St Andrews journal becomes member of Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association

The Journal of Terrorism Research has just become a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA). JTR is  published by the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at University of St Andrews and hosted by University of St Andrews Library Journal Hosting Service.

OASPA was established to represent the interests of Open Access (OA) publishers globally in all scholarly disciplines. It does this through 'exchanging information, setting standards, advancing models, advocacy, education, and the promotion of innovation'. The organisation has just announced standards for 'legitimate journals' and the criteria for membership of OASPA. The Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing includes expectations for peer review and governing bodies:

1. Peer review process: All of a journal’s content, apart from any editorial material that is clearly marked as such, shall be subjected to peer review. Peer review is defined as obtaining advice on individual manuscripts from reviewers expert in the field who are not part of the journal’s editorial staff. This process, as well as any policies related to the journal’s peer review procedures, shall be clearly described on the journal’s Web site.
2. Governing Body: Journals shall have editorial boards or other governing bodies whose members are recognized experts in the subject areas included within the journal’s scope. The full names and affiliations of the journal’s editors shall be provided on the journal’s Web site.

See the OASPA blog for further details

See the latest issue of Journal of Terrorism Research

International survey on attitudes to open access

St Andrews researchers are invited to complete a very short survey on attitudes to open access.

Professor Thomas Eger from University of Hamburg, together with doctoral student Marc Scheufen, is conducting a survey on the experience of academic scholars with and their perception of open access publishing.

One of our objectives is to examine the commonalities and differences between the academic disciplines. For this purpose, we have already conducted surveys in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Benelux, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey, India, Brazil, and Egypt.

It would be of special interest to gather additional information on universities and research institutes in the UK and compare the results with those of the other countries. Therefore, we have decided, in co-operation with Prof. Guido Westkamp from the Queen Mary University of London, to extend the survey to British universities. We would kindly ask you to forward this invitation to all professors and other scholars of the faculties/departments of your university.

Your participation will help to provide valuable information regarding the recent discussion on how to organize the dissemination of academic publications in a globalized and digital knowledge society.

The survey should only take around 10 minutes, and respondents can request the final results.

Please find access to the questionnaire at: http://www.equestionnaire.de/?q=10874

Prof Eger is Vice-Dean for Research and International Affairs Director, Institute of Law & Economics, University of Hamburg.

Mission statement on quality-assured OA research publishing system

The Max Planck Society has presented a draft mission statement in support of the continuing growth of open access.

Ten years since the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities was written, the Max Planck Society hosted the Berlin Open Access Conference (#Berlin11), 19-20 Nov 2013. These conferences have taken place annually, and have been dedicated to support adoption of the Berlin Declaration principles. During Berlin 11, the new mission statement was announced "in order to exploit the innovative and transformational potential of OA", and includes this call:

We call on the signatories of the Berlin Declaration and on all other organisations that perform or support scholarly research to:

1. increase the support for and interoperability of OA repositories for scholarly materials, while reducing and where possible eliminating embargoes, and improving the ability to re-use works;
2. support new and innovative OA publishing models that meet the highest possible scholarly standards, and invest into a publication infrastructure optimised for the needs of research and scholarship; and
3. cooperate with one another to ensure a smooth transition to a stable and functioning, truly open scholarly publishing system, including access to scholarly source and cultural heritage data, where the full text of every research work is open immediately upon publication.

It also urges a strategy that should address standards, quality, stability and a coordinated transition, and concludes:

We believe that a stable, competitive, and quality-assured OA research publishing system offers immense benefits not only to scholarship but also to society as a whole. Scholarly publishing is a global activity, and organisations that perform and support research, particularly those using public money, have a responsibility to work together globally to realise these benefits. It is time to return control of scholarly publishing to the scholars.

See the full Mission Statement at the Berlin 11 Open Access Conference of the Max Planck Society

Horizon 2020: open access to be achieved via repositories

The European Commission has launched its Horizon 2020 programme of research funding. Open access remains a core principle, and the model grant agreement describes the expectations for grant recipients.

All peer-reviewed scientific publications relating to results of a project must be made open access, either by publishing in an open access journal (gold OA), or by self-archiving in a repository (green OA). In either case, a 'machine-readable electronic copy of the published version or final peer-reviewed manuscript accepted for publication' should be deposited into a repository for scientific publications. If the researcher chooses 'gold' open access then the deposited final version will be made open access immediately. Where researchers choose 'green' open access, then the manuscript (usually the author's accepted version) should be made open access within 6 months.

For St Andrews authors, the usual mechanism of depositing into PURE will allow the Library to help with making your publication open access. Contact open-access-support@st.andrews.ac.uk for advice.

The Open Access in Horizon 2020 factsheet provides more detail, including information about related research data: https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/sites/horizon2020/files/FactSheet_Open_Access.pdf

The text of the Model Grant Agreement regarding 'Open access to scientific publications' can be found on page 58, section 29.2: http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/mga/gga/h2020-mga-gga-mono_en.pdf

Open access publishing initiative for physics

An international consortium of libraries and funding agencies has announced an innovative new model to achieve open access to peer-reviewed literature in high-energy physics.

Through a long period of consultation and a tendering process led by CERN, the global SCOAP³ (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access in Particle Physics Publishing) has arranged for high-energy physics articles in key journals to be converted to open access, available under a CC-BY licence.

Based on a complex economic model, the SCOAP³ partners will make central payments to cover the costs of peer review and publishing so that there is no article processing charge for authors. Depending on the journal, either all articles will be open access, or a percentage will be OA (those categorised as high-energy physics in ArXiv) with subscription costs reduced for the consortium partners. Over 20 countries are involved in the partnership, with the UK represented by JISC Collections.

The journals included in the initiative include Physics Letters B (Elsevier), New Journal of Physics (IoP) and the European Physical Journal C (Springer)

The SCOAP³ intiative will start in January 2014 and a dedicated repository will be launched to provide full text access to the articles. More details are available at http://scoap3.org/

Creative Commons 4.0 - new guidance reduces uncertainty

Following two years of development, the Creative Commons organisation has released new licences that are more user-friendly and more internationally robust than ever before. Version 4.0 licences have now been launched with changes that "make sharing and reusing CC-licensed materials easier and more dependable than ever before".

Along with the new licences there is updated guidance available that clarifies some uncertainties. The main changes are listed in What's new in 4.0, and the FAQ have been expanded to reference the new licences. Areas such as attribution are explained in detail: as well as confirming that all CC licences require users to acknowledge the creator of licensed material, there is clarification about modifying work:

"You must also indicate if you have modified the work—for example, if you have taken an excerpt, or cropped a photo. (For versions prior to 4.0, this is only required if you have created an adaptation by contributing your own creative material, but it is recommended even when not required.) It is not necessary to note trivial alterations, such as correcting a typo or changing a font size. Finally, you must retain an indication of previous modifications to the work."

The licences themselves have been re-organised with language which is easier to understand across the world, and they now include Sui generis database rights which are recognised in the European Union. The 'human-readable' licence deeds have links to definitions and further guidance, for example what is 'appropriate credit'

Creative Commons 4.0 licences are available now at http://creativecommons.org/choose/

Background to Creative Commons 4.0 development: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Version_4

Open Access Button - mapping paywalls

A new tool has been launched this week to raise awareness of open access and provide evidence for 'paywalls'. Now if you are asked for payment in exchange for access to a scholarly article you want to read, you can record your frustration, and potentially find a version of the article you were seeking.

The Open Access Button was created by students David Carroll and Joseph McArthur, and is a very simple browser-based tool. It takes seconds to download and install, and is very intuitive to use. In a few easy steps:

• Sign up for the button at https://www.openaccessbutton.org/ 
• Drag the button into your bookmarks
• When you hit a paywall, click the button
• Details of the article load automatically - just add your location and a note of why you need access
• Use the tools to search Google Scholar or CORE (an aggregation of repositories) for the article 

In this example, the search took me straight to the article in Research@StAndrews:FullText

How to use the Open Access Button

Guardian article: Push button for open access 

Mapping the paywalls: https://www.openaccessbutton.org/