1. Collaborating to overcome the obstacles to OA
Open Education and Open Access Panel
CC Summit April 14th 2018, Toronto
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Tom Cochrane, Leslie Chan, Kathleen Shearer, Nic Suzor, Timothy Vollmer

2. Creative Commons founding date 2001
A shared chronology
Creative Commons founding date 2001
in Australia from 2004
Budapest OA declaration 2002
OA starts in Australia with QUT in 2003/4
Early confusion about relationship between the two
Some continuing debates

3. The big picture, research and scholarship
Revolutionary change in:
discovery techniques
communication and sharing techniques
evidence in observations
potential reach and impact

4. At its core, research as a human activity
Generation and verification of new knowledge
Certification of its quality
Its dissemination
Subsequent recognition

5. But….
Control of steps 3 and 4 long ago ceded to a powerful oligopoly of control
AND…
Processes in the academy for recognising excellence tied to metrics controlled by the same interests

6. The linchpin of this control is..
Control and lockdown through copyright assignment
Leading to a closed system….

7. Problems of this closed system
integrity and fraud
inefficiency (slowness)
unnecessary limitations on recognition and impact
cost

8. Dimensions of the problem
global expenditure estimates – collective outlays by research institutions
the economics of moral hazard
varying estimates of the margin between cost and price of academic and research publishing
current (disappointing) tide level for OA

9. Conversely… Increasing traditional scholarly metrics (citation)
Optimising dissemination speed
Simplifying (“de-magnifying”) dissemination costs
Improving integrity and honesty (reproducibility)
Broadening dissemination beyond the academy
Involving new ‘lay’ communities (citizen science)
Enhancing fresh discovery on existing material (re-use)

10. The Obstacle
1. surrendered control of research outputs leading to extraordinary profitable business
2. that business has made its control of metrics an exclusive essential in the assessment of research quality (the JIF)
3. at institutional level there is insufficient leadership to coordinate a rational response to this distortion

11. Ongoing confusion
Lack of coordination enhanced by the competitive state of the research system together with
Systematic and systemic confusion “on the ground” about copyright, its assignment, and licensing alternatives

12. Leslie Chan Kathleen Shearer Nic Suzor Timothy Vollmer
Panel Discussion
Leslie Chan Kathleen Shearer Nic Suzor Timothy Vollmer

13. Summary
The research system as a whole is in trouble. It is increasingly driven by competitive but unauthentic metrics which perpetuate a status quo of institutional rankings, which are under continual methodological challenge. What’s worse, is that this process also supports the highly profitable rent seeking of those who provide the basis of these unauthentic metrics. The ultimate evidence of the degree of this trouble now is the practice of providing academics huge cash prizes in some university systems for landing an acceptance in a HIF journal. It is quite possible that rich publishers will (or are perhaps already) support(ing) such incentives. It continues to be underpinned by the signing over of IP.

14. A radical alternative
A modern properly net-based system to verify and certify research outcomes on a global scale. Such a system would be one part of a more open approach to research, one already described by the concept of open science, including the interoperable accessibility (and therefore verifiability) of processes, sophisticated linking of data and text and software, and high speed sharing and communication of important results. Such an ecosystem can underpin both public spending efficiencies and rapid diffusion, impact and private sector innovation.

15. Remedies – action and leadership to:
develop and support open frameworks
harmonise supporting IP regimes
reframe researcher induction
improve data and tools support services
reward data science methods and re-use techniques
rationalise research quality markers
foster impact tracking in diverse tools

16. Discussion ?