The Open Access Index #oaindex | JISC Elevator

“The subject of open access publishing has been part of the landscape for a while now. We’ve seen the rise of institutional repositories, subject repositories and discipline repositories. There are mandates from funders, institutional policies, and just general common sense reasons to publish our outputs through open access channels. Despite our best best efforts, there is still a lot of misunderstanding about open access. How does gold relate to green, can I still publish in traditional high ranked journals, would people trust an author-final-version? There have been more hours spent on these problems in meetings, conferences, and seminars than we could ever count. Yet rates of research available openly are far from the levels we like to see. Let us consider something: the quality of research outputs is often judged based on several different factors. Most of these are based on scores of one kind or another: citation counts, journal impact factors, or h-indexes. But we’re all like that - we like to find ways in which to measure, score, and quantify our work. Scores and metrics allow us to make comparisons, construct plans, and measure our progress. However we currently have no way to put a score on our level of engagement with open access. How well am I doing? What potential do I have? How many of the journals that I publish in allow me to publish open access? How many of these opportunities have I taken? To put it coarsely: What is my Open Access Index? We’re now in a position where we should be able to measure this. With a myriad of sources from large bibliographic databases, current research information systems, repositories and SHERPA Romeo, we have access to the information that we need to calculate such a score. Our proposal is split in two halves - the first exercise would be to gather a room full of experts together to decide how to construct the index - what factors should be taken into account, what are the component parts and how do we bring these together with relevant weights to construct a meaningful score? Following that, we’d look to see how this can be automated using current data sources, and provide some worked examples. The creaton of an Open Access Index would give us a baseline score for engagement with open access, and a common understanding and method of measuring this. This in turn could lead us to ask new questions, such as: Is there a link between somebody’s altmetric score and the oa index? Should we just be putting a score on open access engagement, or the wider open scholarship? How could a score such as this be used to encourage engagement with open access, and help an individual to identify easy steps to improve their oa index? Should we only apply the score to individuals, or to groups, universities, and publishers? But before we get that far, we need to know if there is merit in the idea of of an Open Access Index. And that is where YOU come in. If you would like to discuss this, please use the hashtag #oaindex. If you like the idea or would like to see it investigated further - vote for it now! [A video presentation describing the Open Access Index is also available. Please note that the idea for the Open Access Index was presented on JISC elevator and, according to the webpage, voting has closed. “JISC elevator is a new way to find and fund innovative ways to use technology to improve universities and colleges. Anyone employed in UK higher or further education can submit an idea. If your idea proves popular then JISC will consider it for funding. The elevator is for small, practical projects with up to £10,000 available for successful ideas. So if you have a brainwave, why not pitch it on the elevator?”]