Archive for the 'open access' Category

Open access: A quick factual post

Posted in open access on May 21st, 2013

Given the growing amount of nonsense being repeated in various ways about OA, here are four simple facts:

  1. Most gold OA journals do not charge article processing fees (“author charges”) at all. Period. (Something like 70% of journals don’t, and those journals include a majority of gold OA articles.)
  2. A higher percentage of subscription journals charge article fees (under various names) than do gold OA journals.
  3. Subscription publishers have in quite a few cases been guilty of practices that could be considered predatory (republishing articles, creating multiple journals in a very short time, etc., etc.)–but it would be as unfair to generalize subscription journals as predatory as it is to assume that most OA publishers are predatory.
  4. You can simultaneously believe that some critics of OA go far overboard in overgeneralizing their criticisms–and that suing a critic for criticism, in the absence of blatant factual error, is both wrong and a pretty good sign that something’s amiss with the publisher. (Call this “a curse on both your houses” if you wish.)

For more information, I refer you to Open Access: What You Need to Know Now (ALA Editions, 2011), also to three recent Cites & Insights issues (January 2013, February 2013, June 2013)–and, if you’re a glutton for punishment, Open Access and Libraries (free PDF, $17.50 paperback), a compilation of earlier OA-related essays.

 

Leave A Comment »

Walking the talk: CC BY

Posted in Copyright, open access on March 25th, 2013

It may be a while before I actually have the license linked and the icon showing in the sidebar, but I’m finally doing something I probably should have done a while ago.

I’ve replaced the bottom paragraph of my “About” page (which referred to the CC BY-NC license for original material in this blog) with this:

As of March 25, 2013, I’m walking the walk: Original content is now covered at least implicitly by a Creative Commons “BY” license: It may be freely used as long as credit is given. Period. I’ll have the actual license and icon as soon as I figure out how to add it.

As for Cites & Insights? I’m thinking about it, and will probably make the same decision. So, y’know, if you’re eager to get filthy rich by selling something based on my posts here, and you provide attribution, go to it. Good luck with that…

Leave A Comment »

Big day for open access

Posted in open access on February 22nd, 2013

If you’re one of my few readers who don’t follow open access developments elsewhere–and I’m guessing there aren’t many of you:

This is a very big and mostly good news day.

Specifically,

  • The White House responded to the We the People petition on open access.
  • The nature of the response is excellent, almost astonishing. Quoting from Dr. John Holdren’s response (the link above):

I have issued a memorandum today (.pdf) to Federal agencies that directs those with more than $100 million in research and development expenditures to develop plans to make the results of federally-funded research publically available free of charge within 12 months after original publication. As you pointed out, the public access policy adopted by the National Institutes of Health has been a great success. And while this new policy call does not insist that every agency copy the NIH approach exactly, it does ensure that similar policies will appear across government.

This is probably the biggest gain in OA since the NIH policy became law.

And there’s more (again quoting from the response):

In addition to addressing the issue of public access to scientific publications, the memorandum requires that agencies start to address the need to improve upon the management and sharing of scientific data produced with Federal funding.

That goes beyond free access to reports, to encourage open data–access to the actual data.

So why the mostly?

It’s good news. It’s very good news. But, as usual, it could always be better.

  • I’ll suggest–as other more knowledgeable sorts are–that this does not mean FRPAA isn’t needed. This is an administration policy, subject to reversal by a new administration. FRPAA would be a law (also, to be sure, subject to reversal, but a little stronger).
  • This memo (and NIH policy) allow for up to a one-year embargo. Ideally, there would be no embargo, or at most a six-month embargo. Delayed open access still delays progress.

But in this case, three-quarters of a loaf is most decidedly better than none!

You’ll have no trouble finding oodles of cheering, commentary and (I imagine) bitching & moaning from all the usual suspects. Meantime, it’s definitely a fine day for OA.

 

Comments Off

This blog is protected by dr Dave\\\\\\\'s Spam Karma 2: 91224 Spams eaten and counting...