Tag: open access

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The White House Openly Supports Openness

On this, the longest day of the year, I offer a short quote:

“Open sharing of research results is a proven strategy for driving positive change.”  

Yep, a typical line for this blog.  But the line doesn’t come from us — no, it comes from the White House, from a press release about their event honoring 13 “Champions of Change” for open science.  (Among those celebrated is Paul Ginsparg, founder of arXiv.org, an enormously important open access repository for physics, math, computer science, and several other sciences.)

First there was the White House’s open access directive.  Then there was its open data policy. Now it’s honoring open science pioneers and making unambiguous statements in support of openness.  Nice to have you as an ally, White House!

white house open science

(Photo credit: rmounce, http://www.flickr.com/photos/79472036@N07/8719095952/)

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Emerald Not So Sparkling Green

Emerald 21x30mm spot

If your field is management, economics, healthcare, education, or library science, chances are you’re familiar with the journal publisher Emerald.  For a long time, true to its name, Emerald was a “green” open access publisher — that is, it allowed authors to immediately make their articles open access by self-archiving them in an online repository.  A shining, sparkling example of greenness.

But Emerald has changed its policy.  Now, if self-archiving is “voluntary,” authors may immediately self-archive their articles on their personal websites or ininstitutional repositories (but not, notably, in subject repositories).  But if authors are subject to a mandatory open access policy, they may not self-archive immediately — they must wait 24 months!  Sparkling emerald green no more, Emerald! (Read more here: Open Access: Emerald’s Green starts to fade?)

Is it not possible that someone affected by a mandatory open access policy is also a supporter of open access and thus a voluntary self-archiver?  Since when are individual interest in open access and institutional interest in open access incompatible?

Apparently, since the Research Councils UK released its new open access policy, which favors gold open access (that is, articles made open access by the publisher itself — often contingent on paying a fee) so strongly that it incentivizes publishers to add or extend embargoes on green open access.  (Read more about the flawed RCUK policy.)

Emerald is not the first publisher to try to make a distinction between “voluntary” and “mandated” self-archiving.  Elsevier has tried the “self-archive if you wish but not if you must” trick too: Some Quaint Elsevier Tergiversation on Rights Retention.

Nice try (and by “try” I mean “desperate attempt to forestall the inevitable”), publishers, but nope.  No matter who my employer is and no matter what agencies fund my research, I will always voluntarily make my work open access!

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Open Access (the book) is now open access (the state)

Open Access book coverLast June, MIT Press published the book Open Access, written by open access leader Peter Suber.  Alas, the book itself was not open access — it had a year-long embargo. But now it’s twelve months later, and Open Access is open access!  Here are the various ways to access it:

Wondering if Open Access is the right treatment of open access for you?  From Gary Daught:

. . . Suber writes succinctly and with clarity, applying the logic of a philosopher (which he is), the sharpness of a debater, and the cadence of a musician (speaking to his writing style). He anticipates the many sides and questions of his readers, even honest critiques, and he answers them with directness and without polemic. He clearly aims to persuade, but he also wants to bring his readers along with with him.

Think you’re too busy to read a whole book about open access?  Think again.  Suber intends the book to be “a succinct introduction to the basics, long enough to cover the major topics in reasonable detail and short enough for busy people to read” (Preface). And none of us can afford to be confused on this topic, no matter how busy we are!  Suber continues [bold is mine]:

My honest belief from experience in the trenches is that the largest obstacle to OA is misunderstanding. The largest cause of misunderstanding is lack of familiarity, and the largest cause of unfamiliarity is preoccupation. Everyone is busy. There has been organized opposition from some publishers, but that has been a minor impediment by comparison.

The best remedy to misunderstanding is a clear statement of the basics for busy people. Only some fellow specialists will wonder, with me, whether I’ve been too brief with some essential subtopics. But I knew that a larger book would miss the audience of busy people. Elaboration, documentation, research findings, case studies, and finer-grained recommendations are available in the voluminous literature online (most of it OA), including my own articles (all of them OA).

I know what my next subway-reading book is.  Maybe make it yours too?