University Health and Medical Librarians Group Spring Forum 2014.docx - Google Docs

abernard102@gmail.com 2014-04-18

Summary:

"Overall the conference provided an interesting look at the current state of play for open access, the first speakers gave an excellent example how, through a University Press, the humanities could be brought closer to the OA movement and could begin to benefit from it through a change in the publication process of the scholarly long form monograph, providing both more flexibility to the researcher and more current access to more research for the public. This could be an important area for us to monitor, currently buy in from HESS subjects is mainly lip service, full OA (without long 12-24 month embargo) and discovery remains a long way off. We may not be in a position to launch our own press but could begin to advocate the use of other university press’s which can provide more flexibility concerning OA. Stephen Curry’s talk, while interesting did more to flag up a problem of the OA movement than it did to providing a way forward, Stephen is obviously engaged and committed to OA and frustrated that many of his colleagues do not share his passion. Although it is undeniable that some academics will be fearful of change and slow to grasp new ideas it is my belief that we will gain more support by engagement, taking concerns seriously, fully answering questions and sharing successful examples. The RCUK talk was something of a turning point in the day, certainly for myself and it seemed for many others. There is much bad feeling about the policies recommended by Finch and adopted by RCUK amongst those committed to Green OA, this involves many in HE particularly those involved in repositories. There seems to have been a feeling that the benefits of Green OA, particularly in terms of costs for institutions have been largely ignored by policy setters in deference to publishers preference for Gold as a continuation of profitable publishing. It was interesting therefore to hear the RCUK speaker and others talk about their preference for Gold being informed by the need to break away from the established publishing system which Green unfortunately does support. This did much to explain the assertions of Finch that the longer term uses for Green would be to support scholarly publishing through dissemination of pre-prints and grey literature and the writings of Alma Swan which argue that Green is often the only option for institutions to take OA forward. The presentations by Paul Ayris (UCL) and Mark Thornley (RCUK) were illuminating in the way in which they set a timescale and international context on to the OA movement. While I believe in the advancement of OA in terms of public engagement the changes which OA could bring to the worldwide research community I had largely unconsidered. While many of the points covered; a more granular publication process, more access to data, a change in metrics and a widening of access, I had considered as merits for their own sake, the differences wide adoption of these policies could make to the worldwide research community I had not considered. The speaker from PLOS did much to illustrate the possibilities and the successes which have already occurred. My experiences with PLOS outside of a work context lead me to believe there is something of a feeling of ownership of this journal amongst non-academics and new researchers, it works the way the Google generation think it should and is open enough to allow reuse and support for new forms of academia, such as MOOCs. Possibly through its standardised and open policies and its commitment to openness PLOS appears to circumnavigate the ‘us and them’ feeling associated with most interactions with academic publishers. Whether this can be sustained through its next stage of development remains to be seen.The presentation from Elsevier was illuminating but very conservative in comparison to the other speakers, the approach of many of the big publishers to APCs seems to have been an attempt to apply the politics of the big deal, while this may provide some assistance in navigation of a complex market many HE institutions and OA commentators have been cautious. The pitfalls of the big deal are well known and obvious in the statistics of the speaker from Elsevier, Alicia repeatedly mentioned the increase in publications worldwide and the continuing need of institutions to subscribe however in practice many institutions end up with huge subscriptions through a need to access certain high impact, key journals and would in fact benefit from a more granular approach. Considering the transparency, reliability and innovation of the PLOS model it would seem that publishers are still keen to sell institutions a bundle of content, much of which they do not need. It is difficult however to predict publishers motives and actions, mirrored almost universally by the speakers assertions that publishers need to ‘win trust’ amongst the research community ..."

Link:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b_SD_iuOJ_qVbPWshQ4VqJyW8shRiFpeJFEKK0EiavI/edit

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.comment oa.events oa.presentations oa.rsm oa.publishers oa.business_models oa.elsevier oa.fees oa.prices oa.hybrid oa.rcuk oa.uk oa.funders oa.mandates oa.green oa.debates oa.gold oa.repositories oa.policies oa.journals

Date tagged:

04/18/2014, 22:59

Date published:

04/18/2014, 18:58