Education of a scientist video http://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/8410/

OA 2012 Developments during 2012

OA is growing COAR website (Confederation of Open Access Repositories) now comprises 90 institutions Berlin Declaration on Open Access Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, a major international statement on open access to knowledge, now has over 300 signatories (scientific organisations) Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) now lists 8,000 peer reviewed titles

OA is growing ROARMAP: Registry of Open Access Repositories Mandatory Archiving Policies – now includes 32 Australian repositories Self archiving of post prints into OA repositories is now accepted by a lot more publishers Rise of vanity presses – low article acceptance threshold with non-existent peer review process – add little value to scholarship, pay little attention to digital preservation, and operate using fly-by-night, unsustainable business models.

International activities HathiTrust vs Authors Guild (US) Research Works Act (US) Elsevier boycott Federal Research Public Access Act HathiTrust is a partnership of major research institutions and libraries whose aim is to ensure that the cultural record if preserved and accessible long into the future. The HathiTrust Digital Library is a collaboration involving Google and several major university libraries where Google creates digital versions of all the holdings of the participating libraries and provides those libraries with a digital copy of all of their materials, at no charge to the libraries. In return Google receives the right to include those collections in its searchable database. The Authors Guild claimed this process involved unauthorized creation of multiple copies of the books in the library collections. HathiTrust argued that the copying was permissable under the fair use doctrine and they won the case. The Libraries do not have the right to distribute that content without further permission but their clients can search the content for free. The HathiTrust Digital Library now has over 10 million works available and this decision could clear the path for wider use of the this resource. The Research Works Act was designed prohibit US science agencies from requiring public access to their funded research. The traditional supporters of open access, Librarians and students, were joined by the research community who lobbied major publishers such as Assoc Advancement Science and Nature Publishing Group who went on record opposing the RWA and support for open access. The RWA did not get passed. Another outcome was the Elsevier Boycott. The Elsevier boycott was extraordinary at the time. A US researcher, Tim Gowers, called on his colleagues to stop publishing in or providing editorial review for journals published by Elsevier, RWA’s staunchest supporter. Within a short period of time over 4,000 individual researchers have added their signatures, with hundreds continuing to sign. Then came another piece of legislation in the US: The Federal Research Public Access Act was introduced to the US Senate for the third time since 2006. It requires “free online public access” to publicly-funded research in the US. It even strengthens the current NIH mandate by reducing the embargo period from 12 months to 6 months. The bill has yet to be passed into Law.

International activities Elsevier’s response – “author’s choice” OA options but involves author/institution paying a processing fee May be done at the article level in some cases 30 journals offer free public access but involves an embargo period, sometimes of 12 months or more. Manuscript can be posted into an Institutional Repository but needs evidence of an institution wide mandate

International activities UK: Research Councils UK announced new Open Access Policy in July World Bank: introduced an Open Access Policy in April this year Wellcome Trust: has toughened up compliance to their mandate already in existence European Union: Open Access policy introduced in July – Gold OA for immediate access, then Green no later than six months RCUK: peer reviewed research papers must be published in journals that adhere to the policy on Open Access – allows a “pay for publication” option and embargos, and use of Creative Commons World Bank: mandates that the Bank’s research outputs and knowledge products be deposited in their Open Knowledge Repository (OKR) accessible freely on the internet. Wellcome Trust found only 55% were compliant so looking at ways of making institutions responsible. Intends to follow

Australia NHMRC revised policy Any publications arising from an NHMRC supported research project must be deposited into an OA institutional repository within a twelve month period from date of publication. First articles due 1 July 2013 Publication metadata should be submitted as soon as possible after the paper is accepted for publication ARC: currently under consideration