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edgehill.ac.uk/ls Zoe Clarke and Yvonne Smith The Digital Researcher: Trends in Open Access Publishing

edgehill.ac.uk/ls Context Open Access literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free from most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright holder. Peter Suber The key question for universities is how to deliver the benefits of open access, but minimise the risks? The other key players in the debate are funders, researchers and publishers.

edgehill.ac.uk/ls Definitions Open access: online availability of published academic research with no access fees and free of most licensing restrictions. Green open access: publishing in a subscription journal, but making the final version available in a repository. Some articles may be embargoed for a time. Repository: An institutional or disciplinary online store for published research articles, which is searchable and freely accessible. Gold open access: publishing in an open access journal usually with the author paying an article publishing charge. Article publishing charge (APC): a charge to the author (or their funder/institution) for publishing their work in an open access journal.

edgehill.ac.uk/ls The Finch Report 2012 Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: how to expand access to research publications for full report and executive summary. UK Govt. tasked the Finch working group with recommending how to develop a model, which would be both effective and sustainable over time, for expanding access to the published findings of research. Finch report found the principle that the results of publicly funded research should be freely accessible in the public domain is a compelling one. The Finch report recommended the Gold model of open access publishing. UK Govt adopted all the Finch recommendations as its Open Access policy, except removal of VAT on ejournals.

edgehill.ac.uk/ls BIS Open Access Enquiry The Business, Innovation and Skills Committee then conducted an enquiry into Govt Open Access policy looking at: The Govts acceptance of the recommendations of the Finch Group Report, including its preference for the gold over the green open access model; Rights of use and re-use in relation to open access research publications, including the implications of Creative Commons CC-BY licences; The costs of article processing charges (APCs) and the implications for research funding and for the taxpayer; and The level of gold open access uptake in the rest of the world versus the UK, and the ability of UK higher education institutions to remain competitive. select/business-innovation-and-skills/inquiries/parliament-2010/open-access/ select/business-innovation-and-skills/inquiries/parliament-2010/open-access/ Enquiry found that whilst gold OA is the ultimate goal, the mechanism of transition should be green OA.

edgehill.ac.uk/ls Repositories Repositories showcase institutional research by making it searchable and freely accessible. Edge Hill has two repositories: Edge Hill Research Archive (EHRA) ( eShare –teaching materials- ( The Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) lists repositories worldwide. ( Cross-search repository engines include: Institutional Repository Search ( OpenDOAR (

edgehill.ac.uk/ls Identifying items in repositories Many items listed in Google Scholar come from institutional repositories

edgehill.ac.uk/ls Types of open access journals Some scholarly open access journals do not charge Generally these tend to be the smaller society or specialised publications. To find a suitable free OA journal to publish in your subject area you could consult the Directory of Open Access Journals. ( Some traditional subscription journals make their content open access after an embargo period that is short enough to comply with many research funders mandates, with no publication fee. An example of this kind of journal would be the British Medical Journal. Some offer low or discounted fees. The RoMEO database to find out what specific publishers' copyright policies are (

edgehill.ac.uk/ls Open Access Books Open Access publishing is changing the way books are published and how to access them e.g. Open Access Publishers – academics from Cambridge University Publish books available to purchase or download for free

edgehill.ac.uk/ls Open Access Publishers Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) ( Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC®) ( Public Library of Science (PLOS) ( For a guide to Open Access produced by these three publishers take a look at the guide: HowOpenIsIt? (

edgehill.ac.uk/ls HEFCE OA policy post 2014 REF In 2014 HEFCE will announce their policy decisions on implementing an OA requirement for the next REF. The funding bodies propose the following criteria for open access: Outputs should be accessible through a UK HEI repository, immediately upon either acceptance or publication, but also respects agreed embargo periods. Outputs should be made available as the final peer-reviewed text, though not necessarily identical to the publishers edited and formatted version. Outputs should be presented in a form allowing for search and re-use of content. Re-use is subject to proper attribution under appropriate licensing. Outputs fulfilling the following definition must meet above criteria: The output is a journal article or conference proceeding. The output is published after a two-year notice period (from 2016 onwards). The output lists a UK HEI in the address field. The consultation document can be accessed at