that (1) immediately upon acceptance for publication, (2) the author’s final draft must be (3) deposited into the Institutional Repository. Only the depositing needs to be mandated; setting access privileges to the full-text as either OA or Restricted Access (RA) can be left up to the author. For articles published in the 93% of journals that have already endorsed self-archiving, access can be set as OA immediately; for the remaining 7%, authors can email the eprint in response to individual email requests automatically forwarded by the Repository

OAPEN-UK: An open access business model for scholarly monographs in the humanities and social sciences

This paper presents the initial findings of OAPEN-UK, a UK research project gathering evidence on the social and technological impacts of an open access business model for scholarly monographs in the humanities and social sciences

Participation in the global knowledge commons : challenges and opportunities for research dissemination in developing countries

Due to improving Internet connectivity and a growing number of international initiatives, knowledge workers in developing countries are now getting access to scholarly and scientific publications and electronic resources at a level that is unmatched historically. This is highly significant, particularly in areas of medicine, agricultural and environmental sciences, and development literature that are much needed if developing countries are to meet the Millennium Development Goals. At the same time, the Open Access movement and the growing number of Open Archive Initiative (OAI) compliant institutional repositories promise to provide even greater access to resources and scientific publications that were previously inaccessible. These low cost technology and interoperability standards are also providing great opportunities for libraries and publishers in developing countries to disseminate local research and knowledge and to bridge the South-North knowledge gap. This article reviews these recent trends, discusses their significance for information access in developing countries, and provides recommendations for knowledge workers on how to actively participate in and contribute to the global knowledge commons

Open Access in the United States

A survey of the most important, current open-access projects in the United States

Huddersfield Open Access Publishing

This paper presents the findings of the Huddersfield Open Access Publishing Project, a JISC funded project to develop a low cost, sustainable Open Access (OA) journal publishing platform using EPrints Institutional Repository software

Bringing together the work of subscription and open access specialists: challenges and changes at the University of Sussex

The rise in open access (OA) publishing has required library staff across many UK academic institutions to take on new roles and responsibilities to support academics. At the same time, the long-established work of negotiating with publishers around journal subscriptions is changing as such deals now usually include OA payment or discount plans in many different forms that vary from publisher to publisher. This article outlines some of the issues we encountered at the University of Sussex Library whilst trying to pull together the newer strand of OA advocacy and funder compliance work with existing responsibilities for managing subscription deals. It considers the challenges faced in effectively bringing together Library staff with knowledge in these areas, and outlines the steps we have taken so far to ensure OA publishing is taken into account wherever appropriate

Open Access Mandates and the "Fair Dealing" Button

We describe the "Fair Dealing Button," a feature designed for authors who have deposited their papers in an Open Access Institutional Repository but have deposited them as "Closed Access" (meaning only the metadata are visible and retrievable, not the full eprint) rather than Open Access. The Button allows individual users to request and authors to provide a single eprint via semi-automated email. The purpose of the Button is to tide over research usage needs during any publisher embargo on Open Access and, more importantly, to make it possible for institutions to adopt the "Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access" Mandate, without exceptions or opt-outs, instead of a mandate that allows delayed deposit or deposit waivers, depending on publisher permissions or embargoes (or no mandate at all). This is only "Almost-Open Access," but in facilitating exception-free immediate-deposit mandates it will accelerate the advent of universal Open Access.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, 32 references. To appear in "Dynamic Fair Dealing: Creating Canadian Culture Online" (Rosemary J. Coombe & Darren Wershler, Eds.