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Follow the golden-green road! A short survey of open access issues ITM Antwerp, July 4, 2008

Follow the golden-green road! A short survey of open access issues ITM Antwerp, July 4, 2008. Moral appeal of OA. Traditional publication paradox [stereotype]: Authors mostly paid by ‘the public’ Reviewers mostly paid by ‘the public’ Results given freely to the publishers

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Follow the golden-green road! A short survey of open access issues ITM Antwerp, July 4, 2008

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  1. Follow the golden-green road! A short survey of open access issues ITM Antwerp, July 4, 2008

  2. Moral appeal of OA • Traditional publication paradox [stereotype]: • Authors mostly paid by ‘the public’ • Reviewers mostly paid by ‘the public’ • Results given freely to the publishers • After repackaging the results are bought back from the publishers by ‘the public’ • The serials crisis is not a myth (see table).But currently masked by open access, big deals, individual document delivery, [USD] – so: is the existing paradigm sustainable?

  3. Practical appeal of OA • Higher visibility – no toll gates • Earlier visibility – no publishing delays, article per article, before the issues are complete • Higher citability (prestige + reward) – selection bias in favour of what is immediately available => Pleasing to readers (libraries), authors, societies => Hybrid formats: direct OA option; early view; faster turnaround of editorial / peer review process; … => Advantages will level out when everyone is OA

  4. Increasing respectability of OA • Proliferation of OA journals from the early 2000s onwards – currently 3500 titles in DOAJ • Soon after indexed by Medline and ISI citation databases (fig.), resulting in Impact Factors: currently 22 titles [starting with] BMC [not including e.g. Malaria Journal], 6 PLoS titles

  5. OA Impact Factors • PLoS: quite high, but not higher than the top general medicine journals:Lancet (28.638) vs PLoS Medicine (12.601);PLoS NTD (?.???) vs. TM&IH (2.466)? • BMC: respectable (range 1.3 => 5.1) but not higher than comparable specialty journalsMalaria Journal (2.473) vs. TM&IH (2.466)

  6. Support from the major funders • USA: NIH aims at mandatory deposit (e.g. PubMed Central) + willingness to pay.But: enfeebled by embargoes + so far voluntary deposit has not been a success) • UK: Wellcome Trust has comparable aims (e.g. UK PubMed Central) + willingness to pay (as 1% of their overall research funding) • UK Government: so far, OA has been countered by the publishers lobby

  7. OA Institutional Repositories (IR) • Comparable pledges on institutional level – Berlin Declaration [but: enforceability??] • It’s ‘their’ research anyway – E.g. TM&IH papers from ITM authors in ITM repository? • Unlike subject repositories (SR - e.g. arXiv) IR are fairly fragmented, strictly affiliation-based, i.e. not a threat to existing journals • In practice even SR don’t seem to have a negative influence on journal subsriptions

  8. OA is not a free lunch • With the transition from print to e-only, a large part of variable volume-based costs may disappear (paper, printer, postage), but most fixed and per paper costs will remain or increase (peer review process, IT investments) – income is still needed • Typical ‘author fees’: 1000 € – 2500 € • But: total publishing costs are estimated at only 1-2% of total research costs

  9. So who pays the bill? • The major funders approve explicitely + are willing to pay the costs themselves – does this also work for the field of tropical medicine? • What about OA-minded universities and institutes? Would partial transfer of library budgets be a solution? [idem] • What to do during the transition phase, when libraries still need increasing acquisitions budgets?

  10. Some caveats • Quality of peer review? Does good editorial practice depend on the business model (if sustainable)? Is this not self-regulatory? • Hidden commercial agenda? • Impact factor calculation and manipulation • Impact of OA journals citing OA journals? • Embargoes as an acceptable compromise? • What about ‘un(der)funded’ research? • Participation from developing countries?

  11. OA and learned societies • Moral appeal: OK • Practical appeal: OK • Impact and prestige: these ultimately depend on the perceived quality of the peer review, which should be self-regulatory and independent from the business model • Condition: guaranteed sustainability • Generate additional income from journal subscriptions? [societies have other aims than publishers; sustainability vs. profit?]

  12. Bibliographic and -metric confusion? • Hybrid journals with e-only contributions.E.g. BMJ short responses vs. Clinical Infectious Diseases full research papers • Printed short version vs. extended online version, with different sets of references (e.g. BMJ) • IR: Publisher PDFs vs. author preprints and postprints, because of publishers refusal

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