Tag Archives: Open Access

Springer charge academics for using CC-NC “Open Access” in lectures

Springer (commendably) publishes most of its APC-paid Open Access under CC-BY licences and allows free re-use for any purpose. However some “Open Access” (e.g. Drugs in R&D) is licensed under CC-BY-NC (non-commercial). This excludes, for example, re-use as teaching materials. Anyone wishing to re-use material in lectures will have to pay Springer, even though the author probably wanted it to be freely used. Here is the evidence; I strongly urge Springer to drop all NC licences, as otherwise it harms academics and many other sectors.


petermr's blog.

Frontiers launches a new open-access journal in Energy Research

One of the largest and fastest-growing open-access scholarly publishers, now part of the Nature Publishing Group family, launched its Frontiers in Energy Research journal yesterday.
Frontiers in Energy Research will provide an open-science and interactive web platform for the research community to publish high-quality and rigorously peer-reviewed articles. Frontiers' real-time and interactive peer review enables fast, transparent and constructive review of a range of article types.

A coordinated approach is key for open access

Even the most optimistic advocates of open access to academic publications must admit that we are years — and perhaps decades — away from full conversion to such a system. It is easy to call for open access, but more difficult to make it happen. More science funders must put their money where their mouths are, and back their positive words with action. It will not be cheap, but the longer we wait, the more expensive it will be.


Nature News.

Alexander Grossmann on the state of Open Access: Where are we, what still needs to be done?

Here is an intervie with Alexander Grossmann.
A: The present business models of subscription based publishing forces librarians to spend most of their budget or all of their budget on package deals with the major publishers. Just to illustrate the situation: For some libraries, in particular smaller libraries which cannot afford all the journals they need, publishers offer to take their whole budget to get access to the complete list of that publisher. As a result, no money is left to buy the publications of other publishing houses, or other content resources. However, those libraries accept that situation as the lesser evil.

Open access gains ground

The global shift towards making research findings available free of charge for readers was confirmed yesterday in a study funded by the European Commission. It suggests that open access is reaching the tipping point:
Brazil, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the US have the highest rates of open access publishing. In Europe, 20 out of 27 countries, including the UK, are likely to have tipped towards a majority of papers published in 2008-2011 being made available for free.

Half of 2011 papers now free to read

Search the Internet for any research article published in 2011, and you have a 50–50 chance of downloading it for free. This claim — made in a report1 produced for the European Commission — suggests that many more research papers are openly available online than was previously thought. The finding, released on 21 August, is heartening news for advocates of open access. But some experts are raising their eyebrows at the high numbers.


Nature News.

If someone hits a paywall in the forest, does it make a sound?: The Open Access Button

This idea was a browser-based tool which tracks how often readers are denied access to academic research, where in the world they were or their profession and why they were looking for that research. The tool would aggregate this information into one place and would create a real time, worldwide, interactive picture of the problem.


PLOS Blogs.

‘Open’ as the default modus operandi for research and higher education

is a policy paper by SURF (a collaborative organisation for ICT in Dutch higher education and research) commissioned by the European Commission about open access to content and infrastructure. This was done within the e-InfraNet project. (...) European opinion leaders and experts examined the context, motivations, developments and results of each of the ‘Opens’, revealing a collection of joint benefits and issues. Their study resulted in the recommendation for a coordinated policy approach, able to benefit all forms of ‘Open’.
Download Summary here.  

OPEN ACCESS TO CODE: EGU journal implements new requirement for authors to provide computer code of their models

The new policies include the requirement that, from now on, authors must provide the actual computer code of their models to the reviewers or editor as part of the review process. Furthermore, authors are required to include a section in the paper itself discussing the availability of their code to the wider community. If the authors choose not to make their code available to the community, then they must describe the reasons for this.

Open access peer-reviewed Journals

Check out these publication modes! Both websites offer open access to peer-reviewed articles you can submit via calls or as contributor.
  • Sensate Journal . A Journal for Experiments in Critical Media Practice. Sensate Journal calls itself a peer-reviewed, open-access, media-based journal for the creation, presentation, and critique of innovative projects in the arts, humanities, and sciences. Read a review on that here.
  • Internet Policy Review.  This Journal is a news and analysis service about internet regulation in Europe. The Internet Policy Review tracks public regulatory changes as well as private policy developments which are expected to have long lasting impacts on European societies. The idea is that the IPR offers resources and research that will add a layer of knowledge to current debates on internet policy. In a word, IPR’s expertise resides in its clear and independent analysis of inter-European digital policy changes. At present, we are looking for authors wanting to commit to a series of articles related to one particular internet policy issue, as well as guest contributors. We are looking for analysis articles which either draw on research or make links with recent research.

Gateways for Open Science

“Science is really ripe for disruption. A lot of the practices are still very much rooted in their analog beginnings.” That is how Kaitlin Thaney, Director of the Mozilla Science Lab—a new open science initiative focused on innovation, best practice, and skills training for research—began her plenary talk at XSEDE13 in San Diego last month.

Fixing the Flaw in OA Mandates That Have Opt-Outs

Stevan Harnard, Professor in the Department of Psychology at Université du Québec à Montréal, holding the Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Sciences and is also Affiliate Professor in Electronics and Computer Science at University of Southampton, UK on the Open Access Mandate by the University of California:
Yes, there's a flaw in the University of California Open Access (OA) mandate ["Open Contradictions," Editorial, The Daily Californian, 12 Aug 2013], and, yes, it has to do with the fact that U of C authors can opt out of compliance with the mandate.
See also Michael Eisen's comment on the OA policies of the University of California.

Free and open access to all scientific publications at University of California

The Academic Senate of the University of California passed an Open Access Policy on July 24, 2013, ensuring that future research articles authored by faculty at all 10 campuses of UC will be made available to the public at no charge. The policy covers more than 8,000 UC faculty and as many as 40,000 publications a year. By granting a license to the University of California prior to any contractual arrangement with publishers, faculty members can now make their research widely and publicly available, re-use it for various purposes, or modify it for future research publications. Faculty on three campuses (UCLA, UCI and UCSF) will begin depositing articles in eScholarship on November 1, 2013. Progress on deposit implementation will be reviewed during the following year. Deposit of articles by faculty on the remaining campuses is expected to begin on November 1, 2014.

The Empire Strikes Back

Publishers may soon compete with libraries. The business case for enticing users away from library-managed portals is simple, compelling, and growing. As funding agencies and universities enact Open Access (OA) mandates and publishers transition their journals from the site-license model to the Gold OA model, libraries will cease to be the spigots through which money streams from universities to publishers. In the Gold-OA world, the publishers' core business is developing relationships with scholars, not librarians. For publishers, it makes perfect sense to cater to scholars both as authors and readers. (...) Publishers, indexing services, journal aggregators, startups, some nonprofit organizations, and library-system vendors all have expertise to produce compelling post-OA services. However, publishers only need to protect their Gold OA income, and any new revenue streams are just icing on the cake. All others need a reasonable expectation of new revenue to develop new services. This sets the stage for a significant consolidation of the scholarly-communication industry into the hands of publishers.
SciTechSociety.

Open Access (Books) vs. Double Dipping: An Ongoing Struggle

The Hybrid Publishing Lab at Leuphana University, Lüneburg, Germany gives a recap on the difficulties to find alternatives in scientific publishing and it's policies.
The dispute amongst scholars and policy makers about which road to take to Open Access (gold or green) revolves to a great extend around the problem (or danger) of double dipping. It is widely acknowledged that publishers ought not to be allowed to charge twice for scientific publications, that is scholars and their public funders on the one hand and publicly funded libraries and readers on the other hand. On first glance this claim seems to be quite obvious as well as its solution appears to be trivial: when published open access a text has to be put online free of charge. Yet, that’s only part of the story.

More Than 100 International Associations Sign Agreement with OMICS Publishing Group to Make Healthcare Information Open Access

Spreading and sharing valuable scientific knowledge generated as a result of years of experiments and research to the humanity at large is something that is laudable and appreciable (read more...)
OMICS Publishing Group publishes more than 300 online journals on Medical, Clinical Life & environmental sciences, Engineering, Pharma and Management.