HowOpenIsIt? Guide update released

Jackie previously blogged about this handy guide for everyone interested in Open Access when it was launched in 2012. It is a collaboration between Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), Public Library of Science (PLOS) and the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) that attempts to shift authors' decision focus from "Open Access" to relative degree of openness and to influence the conversation. After the original release a practical use pilot mapped its Open Access Spectrum to 100 journals' policies. Version 2.0 was then released in International Open Access Week 2014 that has a number of updates, but still retains the core goals - standardising terminology, presenting a continuum of openness, contrasting publications and policies, raising awareness of OA and featuring an easy-to-use grid to determine openness. To achieve this 6 categories are used - Reader Rights, Reuse Rights, Copyrights, Author Posting Rights, Automatic Posting and Machine Readability.

Within our team we think it will have its part to play continuing to introduce a more nuanced concept of OA rather than a closed/open dichotomy. This should help postgraduate students, early career researchers and established academics who are new to OA to optimise their choice of reputable publication venues in line with their research and career aims. The guide is published in English, Chinese, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and French. Why not download a copy and say what you think by leaving a comment below?

Image from HowOpenIsIt? © 2014 SPARC and PLOS, licensed under CC BY

New PLOS account makes Open Access easier and faster

One of the common problems we hear about in the Open Access team is the confusing payment systems employed by publishers. To tackle some of the complexity and time-consumption associated with payments we have entered into agreements with several publishers that offer prepay or membership schemes. The prepay schemes have the benefit of hastening the payment process meaning that articles are made open more quickly with reduced administrative overheads. Memberships provide additional benefits such as discounted Article Processing Charges (APCs) or off-setting against subscription costs.

Last week we entered into an agreement with Public Library of Science (PLOS), one of the largest Open Access publishers, to establish a different sort of service, but one that still has an eye on greater efficiency. The service engenders a very simple payment process: firstly the author selects the University of St Andrews from a drop down list on the PLOS website, the Library will be notified and will then process the payment as necessary, in the meantime the article will be published. Simple!

The Library approval step in the process is a very welcome addition as currently much of our time is spent trying to reverse engineer APC requests. This process allows us to document the request as it happens and also to make sure costs are met by the correct grant or funding stream.

More information on the PLOS membership account can be found here. For a full list of the participating institutions see here.