JISC

Bill Hubbard, Head of the CRC, JISC Research Communications Strategist, Amanda Hodgson, Open Access Advisor, Willow Fuchs, Open Access Advisor (March 2011)

The fourth and final report from Research Communication Strategies contains a strategic overview of issues relating to open access, results from recent opinion gathering activities and recommendations for future advocacy.

1. Attitudes to open access

The authors carried out a survey of the views of economists and chemists to open access. This report contains initial findings and conclusions.

It also highlights a survey from the Study Of Open Access Publishing Project (SOAP) suggesting the majority of researchers take a positive view of open access, names open access journals (such as PLoS One) that now have significant traction, and discusses Nature’s recent adoption of open access publishing methods with its journal Scientific Reports. Less positively, the report notes that SOAP discovered researchers still perceive open access to have less prestige than subscription journals - an idea reinforced by the report authors’ own survey. There is a particular worry that the Research Excellence Framework favours traditional journals over peer-reviewed open access - and so the authors recommend encouraging HEFCE to make it clear that no such distinction should be made.

The report then addresses the perception that Gold open access is seen to be too expensive. It suggests advocating that the wide dissemination that open access allows is a valid expense, that the cost of open access is tiny in the context of grants and informing people that there is often money available to support Open Access publication.

It next highlights copyright fears with relation to Green open access, the worry that depositing takes up too much time and effort, the fact that many researchers don’t even seem to know whether their institution has a repository or not and continuing ignorance about open access within institutions, where libraries have taken up the open access agenda, but it has not been integrated into research. So far, events have been held and an email list set up to try to facilitate discussion and collaboration.

2. Social networking

The report notes that social networking and its potential for open communication is the subject of a Research Communications Strategy consultancy exercise. It also reports a few speculative conversations on the subject with pro-vice-chancellors and research directors, who reported a low uptake among their researchers.

3. Current issues in research communication

3.1 Peer review

The report notes that ideas about open peer review continue to emerge and some submissions to the 2011 House Of Commons Select Committee Inquiry on peer review suggest it as a possibility.

3.2 Intellectual property

The report notes concerns about the Hargreaves Enquiry into intellectual property and what impact it will have on data mining and open access provision, gives updates on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (not as restrictive as first feared) and notes other developments, such as the argument between Google and rights-holders about book digitisation.

4. Advocacy

The report details several areas where advocacy should be employed, such as: providing publicity about the existence of open access mandates (since many researchers are unaware of them), explaining that Green open access can be employed as well as traditional publication (ie they aren’t mutually exclusive), providing incentives for researchers to deposit full texts, explaining how open access contributes to the public good, and the provision of a simple advertising-style “brand” message to promote open access.

Read the report in full