Crafting a Policy for Open Access to Scholarly Publications From the Penn State University Faculty Senate

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2015)

Open access has become an important issue for the dissemination of knowledge.  I have written about the way in which the efforts of the last decade to financially exploit the dissemination of knowledge has produced an increasingly class based system of knowledge dissemination in which the rich or well funded have access to knowledge denied to poorer individuals and institutions.  (E.g., Disseminating Knowledge Broadly--New Offerings From the Digital Commons Network (Jan. 7, 2014), Open Access at Penn State: Scholarsphere (Dec., 14, 2012);   Between Scholar and University--Sharing Knowledge, Protecting Revenue and Control--Is the UCSF Approach Worth Considering (May 28, 2012); Opening Access: Course Proposals Archive at Penn State (June 1, 2012); Digital Humanities From the CIC (Oct. 6, 2012).

Mirroring the age in which we live, and the technology that has changed the way in which knowledge is produced and distributed, we can no longer assume an identity between prestige markets for academics and the populations to which works of scholarship are addressed. Moreover, prestige markets themselves have fragmented--the markets for prestige and advancement within a university may not be the same as markets for prestige  within globally dispersed fields.  And universities have been taking to measure the impacts of such prestige in distinct ways, parsing out rewards accordingly.  Beyond that, and though sometimes it tends to be overlooked in the quest for institutional and personal self interest, their is or ought to be a public duty to the production of scholarship that might call for the broadest possible distribution of works to spread knowledge to those without access to the university or to those business enterprises that make money from publication. 

More insidious are current efforts (I know some in professional schools) the object of which is to seek to assert institutional rights to faculty scholarship and then to hijack scholarly production of faculty, in the name of open access.  The effect, of course, is to transfer effective control of scholarly work from faculty to the institution, leaving, of course, the rights of publishers untouched.  Between the effort of publishers (for perfectly reasonable economic reasons) to capture for themselves most of the value of scholarly production, and of the university (for perfectly plausible reasons of controlling the production of its "servants" at least to the extent that the university might satisfy its conscience that all such work are at least hypothetically plausibly connected to employment) to capture for itself the prestige and distribution value of scholarship that remains. (See here).

The Committee on Libraries, Information Systems, and Technology of the Penn State University Faculty Senate, has sought to develop a reasonable middle way, one that maintains the strong bond between scholars and the institutions in which they are resident, publishers rights (and the logic of publication prestige systems), and the control of scholars over their work. The Committee has proposed a "Resolution on Open Access to Scholarly Publications" for consideration by the University Faculty Senate at its April 28, 2015 meeting (April 28, 2015 Senate Agenda (PDF)).  The Resolution seeks to balance the needs for open access and knowledge dissemination, with the needs of publishers, the protection of faculty rights to their work which represents a substantial amount of their working time and efforts. It builds on earlier work of the Committee and ought to be seriously considered as a benign step toward more vigorous access to knowledge for those who the university, and its academics, ought to serve.

RESOLUTION ON OPEN ACCESS TO SCHOLARLY PUBLICATIONS

SENATE COMMITTEE ON LIBRARIES, INFORMATION SYSTEMS,
AND TECHNOLOGY

Rationale: Why Supporting Open Access Improves Access to Scholarship

This resolution calls upon Penn State faculty authors to consider and utilize available options for sharing our scholarly work with a wider audience of readers (such as educators, students, citizens, and independent researchers) who may not have access to expensive journal subscriptions or a research library. This proposed resolution is not, in any way, intended to limit our venues of publication or require us to take any specific action. Taking advantage of open access opportunities when possible leads to ease of discovery and helps our scholarly contributions achieve greater recognition and impact through increased readership and citations.

WHEREAS, the Faculty of the Pennsylvania State University are committed to producing and disseminating the results of our research and scholarship as broadly as possible in the public interest,

WHEREAS, the research mission of the University depends on the ability of faculty, staff, and students to readily access scholarly work

WHEREAS, publication of research in open access journals and repositories is now an increasingly effective option for disseminating and preserving scholarly communication

WHEREAS, open access to research increases the visibility, accessibility, and impact of a faculty member’s scholarly work and advances the interests of the scholarly community

BE IT RESOLVED THAT

The Faculty Senate strongly urges all University Faculty to:

·       Deposit their scholarly work in Scholarsphere (scholarsphere.psu.edu) the University’s repository, and/or any other appropriate repository (e.g., arXiv, PubMed Central, SSRN)

·       Support the principle of open access to research results while upholding quality and prestige in scholarly publishing

·       Review publishing contracts carefully to understand which rights are retained by the author and which rights are transferred to the publisher, and recognize that opportunities may exist to negotiate for more favorable terms

·      Consider publishing in and serving as peer reviewers and editors for reputable open access journals which make their contents freely available online

History

The topic of open access has been previously brought before the Faculty Senate:

March 2007 - The Penn State Faculty Senate passed a resolution in support of the CIC Provosts’ Statement on authors’ rights. That statement called for authors to review publishing agreements carefully before committing, to negotiate as needed to retain the redistribution right to their work, and to support the principle of the value of open access publishing models.  It includes a sample author addendum to publisher agreements. (http://www.cic.net/docs/default-source/library/authorsrights.pdf)

April 2013 - The Senate Committee on Libraries, Information Systems, and Technology provided a detailed Informational Report on Open Access, including definitions, an environmental scan, a review of publishing funding models, and trends in federal agencies’ requiring authors receiving funding to make the results of their research readily available.

(http://www.psu.edu/dept/ufs/agenda/2012-2013/apr2013/appi.pdf)

It is important to understand that:

·       While some open access journals require author publication fees, many do not. This resolution is not asking or expecting anyone to pay to publish in an open access journal since publication venue is an author’s decision to make.

·       Authors can often achieve open access by publishing in traditional (subscription-based or non-open access) journals, and then making a version of that work available in a repository like ScholarSphere.

·       All open access journals are free to consult and do not charge any fees to readers.  They rely on other sources of financial support. Again, while some charge author fees, many do not.

·       This resolution urges faculty authors to carefully examine the agreements we sign or negotiate with publishers to understand how we may or may not use and share our work. 

LIST Committee Members 2014-15:

   Galen A. Grimes, Chair                         John T. Harwood

   Jonathan Abel                                      Becky Kang

   Fred J. Aebli                                         Amir Khalilollahi

   Rose M. Baker                                     Anna L. Mazzucato

   Rebecca Bascom                                   Kevin M. Morooney

   Daniel C. Beaver                                  Mahdi Nasereddin

   Gordon W. Blood                                 Terry O’Heron

   Ann C. Clements                                  Ira J. Ropson

   Peter J. Dendle                                     Jennifer Sparrow

   Barbara I. Dewey                                  Stormy Stark

   Joseph L. Enama                                  Eric A. Walker

  

Conclusion of Resolution Text

Accompanying Materials to Clarify Open Access Resolution

Common Questions & Concerns

Academic Freedom & Open Access

Under typical Open Access resolutions or policies adopted by faculty, including the one proposed here, faculty may continue to publish wherever they choose. No one else can make this decision about where to publish - only the author. Open access is about taking advantage of opportunities to reach the widest possible audience. It is not about limiting options. 

Author Fees / Article Processing Charges (APC)

Some Gold Open Access journals require a payment from the author to cover publishing costs. In return, the publisher makes the article available for free on their website. The proposed resolution takes no position on whether authors should or should not pay author fees or author publication charges requested by publishers. This decision remains with the author as has always been the case.

“Quality” of Open Access Journals

A common misconception is that “open access” equates to less quality or less rigor when it comes to peer review and academic publishing standards.  This is not the case. There are many well established and highly respected open access journals. 

It is true that some open access journals are of higher or lower quality than other journals. The same can be said of more traditional non-open access (subscription-based) journals. Authors and readers must exercise their best judgment when evaluating journal quality. This has always been the case.

How does open access affect my copyright on my work?

Distributing your work under an open access agreement generally does not require you to transfer or give away your full copyright or ownership. Authors will often grant an open access publisher a limited license to distribute the work, while retaining ownership and the ability to use the work in other ways. Refer to the individual publishers and their publishing policies for more specific details.

Will a journal publisher refuse to publish my article because of the Open Access resolution?
OR
Will faculty be required to pursue Open Access options? 

This proposed resolution is not, in any way, intended to limit your venue of publication or require any specific action. It is a recommendation to consider all available opportunities for sharing your work with a wider audience of readers (such as educators, students, citizens, and independent researchers) who may not have access to expensive journal subscriptions or a research library.  Open access also has the potential to bring your scholarly contributions further recognition and impact via increased access and additional citations. 

What if the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy applies to my article?

This mandatory policy is designed to increase access to publicly funded research information (http://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm ).  It applies to any peer-reviewed manuscript accepted for publication in a journal on or after April 7, 2008 whose content arises from NIH direct funding. It requires deposit of a copy if the final peer reviewed manuscript in the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central database within 12 months of the date of publication. This is a policy of the funding agency and complements this Resolution.   Penn State Hershey Library has additional information available at http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/hershey/resources/copyright/nihcomp.html

Further Background on Open Access

In traditional publishing, readers and libraries pay or subscribe to journals in order to view digitally published articles. As expressed by Peter Suber in his research monograph Open Access (2012), this publishing method is defined as “digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions."

There are a variety of ways to achieve open access.

·      Gold Open Access - This is achieved through Open Access journals that make content freely available online. Some may charge an author fee or article processing charge, but many do not.

Examples:

·      College & Research Libraries - a gold open access journal that does not charge author fees http://crl.acrl.org  

·      Online Journal of Issues in Nursing - http://www.nursingworld.org

·      Cultural Anthropology http://www.culanth.org/articles/open_access   (charges a small submission fee for nonmembers, $21)  

·      Higher Education in Review  http://www.higheredinreview.org

·      Green Open Access - This is accomplished by publishing in a closed access (subscription-based) journal, but then making a copy of the Author’s Final Version available in a repository like ScholarSphere. Many publisher agreements (including those from Elsevier, Wiley & Taylor & Francis) may allow authors to post the Author’s Final Version in an open access repository. Green Open Access involves no author fees or article processing charges. See an example of Green Open Access here: https://scholarsphere.psu.edu/files/r781wj485

·      Sharing a Version in a Repository or Personal Website

Author’s Final Version - The final version of an article submitted by the author to the publisher after all revisions have been completed. This is not the Publisher’s Final Version, which is often a PDF file, typeset, edited, and formatted in a certain style. Many publisher agreements allow authors to post the author’s final version (but not the Publisher’s Final Version) in an open access repository.  Sometimes referred to as a Postprint.

Publisher’s Final Version - Final or official version provided by a publisher. Often a PDF file, typeset, edited, and formatted in a certain style. Explicit permission is often needed to post this version in an open access repository.

Preprint - a draft or incomplete version of scholarly work, generally a research paper, not peer reviewed or submitted for publication. It can be self-archived or submitted to a repository and is sometimes presented in multiple edited versions while working toward a final product.

Postprint – draft of a research paper after peer review has happened.  Sometimes referred to as the Author’s Final Version.

Self-archiving – making a copy of one’s scholarly research freely available on the web, often in a repository.  Generally used in relation to journal articles but could be data, conference presentations, etc.

Repository - A digital collection or archive where documents or other data are collected, preserved, and made publicly available, often without charge. Examples include arXiv, ScholarSphere, GitHub, SSRN, and others. See http://www.opendoar.org/ .  An institutional repository generally collects, preserves and distributes the scholarly output of an institution’s members.

ScholarSphere – Penn State’s institutional repository. The content in ScholarSphere represents the research, scholarship, and intellectual output of the Penn State community that researchers have chosen to share. Through ScholarSphere, the work of Penn State researchers gains broader visibility and impact, and is archived for the future.  ScholarSphere captures scholarly content in any digital format including data, curricular materials, and creative works. Anyone with a PSU Access ID is encouraged to upload scholarly material. See http://scholarsphere.psu.edu

Sherpa/RoMEO

RoMEO is a searchable database of publishers' policies on self-archiving of journal articles and selected conference series.  Each entry attempts to summarize a publisher's or a journal’s standard policy, including what version of an article may be self-archived, and any conditions that are attached to that deposit. Almost 1,800 publishers are included to date, and about 75% allow some form of self-archiving.  RoMEO's own database covers over 22,000 journals and also searches the Zetoc, DOAJ, and Entrez databases for additional journals.  Individual publisher websites will have current and definitive information. The Sherpa service itself is located at the University of Nottingham.  http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/  

Directory of Open Access Publications (DOAJ) – one source of searchable information about journals that follow open access publishing principles.   http://doaj.org/

The University Libraries has resources available to
 support authors following this resolution and to supply further information.