UKRI monograph open access policy coming soon: here’s what you need to know – Jisc

“From 1 January 2024, monographs, book chapters or edited collections acknowledging funding from UKRI or any of its councils must be made open access (OA) within 12 months of publication. This is the first time that long-form research outputs have been included in UKRI’s open access policy. Not only does the new policy align with the approach of other funders such as the Wellcome Trust, it also implements the government’s firm commitment for open publication of publicly-funded research.

However, it is important to recognise that the OA landscape for long-form research outputs is less mature than for short-form outputs such as journal articles, and this will be a significant change for funded authors. Those affected by the changes may have queries or concerns, but UKRI’s OA policy has been written to allow a smooth transition and reduce disruption. For example, they have just announced a bedding-in period of 9 months from policy launch to allow institutions time to adjust and smooth out processes.

New UKRI policy requirements

The core requirements are:

The final Version of Record or Author’s Accepted Manuscript must be free to view and download via an online publication platform, publisher’s website, or institutional or subject repository within a maximum of 12 months of publication
The OA version of the publication must have a Creative Commons licence, with an Open Government Licence (OGL) also permitted.
Images, illustrations, tables and other supporting content should be included in the OA version where possible (third-party materials DO NOT require a CC licence)….”

Harmonising Zero Embargo initiatives: Challenges in Europe and Beyond – YouTube

“This KR21-LIBER webinar held on 14 November 2023 took a deep dive into the prospect of a zero embargo model by:

? exploring initiatives and barriers to harmonise secondary publishing rights (SPR) legislation; ? examining how SPR legislation can go from a national to an international level so that publicly funded research output will be shared openly and without any embargo period; and, ? providing insights on how SPR can enable the immediate access to research findings, the course of action needed to get there, and identify which stakeholders must act….”

Federal Register :: Public Inspection: Request for Information: Public Access Plan 2.0: Ensuring Open, Immediate, and Equitable Access to National Science Foundation Funded Research

“SUMMARY: The National Science Foundation (NSF) is seeking public input from the science and engineering research and education community on implementing NSF Public Access Plan 2.0: Ensuring Open, Immediate, and Equitable Access to National Science Foundation Funded Research. This plan, described in SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION, represents an update to NSF current public access requirements in response to recent White House Office of Science and Technology Policy guidance. A primary consideration during the development of NSF’s plan has been potential equity impacts of public access requirements. NSF’s goal is to improve equity throughout the research life cycle, making data and opportunities available to all researchers, including those from marginalized communities and historically under-resourced institutions of higher education in the U.S. NSF is committed to considering the needs of the diverse US research community, including identifying possible unintended consequences that the plan and its implementation could produce. 

This is the preprint version of the NSF RFI. The final version will appear later today (November 16, 2023) at this URL:

https://www.federalregister.gov/public-inspection/2023-25267/request-for-information-public-access-plan-20-ensuring-open-immediate-and-equitable-access-to

Comment publier en Open Access sans payer de frais supplémentaires ? – Open science : évolutions, enjeux et pratiques

From Google’s English:  “In the biomedical field, gold journals often ask authors to pay publication fees to publish in Open Access ( Article Processing Charges or APC). And the more prestigious the journal, the higher the costs. But then, how can you avoid paying APCs?

Thanks to the strategy of non-assignment of rights

By affixing a Creative Commons CC-BY license to your manuscript, you remain in control of its distribution. This strategy makes it possible to overcome the embargo period imposed by the publisher which can last up to 6 months in the disciplines of Science – Technology – Medicine (STM). Thus, whatever journal your article is published in, you can, without delay and without charge , make the accepted author manuscript available in open access in an open archive such as HAL ( green route ).

How to do it ? Find all the details for implementing this strategy in the practical guide published by the Committee for Open Science ….”

Webinar “Harmonising Zero Embargo initiatives: challenges in Europe and beyond”, Nov 14, 2023 | LIBER Europe

LIBER, in the Knowledge Rights 21 Project (KR21) framework, will host an event on 14 November on efforts to harmonise Zero Embargo initiatives across Europe and beyond. In this webinar, a panel of experts will present the challenges in harmonising Secondary Publishing Rights legislation across Europe and the symbiosis with other instruments, such as the Rights Retention Strategy and the initiative in the US to implement a zero embargo campaign.  

About the event

The overall goal of the webinar is to explore initiatives and barriers to harmonise Secondary Publishing Rights (SPR) legislation. We will explore how legislation can go from a national to an international level so that publicly funded research output will be shared openly and without any embargo period. This webinar gives insight into how Secondary Publishing Rights can enable the immediate access to research findings, the course of needed action to get there, and identify which stakeholders must act.

Each speaker will make a short presentation about their perceived challenges before engaging in an in-depth panel discussion about the harmonisation of legislation for immediate access to scientific knowledge. This will be followed by a 40 minute panel discussion with the opportunity for the audience to engage, question, and share their experiences and perspectives.  

The session is closely related to the KR21 Research on Secondary Publishing Rights and acts as a follow-up event to the project’s webinar on May 4th – available to watch again here. 

Register here to attend.

[…]

 

Access and impact barriers to academic publications: a global study of thesis and dissertation embargo policies | Emerald Insight

Abstract:  Purpose

Many Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) allow students or their advisors to restrict access to theses/dissertations (TDs) by applying embargoes. This study aims to identify why Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) allow embargoes.

Design/methodology/approach

One hundred HEIs were randomly selected, representing seven geographic regions. The authors imported policies/guidelines for embargoing TDs into MAXQDA software and coded the qualitative data.

Findings

Among the 100 studied HEIs, 43 HEIs (43%) have policies/guidelines on the web for embargoing TDs, most of which are from North America. For the majority of HEIs, embargoes are a voluntary option for students/advisors. Content analysis of the 32 embargo policies showed that embargo reasons (18 key reasons) can be categorized into six broad themes (commercialization, publication, ethical issues, funding contracts/agreements, security and safety, and miscellaneous).

Research limitations/implications

In this study, only those policies are reviewed that are available, discoverable and accessible on HEIs’ websites.

Practical implications

Highlighting the detrimental effect of not managing stipulations towards embargoes clearly, the findings could be useful for national/institutional policymakers and administrators of research departments, academic libraries, institutional repositories and graduate offices.

Originality/value

This is the first study to investigate rationales for TDs embargo practices. It creates awareness of how embargoes are managed and reflected in policy. Ultimately, it recommends further interrogation on how embargoes influence the principle of openness to scholarship.

Immediate open access to research data: a federal mandate and much debate – The Publication Plan for everyone interested in medical writing, the development of medical publications, and publication planning

“A year ago, the US White House announced plans to make all federally funded research immediately available for free by the end of 2025. So, what progress has been made, and what will this model mean for the status quo in medical publishing?

The mandate from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) instructed all federal agencies to implement plans to “deliver transparent, open, secure, and free communication of federally funded research and activities”. Under the new directive, publications must be made instantly available to the public, removing the current optional 12-month grace period. In line with a similar mandate from the WHO, the directive also applies to research data….

In an economic assessment report, the OSTP predicted that the policy would lead to changes in publishers’ business models. The move to immediate open access will inevitably make journal subscription models less desirable, and publishers’ incomes will likely become more reliant on the article processing fees levied on open access publications. As reported by Susan d’Agostino of Inside Higher Ed, this raises the question of who will bear these costs. The OSTP allows researchers to “include reasonable publication costs” in their budgets, but some researchers point out that budget squeezes may follow, with open access fees impacting on funds available for other aspects of research….”

 

The American Chemical Society Offers a New Twist on the Article Processing Charge: An Interview with Sarah Tegen – The Scholarly Kitchen

“Will the author have the option of withdrawing at this point, if s/he doesn’t have funds to cover the ADC? Or does the author commit to the ADC payment before the manuscript is sent out for review?

We expect a very small number of authors to elect the ADC — in the range of about 200 per year out of 200,000 annual manuscript submissions.  If an author cannot pay the ADC, they can continue on their publishing journey, but they will need to wait to post their accepted manuscript for 12 months.

Is the ADC the same amount as the APC paid by funded authors? If not, how is the difference calculated? 

The ADC is a flat fee of $2,500 for our hybrid journals, and it covers the costs associated with the many publishing services provided from submission to final editorial decision. This includes organizing, maintaining, and investing in the high-quality scholarly peer review process and multiple other services provided by an expansive global network of editors and reviewers. These costs are significant, comprising more than 50% of the overall cost of publishing the final version of record. …

To ask what is such an obvious question that it might be stupid: how does an unfunded author (who therefore presumably can’t afford an APC) benefit from being charged an ADC instead? 

Assisting authors to get published is our North Star, and we’re introducing this ADC option to help authors navigate shifting funder mandates. Funders, institutions, and publishers agree there is a real cost to scholarly publishing, and choosing an OA option is entirely voluntary. The ADC ensures the long-term integrity and quality of content published in ACS journals. We also provide cost-free pathways to publish for all authors.  

Through the read and publish agreements we have with thousands of institutions worldwide, we have shielded authors from the costs of meeting funder requirements for gold OA. These enable authors to post the final version of record to repositories immediately after publication. ACS Publications already allows those authors who cannot publish via the gold OA route to post the accepted manuscript to a repository 12 months after publication at no cost. Authors may also choose to publish through subscription access journals at no cost to them.

For authors not covered by a read and publish agreement or another pathway, our zero-embargo green OA pathway will provide an additional option to immediately share the accepted manuscript while offsetting the costs incurred to ensure the quality, value, and integrity of the research during the publishing process.”

Unlike an article publishing charge (APC), the ADC does not cover expenses related to final production, digital distribution, discovery, and hosting of the version of record or maintaining post-publication updates. For those authors who later decide to publish fully OA, the amount of the ADC will be deducted from the cost of the gold APC. Authors will not pay more than the APC required for gold OA. ADC waivers or discounts will be automatically applied to papers from corresponding authors from all countries that currently receive special country pricing for APCs….”

Publisher Wants $2,500 To Allow Academics To Post Their Own Manuscript To Their Own Repository

As a Walled Culture explained back in 2021, open access (OA) to published academic research comes in two main varieties. “Gold” open access papers are freely available to the public because the researchers’ institutions pay “article-processing charges” to a publisher. “Green” OA papers are available because the authors self-archive their work on a personal Web site or institutional repository that is publicly accessible.

The self-archived copies are generally the accepted manuscripts, rather than the final published version, largely because academics foolishly assign copyright to the publishers. This gives the latter the power to refuse to allow members of the public to read published research they have paid for with their taxes, unless they pay again with a subscription to the journal, or on a per article basis.

You might think that is unfair and inconvenient, but easy to circumvent, because the public will be able to download copies of the peer-reviewed manuscripts that the researchers self-archive as green OA. But many publishers have a problem with the idea that people can access for free the papers in any form, and demand that public access to the green OA versions should be embargoed, typically for 12 months. There is no reason for academics to agree to this other than habit and a certain deference on their part. It’s also partly the fault of the funding agencies. The open access expert and campaigner, Peter Suber, explained in 2005 why they are to blame:

Researchers sign funding contracts with the research councils long before they sign copyright transfer agreements with publishers. Funders have a right to dictate terms, such as mandated open access, precisely because they are upstream from publishers. If one condition of the funding contract is that the grantee will deposit the peer-reviewed version of any resulting publication in an open-access repository [immediately], then publishers have no right to intervene.

Accepting embargoes on green OA at all was perhaps the biggest blunder made by the open access movement and their funders. Even today, nearly 20 years after Suber pointed out the folly of letting publishers tell academics what they can do with their own manuscripts, many publishers still demand – and get – embargoes. Against this background, ACS Publications, the publishing wing of the American Chemical Society, has come up with what it calls “Zero-Embargo Green Open Access” (pointed out by Richard Poynder):

A number of funders and institutions require authors to retain the right to post their accepted manuscripts immediately upon acceptance for publication in a journal, sometimes referred to as zero-embargo green open access (OA). More than 90% of ACS authors under these mandates have a simple and funded pathway to publish gold OA in ACS journals.

For those not covered by an institutional read and publish agreement or through other types of funding, ACS offers the option to post their accepted manuscripts with a CC BY license in open access repositories immediately upon acceptance. This option expands this small subset of authors’ choices beyond the existing option to wait 12 months to post at no cost.

Great news? Well, no, because a hefty new fee must be paid:

The article development charge (ADC) is a flat fee of $2,500 USD and is payable once the manuscript is sent for peer review. The ADC covers the cost of ACS’ pre-acceptance publishing services, from initial submission through to the final editorial decision.

That is, if academics publish a paper with the ACS, their institution must pay $2,500 for the privilege of being allowed to post immediately the accepted manuscript version on their own institutional server – something that should have been a matter of course, but was weakly given up in the early days of open access, as Suber pointed out. There is a feeble attempt to justify the cost, on the basis that the $2,500 is for “pre-acceptance publishing service”. But this apparently refers to things like peer review, which is generally conducted by fellow academics for free, and decisions by journal editors, who are often unpaid too. In general, the costs involved in “pre-acceptance publishing” are negligible.

“Zero-Embargo Green Open Access” sounds so promising. But it turns out to be yet another example of the copyright industry’s limitless sense of entitlement. Publishing is constantly finding new ways to extract money from hard-pressed academic institutions – money that could be used for more research or simply paying underfunded researchers better.

This is a personal issue for me. In 2013, I spoke at a conference celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Berlin declaration on open access. More formally, the “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities” is one of three seminal formulations of the open access idea: the other two are the Bethesda Statement (2003) and the original Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002) (all discussed in Walled Culture the book, free digital versions available). I entitled my speech “Half a Revolution”, and the slides I used can be freely downloaded from SlideShare, along with many more of my presentations.

My Berlin talk concluded with a call to action under the slogan “Zero Embargo Now” (ZEN). Back then, I looked forward to a world where all academic papers would routinely be available under green OA immediately, without any embargo. I’m still waiting.

Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon. This post originally appeared on Walled Culture.

ACS Publications provides a new option to support zero-embargo green open access – American Chemical Society

“Beginning Oct. 1, 2023, the Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) will provide authors with a new option to satisfy funder requirements for zero-embargo green open access. Through this pathway, authors will be able to post accepted manuscripts with a CC BY license in open access repositories immediately upon acceptance.

To ensure a sustainable model of delivering services from submission to final editorial decision, ACS Publications is introducing an article development charge (ADC) as part of this new zero-embargo green open access option. The ADC covers the cost of ACS’ publishing services through the final editorial decision….”

Zero-Embargo Green Open Access – ACS Open Science

“A number of funders and institutions require authors to retain the right to post their accepted manuscripts immediately upon acceptance for publication in a journal, sometimes referred to as zero-embargo green open access (OA). More than 90% of ACS authors under these mandates have a simple and funded pathway to publish gold OA in ACS journals.

For those not covered by an institutional read and publish agreement or through other types of funding, ACS offers the option to post their accepted manuscripts with a CC BY license in open access repositories immediately upon acceptance. This option expands this small subset of authors’ choices beyond the existing option to wait 12 months to post at no cost.

 

An article development charge (ADC) will be applied if the zero-embargo green OA route is requested and the manuscript is recommended to be sent out for peer review. The ADC covers the cost of ACS’ publishing services through the final editorial decision….”

SPARC response to NIST RFI

“SPARC strongly supports the OSTP Memorandum’s emphasis on ensuring equity in contributing to, accessing, and benefitting from the results of federally funded research, and we appreciate NIST’s specific attention on how to ensure equity in publication opportunities for its funded authors. To ensure equity in publication opportunities, NIST should provide authors with compliance options that do not present financial barriers. To this end, NIST’s plan and associated policies and guidance should clearly state that authors can fully comply with its public access policy at no cost by depositing their author’s accepted manuscripts into PubMed Central (PMC) or any other agency-approved repository.

Further, NIST should clarify that any fee that authors may be asked to pay is a publication fee, and not a fee required by NIST for compliance. It is critical that authors do not conflate compliance with article processing charges (APCs), which create significant barriers for less-well-resourced authors and institutions to make their research available….

NIST should highlight the diversity of publication models available to authors who may face financial barriers in paying for APCs—including Subscribe to Open (S2O) and Diamond Open Access. Additionally, institutional repositories run by libraries and other research institutions generally do not charge authors to deposit articles or manuscripts, and can play an important role in easing compliance burdens on authors, improving discoverability of research outputs, and providing long-term preservation support. Therefore, we strongly recommend that NIST allow for the deposit of publications into other repositories beyond PMC, and suggest that NIST utilize the guidance set out in the U.S. Repository Network’s Desirable Characteristics of Digital Publications Repositories….” 

NIST RFI: Plan for Providing Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research – SPARC

“On June 30, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) issued a request for input on the agency’s draft public access plan.

SPARC submitted comments outlining the need for NIST to clarify the language in their plan to ensure research funded by NIST is made immediately available, with no embargo, to the public as required by the Nelson Memo.

Read SPARC’s Comments: Response to NIST RFI on Draft Plan for Providing Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research.”

DOE Public Access Plan | Department of Energy

The Department of Energy Public Access Plan (June 2023) describes how DOE-funded research and digital data will become more open and available to the public and how DOE will use persistent identifiers to help ensure scientific and research integrity. Building on the previous DOE Public Access Plan (July 2014), the new Plan charts a path to:

Provide free, immediate access to peer-reviewed, scholarly publications;
Provide immediate access to scientific data displayed in or underlying publications and increased access to other data;
Use persistent identifiers (PIDs) for research outputs, researchers, organizations, and awards.

Policy and implementation guidance related to the publications and data components of the Plan will be issued by December 31, 2024, followed by policy and guidance for PID requirements….”