Open Access What does it mean? Open access (OA) means immediate, free and unrestricted online access to digital scholarly material[1], primarily peer-reviewed research articles in scholarly journals. OA was made possible by the advent of the Internet. (Wikipedia)online[1]peer-reviewed researchInternet Why should you care? could change the publishing landscape ESO will change its workshop proceedings to open access maintain quality of journals (reviewing system) financing of journals may change (“author-pay”) guarantee future retrieval of and access to published literature (archive)

Open Access Political argument: public pays three times for refereed publications: authors (salaries) referees (‘salaries’) libraries (subscriptions) Changes to peer reviewing? quality of journals depends on good refereeing (“astro-ph vs. A&A”) Maintaining the publishing quality editing of articles (copy-editing, language editing) uniform appearance (formatting) ensure preservation the publications (archive)

EU has heard about this Extensive document, which was discussed in European fora (ERC, EURAB, EIROForum, etc.) Request that publicly financed research is openly available (enforce vs. encourage)

Recommendations of EC report A1. GUARANTEE PUBLIC ACCESS TO PUBLICLY-FUNDED RESEARCH RESULTS SHORTLY AFTER PUBLICATION A2. AIM AT A ‘LEVEL-PLAYING FIELD’ IN TERMS OF BUSINESS MODELS IN PUBLISHING A3. ‘EXTENDED QUALITY’ RANKINGS OF SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS A4. GUARANTEE PERENNIAL ACCESS TO SCHOLARLY JOURNAL DIGITAL ARCHIVES A5. FOSTER INTEROPERABLE TOOLS TO IMPROVE KNOWLEDGE VISIBILITY, ACCESSIBILITY AND DISSEMINATION B1. PROMOTE PRO-COMPETITIVE PRICING STRATEGIES B2. SCRUTINIZE FUTURE SIGNIFICANT MERGERS B3. PROMOTE THE DEVELOPMENT OF ELECTRONIC PUBLICATIONS

Some definitions Self-archiving make papers freely accessible to everybody at the same time as the publication in the journal e.g. through astro-ph, own web pages Free Access some journals make their contents freely available after some period A&A, MNRAS after 3 years ApJ, ApJL, AJ, PASP after two years

Open Access in Astronomy Most of the astronomical literature is through ‘learned societies,’ i.e. not-for-profit organisations A&AESO/A&A Board MNRASRoyal Astronomical Society ApJ,AJAmerican Astronomical Society PASPAstronomical Society of the Pacific astro-ph widely accepted

Open Access in Astronomy Open Access journals A sampler Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics (published by the Indian Academy of Sciences) Information Bulletin of Variable Stars (IBVS; Konkoly Observatory) Living Reviews in Relativity (Max Planck Institute for Gravitationsphysik, Potsdam)

Open Access and Astronomy Major journals are ‘publicly controlled’ all journals are electronically available ADS is a brilliant search engine astro-ph major open archive Individual home pages all major journals allow the authors to present a copy of their paper on their personal home page formatting has to be different! (style files) Remaining problem: archiving

Open Access and ESO ESO Messenger Plan to move the ESO Workshop Series to Open Access Springer asks for 3000€ per article for Open Access Investigate whether we can host astro-ph Create our own open access repository for papers based on ESO data?