1. Open Access @ the University of Florida: The IR@UF and the UF Open Access Publishing Fund
Presentation to the Infrastructure Council, December 10, 2010
Good morning. We appreciate the opportunity to share with you information on Open Access and OA initiatives at the Smathers Libraries—specifically the UF Open Access Publishing Fund and the UF Institutional Repository—called the

2. Main Points Open-access in brief
National and international trends and mandates at peer institutions
Local Initiatives
Questions/Discussion
What I’d especially like to do today is keep you informed of changes and trends in scholarly publishing, and how we are responding to those challenges here on campus.
I’ll present OA – what it is and why it is so important.
I’ll mention national and global trends and mandates, and
Review our local initiatives
Allow some time for questions and discussion

3. Open Access Defined Open-access (OA) literature is
free of charge to readers
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions
digital and online
Peter Suber, Focusing on open access
Open Access literature is scholarly literature that is:
free-of-charge to readers,
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions (it requires the consent of the author or copyright holder), and
it is digital and online—accessible to any reader, anywhere, at any time, who has access to the Internet.
In short: it’s free, unrestricted, and online.

4. Why OA is so Important to Researchers
Available online:
Faster + timely visibility + increased findability  wider readership + higher citation rates
Barriers to access negatively impact research
Overall IMPACT
There are significant trends in publishing that are supporting the open access movement. OA benefits our UF researchers because:
Their articles are published in digital format and online, and therefore are made available much faster than those in conventional journals.
The research results are broadly and freely available – on the Internet: accessible to anyone, at anytime, anywhere in the world!
There is good find-ability through search engines and reference services, and
Long-term document availability.
This makes it possible for our faculty to share their work, and their research has a wider readership, and higher citation rates.
While the traditional research barriers (such as publication time delays and the expense of subscriptions) can limit the impact of research, the reduction of these barriers through OA means that there is greater research efficiencies through early discussion of findings and engagement with other scholars, and also a facilitation of international and interdisciplinary inquiry and collaboration.
Overall, THE RESEARCH PUBLICATION CAN HAVE GREATER IMPACT, and this provides wider recognition to our faculty and University.
And, because of these obvious advantages, many of our colleagues—especially those in the sciences, have already published in open access vehicles or edit or publish an open access journal.

5. The Public’s Need for OA
Concept of “public access”: taxpayers, federal agencies, and universities pay twice for funded research
Increases the public’s ROI in research
Open access reduces barriers and can foster collaboration and research advances.
In addition, Senior VP Dr. David Guzick has written, one of the fundamental advantages of open access publishing deals with the principle of Public Access: most research is publicly-funded (by the University and the national funding agency), but then is given away freely to the marketplace by the author, and then the public must buy it back, often at exorbitant rates, and even then the public doesn’t “own” digitized material and it can lose it. This is a barrier to public access, and not in the interest of the “Common Good”.
The conventional publishing model—not in the interest of researchers or the public good—is also not in the interest of research. There are scholarly studies that indicate that publishing our publicly-funded research in an OA format can lead to further collaborations and efficiencies. One major example of this is the Human Genome Project, which made tremendous progress only after the research became open, shared, and coordinated globally.
Moreover, online open access to federally-funded research significantly increases the return on the public’s investment in science. The public pays for the research, and open access enables the public to benefit from the research.
Just as Harvard has recently stated its mission to serve the public good—and its open access and licensing policies deliberately reflect this—UF, as a land-grant institution, also shares this same purpose. And the library is in a good position to lead the OA initiative because
providing access to information, and the
collection and preservation of content is integral to our mission.
The library is also well-placed within the university as a neutral, trusted, and service institution.

6. National and Global Mandates
2008 NIH mandate
2009 Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA)
UNESCO: for the benefit of global knowledge flow, innovation and socio-economic development
EU’s OpenAire
Because of the benefits of OA to researchers, the research, and the public, national and global mandates supporting OA publishing are increasing:
NIH Mandate: that all NIH-funded investigators submit an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts to pubmedcentral.gov as soon as they are accepted for publication. They are then made available to the public on PubMed Central within 12 months of publication.
FRPPA, which has been moving through both the House and the Senate, requires 11 agencies with over $100 million in research funding to make results publicly and freely available via the Internet within 6 months of commercial publication. This bill, BTW, has been supported in an “Open Letter to Higher Education” by our colleagues at Carnegie-Mellon, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Harvard, Indiana U, Miami U, Ohio State, Stanford, the U. of CA, and others. [While it may not get passed in this lame-duck session, it is almost certain to be re-introduced in the new session.]
Other funding agencies are jumping on board:
Wellcome Trust and grant recipients from a number of British funding sources must submit copies of peer-reviewed research articles to UKPMC. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research also requires grant recipients to submit their peer-reviewed articles to PubMed Central Canada within 6 months of publication. In addition, some countries—notably Sweden and Denmark—are in the process of constructing national open access policies.
This is a global movement:
UNESCO: has come out in support of OA for the benefit of global knowledge flow, innovation, and socio-economic development of developing countries.
In addition, the largest, most successful International Open Access Week was celebrated this past October. With just under 900 participants in 94 countries, this year’s event was three times larger than it was just a year ago. From a student-driven event in 2007, deep inroads have been made into the academy, with humanists, climate change scientists, provosts, research funders, Nobelists, and lawyers using this occasion to share their insights on how Open Access has had an impact on their work and lives. [ message from Heather Joseph, Executive Director, and Jennifer McLennan, Program Director for Open Access Week, SPARC)
The big news is that the European Union has just launched OpenAire at the University of Ghent in Belgium to provide EU researchers, businesses, and citizens free and open access to EU-funded research papers. The project is running a helpdesk in 27 European countries, consisting of a network of experts and a portal of tools helping researchers to make their articles available online. [Source: The European Commission] In short, while OA has many advantages to the researcher, it is no longer optional for many funded projects—it is increasingly mandatory.

7. Strategies Toward Open Access @ UF
Promotion of the UF institutional repository: the
Establishment of an OA publishing fund: UFOAP
Creation of a faculty-driven university-wide OA policy
Given both the need for OA and the library’s potential role, the University Libraries Committee supported the development of an infrastructure to support OA.
First, we have created the UF Institutional Repository—the open access portal to UF’s research and creativity. Please see the brochure, visit the website, AND deposit your publications and work to give it a stable and permanent home and make it accessible. It’s a very easy submission process and we can give you assistance as well.
AND, second, with the assistance of the provost and academic deans, we have established an OA publishing fund of $120,000 over the next two years.
While many other universities are now striving to build digital repositories, UF is in the vanguard with both the and especially with our UF OA Publishing fund, joining other top-tier universities, such as: Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, U. of Berkeley, Columbia. We can be very proud of our university leadership in this area.
So basically, these are the two ways to participate in OA publishing at UF:
1). Depositing your work in the portal to our university’s research and creativity, and
2). Publishing in an open access journal, with supporting funds from the UFOAP.
The next step is for us to facilitate a faculty-driven policy, in step with both national mandates and the global movement. Many top-tier research universities have already adopted Open Access policies, encouraging or mandating faculty to submit peer-reviewed articles to Institutional Repositories; e.g., Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, the University system of California, the University of Oregon, Illinois (U-C), University of Kansas, Massachusetts, Temple -- just to name a few. These policies were derived from faculty support, following discussion and debate, for the benefit of faculty, and the benefit of the university.
The growing number of policies indicates that the question is not if but what kind policy UF will adopt, and when it will be implemented. With the hiring of the new Scholarly Communications Librarian at Smathers Libraries, a jumpstart position, this third initiative can become a reality here at UF, especially with continued University support OA as part of its mission, and eventually faculty who treat it as standard operating procedure.

8. The IR@UF-1½ Million! Journal articles
Conference papers and proceedings
Monographs and monograph series
Technical reports
Theses and dissertations
White papers
UF Journals and Other Publications
Grant proposals
University archives materials
So let’s look at our first strategy in OA publishing:
The now has almost one-and-a-half million pages, and includes:
Journal articles
Conference papers & proceedings
Monographs and monograph series, and
Technical reports
It also collects “gray literature” not handled by conventional publishers; materials such as:
Theses and dissertations
White papers/working papers
UF journals and other publications
Grant proposals
Data sets
Lectures, outreach, and educational materials
Materials from the University Archives including graduation programs, photographs, audio and video of recent and historic campus events and people, campus directories and yearbooks
The now has 1,345,000 pages. Dissertations and theses account for just over half of these pages. The rest are UF faculty, student, and staff publications, and a large portion of materials are from the IFAS documents written by UF faculty.

9. Why Scholars Participate in the IR@UF?
A faculty resource
To share research through:
A permanent archive with stable links
An OA repository compliant with digital library standards
Why participate in the
It can be used as a faculty resource:
*to try out a work in progress [and a visiting scholar recently told us how this was a great advantage to him in correcting a work he had posted in draft form]
*as a teaching resource,
*as a site for distance learning
It can be used for faculty advancement and self-promotion:
*It allows faculty to advertise themselves and their work. This is an advantage for P & T: the faculty member must be “known”.
*It allows faculty to share their research openly with scholars around the world, regardless of affiliation.
*The consistent, stable links to the materials are ideal to use on a researcher’s website, CV or distribute in other promotional materials.
*The facilitates citations and links to the work via the UF Digital Collections, library catalog, Google and many other search systems.
It also provides a permanent archive for preservation, independent of the publishers

10. Why UF Supports the IR@UF?
A PORTAL TO UF RESEARCH & CREATIVITY
Institutional memory
Public advancement: a showcase
Institutional advancement
Institutional benefits: AND IT IS A PORTAL TO, AND SHOWCASE OF, UF SCHOLARLY OUTPUT: RESEARCH & CREATIVITY
A home for the Institutional Memory
Preservation of university records, archives, and creative and scholarly output
Access to & discovery of UF research
A place to consolidate and find UF research, creative output, and records
Public Advancement
Open access to UF research and
Enables and facilitates regional collaboration
Institutional Advancement
Branding and promotion of UF as a great research university
Development (Funding)
Recruitment

11. The UF Open Access Publishing Fund
supports making UF research findings immediately, freely and globally available through Open Access publishing.
The Open Access Publishing Fund Pilot Project supports the goal of making UF research findings immediately, freely and globally available.
The pilot project began on July 1, 2010, with $120,000 was provided by the Provost for months.
When funds are not available from other sources, the UFOAP Fund will assist UF authors by paying reasonable article processing fees for publishing in open access journals and for a portion of paid access fees charged by other publishers, as specified in the brochure.
Emphasize that it is the author who must choose the appropriate journal for his article and academic career. This fund is designed to support the author’s choice to publish in an OA journal, and by so doing, providing the opportunity of expanded exposure to faculty and students, and their research.
Articles that comply with the eligibility criteria are funded on a first-come, first-serve basis.

12. Eligible Authors Eligible Articles UF faculty, staff and student
authors and co-authors, including
post-doctoral researchers
Eligible Articles
Peer-reviewed research articles in OA and hybrid journals
Listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals:
Eligible authors include any UF faculty, post-doctoral researcher, staff member, or student author.
Eligible articles include peer-reviewed journal articles in OA and hybrid journals, listed in the Directory of OA Journals. I want to stress that this Fund only supports articles in peer-reviewed OA journals, and not creative works, which ideally would be submitted to the It should also be noted that the number and quality of OA journals are increasing every day. For example, new studies (and citation reports that we have run) show that many open access journals have higher impact factors that the traditional prestigious journals and lead to higher citation rates.

13. UF Recipients
Dr. Graciela Lorca, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Microbiology and Cell Science
Daniel Spade, Student in Physiological Sciences
Max Teplitski, Associate Professor, Soil and Water Science
To date, we have approved 17 applications and disbursed almost $22,000, benefitting as many as 64 UF researchers—faculty and students from various departments across campus. The average request is almost $1,300 and average per person amount allocated is $340 to support OA publishing.
Reactions from UF researchers have been very positive: we’ve received many s expressing appreciation.
Dr. Graciela Lorca, Assistant Professor, Department of Microbiology and Cell Science wrote to us:
The Open Access Publishing Fund is more important than ever. The use of open access publications increases the impact and availability of peer-reviewed work to a much wider audience than traditional publications… For us personally, the open access format maximizes the visibility and impact of our work, and is the real next step in the evolution of peer-reviewed publishing…..The Open Access Fund allowed us to publish in what we believe is a better format than traditional journals without dealing with inhibitory publishing fees.
[right click, open hyperlink]
Graduate Student Dan Spade pointed out the significance of open access to developing countries that otherwise cannot afford access to scholarly subscriptions and research, and also the permanency of his published OA article. [move forward to 36 or 2:21 minutes].
[Associate Professor Max Teplitski shows that open access publishing has come a long way and now there are many highly prestigious journals in which to publish, and the rapid turn-around of his published article demonstrated value to the funding agency and helped participating graduate students. [move forward to 36 to 2:29]

14. For more information, contact:
Judy Russell
Dean of University Libraries
Isabel Silver
Director, Academic and Scholarly Outreach
Visit our website:
We want to emphasize that we are providing UF researchers and scholars with a broader choice for their publishing, and we want to support their choice to publish open access.
If we have a little time for Qs and discussion, we would also like to ask you how we can more effectively promote OA and the UFOAP on campus and move the issue forward with faculty. [switch to next slide]

15. Questions and Discussion
I welcome any questions, comments, or discussion about our open access initiatives…..
Please contact me, or Isabel Silver, if you have any further questions or comments on our efforts.
[In closing] I want to thank you for your invitation today, and taking the time to consider OA and the current trends in this direction. Thank you very much and please don’t hesitate to contact us for more information.
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IF Question about quality:
There is a range of quality in OA journals just as in conventional publishing. We are not talking about vanity publishing but only peer-reviewed journals, some of which have over-taken the conventional prestigious journals in their impact factors. We can expect this trend to continue, given the advantages of OA publishing.
If statement that OA publishing is not recommended for T & P purposes:
We have had assistant and associate professors seek OA Publishing Fund support because they are thrilled to be publishing in very reputable OA journals, and they fully expect that these articles will strengthen their T & P case because the journals are so reputable. Moreover, faculty establish the T & P standards, and more and more faculty are now recognizing the value of OA journals. Meanwhile, those tenured faculty who don’t have to adhere to traditional publishing measures can exert more creativity in their publishing choices, and they will experience the benefits of OA publishing.
If statement about the need to support their society journal or it will not survive. A visiting scholar [Siva Vaidhyanathan] recently recognized that the economic situation of many scholarly journals is very fragile. He asked, “What might emerge if other publishing options are not resisted?” Perhaps there might be a greater range of publishing options (?), and this might be good for the field. OA publishing, for example, allows non-scholars (i.e., journalists), and scholars from other areas, to engage with the work. This can also be beneficial for the field.