Open Access in Canada: “It’s all about choice”

© Copyright 2014 – Canadian Science Publishing.

“[O]pen access is a worldwide phenomenon. However, the urgency of implementation has greater impetus in some nations because of strong OA mandates from large, centralised funders.” Martin Paul Eve, Open Access and the Humanities, p.5. CC BY-SA 4.0

The OA mandates from large funders that Martin Paul Eve mentions in the quote above no doubt refers, at least in part, to RCUK and Wellcome trust open access mandates that have helped to drive OA in the UK. The pace of change gained even greater urgency after HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England) released its open access policy for the next Research Excellence Framework. In many respects the UK can be seen to be leading the way in open access, however there are many international initiatives happening as well. So, over the next couple of weeks we will be sharing some international developments in open access. First up is Canada where there have been recent developments akin to those in the UK with large centralised funders mandating OA for papers resulting from funded research.

In Canada there are three main state sponsored funding bodies:

“The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) (“the Agencies”) are federal granting agencies that promote and support research, research training and innovation within Canada. As publicly funded organizations, the Agencies have a fundamental interest in promoting the availability of findings that result from the research they fund, including research publications and data, to the widest possible audience, and at the earliest possible opportunity. Societal advancement is made possible through widespread and barrier-free access to cutting-edge research and knowledge, enabling researchers, scholars, clinicians, policymakers, private sector and not-for-profit organizations and the public to use and build on this knowledge.” Government of Canada, Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications Science.gc.ca*

All grants awarded after May 2015 (and all grants from 1st January 2008 for CIHR funded authors) are required to comply with the harmonised open access policy of the three funders. Grant holders will be required to make peer-reviewed journal articles freely available within 12 months of publication. Authors can choose “green” open access and deposit their accepted manuscript in an online repository, or authors can choose to publish in a journal that offers immediate open access via the “gold” route.

There are similarities between the Canadian funding agencies' OA policy and the RCUK open access policy, but there are divergences as well. One such difference is where RCUK stipulate an embargo of between 6 and 24 months depending on which of the 7 research councils has funded the research, the Canadian OA policy stipulates that only a 12 month embargo is allowed. The two policies differ in their approach to APC payments as well; unlike RCUK who have elected to supply UK institutions with funds to pay for immediate “gold” open access, in the Canadian model the cost of OA publishing can come directly from the grant as an eligible expense.

The Canadian funding agencies' open access policy is predicated on the firm belief that spreading the reach and impact of academic research is beneficial to society, both at home and abroad. Aligning the open access policy of the Agencies with international funding agencies such as RCUK was a principal concern.

“Momentum for open access has been growing as numerous funding agencies and institutions worldwide implement open access policies. The Agencies strongly support open access to research results which promotes the principle of knowledge sharing and mobilization – an essential objective of academia. As research and scholarship become increasingly multi-disciplinary and collaborative, both domestically and internationally, the Agencies are working to facilitate research partnerships by harmonizing domestic policies and aligning with the global movement to open access.” Government of Canada, Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications Science.gc.ca*

The UK is not going it alone, and to paraphrase the Canadian funding agencies, open access is a global movement. Over the next few weeks we will highlight other countries around the world that are actively making commitments to open access.


*Quotations are reproduced from an official work that was published by the Government of Canada. The reproduction has not been produced in affiliation with or with the endorsement of the Government of Canada.

Report from BIS inquiry on open access

The UK Government's Business, Innovation and Skills Committee published their report today following an inquiry into open access.

Parliament announced the report, emphasising the role of repositories:
"The Government’s commitment to increasing access to published research findings, and its desire to achieve full open access, are welcome, says the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee in a Report published today.  However, whilst Gold open access is a desirable ultimate goal, focusing on it during the transition to a fully open access world is a mistake, says the Report.

The Report calls on the Government and RCUK to reconsider their preference for Gold open access during the five year transition period, and give due regard to the evidence of the vital role that Green open access and repositories have to play as the UK moves towards full open access."

SPARC Europe welcomed the report with this response, stating that "we expect the research community now broadly to support the recommendations contained in this new report."

Among other things the report recommends that RCUK realigns its policy to match that of HEFCE’s post-2014 REF proposals, which mandates immediate deposit in an institutional repository.

Evidence for BIS open access inquiry

The UK Government's Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) committee has published the written evidence for its inquiry into open access. The inquiry was announced at the end of Jan 2013.

98 pieces of evidence have been submitted by societies, publishers, researchers, institutions and other contributors such as Research Libraries UK and SPARC Europe. These deal with topics including use of Creative Commons licences, cost of APCs and the role of repositories.

The written evidence is available at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmbis/writev/openaccess/contents.htm

This follows a  similar inquiry heard by The House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, and ahead of a request from RCUK for feedback on its revised open access policy. Despite various consultations, there are still some points that require clarification before the new policy comes into effect on 1 April 2013.

Landmark US directive on open access

On Friday 22 Feb 2013 the White House issued a directive which requires federal agencies with annual research and development budgets of $100 million or more to provide free online access to the results of that research, within a year of publication. It has been described as a watershed moment by Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC and follows closely on the introduction of a new open access bill to the US Congress: Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR).

These two important developments have been praised by open access advocates such as SPARC, Creative Commons and the Association of Research Libraries, and are compared here by Peter Suber. While the directive and FASTR differ on proposed embargo lengths, they both recommend deposit in a repository as the route to open access, rather than the 'Gold' route (publication in OA journals) favoured by the UK government.

The announcement and policy are available from the Obama Office of Science and Technology Policy.

The directive comes after years of campaigning for open access, and a We the People petition 'Require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research' which received over 65000 signatures and this official response.

Massive shift to open access for UK

July 16 was a big day for open access in the UK. The latest SPARC Open Access Newsletter (SOAN) by Peter Suber describes the 'tipping point' for the open access movement.



SOAN #165 (Sep 2, 2012) gives a detailed analysis of 3 major announcements on 16 July 2012 from RCUK, HEFCE and the UK Minister for Universities and Science, including the potential consequences for journals and authors. The newsletter also covers the subsequent release of documents from the European Commission on OA policy. Taken together, these announcements appear to make the transition to open access for scholarly publishing innevitable - at least across Europe.

Discussions are now under way across institutions to decide how to manage the transition, including the costs involved and mechanisms for adapting to new business models from publishers. The UK government has recently announced additional funding for some universities, to 'kick-start' this process.

RCUK welcomes additional investment in Open Access

UK Research Councils strengthen open access policy

RCUK has announced a new policy on open access to research outputs, significantly strengthening the existing requirements for grant holders to ensure their peer-reviewed articles are freely available to all.

The new policy will apply to peer-reviewed research articles and conference proceedings submitted for publication from 1 April 2013. Researchers will still be able to choose whether to publish in an open access journal (which may require payment of an Article Processing Charge (APC)), or to deposit an accepted manuscript in an institutional or subject repository. Where an APC is paid, the resulting article must allow unrestricted reuse including downloading and text mining under a Creative Commons licence. If papers are made open access through the repository route, there will be a maximum delay (embargo) allowed of 6 months (12 months for AHRC and ESRC).

As well as publishing outputs in journals which comply with the policy, researchers will be expected to include details of the funding that supported the research, and a statement on how the underlying research materials – such as data, samples or models – can be accessed.

Institutions will now need to put in place mechanisms for managing APCs, which will be funded by block grants from RCUK.

The RCUK policy took account of the recently published Finch Report (report of the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings), however it has a notably stronger view on embargoes compared to the UK Government's response to the Finch recommendations (p5).

Library Open Access Support
St Andrews researchers can contact the Library with queries about open access and funder requirements - contact Jackie Proven or Janet Aucock, email open-access-support or see details of current open access policies on our Library web pages.


Links
RCUK Policy on Access to Research Outputs and guidance

UK Government response to the Finch report

Related articles:
Times Higher Education article 
Guardian article
Nature news blog
HEFCE statement on implenting open access in the REF
Response from SPARC Europe

Open Access is changing fast so there are bound to be many more articles appearing in the coming days...

Finch Report released

The report of the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings (Finch report) has been released.

The report is very clear on its expectation for open access to become the norm in scholarly communication:

The principle that the results of research that has been publicly funded should be freely accessible in the public domain is a compelling one, and fundamentally unanswerable.

There is much made of the need to sustain publisher revenue, and therefore many of the recommendations relate to the 'gold' route to open access, looking at business models, licensing and funding for Article Processing Charges (APCs). Funders and universities will inevitably need to look at mechanisms for supporting and managing APCs for their researchers.

Repositories are discussed as both a 'threat' (p36) to commercial publishers (while acknowledging no evidence for a disruption to publisher income, p86) and an option (through the 'green' route to open access) with modest operating costs. Amongst the conclusions there is a comment that 'journals can work effectively with repositories' (p91).

It will be interesting to see how the report impacts on policies such as the proposed RCUK revised mandate, due later this summer.

Further useful comments:

BBC - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18497083

Peter Suber - https://plus.google.com/109377556796183035206/posts/DsBAeSCofDX

Guardian - http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jun/19/open-access-academic-publishing-finch-report

Stephen Curry - http://occamstypewriter.org/scurry/2012/06/18/the-finch-report-on-open-access/

Cameron Neylon - http://cameronneylon.net/blog/first-thoughts-on-the-finch-report-good-steps-but-missed-opportunities/

International petition in support of open access

A White House 'We the People' petition has been posted to gather international support for open access to scholarly articles arising from publicly-funded research. If the petition receives 25,000 signatures in 30 days, the US Administration must issue an official response.

The petition to the Obama administration states:

"We believe in the power of the Internet to foster innovation, research, and education. Requiring the published results of taxpayer-funded research to be posted on the Internet in human and machine readable form would provide access to patients and caregivers, students and their teachers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and other taxpayers who paid for the research. Expanding access would speed the research process and increase the return on our investment in scientific research.

The highly successful Public Access Policy of the National Institutes of Health proves that this can be done without disrupting the research process, and we urge President Obama to act now to implement open access policies for all federal agencies that fund scientific research."

Calls for action have appeared on Twitter with the tag #OAMonday, and on the morning of the petition's launch (Monday 21 April 2012) over 500 signatures had already been added.

See the petition at https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/%21/petition/require-free-access-over-internet-scientific-journal-articles-arising-taxpayer-funded-research/wDX82FLQ
(requires a White House account to sign)

UK Government minister's support for open access

The Government Minister for universities and science, David Willets, made a significant speech yesterday in support of a transition to open access. Speaking to the Publishers Association, he made strong statements of intent to ensure sustainable models are found to make publicly funded research available to the public.

There is a useful analysis of the speech in a blog by scientist Stephen Curry.

This follows a month where open access has made front page news in the Guardian and has been the subject of numerous news stories by the BBC, The Economist, Times Higher Education and more. The UK PubMed Central blog provides a round-up of some of these stories.

The Government's commissioned report looking into options for enabling open access is due in the next few weeks, and will no doubt spur further debate.