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Category: open access

On “The Forbidden Forecast: Thinking About Open Access and Library Subscriptions,” by Rick Anderson

On “The Forbidden Forecast: Thinking About Open Access and Library Subscriptions,” by Rick Anderson

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In “The Forbidden Forecast: Thinking About Open Access and Library Subscriptions,” Rick Anderson considers and advocates in favour for the potentially disruptive role of Green OA on subscriptions budgets. He argues that without cancelling subscriptions alongside moving to Green OA, library budgets will not recover. Anderson brings attention to the fact that more OA articles is not what is needed; rather, a transition from toll access to open access is the action that would have the largest impact. Although Anderson…

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On “Access, Ethics and Piracy,” by Stuart Lawson

On “Access, Ethics and Piracy,” by Stuart Lawson

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In “Access, Ethics and Piracy,” Stuart Lawson briefly explores the phenomenon of “academic piracy,” or the sharing of copyrighted, toll access research on sites like SciHub or aaaaarg. He relies on the historical framework that Adrian Johns lays in his book Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates to reinforce the idea that intellectual property is not a natural or necessary state, and only came about in response to the rampant copying of books in 18th century England….

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On “From the Field: Elsevier as an Open Access Publisher,” by Heather Morrison

On “From the Field: Elsevier as an Open Access Publisher,” by Heather Morrison

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Heather Morrison explores Elsevier’s current open access practices, and the feasibility of transitioning Elsevier to a full open access publisher. She concludes that although Elsevier has boosted its quantity of full and hybrid open access journals substantially in recent years (511 full OA and 2,149 hybrid OA journals), it is unlikely that the publisher will become a fully open access venture as they would miss out on substantial revenue that could not feasibly be recovered through article processing charges (APCs)…

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On “The Transition to Open Access: The State of the Market, Offsetting Deals, and a Demonstrated Model for Fair Open Access with the Open Library of Humanities,” by Martin Paul Eve, Saskia C.J. de Vries, and Johan Rooryck

On “The Transition to Open Access: The State of the Market, Offsetting Deals, and a Demonstrated Model for Fair Open Access with the Open Library of Humanities,” by Martin Paul Eve, Saskia C.J. de Vries, and Johan Rooryck

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Martin Paul Eve, Saskia C.J. de Vries, and Johan Rooryck explore gold open access practices, especially in the Netherlands. They point out that, worldwide, commercial publishers are still guaranteeing their journal revenue in open access scenarios, either by subscriptions to hybrid journals, article processing charges (APCs), or some combination thereof. The authors then offer a case study alternative to such practices: LingOA, a group of linguistics journals that have agreed to fair open access practices. Eve et al. argue that…

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On “Claims About Benefits of Open Access to Society (Beyond Academia),” by ElHassan ElSabry

On “Claims About Benefits of Open Access to Society (Beyond Academia),” by ElHassan ElSabry

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ElHassan ElSabry studies the language used in open access declarations, policies, and editorials in order to ascertain which main reasons are given in open access advocacy. To do so, he studies a corpus of 164 of these sorts of documents. ElSabry concludes that journal editors are more prone to highlighting the benefits to authors (e.g. citation and professional impact), where governments and funding bodies tend to highlight broader and more abstract benefits to society. Work cited ElSabry, ElHassan. 2017. “Claims…

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On “Making Open Access Work: the “State-of-the-Art” in Providing Open Access to Scholarly Literature,” by Stephen Pinfield

On “Making Open Access Work: the “State-of-the-Art” in Providing Open Access to Scholarly Literature,” by Stephen Pinfield

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Stephen Pinfield offers an up to date review of the state of open access at the time of writing (2015). Using corpus analysis and text visualization, he locates the most frequently discussed topics in the literature on open access, taking a wide angle lens approach to include editorials and reviews alongside articles and monographs. Drawing on this literature review and analysis, Pinfield reinforces the centrality of a few key issues, including Green vs. Gold OA; the increasing prominence of OA…

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On “Institutional Repositories and Academic Social Networks: Competition or Complement?” by Julia A. Lovett et al.

On “Institutional Repositories and Academic Social Networks: Competition or Complement?” by Julia A. Lovett et al.

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Julia A. Lovett, Andrée J. Rathemacher, Diana Boukari, and Corey Lang set out to compare whether faculty members at their institution, the University of Rhode Island, deposit their work more with ResearchGate or with the institution’s own repository. To do so, the authors perform a population study and survey of over 500 faculty members. Lovett et al. found that scholars who are prone to depositing with one system will likely deposit with another. As such, Lovett et al. argue, “librarians…

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On “Final Report, Canadian Scholarly Publishing Working Group”

On “Final Report, Canadian Scholarly Publishing Working Group”

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The Final Report of the Canadian Scholarly Publishing Working Group outlines the current challenges to the Canadian academic publishing system, as well as suggests principles to guide a successful, sustainable system moving forward. These principles include accountability (to the academy), supporting openness and high-quality publishing practices, well-informed authors, dynamic Canadian publishing opportunities, building on strength, and flexibility and adaptability. The report applauds initiatives like the collaboration between Érudit and the Canadian Research Knowledge Network to bring more open access journals…

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On “Creating Digital Knowledge: Library as Open Access Digital Publisher,” by Russell Bailey

On “Creating Digital Knowledge: Library as Open Access Digital Publisher,” by Russell Bailey

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As more and more scholarship becomes digital, the role of libraries and librarians is changing. Russell Bailey comments on the possibilities for university libraries in the digital age. In particular, he argues that there are increasing opportunities for libraries to facilitate or even produce open access digital scholarship. Bailey walks his readers through three examples of digital scholarship projects led by Providence College: a multimedia monograph and two online journals. He concludes that open access digital publishing in higher education…

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On “Creating an Intellectual Commons through Open Access,” by Peter Suber

On “Creating an Intellectual Commons through Open Access,” by Peter Suber

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Peter Suber is a well-known open access advocate as well as the Director of the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication in the Harvard Library. In “Creating an Intellectual Commons through Open Access” Suber takes a measured approach at detailing the OA landscape, and of likening it to a commons. Suber details the difference between royalty-free and royalty-producing content, and suggests some options for convincing those who make royalties off of their academic work to consider switching to an open access…

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