“On April 19, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) released their draft plan for updating the agency’s policy for public access and requested public feedback.
SPARC submitted comments praising the no-cost manuscript deposit compliance option and offered additional steps for AHRQ to consider to further strengthen the plan and address rights retention to minimize burden on researchers.
Read SPARC’s Comments: Response to AHRQ RFI on Draft Public Access Plan…”
From 1 January 2024, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)’s new open access policy will apply to monographs, book chapters and edited collections
The open access policy applied since April 2022 for peer-reviewed research articles acknowledging UKRI funding.
The policy aims to ensure that findings from research UKRI funds with public money can be accessed and built on by the research and innovation community and wider society.
New guidance
UKRI has published the following information to support UKRI-funded authors and research organisations to follow the new policy:
guidance for researchers about our long-form open access requirements
updated UKRI open access policy, including new guidance on using long-form policy exemptions
information about UKRI’s dedicated long-form open access fund and other open access implementation updates
updated guidance on accessing long-form open access funding before 2024
updates to frequently asked questions about the policy, including the use of UKRI open access funding for transformative journals
Open access is less established for books and while open access is preferred there may be instances when open access publication is not feasible. Please refer to the guidance about when and how to apply one of the defined exemptions.
[…]
“At its launch in 2018, cOAlition S announced that its members would, for a “transition period,” fund open access fees for journals covered by “transformative” agreements. …As cOAlition S recently communicated, the transition period is ending; beginning in 2025, funders adhering to Plan S will no longer support the agreements. What is more, a growing chorus of stakeholders, including the Ivy Plus librarians in the US and a coalition of UK-based researchers, are calling for an alternative, collective funding model for OA. At the same time, collective funding experiments as well as conditional open models (such as Subscribe to Open)—in which neither authors nor readers pay—are reporting promising results around the globe. This webinar features perspectives on the emerging landscape of collective and conditional open models from publishers and will be followed this year by a second webinar focusing on the perspective of funders. The webinar will be chaired by Raym Crow of SPARC and Chain Bridge Group. Panellists: Vivian Berghahn of Berghahn Books, Evgeniya Lupova-Henry of Quartz OA and Judith Fathallah of Lancaster University. With thanks also to Demmy Verbeke of Leuven University for organising this webinar. …”
Abstract: Purpose
This study aims to analyze Open Access (OA) publishing trends and policy perspectives in India. Different aspects, such as the growth of OA journals digital repositories, the proportion of OA availability to research literature and the status of OA mandates and policies are studied.
Design/methodology/approach
Data for analyzing OA trends were gathered from multiple data sources, including Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), OpenDOAR, SCImago and Web of Science (WoS) databases. DOAJ and OpenDOAR were used for extracting OA journals and digital repository data. SCImago Journal and Country ranking portal and WoS database were used to obtain Indian publication data for assessing the proportion of OA to research literature. ROARMAP was used to study OA mandates and policies adopted by universities, research institutions and research funders in India. OA mandates and policies of major regulatory bodies and funding agencies were also reviewed using secondary sources of information and related websites.
Findings
India ranks number 15 and 17 globally for OA journals and OA repositories, with 317 journals and 98 repositories. Although India’s proportion to OA publications is 23% (7% below the world average of 30%), the annual growth rate of OA publications is around 18%. Although the governing bodies and institutions have made efforts to mandate researchers to adopt OA publishing and self-archiving, its implementation is quite low among Indian researchers, as only three institutions (out of 18 listed in the ROARMAP) are defined the embargo period. Funding agencies in India do not provide financial assistance to authors for the payment of Article Processing Charges despite mandates that research is deposited in OA repositories. India lacks a national OA policy but plans to implement a “one nation one subscription” formula to provide OA to scientific literature to all its citizens.
Research limitations/implications
The study has certain limitations. Because much of India’s research output is published in local journals that are not indexed in WoS, the study recommends conducting further analyses of publications using Scopus and other databases to understand the country’s OA publishing proportion better. A further study based on feedback from different stakeholders through a survey may be conducted for formulating a national OA policy.
Originality/value
The study is the first that used multiple data sources for investigating different facets of OA publishing in India, including OA journals, digital repositories, OA research output and OA mandates and policies for publicly funded research. The findings will be helpful for researchers and policymakers interested in promoting OA adoption among researchers worldwide.
“NASA seeks public input on the “NASA’s Public Access Plan, Increasing Access to the Results of Scientific Research” (NASA Public Access Plan). NASA has a decades-long history of providing public access to scholarly publications and data resulting from the research it supports, including through the 2014 Open Access Plan. In 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a memorandum on “Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research” that establishes new guidance for improving public access to scholarly publications and data resulting from Federally supported research. The NASA Public Access Plan outlines the proposed approach NASA will take to implement the new guidance, consistent with its longstanding commitment to public access.”
“Complying with the UKRI open access policy: member experiences
Representatives from three HEI libraries will share their experiences of implementing the UKRI OA policy at their institution.”
Abstract: Background: Preprints are open and accessible scientific manuscript or report that has not been submitted to a peer reviewed journal. The value and importance of preprints has grown since its contribution during the public health emergency of the COVID-19 pandemic. Funders and publishers are establishing their position on the use of preprints, in grant applications and publishing models. However, the evidence supporting the use and acceptability of preprints varies across funders, publishers, and researchers. The purpose of this scoping review was to explore the current evidence on the use and acceptability of preprints by publishers, funders, and the research community throughout the research lifecycle.
Methods: A scoping review was undertaken with no study or language limits. The search strategy was limited to the last five years (2017-2022) to capture changes influenced by COVID-19 (e.g., accelerated use and role of preprints in research). The review included international literature, including grey literature, and two databases were searched: Scopus and Web of Science (24 August 2022). Results: 379 titles and abstracts and 193 full text articles were assessed for eligibility. Ninety-eight articles met eligibility criteria and were included for full extraction. For barriers and challenges, 26 statements were grouped under four main themes (e.g., volume/growth of publications, quality assurance/trustworthiness, risks associated to credibility, and validation). For benefits and value, 34 statements were grouped under six themes (e.g., openness/transparency, increased visibility/credibility, open review process, open research, democratic process/systems, increased productivity/opportunities). Conclusions: Preprints provide opportunities for rapid dissemination but there is a need for clear policies and guidance from journals, publishers, and funders. Cautionary measures are needed to maintain the quality and value of preprints, paying particular attention to how findings are translated to the public. More research is needed to address some of the uncertainties addressed in this review.
Organised by the Open Access Books Network, the PALOMERA series next 2 online events call all publishers and libraries to share their concerns and challenges with OA book funder policies. Sign up for the event that works best for you:
Tuesday 16 May, 3pm BST / 4pm CEST / 10am EDT: a 90-minute PALOMERA Series engagement session with Publishers. Sign up here https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUsdeuurj4oHtGSlWk-YCxcq9go37C84LQ4#/registration
Wednesday 17 May, 3pm BST / 4pm CEST / 10am EDT: a 90-minute PALOMERA Series engagement session with Librarians. Sign up here https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZctceyhrDgtGNd3yn-IkLsiQp9YO8Q8gkrl#/registration
“For Higher Education Institutions
Publish a Knowledge Equity Statement for your institution by 2025, incorporating tangible commitments aligned with the principles and objectives below.
Commit to institutional action(s) to support a sustained increase of published educational material being open and freely accessible for all to use and reuse for teaching, learning, and research.
Commit to institutional action(s) to support a sustained increase of new research outputs being transparent, open and freely accessible for all, and which meet the expectations of funders.
Use openness as an explicit criteria in reaching hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions. Reward and recognise open practices across both research and research-led education. This should include the importance of interdisciplinary and/or collaborative activities, and the contribution of all individuals to activities.
Define Equity, Diversity and Inclusion targets that will contribute towards open and inclusive Higher Education practices, and report annually on progress against these targets.
To create new mechanisms in and between Higher Education Institutions that allow for further widening participation and increased diversity of staff and student populations.
Review the support infrastructure for open Higher Education, and invest in the human, technical, and digital infrastructure that is needed to make open Higher Education a success.
Promote the use of open interoperability principles for any research or education software/system that you procure or develop, explicitly highlighting the option of making all or parts of content open for public consumption.
Ensure that all research data conforms to the FAIR Data Principles: ‘findable’, accessible, interoperable, and re-useable.
For Funding Agencies
Publish a statement that open dissemination of research findings is a critical component in evaluating the productivity and integrity of research.
Incorporate open research practices into assessment of funding proposals.
Incentivise the adoption of Open Research through policies, frameworks and mandates that require open access for publications, data, and other outputs, with as liberal a licence as possible for maximum reuse.
Actively manage funding schemes to support open infrastructures and open dissemination of research findings, educational resources, and underpinning data.
Explicitly define reward and recognition mechanisms for globally co-produced and co-delivered open educational resources that benefit society….”
“The United Kingdom is experiencing the largest-ever increase in public investment in research and development, with the Government R&D budget set to reach £20 billion a year by 2024/5. The creation of the new Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has been advanced by the Government as heralding an increased focus on research and innovation—seen to be among Britain’s main strengths.
At the same time, there have been increasing concerns raised that the integrity of some scientific research is questionable because of failures to be able to reproduce the claimed findings of some experiments or analyses of data and therefore confirm that the original researcher’s conclusions were justified. Some people have described this as a ‘reproducibility crisis’.
In 2018, our predecessor committee published a report ‘Research Integrity’. Some of the recommendations of that report were implemented—such as the establishment of a national research integrity committee.
This report looks in particular at the issue of the reproducibility of research….
We welcome UKRI’s policy of requiring open access to research that it funds, but we recommend that this should go further in requiring the recipients of research grants to share data and code alongside the publications arising from the funded research….”
“The MIT Press today announced that it has received a $10 million gift from Arcadia—a charitable foundation that works to protect nature, preserve cultural heritage, and promote open access to knowledge—to establish the Arcadia Open Access Fund. The new fund will support the MIT Press’s ground-breaking efforts to publish open access books and journals in fields ranging from science and technology to the social sciences, arts, and humanities. It will also help the MIT Press continue to develop tools, models, and resources that make scholarship more accessible to researchers and other readers around the world. “We are incredibly grateful to Arcadia for this generous gift,” said Amy Brand, Director and Publisher of the MIT Press. “The new endowment makes it possible for the MIT Press to build on and sustain its influential publishing programs. With this enduring support for open books and journals, we can use our power as an academic publisher to expand public understanding of scholarship and science and to democratize participation in research.” Arcadia is providing an outright endowment gift of $5 million, as well as a $5 million “challenge” gift to incentivize other funders by matching their support of MIT’s open publishing activities….”
“The NIHR has been recognised as the world’s most transparent research funding body.
New analysis produced by TranspariMED shows the NIHR is the only research funder in the world to have adopted all 11 of the World Health Organisation’s recommendations for maximising clinical trial transparency and minimising waste.
These include:
making all clinical trial results public within 12 months
having specific policies to prevent waste in research and speed up the development of new treatments
requiring researchers to make key data available on public trial registries and publish their results in scientific journals
monitoring whether researchers are following best practices, and sanctioning those that do not…”
More and more academics and governements consider that the open access model based on Article Processing Charges (APC) is problematic, not only due to the inequalities it generates and reinforces, but also because it has become unsustainable and even opposed to open access values. They consider that scientific publishing based on a model where both authors and readers do not pay, the so-called Diamond, or non-APC model, should be developed and supported. However, beyond the display of such a support on an international scale, the landscape of Diamond journals is rather in the form of loosely connected archipelagos, and not systematically funded. This article explores the practical conditions to implement a direct funding mechanism to such journals, that is reccurent money provided by a funder to support the publication process. Following several recommendations from institutional actors in the open access world, we consider the hypothesis that such a funding would be fostered by research funding organizations (RFOs), which have been essential to the expansion of the APC model, and now show interest in supporting other models. Based on a questionnaire survey sent to more thant 1000 Diamond Open Access journals, this article analyzes their financial needs, as well as their capacity to interact with funders. It is structured around four issues regarding the implementation of a direct funding model: do Diamond journals really make use of money, and to what end? Do they need additional money? Are they able to engage monetary transactions? Are they able to meet RFOs visibility requirements? We show that a majority of OA Diamond journals could make use of a direct funding mechanism with certain adjustments. We conclude on the challenges that such a financial stream would spur.
“On February 22, 2013, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released the memorandum entitled “Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research.” This memorandum requires federal agencies to make the results of federally funded scientific research available to and useful for the public, industry, and the scientific community. In response, AHRQ published a plan for establishing a policy for public access to scientific publications and scientific data resulting from AHRQ funding (https://www.ahrq.gov/funding/policies/publicaccess/index.html) in February 2015, a Policy for Public Access to AHRQ funded Scientific Publications (NOT-HS-16-008) in February 2016,) and in May 2020, a Data Management Plan Policy (NOT-HS-20-011).
On August 25, 2022, the White House OSTP released a memorandum on “Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research” (2022 Memo). The 2022 Memo establishes new guidance for improving public access to scholarly publications and data resulting from federally supported research. Accordingly, AHRQ updated its Public Access Plan that outlines the proposed approach AHRQ will take to implement the new guidance, consistent with its longstanding commitment to public access….”