Working towards a transition to open access

[Hersh, Gemma (ELS-LOW)]

Dear All

 

I thought you might be interested in a piece we have shared on working towards a transition to open access: https://www.elsevier.com/connect/working-towards-a-transition-to-open-access

 

The piece is intended to contribute positively and constructively to the discussion about how a transition to open access can be achieved.

 

Feedback welcome.

 

Gemma

 

Gemma Hersh

VP, Open Science

Elsevier I 125 London Wall I London I EC2Y 5AS

M: +44 (0) 7855 258 957 I E: g.h...@elsevier.com

Twitter: @gemmahersh

 

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[Toby....@oecd.org]

Gemma and everyone,

In response to your invitation for discussion, you may be interested in a post I wrote on Medium yesterday. 

https://medium.com/@TobyABGreen/a-response-to-elseviers-insights-into-making-the-transition-to-open-access-possible-f3deb155b061

Feedback welcome,

Toby

Toby Green

Public Affairs and Communications Directorate

OECD

Winner The Academic and Professional Publisher Award 2017

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[Glenn Hampson]

Hi Toby,

 

This is a fun analogy---thanks. I would argue (in the academic sense of the word), though, that it actually applies to lots of stakeholders who are “stuck” in the current system of scholarly communication---libraries, universities, societies, publishers. It’s impossible for anyone to find their way out of this forest without working together. And far from being inactive, I think everyone is approaching this challenge and contributing to solutions the best they can from their own vantage points. Gemma’s “regional gold” idea is fascinating and maybe it’s workable with more collaboration---or maybe it’s just a starting point for discussion (what would it need to work better?).

 

Which is why OSI is so important---thanks for the segue---and why it’s so important that Elsevier and others have been part of this effort. Take a look at the recommendations set forward and let me know what you think. Getting from point a to point b may not involve much waiting at all. Indeed, I’m excited that this is the year we can all start making some significant steps forward together---tbd.

 

Cheers,

 

Glenn

[Robert Kiley]

Glenn

How does regional gold work?

If an APC is paid this must give **everyone** access to read and reuse that content. 

You can't start limiting access to OA content to privileged IP addresses. 

R

Robert Kiley

Development Lead - Open Research

Wellcome Trust

215, Euston Road, London

Tel: 0207 611 8338

[Glenn Hampson]

Hi Robert,

 

I don’t know---Gemma? And just to be clear, I’m not endorsing this particular idea FWIW---I’m just saying that it’s interesting and original and one of many ideas we should discuss with regard to thinking through pros and cons, collaborations, ways to make ideas work better, or reasons why some ideas should never see the light of day. This is a unique forum---we’re going to try using it more this year and next (this listserv might not be the best place for this kind of increased back and forth, granted, since about a third of OSI participants want to see less email, so please stay tuned for the new communication tools I promised, maybe starting next week).

 

Best,

 

Glenn

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
National Science Communication Institute (nSCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

2320 N 137th Street | Seattle, WA 98133
(206) 417-3607 | gham...@nationalscience.org | nationalscience.org

[Mike Taylor]

There is much to like here for an OA advocate. I particularly like, and agree with, the observation that "the primary reason to transition to gold open access should not be to save money ... but that it would be better for research and scholarship."

However ... I worry about the misuse of the terms Green OA _and_ OA itself in this article.

You define Green OA as "making a version of the subscription article widely available after a time delay or embargo period", but this is simply not what the term means. What marks out Gold from Green is that the former is provided by a publisher (often though not necessarily in exchange for a fee) while the latter is provided by the author or her institution. There is no delay inherent in Green OA.

Gold OA does have advantages over Green, not least the simplicity of there being only one version of the published article out there; but immediate access is not one of them.

And then this: "one possible first step for Europe to explore would be to enable European articles to be available gold open access within Europe and green open access outside of Europe." There is no such thing as "gold open access within Europe". The term "open access" means and has always meant (going right back to the BOAI) "free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers". Something is OA to the world or not OA at all.

We will all make better progress if we use terms correctly.

-- Mike.

https://medium.com/@TobyABGreen/a-response-to-elseviers-insights-into-making-the-transition-to-open-access-possible-f3deb155b061

 

Feedback welcome,

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[Glenn Hampson]

Hi Mike,

 

I don’t want to step on Gemma’s answer here, but you’ve noted an issue that came up in several OSI workgroups this year (as well as at OSI2016)---confusion over terminology. Getting on the same page will be an important step in moving forward and there will be folks working on this and creating proposals for you and others to consider.

 

This said, I think it’s important to note that getting on the same page is not the same as all agreeing that BOAI’s definitions must remain sacred. Several workgroups at OSI2016 and OSI2017 endorsed the viewpoint that open exists on a spectrum and that it might be helpful to stop thinking not in terms of what is and isn’t open, and consider instead that various efforts exist on an open scale----in part to recognize more efforts, in part to make it easier for more people and institutions to participate in open (to the best of their abilities), in part to be able to stop bickering about various orthodoxies (CC-BY, etc.), and in part to encourage a little competition in the system---to be able to say that this product is a 9.9 and that one is a 6.8 (or whatever) and let customers vote with their wallets.

 

I suppose one could come up with a green spectrum argument as well, but the point is that the whole gold/green/orange/etc. approach has everyone confused, especially the people we want to get excited about open, so more clarity all around is essential and what pretty much everyone at OSI2017 agreed on.

 

I don’t have any answers here—just sayin’

https://medium.com/@TobyABGreen/a-response-to-elseviers-insights-into-making-the-transition-to-open-access-possible-f3deb155b061

 

Feedback welcome,

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[rob.johnson]

Dear all,

I enjoyed reading the article, Gemma - and Toby's response. I do think there is a role for other models beyond green and APCs - subsidised/APC-free gold, freemium etc - which isn't acknowledged. Nevertheless, I'd recognise that is these haven't made much headway in the market to date, and for a commercial publisher like Elsevier gold is pretty much the only game in town. I also agree with Glenn that recognising a spectrum of openness is helpful - though hard to square with clarity!

It's helpful be clear about the fact that APCs will indeed need to rise if they are to replace subscriptions as the main revenue source for scholarly publishing (and publisher-supported infrastructure), though this doesn't mean per-article revenues must remain unchanged. Talking to a number of learned society publishers recently, the expectation is that over time scholarly publishing will become a lower-margin business. Revenues might indeed continue to grow, but rising article volumes (and the extra complexity of OA) mean expenditure will grow faster - and I know this is already happening for some publishers that have implemented significant OA programmes.

I would emphasise the point in the middle of Gemma's article about the opportunity, and need, to create a 'persuasive evidence base' from Europe's experience. We are reaching a point where significant proportions of some European countries articles are gold OA, and we need to get better at evaluating the benefits of this. Specifically, do significant benefits accrue to the country/organisations bearing the cost of OA? Or do the benefits flow primarily to other countries, particularly in the developing world (over and above the benefits from Research4LIfe etc etc). If the latter should we start thinking more explicitly about seeing the costs of OA as something akin to Overseas Development Assistance, and as contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals?

Best wishes,

Rob

Rob Johnson

Director

Research Consulting

 

Follow us on Twitter @rschconsulting

T: +44(0)115 896 7567

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[Hersh, Gemma (ELS-LOW)]

Hi Robert

 

There is an assumption in your response that this model would be supported by APCs (which is a perfectly reasonable assumption, of course).  However region-specific OA would be a new model not yet tried out, so would need careful working through with seriously interested parties – including on what costs need to be covered, for what and by who. We have always been clear that APCs pay to broadcast research, globally, free of charge to the end user while subscriptions pay to access or receive the rest of the world’s articles published under the subscription model. If gold OA were to be limited to Europe, this would not fall neatly into either the APC or subscription buckets, so a new approach could be crafted.

 

Best wishes

Gemma

 

From: Glenn Hampson [mailto:gham...@nationalscience.org]
Sent: 28 September 2017 19:37
To: 'Robert Kiley' <r.k...@wellcome.ac.uk>
Cc: Toby....@oecd.org; Hersh, Gemma (ELS-LOW) <g.h...@elsevier.com>; osi20...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: Working towards a transition to open access

 

*** External email: use caution ***

[Robert Kiley]

Gemma

 

Thanks – but I’m still confused.

 

Is the model you suggesting – and I recognise that you say that this needs further thought with “seriously interested parties” – something like this:

 

1.      A researcher based somewhere in Europe – and has access to funds to meet OA costs – pays a publication fee.  [You are clear that this is NOT an APC]

2.      This article would then be made free to read for researchers in Europe at the time of publication.  Access would be granted/denied based on IP address (or equivalent)

3.      This fee would (presumably) not include re-use rights (like CCBY) or deposit in a subject repository (like Europe PMC) – else this would mean that immediate access was available to all.

4.      After a period of time, a version of the article – presumably the author manuscript version – would be made available to the rest of the world.

5.      The publication fee, charged to the researcher (or his/her funder/institution) would, presumably, be lower than the APC

 

Is this approximately right?

 

If so, my immediate instinct is that this will make an already complex system, even more complicated.  And, whatever colour got ascribed to this method publishing – it would need to be made clear that this is NOT open access.

 

R

[Hersh, Gemma (ELS-LOW)]

Hi Mike

Thank you for your positive response.

What marks out gold OA from green OA is the business model: green is supported by the subscription model, gold is not. Depending on the version of the subscription article being shared, access may indeed be immediate (in the case of preprints, for example) or may not (in the case of accepted manuscripts, for example).  Publishers provide green OA too, for example through CHORUS. I understand you may see this differently.

You are right that one of the suggestions we make for region-specific OA does not fall neatly into existing definitions. The point however is to think constructively and creatively – and dare I say it, outside of the box - about how we move open access forward.

Best wishes

Gemma

 

From: Mike Taylor [mailto:mi...@indexdata.com]
Sent: 28 September 2017 23:15
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Cc: Robert Kiley <r.k...@wellcome.ac.uk>; Toby....@oecd.org; Hersh, Gemma (ELS-LOW) <g.h...@elsevier.com>; The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Working towards a transition to open access

 

*** External email: use caution ***

 

There is much to like here for an OA advocate. I particularly like, and agree with, the observation that "the primary reason to transition to gold open access should not be to save money ... but that it would be better for research and scholarship."

 

-- Mike.

 

 

https://medium.com/@TobyABGreen/a-response-to-elseviers-insights-into-making-the-transition-to-open-access-possible-f3deb155b061

 

Feedback welcome,

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[Hersh, Gemma (ELS-LOW)]

Hi Robert

 

Your outline is certainly one way this could work, but there will no doubt be others/alternative views. We haven’t addressed elements such as how access would be granted, reuse rights etc. This would all be up for discussion if there was appetite to do so.

 

This particular idea has attracted a lot of attention, which is great, but I would point out that there are other things we say in the piece too, for example regarding principles behind SCOAP3 and how those might be useful.

 

Gemma

 

From: Robert Kiley [mailto:r.k...@wellcome.ac.uk]
Sent: 29 September 2017 08:55
To: Hersh, Gemma (ELS-LOW) <g.h...@elsevier.com>; Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Cc: Toby....@oecd.org; osi20...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: Working towards a transition to open access

 

*** External email: use caution ***

 

Gemma

 

Thanks – but I’m still confused.

 

Is the model you suggesting – and I recognise that you say that this needs further thought with “seriously interested parties” – something like this:

 

1. A researcher based somewhere in Europe – and has access to funds to meet OA costs – pays a publication fee.  [You are clear that this is NOT an APC]

1. This article would then be made free to read for researchers in Europe at the time of publication.  Access would be granted/denied based on IP address (or equivalent)

1. This fee would (presumably) not include re-use rights (like CCBY) or deposit in a subject repository (like Europe PMC) – else this would mean that immediate access was available to all.

1. After a period of time, a version of the article – presumably the author manuscript version – would be made available to the rest of the world.

[Martin G. Hicks]

I am having a little trouble in deciding whether the whole thing about region-specific OA is a joke, or whether the accountants are just being creative again….

 

Anyway, I agree with Robert – NOT OA

 

Certainly not compatible with the Europe Commission Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (RISE) report: Europe’s future: Open innovation, Open Science, Open to the world (March 2017) https://www.rri-tools.eu/-/the-rise-report-europe-s-future-open-innovation-open-science-open-to-the-world-

 

“[First,] our actions must always reflect European values of openness and diversity, if we are serious about using European research and innovation for something greater than our own gain. [And second,] we have to embrace change – try new things and be willing to take risks – if we want European research and innovation to remain at the forefront of modernity and economic growth.” Carlos Moedas

 

So it won’t fly!

 

 

Reminds me of the following article:

 

“Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science?” By Stephen Buranyi in The Guardian, Tuesday 27 June 2017

 

Some passages from the article:

 

"if you control access to the scientific literature, it is, to all intents and purposes, like controlling science"

 

“there is a moral imperative to re-consider how scientific data are judged and disseminated”

 

A 2005 Deutsche Bank report referred to it as a “bizarre” “triple-pay” system, in which “the state funds most research, pays the salaries of most of those checking the quality of research, and then buys most of the published product”.

 

 

Martin Hicks

[Glenn Hampson]

Hi Rob, Everyone,

 

Pasted below my signature is the open spectrum framework proposal from OSI2016 and the amended proposal from OSI2017.  At its core, this framework is called DART, which stands for discoverability, accessibility, reusability, and transparency. The 2017 group recommended adding “sustainability” as an important additional metric. Here’s a graphic showing the “spectrum” for the first four of these (I haven’t created one yet with the new sustainability measure included):

 

 

One of the benefits of adopting this approach---please see the reports for the fine grain details because this is a bit general---would be to stop talking about green this and gold that and just focus on seeing where scholarship exists on this spectrum by institution, country, discipline, etc., and then seeing (hopefully more clearly) where we need to focus to do more and do better. The OSI2017 Standards Workgroup, in fact, went so far as to propose that OSI adopt this approach:

 

Proposed: The Opens Scholarship Initiative envisions a scholarly community where all parts of the research lifecycle are openly available. In order to achieve this vision, OSI adopts the following principles in order to evaluate policy proposals and actions: research products must be made more Discoverable, Accessible, Reusable, Transparent, and Sustainably supported. Policies that increase openness among one or more of these dimensions, while having no net decrease on any other, are aligned with the mission and purpose of OSI delegates and member institutions.

 

Best,

 

Glenn

 

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)

Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

2320 N 137th Street | Seattle, WA 98133
(206) 417-3607 | gham...@nationalscience.org | nationalscience.org

---

OSI2016 Report from the “What is Open?” Workgroup

VERSION OF RECORD INFO

Published by Mason Publishing, online at http://journals.gmu.edu/osi. Open Scholarship Initiative Proceedings, Volume 1, 2016. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13021/G8XK5R. ©2016 OSI2016 What is Open Workgroup. This open access article is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

The scholarly community’s current definition of “open” captures only some of the attributes of openness that exist across different publishing models and content types. Open is not an end in itself, but a means for achieving the most effective dissemination of scholarship and research. We suggest that the different attributes of open exist along a broad spectrum and propose an alternative way of describing and evaluating openness based on four attributes: discoverable, accessible, reusable, and transparent. These four attributes of openness, taken together, form the draft “DART Framework for Open Access.” This framework can be applied to both research artifacts as well as research processes. We welcome input from the broader scholarly community about this framework.

OSI2016 workgroup question

There is a broad difference of opinion among the many stakeholders in scholarly publishing about how to precisely define open access publishing. Are “open access” and “open data” what we mean by open? Does “open” mean anything else? Does it mean “to make available,” or “to make freely available in a particular format?” Is a clearer definition needed (or maybe just better education on the current definition)? Why or why not? At present, some stakeholders see public access as being an acceptable stopping point in the move toward open access. Others see “open” as requiring free and immediate access with articles being available in CC-BY format. The range of opinions between these extremes is vast. How should these differences be decided? Who should decide? Is it possible to make binding recommendations (and how)? Is consensus necessary? What are the consequences of the lack of consensus?

Initial conclusions

Our workgroup began by considering whether we should focus narrowly on open access as it relates to scholarly publishing, or whether we should take an expansive look at open scholarship writ large across all disciplines, research products and processes. In the end, we chose to view open scholarship in the broadest possible context.

A range of outputs can be made open: articles, journals,^[1] monographs, new forms of research, educational resources, data, materials, software code, and where appropriate, hardware. Our group noted that for journal literature, from the perspective of the user, it is the relative openness of an article that is of prime importance. It was also agreed that various versions of the journal article are effectively distinct outputs when we consider openness—for example, the submitted version, accepted version, and final published version can all have different degrees of openness.

Research processes and practices can also be open. Among these processes are research methodologies, peer review, disclosure of funding sources, disclosure of negative results, other research in progress, and so on.

Our workgroup agreed that open is a means to an end, rather than an end in itself, and identified three overarching goals shared by all stakeholders that can be utilized for openness:

·        Better research

·        More impactful research

·        Maximizing value for money.

We noted that open could benefit research in a number of ways aligned to these goals, including, but not limited to:

·        More value for research expenditures: Openness does not necessarily drive down costs, but it may increase the value delivered by the investment in research.

·        Faster visibility: Users have faster access to research products that are open, which may boost discovery.

·        Reproducibility: For openness to serve reproducibility (an important aspect of ensuring verifiable results), the findings, data, methods, materials, and software (the version used, as well as the hardware) must all be described and available.

Describing the range of open

Our workgroup struggled over the question of whether open is a single, absolute state (i.e., something is open only if it meets a specific set of qualities), or whether it could and should be more accurately described as a series of conditions that exist along a spectrum.

We recognized during this deliberation that there are previously articulated definitions of open, including the Budapest definition which defines open access to journal articles as free availability with the functional equivalent of a Creative Commons (CC-BY) license.[2] We agreed, however, that in addition to these definitions there is a broad spectrum of open attributes not currently articulated, and further, that open could be reasonably viewed as not an end in itself but as a means for achieving better, more impactful research and for maximizing the value of our research expenditures.

Our conclusion was that openness has a number of dimensions and can be conceptualized as a spectrum, rather than at a single defined point. Our group identified a baseline set of attributes that constitute what the scholarly community currently views as being the minimum requirements for “open” (and without which a research output or process is effectively closed)—namely, discoverable, and freely accessible at the point of use. Beyond this baseline, there are attributes that may be more nuanced, and where degrees of openness may occur. Open, therefore, is in many respects a range or scale of less open to more open.

Our group sought to identify points on the openness spectrum without attributing a particular value to these points, in order to avoid designations that would deem some forms of open to be better than others. We leave it to individual users applying the spectrum to determine respective value, both because it addresses numerous content types, disciplines and contexts, and because the views of different stakeholders and disciplines vary regarding what constitutes optimum solutions in moral and practical terms.

Our workgroup then identified four dimensions that have a particular bearing on openness: Discoverability, Accessibility, Reusability, and Transparency (DART). These four DART dimensions exist along a spectrum, rather than as binary values (e.g., yes/no, on/off).

The DART Framework

Dimension		Attributes include		Description
Discoverable		·        Indexed by search engines ·        Sufficient, good quality discovery metadata ·        Links ·        Persistent unique identifiers ·        Explicit rights statements ·        Open and widely used standards (for all of the above attributes)		This may be the most fundamental baseline condition of open (meaning that if an object is not discoverable, it is not open). However, there is a wide range here, including open with bad metadata or links and no or faulty identifiers.
Accessible		·        Free (in terms of cost) to all users at point of use, in perpetuity ·        Downloadable (binary) ·        Machine-readable (binary) ·        Timeliness of availability (spectrum)		Generally drives whether we currently consider something to be open, although many variations exist (taking into account embargoes and other conditions).
Reusable		·        Usable and reusable (including commercial uses) ·        Able to be further disseminated ·        Modifiable		Openness is advanced by having fewer restrictions on reuse, dissemination and modification.
Transparent		·        Peer review ·        Impact metrics ·        Transparency in the research process (based on the Center for Open Science TOP Guidelines), including data transparency (metadata and level of availability), and software (including version and operating system/hardware) ·        Research design and analytical methods (plus software and versions), including citation standards, pre-registration of studies and of analysis, and replication ·        Author transparency (funding source, affiliations, roles, other disclosures such as conflict of interest)		Serves the research lifecycle, given that outputs of research become inputs. Some of the factors that affect transparency include the software used, inclusion of data, the transparency of the peer review process and analytical methods, and more.

 

The DART framework was developed over two days of discussions at the OSI meeting in April 2016. We present it now to the community with the aim of expanding the conversations about openness and to help better identify where scholarly artifacts and practices exist along the spectrum of open.

One application of the DART Framework might be to try to identify and assess open spectrums by institution, publication, or discipline, which will allow administrators to design precise, targeted corrections as warranted to improve open access—something that cannot be done with existing methodologies. Another application might be to use this framework to help improve openness across a particular metric (to be determined), such as increasing the number of viewers or users over time.

We welcome comments and input about this framework in order to validate it with the wider community and ensure it reflects thinking and practices from a broad range of stakeholders.

Next steps

The DART Framework provides identifiable end-points and discrete, quantifiable attributes that we hope will be helpful in terms of describing levels of openness. It enables users to focus efforts in particular areas and allows them to compare practices across institutions, publications and disciplines.

We are sharing this draft conceptual framework with the broader community in order to validate this approach. Once we have received feedback, we intend to further assess the value and relevance of the DART Framework.

Ultimately, we agreed that more openness—that is, moving along the spectrum toward becoming more open on one, some or all of the attributes of openness—is a goal that our entire stakeholder community supports in principle, and that could well have many positive repercussions for research and society. Working together to conceptualize openness as a spectrum with a range of attributes is an important addition to our conversations about openness and our efforts toward this common goal.

AUTHORS

Rick Anderson, Seth Denbo, Diane Graves, Susan Haigh, Steven Hill, Martin Kalfatovic, Roy Kaufman, Catherine Murray-Rust, Kathleen Shearer, Dick Wilder, Alicia Wise. This document reflects the combined input of these authors (listed here in alphabetical order by last name) as well as contributions from other OSI2016 delegates. The findings and recommendations expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the opinions of individual authors, nor of their agencies, trustees, officers, or staff

OSI2016 “What is Open?” Workgroup

·        Rick Anderson, Associate Dean of Libraries at the University of Utah and President-Elect, Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP)

·        Seth Denbo, Director of Scholarly Communication & Digital Initiatives, American
Historical Association

·        Diane Graves, Assistant Vice President for Information Resources and University
Librarian, Trinity University and Board member, EDUCAUSE

·        Susan Haigh, Executive Director, Canadian Association of Research Libraries

·        Steven Hill, Head of Research Policy, Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)

·        Martin Kalfatovic, Associate Director, Digital Program and Initiatives, Smithsonian
Libraries

·        Roy Kaufman, Managing Director, New Ventures, Copyright Clearance Center

·        Catherine Murray-Rust, Dean of Libraries & Vice Provost for Academic
Effectiveness, Georgia Tech

·        Kathleen Shearer, Executive Director, Confederation of Open Access Repositories

·        Dick Wilder, Associate General Counsel, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

·        Alicia Wise, Director of Access and Policy, Elsevier

Notes:

^[1] Openness of content within a particular journal often varies, as different articles within a journal may comprise different degrees of openness. The group agreed that the degree of openness of individual articles can be distinct, and that this is a significant factor, given that scholars use articles rather than journals. (We noted that the ‘How open is it?’ open access spectrum tool, developed by SPARC, PLOS, and the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), is focused on the components that make journals, not articles, more open. As of June 14, 2016: http://sparcopen.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/hoii_guide_rev4_web.pdf.)

[2] See the Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002), as of June 14, 2016: http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/; the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (2003), as of June 14, 2016: http://openaccess.mpg.de/Berlin-Declaration; the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (2003), as of June 14, 2016: http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htm; and The Bouchout Declaration for Open Biodiversity Knowledge Management (2014) , as of June 14, 2016: http://www.bouchoutdeclaration.org.

 

---

 

 

OSI2017 Report from the Standards Workgroup

(Draft version, publication pending)

 

Authors

Michelle Gluck, George Washington University

Adrian K. Ho, University of Kentucky Libraries, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7417-7373  

Martin R. Kalfatovic, Smithsonian Libraries, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4563-4627

David Mellor, Center for Open Science, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3125-5888

Louise Page, PLOS

Brianna Schofield, Authors Alliance

Emma Wilson, Royal Society of Chemistry, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6362-3406 

 

This document reflects the combined input of these authors (listed here in alphabetical order by last name) as well as contributions from other OSI 2017 delegates. The findings and recommendations expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the opinions of individual authors, nor of their agencies, trustees, officers, or staff.

 

Background

 

Standards improve efficiency by reducing the number of times in which one is expected to alter their normal workflow. Researchers who use standard practices in dissemination quickly learn how to navigate through the process. Journals, editors, and publishers who use standard practices quickly become more efficient at decision making, evaluation, and then dissemination.

However, in order to prevent the stifling of innovation, standards creation requires planning for iterative improvement. Furthermore, there is no “one size fits all” that can reasonably accommodate diverse and decentralized communities. Scholarship, both the process of systematic knowledge creation in the sciences and humanities, and the process of knowledge dissemination, both relies on current evidence and is highly decentralized, which presents particular challenges for the creation and adoption of standards within this community. Organizations such as the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) exist to address this particular challenge and will perhaps be required to in order to achieve the goals presented below. 

 

The purpose of this working group and its report is to identify existing relevant standards, evaluate areas of overlap or perhaps conflict, which can be used to foster increased collaboration, and areas where relevant standards do not yet exist, which can be used to focus future effort.

 

Open Scholarship: Idea Generation to Dissemination

 

As a threshold matter, the Standards Workgroup approached the concept of “open scholarship” as much broader than a focus on open access to scholarly articles alone. Instead, the Workgroup conceptualized open scholarship as applying transparency to all applicable aspects of the research lifecycle: idea generation, research design, data collection, data analysis, early dissemination, peer review, contributorship, funding sources, and dissemination of research products such as journal articles, research data, and software codes. Though some stages of the research lifecycle are not applicable to all fields of scholarship, increasing transparency into any relevant products will engender similar benefits to those disciplines as transparency does to every other discipline. More openness is necessary at all stages, with appropriate protection for sensitive data and with the associated costs fairly shared among stakeholders in the interest of mutual benefits.

 

Making all aspects of the scholarly workflow more transparent is increasingly necessary in order to foster trust and collaboration in the process of knowledge creation and sharing. Society demands and deserves accessible insight into the foundation of knowledge because of scholarship’s central role in policy-making, among other areas. Creating a more transparent scholarly ecosystem requires rethinking how each individual and institution is rewarded and recognized for their roles in knowledge creation and dissemination, so that transparency becomes a key metric of success and accountability. Furthermore, it requires careful attention in order to design a system that is sustainable, just, and responsive to new evidence.

 

Need to Align Standards

 

Competing standards threaten to derail their benefit. Just as learning how to use a new piece of software takes time, competing standards threaten to confuse the wider community. However, as stated above, overly rigid standards stifle improvement, and so in many cases the best practice is to standardise a framework of policies and actions so that each stakeholder can quickly ascertain their meaning. In this sense, the wider community can “speak the same language” while permitting necessary diversity in actual policy.

 

A reasonable example of this need are the four Data Sharing Policy Types used by Springer Nature and the relevant data transparency policies presented in the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines. While similarly structured, the four specific “types” or “levels” described are slightly unaligned. While realignment may be difficult, it could provide immediate benefit to a wider community.

 

Possible areas of contention in such an alignment could be the use of specific terminology. “Type” does not convey value, rigor, or potential challenges with a particular policy, whereas the term “Level” does. Depending on one’s point of view, it could be either beneficial or detrimental to convey such values in policy types. Perhaps simple labels that describe the essence of each type or level would alleviate this tension (e.g. Encourage, Disclose, Require, and Verify), though that is slightly more challenging to convey than a simple numbering system.

 

Proposed OSI Guiding Principles

 

In order for OSI to continue to make progress and generate action items that advance its mission, while still being able to function with a consensus model among stakeholders who have very diverse interests, we must agree on a set of principles to use when making future decisions. The “What is Open” Workgroup^[1] from OSI 2016 laid out most of the salient principles and we propose that OSI endorse it as a collective. When future proposals are considered, this common set of principles will guide OSI and enable its members to judge the potential effect of any action. In brief, those principles highlight that openness can be considered as a spectrum across four dimensions: Discoverability, Accessibility, Reusability, and Transparency (DART). Any proposal can be assessed on its (estimated) impact on the openness of the practices along the research lifecycle, e.g., idea generation, knowledge creation, interpretation and analysis, dissemination, and evaluation. 

 

We propose that one additional dimension be considered: Sustainability. While not directly related to open scholarship, financial sustainability is necessary for any proposal to be adopted or for any adopted proposal to be implemented for medium- and long-term use. Since persistence of a research output is an unmentioned but essential element for later discoverability, accessibility, and reusability, adding Sustainability to the DART principles (hereinafter referred to as “DARTS”) aligns with the underlying principles proposed in 2016.

 

The principle of Sustainability requires that proposals consider the method by which content will be hosted and curated and services be supported. In some cases, proposals could include sustainability plans that rely on existing funding sources (e.g., government, foundation, or NGO support) but without incurring an increase in such reliance (or ideally with a decrease in such reliance). Alternatively, proposed projects could be sustainable if a reasonable business plan be created that increases any dimension of DART.

 

This proposal needs to be assessed by key stakeholders present in OSI. As of now, there is no decision-making framework adopted by OSI. As such, the natural course of action is to either 1) propose that the following motion be considered “adopted” only after affirmation from every delegate who chooses to participate in a vote conducted by the planning committee or 2) the proposal be shelved until a governing and decision-making framework is adopted.  

 

Proposed: The Opens Scholarship Initiative envisions a scholarly community where all parts of the research lifecycle are openly available. In order to achieve this vision, OSI adopts the following principles in order to evaluate policy proposals and actions: research products must be made more Discoverable, Accessible, Reusable, Transparent, and Sustainably supported. Policies that increase openness among one or more of these dimensions, while having no net decrease on any other, are aligned with the mission and purpose of OSI delegates and member institutions.

 

Making DARTS a Reality

 

One way of approaching this challenge, and what we’re proposing herein, is to encourage widespread adoption of the DARTS framework. Connecting the entire research workflow will help to ensure that the body of work, from idea dissemination, data collection, interpretation, dissemination, and evaluation increase along every dimension of DARTS.

 

The Open Science Framework (OSF https://osf.io) is designed both for those scholarly activities and for the DARTS dimensions. As a key to its utility in connecting a preserving a complex research workflow, it’s open source code and APIs allow for connections to other research tools. The fact that it is open source and its endowment for 50 years of maintenance address important sustainability questions. Its public content is discoverable through the SHARE initiative (https://share.osf.io/), which not only makes work on the OSF Discoverable and Accessible, but also makes research outputs from other repositories connected.

 

Utilization of this and related tools will help make a truly open scholarly community happen. This will take additional education, marketing, and coordination between players.

 

Open Standards Matrix

 

The Standards Workgroup envisions that a fruitful path forward to operationalizing this proposal is to build upon a draft “open standards matrix” initiated by the Workgroup in 2017. Still in the nascent stage, the matrix aims to identify potential standards and best practices that can increase openness. (It is to be evaluated in accordance with the DARTS principles.) The matrix lists stakeholders across columns (i.e., funders, researchers, universities, libraries, societies, and publishers) and stages of the research lifecycle across rows (i.e., idea generation, knowledge creation, interpretation and analysis, dissemination, and evaluation). See the complete matrix here.

 

 

Standards, Norms, or Best Practices to Promote Openness in Scholarship

Funders

Researchers

Universities

Libraries

Societies

Publishers

Idea generation

Registries.

Open data. Registries.

Networking & ECR creation. Topic & discipline specific standards. Registries.

Knowledge creation

Institutional recognition/rewards for collaboration and/or sharing, Increase transparency

Interpretation & analysis

Use of tools to address bias and motivated reasoning.

Versions; Open licensing to enable reuse and innovation. Open peer review. Best practices proposed by COPDESS http://www.copdess.org/copdess-suggested-author-instructions-and-best-practices-for-journals/

Dissemination

Open Science linked to ROI & societal impact; Funder expectation of open access

Pre-prints

Data repositories & archiving; Open Access; Recognition of researchers’ roles (contributorship); Open Science linked to ROI and societal impact

Repositories connected through open APIs. Taxonomies. Workshops and training for dissemination

SSO, SEO, DOI, portable submission, device agnostic, PDF, JATS, OAI-PMH, machine read, common standards for interoperability, taxonomies, mineable.

Evaluation

Standards and metrics that align w/ scientific ideals

Post-pub peer review

Hiring & promotion based on open practices

Surface metrics created by funders & societies

Surface metrics created by funders and societies. Data citation.

 

The Standards Workgroup began to identify potential “standards,” “norms,” and “best practices” to populate the cells of the matrix.^[2]  For example, to increase openness, funders may require Creative Commons licensing of works at the dissemination stage and publishers may make research outputs machine-readable. The Standards Workgroup expects that with additional time and input from stakeholders with a wider range of expertise, this open standards matrix may prove a useful starting point to indicate areas where individual stakeholders can contribute to increasing the openness of research products.

 

One area that requires additional development is the creation of standards in knowledge creation. In particular, researchers, societies, and publishers can work together to start to address current needs, such as those that relate to open data.

Open Data

Mentioned above, both Springer Nature’s Data Policy Types and the TOP Guidelines lay out modular data sharing policies and provide some examples and resources for each level. There is still need, however, to increase standardization of the operalizational of each of those types/levels.

 

Standardised data disclosure statements would help researchers quickly select the statement that applies to them, and aid in later meta-analytic work in evaluating openness.

 

Standardised exceptions to data sharing mandates would have similar benefits (though would likely still require free response, “other reasons”). Reasonable ethical constraints, the use of intellectual property concerns may or may not be a reasonable exception to some funders and publishers, and inability to share massive data sets could all be considered.

 

The meaning of peer review is still not well defined when it comes to any object that is not a traditional paper. Setting standards or options for such review practices is needed. As a suggestion, various tiers of data peer review could be used: verification of the data’s existence, verification that reasonable meta-data  or a “data dictionary” are included, basic assessment that the data set is complete, and finally the ability to computationally reproduce the results are different tiers that could be applied 

 

Other members of the Open Scholarship Initiative should address the missing standards presented in this gap analysis and highlight known gaps as they are identified.

 

Summary and Next Steps

 

The use of standardized best practices for making scholarship more Discoverable, Accessible, Reusable, Transparent, and Sustainable will help to make the vision of OSI a reality. The following actions, described above in detail, are the recommended next steps toward this process:

• Adopt a unifying policy goal in order to evaluate future proposals at OSI.
• Coordinate alignment between closely related open data policy frameworks.
• Facilitate the creation of best practices and specific policy frameworks for detailed actions relating to open data.
• Solicit help in identifying existing standards within the Open Standards Matrix so that gaps represent truly actionable items.
• Coordinate with stakeholders who are working on similar standards alignment within the open science community, for example the Data policy standardisation and implementation interest group at the Research Data Alliance
• Advocate for tools that make every part of the research workflow more connected, efficient, and preserved, such as the Open Science Framework.

---

^[1] http://osinitiative.org/osi-reports/osi2016-reports/report-from-the-what-is-open-workgroup/

^[2] https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Yk_tu4blfkJpPHyfIt9uuCF8jVXvoNDhdmhjTNSnTGM/edit?usp=sharing

[Mike Taylor]

No-one objects to clarifying notions of how open things are along different axes. This is helpful.

I *do* object to re-defining perfectly well-defined terms like "open access" and "green OA". To do so is purely obfuscatory. No good can come of it, except for those who benefit from such obfuscation.

Please stop.

-- Mike.

E: rob.johnson@research-consulting.com

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^[1] http://osinitiative.org/osi-reports/osi2016-reports/report-from-the-what-is-open-workgroup/

^[2] https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Yk_tu4blfkJpPHyfIt9uuCF8jVXvoNDhdmhjTNSnTGM/edit?usp=sharing

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[Rick Anderson]

> We are reaching a point where significant proportions of some European countries articles

> are gold OA, and we need to get better at evaluating the benefits of this.

 

One of the problems with doing cost/benefit analysis in this context is the fact that as difficult as the benefits may be to quantify, the costs are even harder. That may sound backwards – after all, the costs can be calculated in dollars/pounds/euros/whatever. But unfortunately, what can’t be calculated is the opportunity cost of shifting money from one project (subsidizing research) to another (making articles freely available). If you start talking about redirecting somewhere between 1% and 2% of disbursements by major funders like the U.S. Department of Energy or the Wellcome Trust, you’re getting into nine-figure dollar amounts – that represents significant amounts of real research that is not being done, in order to make reports based on previously-funded research freely available.

 

This scenario represents both real and significant benefits and real and significant costs. So will any other scenario, including sticking with the current system. No matter what we decide to do, we’d better be able (and willing) to look in a careful and hardheaded way at both the benefits AND the costs of whatever scenarios we consider.

 

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

Desk: (801) 587-9989

Cell: (801) 721-1687

rick.a...@utah.edu

 

From: <osi20...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of "rob.johnson" <rob.j...@research-consulting.com>
Date: Friday, September 29, 2017 at 1:14 AM
To: The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Working towards a transition to open access

 

Dear all,

2320 N 137th Street | Seattle, WA 98133
(206) 417-3607 | gham...@nationalscience.org | nationalscience.org

 

 

 

From: osi20...@googlegroups.com [mailto:osi20...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Mike Taylor
Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2017 3:15 PM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Cc: Robert Kiley <r.k...@wellcome.ac.uk>; Toby....@oecd.org; g.h...@elsevier.com; The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Working towards a transition to open access

 

There is much to like here for an OA advocate. I particularly like, and agree with, the observation that "the primary reason to transition to gold open access should not be to save money ... but that it would be better for research and scholarship."

 

However ... I worry about the misuse of the terms Green OA _and_ OA itself in this article.

 

You define Green OA as "making a version of the subscription article widely available after a time delay or embargo period", but this is simply not what the term means. What marks out Gold from Green is that the former is provided by a publisher (often though not necessarily in exchange for a fee) while the latter is provided by the author or her institution. There is no delay inherent in Green OA.

 

Gold OA does have advantages over Green, not least the simplicity of there being only one version of the published article out there; but immediate access is not one of them.

 

And then this: "one possible first step for Europe to explore would be to enable European articles to be available gold open access within Europe and green open access outside of Europe." There is no such thing as "gold open access within Europe". The term "open access" means and has always meant (going right back to the BOAI) "free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers". Something is OA to the world or not OA at all.

 

We will all make better progress if we use terms correctly.

 

-- Mike.

 

On 28 September 2017 at 19:36, Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org> wrote:

Hi Robert,

 

I don’t know---Gemma? And just to be clear, I’m not endorsing this particular idea FWIW---I’m just saying that it’s interesting and original and one of many ideas we should discuss with regard to thinking through pros and cons, collaborations, ways to make ideas work better, or reasons why some ideas should never see the light of day. This is a unique forum---we’re going to try using it more this year and next (this listserv might not be the best place for this kind of increased back and forth, granted, since about a third of OSI participants want to see less email, so please stay tuned for the new communication tools I promised, maybe starting next week).

 

Best,

 

Glenn

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
National Science Communication Institute (nSCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

[Rick Anderson]

> I *do* object to re-defining perfectly well-defined terms like "open access" and "green OA".

> To do so is purely obfuscatory. No good can come of it, except for those who benefit from

> such obfuscation.

 

The problem with this comment, Mike, is that it assumes your preferred definitions of “open access” and “Green OA” are universally accepted as the right ones – and, therefore, that anyone who uses or offers a somewhat different definition is trying to obfuscate a “perfectly well-defined term.” That’s simply not the case. Today, 15 years after the Budapest statement, we still can’t assume that two people who say “open access” are talking about the same thing.

 

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

Desk: (801) 587-9989

Cell: (801) 721-1687

rick.a...@utah.edu

 

From: <osi20...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Mike Taylor <mi...@indexdata.com>
Date: Friday, September 29, 2017 at 9:33 AM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Cc: "rob.johnson" <rob.j...@research-consulting.com>, The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Working towards a transition to open access

 

No-one objects to clarifying notions of how open things are along different axes. This is helpful.

 

I *do* object to re-defining perfectly well-defined terms like "open access" and "green OA". To do so is purely obfuscatory. No good can come of it, except for those who benefit from such obfuscation.

 

Please stop.

 

-- Mike.

 

 

On 29 September 2017 at 16:17, Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org> wrote:

Hi Rob, Everyone,

 

Pasted below my signature is the open spectrum framework proposal from OSI2016 and the amended proposal from OSI2017.  At its core, this framework is called DART, which stands for discoverability, accessibility, reusability, and transparency. The 2017 group recommended adding “sustainability” as an important additional metric. Here’s a graphic showing the “spectrum” for the first four of these (I haven’t created one yet with the new sustainability measure included):

 

 

One of the benefits of adopting this approach---please see the reports for the fine grain details because this is a bit general---would be to stop talking about green this and gold that and just focus on seeing where scholarship exists on this spectrum by institution, country, discipline, etc., and then seeing (hopefully more clearly) where we need to focus to do more and do better. The OSI2017 Standards Workgroup, in fact, went so far as to propose that OSI adopt this approach:

 

Proposed: The Opens Scholarship Initiative envisions a scholarly community where all parts of the research lifecycle are openly available. In order to achieve this vision, OSI adopts the following principles in order to evaluate policy proposals and actions: research products must be made more Discoverable, Accessible, Reusable, Transparent, and Sustainably supported. Policies that increase openness among one or more of these dimensions, while having no net decrease on any other, are aligned with the mission and purpose of OSI delegates and member institutions.

 

Best,

 

Glenn

 

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

E: rob.j...@research-consulting.com

W: www.research-consulting.com

On Thursday, 28 September 2017 23:44:13 UTC+1, National Science Communication Institute wrote:

Hi Mike,

 

I don’t want to step on Gemma’s answer here, but you’ve noted an issue that came up in several OSI workgroups this year (as well as at OSI2016)---confusion over terminology. Getting on the same page will be an important step in moving forward and there will be folks working on this and creating proposals for you and others to consider.

 

This said, I think it’s important to note that getting on the same page is not the same as all agreeing that BOAI’s definitions must remain sacred. Several workgroups at OSI2016 and OSI2017 endorsed the viewpoint that open exists on a spectrum and that it might be helpful to stop thinking not in terms of what is and isn’t open, and consider instead that various efforts exist on an open scale----in part to recognize more efforts, in part to make it easier for more people and institutions to participate in open (to the best of their abilities), in part to be able to stop bickering about various orthodoxies (CC-BY, etc.), and in part to encourage a little competition in the system---to be able to say that this product is a 9.9 and that one is a 6.8 (or whatever) and let customers vote with their wallets.

 

I suppose one could come up with a green spectrum argument as well, but the point is that the whole gold/green/orange/etc. approach has everyone confused, especially the people we want to get excited about open, so more clarity all around is essential and what pretty much everyone at OSI2017 agreed on.

 

I don’t have any answers here—just sayin’

 

Best,

 

Glenn

 

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
National Science Communication Institute (nSCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

2320 N 137th Street | Seattle, WA 98133
(206) 417-3607 | gham...@nationalscience.org | nationalscience.org

 

 

 

From: osi20...@googlegroups.com [mailto:osi20...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Mike Taylor
Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2017 3:15 PM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Cc: Robert Kiley <r.k...@wellcome.ac.uk>; Toby....@oecd.org; g.h...@elsevier.com; The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Working towards a transition to open access

 

There is much to like here for an OA advocate. I particularly like, and agree with, the observation that "the primary reason to transition to gold open access should not be to save money ... but that it would be better for research and scholarship."

 

However ... I worry about the misuse of the terms Green OA _and_ OA itself in this article.

 

You define Green OA as "making a version of the subscription article widely available after a time delay or embargo period", but this is simply not what the term means. What marks out Gold from Green is that the former is provided by a publisher (often though not necessarily in exchange for a fee) while the latter is provided by the author or her institution. There is no delay inherent in Green OA.

 

Gold OA does have advantages over Green, not least the simplicity of there being only one version of the published article out there; but immediate access is not one of them.

 

And then this: "one possible first step for Europe to explore would be to enable European articles to be available gold open access within Europe and green open access outside of Europe." There is no such thing as "gold open access within Europe". The term "open access" means and has always meant (going right back to the BOAI) "free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers". Something is OA to the world or not OA at all.

 

We will all make better progress if we use terms correctly.

 

-- Mike.

 

On 28 September 2017 at 19:36, Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org> wrote:

Hi Robert,

 

I don’t know---Gemma? And just to be clear, I’m not endorsing this particular idea FWIW---I’m just saying that it’s interesting and original and one of many ideas we should discuss with regard to thinking through pros and cons, collaborations, ways to make ideas work better, or reasons why some ideas should never see the light of day. This is a unique forum---we’re going to try using it more this year and next (this listserv might not be the best place for this kind of increased back and forth, granted, since about a third of OSI participants want to see less email, so please stay tuned for the new communication tools I promised, maybe starting next week).

 

Best,

 

Glenn

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
National Science Communication Institute (nSCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

---

^[1] http://osinitiative.org/osi-reports/osi2016-reports/report-from-the-what-is-open-workgroup/

^[2] https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Yk_tu4blfkJpPHyfIt9uuCF8jVXvoNDhdmhjTNSnTGM/edit?usp=sharing

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[Mike Taylor]

On 29 September 2017 at 16:49, Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu> wrote:

> I *do* object to re-defining perfectly well-defined terms like "open access" and "green OA".

> To do so is purely obfuscatory. No good can come of it, except for those who benefit from

> such obfuscation.

 

The problem with this comment, Mike, is that it assumes your preferred definitions of “open access” and “Green OA” are universally accepted as the right ones

They HAVE been universally accepted for ten or fifteen years -- until people started deliberately introducing confusion by trying to blur their meanings.

This is not complicated. It's a simple matter of history.

-- Mike.

[Rick Anderson]

One question, Glenn: in the rubric below, does “completely closed” mean “inaccessible to the public,” or does it mean “accessible only for a fee”?

 

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

Desk: (801) 587-9989

Cell: (801) 721-1687

rick.a...@utah.edu

 

From: <osi20...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Date: Friday, September 29, 2017 at 9:18 AM
To: "'rob.johnson'" <rob.j...@research-consulting.com>, 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: Working towards a transition to open access

 

Hi Rob, Everyone,

 

Pasted below my signature is the open spectrum framework proposal from OSI2016 and the amended proposal from OSI2017.  At its core, this framework is called DART, which stands for discoverability, accessibility, reusability, and transparency. The 2017 group recommended adding “sustainability” as an important additional metric. Here’s a graphic showing the “spectrum” for the first four of these (I haven’t created one yet with the new sustainability measure included):

 

 

One of the benefits of adopting this approach---please see the reports for the fine grain details because this is a bit general---would be to stop talking about green this and gold that and just focus on seeing where scholarship exists on this spectrum by institution, country, discipline, etc., and then seeing (hopefully more clearly) where we need to focus to do more and do better. The OSI2017 Standards Workgroup, in fact, went so far as to propose that OSI adopt this approach:

 

Proposed: The Opens Scholarship Initiative envisions a scholarly community where all parts of the research lifecycle are openly available. In order to achieve this vision, OSI adopts the following principles in order to evaluate policy proposals and actions: research products must be made more Discoverable, Accessible, Reusable, Transparent, and Sustainably supported. Policies that increase openness among one or more of these dimensions, while having no net decrease on any other, are aligned with the mission and purpose of OSI delegates and member institutions.

 

Best,

 

Glenn

 

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

2320 N 137th Street | Seattle, WA 98133
(206) 417-3607 | gham...@nationalscience.org | nationalscience.org

 

 

 

From: osi20...@googlegroups.com [mailto:osi20...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Mike Taylor
Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2017 3:15 PM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Cc: Robert Kiley <r.k...@wellcome.ac.uk>; Toby....@oecd.org; g.h...@elsevier.com; The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Working towards a transition to open access

 

There is much to like here for an OA advocate. I particularly like, and agree with, the observation that "the primary reason to transition to gold open access should not be to save money ... but that it would be better for research and scholarship."

 

However ... I worry about the misuse of the terms Green OA _and_ OA itself in this article.

 

You define Green OA as "making a version of the subscription article widely available after a time delay or embargo period", but this is simply not what the term means. What marks out Gold from Green is that the former is provided by a publisher (often though not necessarily in exchange for a fee) while the latter is provided by the author or her institution. There is no delay inherent in Green OA.

 

Gold OA does have advantages over Green, not least the simplicity of there being only one version of the published article out there; but immediate access is not one of them.

 

And then this: "one possible first step for Europe to explore would be to enable European articles to be available gold open access within Europe and green open access outside of Europe." There is no such thing as "gold open access within Europe". The term "open access" means and has always meant (going right back to the BOAI) "free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers". Something is OA to the world or not OA at all.

 

We will all make better progress if we use terms correctly.

 

-- Mike.

 

On 28 September 2017 at 19:36, Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org> wrote:

Hi Robert,

 

I don’t know---Gemma? And just to be clear, I’m not endorsing this particular idea FWIW---I’m just saying that it’s interesting and original and one of many ideas we should discuss with regard to thinking through pros and cons, collaborations, ways to make ideas work better, or reasons why some ideas should never see the light of day. This is a unique forum---we’re going to try using it more this year and next (this listserv might not be the best place for this kind of increased back and forth, granted, since about a third of OSI participants want to see less email, so please stay tuned for the new communication tools I promised, maybe starting next week).

 

Best,

 

Glenn

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
National Science Communication Institute (nSCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

[Rick Anderson]

> They HAVE been universally accepted for ten or fifteen years -- until people started

> deliberately introducing confusion by trying to blur their meanings.

 

My impression is that people very often use different definitions mainly because they genuinely think about the issues somewhat differently, and/or genuinely disagree as to which aspects of openness are centrally important. Can you provide any support for your assertion that what may look like genuine diversity or disagreement is actually a deliberate campaign of obfuscation? (For example, given the differences between the definitions provided in the Bethesda, Berlin, and Budapest statements, can you tell us which of those is the “true” definition and which ones are deliberately obfuscatory?)

 

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

Desk: (801) 587-9989

Cell: (801) 721-1687

rick.a...@utah.edu

 

From: Mike Taylor <mi...@indexdata.com>
Date: Friday, September 29, 2017 at 9:58 AM
To: Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu>
Cc: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>, "rob.johnson" <rob.j...@research-consulting.com>, The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Working towards a transition to open access

 

On 29 September 2017 at 16:49, Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu> wrote:

[Glenn Hampson]

Unfortunately, that’s exactly the problem Mike. Take a look at the OSI2017 reports (and, like in the OSI2016 conference you attended, look at how many distinguished experts contributed to these from so many varied perspectives) and see how many groups identified a lack of clarity as one of the most important problems in open access. No one is trying to obfuscate---it’s exactly the opposite.

 

This is a broad partnership of people who want to advance open but recognizes that many customers aren’t buying it---they don’t get the concept, they don’t know how to do it, they don’t know which way is right and which way is wrong, they don’t see the benefit, they don’t have the resources in-house to manage this transition, etc. etc. Some people might think the solution, then, is to double down---to turn the thumbscrews even tighter on what pure open access means. Others might think the solution is to come up with new terms that do a better job of explaining open---or at least explanations that are easier to understand, adopt and adapt.

 

We can all work out the messaging as part of the “culture of communications” reform effort that will get underway soon. The hope is for everyone to start pulling in the same direction, though, so this may eventually mean side-stepping the whole debate about open definitions in this forum---not to obfuscate, but just so we can finally get on with the actual business of improving open.

 

Best,

 

Glenn

 

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

2320 N 137th Street | Seattle, WA 98133
(206) 417-3607 | gham...@nationalscience.org | nationalscience.org

 

 

 

From: Mike Taylor [mailto:mi...@indexdata.com]
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2017 8:32 AM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Cc: rob.johnson <rob.j...@research-consulting.com>; The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Working towards a transition to open access

 

No-one objects to clarifying notions of how open things are along different axes. This is helpful.

E: rob.j...@research-consulting.com

---

^[1] http://osinitiative.org/osi-reports/osi2016-reports/report-from-the-what-is-open-workgroup/

^[2] https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Yk_tu4blfkJpPHyfIt9uuCF8jVXvoNDhdmhjTNSnTGM/edit?usp=sharing

--

As a public and publicly-funded effort, the conversations on this list can be viewed by the public and are archived. To read this group's complete listserv policy (including disclaimer and reuse information), please visit http://osinitiative.org/osi-listservs.
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[Mike Taylor]

On 29 September 2017 at 17:05, Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu> wrote:
>> They HAVE been universally accepted for ten or fifteen years -- until
>> people started
>> deliberately introducing confusion by trying to blur their meanings.
>
> My impression is that people very often use different definitions mainly
> because they genuinely think about the issues somewhat differently, and/or
> genuinely disagree as to which aspects of openness are centrally important.
> Can you provide any support for your assertion that what may look like
> genuine diversity or disagreement is actually a deliberate campaign of
> obfuscation?

No. I very much hope I am wrong in making that assumption. I've
certainly been trying hard for the last few years to ascribe such
mistakes to ignorance rather than malice, but my credulity is strained
at this stage.

> (For example, given the differences between the definitions
> provided in the Bethesda, Berlin, and Budapest statements, can you tell us
> which of those is the “true” definition and which ones are deliberately
> obfuscatory?)

The _wording_ of those definitions different; I can't think of single
_substantive_ difference between them -- certainly nothing in the same
league as redefining OA to mean "free to read in one continent". Can
you?

-- Mike.

[Glenn Hampson]

You tell me! You invented this! 😊 (You and Seth Denbo, Susan Haigh, Steven Hill, Martin Kalfatovic, Roy Kaufman, Catherine Murray-Rust, Kathleen Shearer, Dick Wilder, and Alicia Wise). Reading your description, though, it looks like you wrapped costs into the “accessibility” scale---so free stuff is more accessible than paywalled. However, there are other attributes baked into your accessibility scale as well like downloadability and embargo length (maybe we’ll need to think in terms of subscales to this spectrum so these different elements can be teased out). So by this, “completely closed” might mean a paper document in a government file box, not a downloadable document on a website (even if it’s paywalled or restricted to certain people). Correct-ish?

[Joan K. Lippincott]

Just as a point of information, there is a European project that works to improve global access to theses and dissertations - DART-Europe http://www.dart-europe.eu/About/info.php

Its mission somewhat overlaps with the work of the OSI group.

Joan

-------

Joan K. Lippincott, Ph.D.

Associate Executive Director

Coalition for Networked Information

21 Dupont Circle, Suite 800

Washington, DC  20036

202-296-5098

202-872-0886 (Fax)

jo...@cni.org

www.cni.org

On Sep 29, 2017, at 11:17 AM, Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org> wrote:

Hi Rob, Everyone,

 

Pasted below my signature is the open spectrum framework proposal from OSI2016 and the amended proposal from OSI2017.  At its core, this framework is called DART, which stands for discoverability, accessibility, reusability, and transparency. The 2017 group recommended adding “sustainability” as an important additional metric. Here’s a graphic showing the “spectrum” for the first four of these (I haven’t created one yet with the new sustainability measure included):

 

<image002.jpg>

 

One of the benefits of adopting this approach---please see the reports for the fine grain details because this is a bit general---would be to stop talking about green this and gold that and just focus on seeing where scholarship exists on this spectrum by institution, country, discipline, etc., and then seeing (hopefully more clearly) where we need to focus to do more and do better. The OSI2017 Standards Workgroup, in fact, went so far as to propose that OSI adopt this approach:

 

Proposed: The Opens Scholarship Initiative envisions a scholarly community where all parts of the research lifecycle are openly available. In order to achieve this vision, OSI adopts the following principles in order to evaluate policy proposals and actions: research products must be made more Discoverable, Accessible, Reusable, Transparent, and Sustainably supported. Policies that increase openness among one or more of these dimensions, while having no net decrease on any other, are aligned with the mission and purpose of OSI delegates and member institutions.

 

Best,

 

Glenn

 

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

<image001.jpg>

<image002.jpg>

Versions; Open licensing to enable reuse and innovation. Open peer review. Best practices proposed by COPDESShttp://www.copdess.org/copdess-suggested-author-instructions-and-best-practices-for-journals/

[Rick Anderson]

> The _wording_ of those definitions different; I can't think of single _substantive_

> difference between them... Can you?

Yup.

Berlin says that OA means access is free and the content is hosted in a repository maintained by an institution dedicated to promoting OA. However, it doesn’t say that OA means either deposit or access must be immediate. It requires the assignment of most (but not all) copyright prerogatives to the public “for any responsible purpose.”

Bethesda’s definition is similar, but it requires immediate deposit—though it does not require immediate access.

Budapest says access must eventually be free, but requires no timeframe for either deposit or access. It requires that the author assign all copyright prerogatives to the public except for those that “give authors control over the integrity of their work” and the “right to be properly acknowledged and cited.” This definition says that OA is only real if it’s provided by a repository, but (unlike the other two) leaves open the question of what constitutes an acceptable repository.

All three of these definitions contrast with the SPARC and SPARC Europe definitions, which say that OA is only real OA when both deposit and access are immediate and when all copyright prerogatives are assigned to the public. It also departs from them in not making deposit in any kind of repository an essential element of OA—instead, it cites the repository as one of several “primary mechanisms” for providing OA.

So which of these is the “universally accepted” definition of OA, any departure from which is an expression of either “ignorance” or “deliberate obfuscation”? Is OA only real if it’s housed in a repository (as per Budapest, Berlin, Barcelona), or can access be OA if it’s hosted by a commercial publisher (as per SPARC)? Is OA only real if it’s immediate (as per Bethesda and SPARC) or can it still be OA if there’s some kind of embargo (as per Budapest and Berlin)? Does OA require CC-BY licensing or the equivalent (as per SPARC), or can it still be OA if the author retains some exclusive reuse rights (as per Budapest, Berlin, and Bethesda—though they don’t entirely agree as to which rights the author may exclusively retain)?

[Glenn Hampson]

LOL. Thanks for the comic relief Mike. I think everyone on the planet will agree with you that open access will never mean "free to read on one continent." So yes---absolutely---if your concern is that "regional OA" is being described as "OA, but just for a region," then I agree with you. There needs to be a different term for this type of access---maybe regional access? But then there are plenty of institutions that offer their own flavors of RA as well---accessible only to researchers in an institution or network, for instance (IA, NA). Is there an umbrella concept for all this---maybe local access (LA)?

-----Original Message-----
From: osi20...@googlegroups.com [mailto:osi20...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Mike Taylor

Sent: Friday, September 29, 2017 9:26 AM
To: Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu>
Cc: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>; rob.johnson <rob.j...@research-consulting.com>; The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Working towards a transition to open access

[Rick Anderson]

That sounds right to me. I do think it would be misleading to say “available for a fee” means “completely closed.” To my mind, “completely closed” would mean “completely unavailable to the general public.”

 

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

Desk: (801) 587-9989

Cell: (801) 721-1687

rick.a...@utah.edu

 

From: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Date: Friday, September 29, 2017 at 10:30 AM
To: Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu>, "'rob.johnson'" <rob.j...@research-consulting.com>, 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: Working towards a transition to open access

 

You tell me! You invented this! 😊 (You and Seth Denbo, Susan Haigh, Steven Hill, Martin Kalfatovic, Roy Kaufman, Catherine Murray-Rust, Kathleen Shearer, Dick Wilder, and Alicia Wise). Reading your description, though, it looks like you wrapped costs into the “accessibility” scale---so free stuff is more accessible than paywalled. However, there are other attributes baked into your accessibility scale as well like downloadability and embargo length (maybe we’ll need to think in terms of subscales to this spectrum so these different elements can be teased out). So by this, “completely closed” might mean a paper document in a government file box, not a downloadable document on a website (even if it’s paywalled or restricted to certain people). Correct-ish?

 

From: osi20...@googlegroups.com [mailto:osi20...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Rick Anderson
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2017 8:59 AM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>; 'rob.johnson' <rob.j...@research-consulting.com>; 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Working towards a transition to open access

 

One question, Glenn: in the rubric below, does “completely closed” mean “inaccessible to the public,” or does it mean “accessible only for a fee”?

 

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

Desk: (801) 587-9989

Cell: (801) 721-1687

rick.a...@utah.edu

 

From: <osi20...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Date: Friday, September 29, 2017 at 9:18 AM
To: "'rob.johnson'" <rob.j...@research-consulting.com>, 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: Working towards a transition to open access

 

Hi Rob, Everyone,

 

Pasted below my signature is the open spectrum framework proposal from OSI2016 and the amended proposal from OSI2017.  At its core, this framework is called DART, which stands for discoverability, accessibility, reusability, and transparency. The 2017 group recommended adding “sustainability” as an important additional metric. Here’s a graphic showing the “spectrum” for the first four of these (I haven’t created one yet with the new sustainability measure included):

 

 

One of the benefits of adopting this approach---please see the reports for the fine grain details because this is a bit general---would be to stop talking about green this and gold that and just focus on seeing where scholarship exists on this spectrum by institution, country, discipline, etc., and then seeing (hopefully more clearly) where we need to focus to do more and do better. The OSI2017 Standards Workgroup, in fact, went so far as to propose that OSI adopt this approach:

 

Proposed: The Opens Scholarship Initiative envisions a scholarly community where all parts of the research lifecycle are openly available. In order to achieve this vision, OSI adopts the following principles in order to evaluate policy proposals and actions: research products must be made more Discoverable, Accessible, Reusable, Transparent, and Sustainably supported. Policies that increase openness among one or more of these dimensions, while having no net decrease on any other, are aligned with the mission and purpose of OSI delegates and member institutions.

 

Best,

 

Glenn

 

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

2320 N 137th Street | Seattle, WA 98133
(206) 417-3607 | gham...@nationalscience.org | nationalscience.org

 

 

 

From: osi20...@googlegroups.com [mailto:osi20...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Mike Taylor
Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2017 3:15 PM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Cc: Robert Kiley <r.k...@wellcome.ac.uk>; Toby....@oecd.org; g.h...@elsevier.com; The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Working towards a transition to open access

 

There is much to like here for an OA advocate. I particularly like, and agree with, the observation that "the primary reason to transition to gold open access should not be to save money ... but that it would be better for research and scholarship."

 

However ... I worry about the misuse of the terms Green OA _and_ OA itself in this article.

 

You define Green OA as "making a version of the subscription article widely available after a time delay or embargo period", but this is simply not what the term means. What marks out Gold from Green is that the former is provided by a publisher (often though not necessarily in exchange for a fee) while the latter is provided by the author or her institution. There is no delay inherent in Green OA.

 

Gold OA does have advantages over Green, not least the simplicity of there being only one version of the published article out there; but immediate access is not one of them.

 

And then this: "one possible first step for Europe to explore would be to enable European articles to be available gold open access within Europe and green open access outside of Europe." There is no such thing as "gold open access within Europe". The term "open access" means and has always meant (going right back to the BOAI) "free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers". Something is OA to the world or not OA at all.

 

We will all make better progress if we use terms correctly.

 

-- Mike.

 

On 28 September 2017 at 19:36, Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org> wrote:

Hi Robert,

 

I don’t know---Gemma? And just to be clear, I’m not endorsing this particular idea FWIW---I’m just saying that it’s interesting and original and one of many ideas we should discuss with regard to thinking through pros and cons, collaborations, ways to make ideas work better, or reasons why some ideas should never see the light of day. This is a unique forum---we’re going to try using it more this year and next (this listserv might not be the best place for this kind of increased back and forth, granted, since about a third of OSI participants want to see less email, so please stay tuned for the new communication tools I promised, maybe starting next week).

 

Best,

 

Glenn

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
National Science Communication Institute (nSCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

[Glenn Hampson]

Or (and you're probably not going to like this Mike), maybe going in the other direction is also a possibility and thinking in terms of concepts like:

Global OA (GOA)
Regional OA (ROA)
Local OA (LOA)
Etc.

DOA?

I'm not sure what purpose this would serve but it might be another way to look at the regional OA concept---i.e., that rather than being lesers forms of OA, they are just different and as yet undefined forms (but in any case, as you note, they aren't all just "OA"). Maybe these variants serve as a bridge to help get us from local to global? For instance, as per Rob's suggestion about the UN (and Rick's email about the costs), maybe regional strata help clarify that a country or region can provide subsidies to get to the ROA stage, but that it's really the UN's role to provide subsidies to get from the ROA to the GOA stage?

Just thinking out loud 'cause I know you all love getting emails from me...

-----Original Message-----
From: Glenn Hampson [mailto:gham...@nationalscience.org]

Sent: Friday, September 29, 2017 9:45 AM
To: 'Mike Taylor' <mi...@indexdata.com>; 'Rick Anderson' <rick.a...@utah.edu>
Cc: 'rob.johnson' <rob.j...@research-consulting.com>; 'The Open Scholarship Initiative' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: Working towards a transition to open access

LOL. Thanks for the comic relief Mike. I think everyone on the planet will agree with you that open access will never mean "free to read on one continent." So yes---absolutely---if your concern is that "regional OA" is being described as "OA, but just for a region," then I agree with you. There needs to be a different term for this type of access---maybe regional access? But then there are plenty of institutions that offer their own flavors of RA as well---accessible only to researchers in an institution or network, for instance (IA, NA). Is there an umbrella concept for all this---maybe local access (LA)?


-----Original Message-----

From: osi20...@googlegroups.com [mailto:osi20...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Mike Taylor

Sent: Friday, September 29, 2017 9:26 AM
To: Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu>
Cc: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>; rob.johnson <rob.j...@research-consulting.com>; The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Working towards a transition to open access

[Mike Taylor]

Just call them something other than OA, and we can have a sensible
conversation about their merits and drawbacks.

-- Mike.


On 29 September 2017 at 18:04, Glenn Hampson

[Glenn Hampson]

Certainly works for me (although the group will need to decide this), but certainly for the sake of conversation. So if we drop the "o" and just call these concepts global access (GA), regional access (RA), local access (LA), etc., what are the merits and drawbacks?

-----Original Message-----
From: osi20...@googlegroups.com [mailto:osi20...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Mike Taylor

Sent: Friday, September 29, 2017 10:06 AM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>

[Rick Anderson]

I think the drawback is that it suggests access is only actually available on a regional, local, etc. basis – whereas in many cases, access will be available globally to anyone willing/able to pay for it. (Is that right? I may be misunderstanding, though I promise that I’m not deliberately obfuscating...)

---
Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication
Marriott Library, University of Utah
Desk: (801) 587-9989
Cell: (801) 721-1687
rick.a...@utah.edu

[Glenn Hampson]

Isn't this a condition that already exists though?---maybe not on the scale Gemma described, but certainly on a network scale, for instance, where only researchers in a particular network are allowed to access data? So already, this is a condition that needs to be taken into account in your DARTS model, correct? Or are we just giving a new name to a condition you've already considered? Sorry---don't mean to put you on the spot here.

I'm not suggesting it wouldn't be a drawback to expand this throttling concept to continents---just wondering if this concept already exists and that this is just a new and broader (geographically) variation on it.

[Rick Anderson]

If there really is a class of information that is entirely restricted on a regional or local basis, then the terms “regional access” and “local access” definitely make sense for that class of info. I only worry about those terms if they incorrectly imply complete restriction in cases where access is actually available to anyone who’s willing/able to pay for it.

---
Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication
Marriott Library, University of Utah
Desk: (801) 587-9989
Cell: (801) 721-1687
rick.a...@utah.edu

[Glenn Hampson]

I don't know (offhand) of any examples of regional access restrictions on the type of information we're considering---maybe that's where the whole pros and cons argument needs to focus. There are, of course, regional info sharing networks built specifically for science---like RedCLARA, for instance---that only connect research institutions in Latin America. Is this arrangement restrictive (i.e., the fact that the US and EU can't get in)? And restrictions within research networks (especially clinical research) are also very common, as are institutional restrictions in industry, government and non-university research institutions. So this "class" of restricted info might already exist. Or maybe not---maybe these are apples, oranges and pears.

[Toby....@oecd.org]

Gemma,

As Mike says, I think we must be vary careful with words. You say subscription journals ‘support’ green OA. This suggests they make a positive contribution to this model. I’m not sure everyone would agree.

Green OA has emerged because subscription journals limit access to the versions of record and, in order to free up access to this content for non-subscribers, stakeholders have had to build a parallel repository system. Therefore, one could see repositories as a workaround that makes another version of an article available, free of charge, the cost being borne by whoever runs the repository. The need to work around subscription journals and the additional costs entailed to create green OA doesn’t sound a positive thing. 

So, in the case of green OA perhaps it might be better set aside value judgements and write, “what marks out gold OA from green OA is the business model: green comprises two in parallel, subscription journals and repositories; while gold is a single model”. 

There is, of course, another model which would make the content free to read for non-subscribers without the need for repositories - freemium open access. If it were used, then it would be accurate to write “What marks out gold OA from freemium OA is the business model: freemium is supported by the subscription model, gold is not.”

Toby

Toby Green

Public Affairs and Communications Directorate

OECD

Winner The Academic and Professional Publisher Award 2017

<image001.jpg>

[Holland, Claudia]

I just have to say it. . . the thought of regional, national, local or otherwise restricting access to research makes my brain boil. What in the world have we been working toward all this time to even entertain such an idea?

Claudia

[Rick Anderson]

I’m not sure anyone is proposing that such restrictions be imposed – I think the suggestion is that such restrictions already exist, and we need a way of referring to them.

I may be totally misunderstanding how this conversation started, though.

---
Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication
Marriott Library, University of Utah
Desk: (801) 587-9989
Cell: (801) 721-1687
rick.a...@utah.edu

[Glenn Hampson]

Hi Claudia,

I think that's right, Rick---just kicking the tires here. Gemma (thank you by the way) circulated her article that touched on Elsevier's new regional OA concept and invited feedback from the group (Gemma---sorry for paraphrasing; your article was about more than this). Mike, Toby and Robert objected to calling regional OA open access at all, so we're dropping that reference here and just calling it regional access. And then the suggestion was where else does this kind of limited access already exist so we can see how/where this concept fits into the open spectrum. It already exists in research networks, some international networks, and of course in private industry and many non-university research locations, but I think the question to the group is whether this is all fits into the same bucket or whether we're looking at this all wrong. And then of course, what are the pros/cons of regional access? Could it be a bridge to getting UN funding for more global access (as Rob suggests)? For getting more limited networks connected to the global grid? For transitioning to more open? Or do the potential cons/abuses outweigh the positives?

Hope this helps,

Glenn

[Joyce Ogburn]

I am bypassing emails that created a long trail since this email because I want to us this email to remind people that there are other open spectra, such as SPARC HowOpenIsIt: https://sparcopen.org/our-work/howopenisit/

Also: http://www.oaspectrum.org/?source=%7B%22query%22%3A%7B%22match_all%22%3A%7B%7D%7D%2C%22sort%22%3A%5B%7B%22total%22%3A%7B%22order%22%3A%22desc%22%7D%7D%5D%2C%22from%22%3A0%2C%22size%22%3A10%7D

Joyce

Joyce L. Ogburn

Appalachian State University

218 College Street

Boone NC 28608-2026

Lifelong learning requires lifelong access 

E: rob.johnson@research-consulting.com

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^[1] http://osinitiative.org/osi-reports/osi2016-reports/report-from-the-what-is-open-workgroup/

^[2] https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Yk_tu4blfkJpPHyfIt9uuCF8jVXvoNDhdmhjTNSnTGM/edit?usp=sharing

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[Glenn Hampson]

Thanks Joyce,

 

This is helpful information. I’m attaching the SPARC “How Open Is It?” pdf here. It seems to me anyway (if I’m reading this right) that the fundamental distinction between this approach and the DARTS approach is that with the SPARC approach, if you fail any of the six tests (reader rights, reuse rights, etc.) your product is not considered truly open. This brochure, therefore, is a user guide to recognizing what is and is not open.

 

The DARTS approach, on the other hand, posits that open exists on a spectrum and that some products will be more open than others.

 

Maybe the team that rolls out the final version of the DARTS approach can glean some good info from this SPARC brochure, though, and also other approaches that are no doubt out there somewhere.

 

Best,

 

Glenn

 

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

2320 N 137th Street | Seattle, WA 98133
(206) 417-3607 | gham...@nationalscience.org | nationalscience.org

 

 

 

From: osi20...@googlegroups.com [mailto:osi20...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Joyce Ogburn
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2017 5:06 PM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Cc: rob.johnson <rob.j...@research-consulting.com>; The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Working towards a transition to open access

 

I am bypassing emails that created a long trail since this email because I want to us this email to remind people that there are other open spectra, such as SPARC HowOpenIsIt: https://sparcopen.org/our-work/howopenisit/

 

Also: http://www.oaspectrum.org/?source=%7B%22query%22%3A%7B%22match_all%22%3A%7B%7D%7D%2C%22sort%22%3A%5B%7B%22total%22%3A%7B%22order%22%3A%22desc%22%7D%7D%5D%2C%22from%22%3A0%2C%22size%22%3A10%7D

 

Joyce

E: rob.j...@research-consulting.com

---

^[1] http://osinitiative.org/osi-reports/osi2016-reports/report-from-the-what-is-open-workgroup/

^[2] https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Yk_tu4blfkJpPHyfIt9uuCF8jVXvoNDhdmhjTNSnTGM/edit?usp=sharing

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[Joyce Ogburn]

I just linked through to note 1 in what Glenn sent us and there was an acknowledgement to these two sources.

While I am writing again, though, let me note that DART doesn't fully encompass the BOAI definition because reuse is not defined to include these two elements: "crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software." CC-BY doesn't make this explicit. Machine-readable and processable is an essential to research. 

DART also refers to the TOP guidelines, which are in themselves a kind of spectrum, using levels. 

If DART is to be used we might want to re-examine the definitions to see if they capture everything intended or considered relevant today (and going forward). For example, transparency could include revealing the source of funding which is not in TOP or the DART definition. 

Joyce

Joyce L. Ogburn

Appalachian State University

218 College Street

Boone NC 28608-2026

Lifelong learning requires lifelong access 

[Joyce Ogburn]

Our replies crossed in the ether. One other note, it could be better to refer to a matrix rather than a spectrum since that allows for anything being evaluated to exist in different states rather than a linear progression.

Joyce

Joyce L. Ogburn

Appalachian State University

218 College Street

Boone NC 28608-2026

Lifelong learning requires lifelong access 

E: rob.johnson@research-consulting.com

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[Glenn Hampson]

Absolutely agreed on revaluating and modifying DARTS to make sure it’s up-to-date and complete and that everyone in OSI gets a chance weigh in on it---that’s going to be crucial. With regard to the matrix idea, the Standards report from OSI2017 does indeed suggest using a matrix to help visualize new open standards (they acknowledge this roadmap is still very nascent); a matrix would probably also work well for DARTS but not might be as visually catchy (the spectrum could boil down to a color shade or a series of numbers). Just a thought---lots to think about.

 

Thanks Joyce,

 

Glenn

Our replies crossed in the ether. One other note, it could be better to refer to a matrix rather than a spectrum since that allows for anything being evaluated to exist in different states rather than a linear progression.

 

Joyce

E: rob.j...@research-consulting.com

---

^[1] http://osinitiative.org/osi-reports/osi2016-reports/report-from-the-what-is-open-workgroup/

^[2] https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Yk_tu4blfkJpPHyfIt9uuCF8jVXvoNDhdmhjTNSnTGM/edit?usp=sharing

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[Hersh, Gemma (ELS-LOW)]

Hi Toby

 

There is a subtle but important difference in what I wrote and what you have repeated below. I made no value judgment about the benefit(s) of the subscription model but clarified that green OA is not supported by a separate business model for article publishing in the way that gold is. In the absence of a separate business model, it follows that green OA needs to operate alongside the subscription publishing model as there is no other revenue stream to support the publication of articles being made openly available (in your example, via repositories). I would also challenge the suggestion implicit in your comments below that green OA requires a parallel, costly repository system. Repositories do play an important role in green OA, that is clear, but there are ways of making green OA more effective and efficient. CHORUS is an excellent example of this as are the partnerships Elsevier has with institutional repositories such as U Florida and U Qatar.

 

There is clearly a lot more to this whole discussion and Glenn, the spectrum you have circulated looks interesting. I’ll take a look at this and look forward to continuing the conversation with everyone.

 

Best wishes

Gemma

[Glenn Hampson]

Hi Gemma,

 

Yes---clearly a whole lot more here. And to Danny’s point (following up on Mike’s point), there’s clearly a need for more clarity and consistency here. Honestly--- take a step back and look at this OSI group: hundreds of the most knowledgeable scholcomm people on the planet are receiving this email, and even amongst yourselves there’s disagreement about what these terms mean and/or should mean. What hope is there that a scholcomm communications officer at the University of JustTryingToDoTheRightThing is going to know how to interpret all this? Developing a MUCH clearer message is going to be critical----it seems you guys were all spot on with that recommendation from OSI2016 and OSI2017. Maybe this is where a DARTS-like model can help.

 

And food for thought (maybe): As this space continues to evolve, how useful are all these distinctions anyway---green this, hybrid that, orange, purple, delayed, etc.? Does it really matter (except to an economist or an industry analyst) by what path material is becoming open, as long as it gets there? I know it matters to this group because this is your business, but does it need to matter to the customer? It seems to me anyway---and this may just be due to not enough coffee yet---that as more options evolves, this already complicated coding scheme is going to get ridiculously (and unnecessarily) more complicated. So, finding a better way to describe this (and/or shifting our focus away from worrying so much about describing it) might be helpful as we try to promote open. Maybe.

 

Happy Sunday. Go _____ (fill in your favorite football team name)! I’ll reply to the data management thread on Monday.

 

Best,

 

Glenn

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)

Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

[David Wojick]

Hi Gemma,

In order to begin to assess the costs and benefits of a regional OA model (ROA?) we may need to first know, or think, more about it. Am I correct that the basic idea is that the entire content of a journal would be freely open within some region or regions, but sold by subscription everywhere else?

As an aside, it strikes me that this is a spatial analog to the embargoed access model, where the content is free at certain times but not others.

It seems that the most likely regions would be nations or groups thereof, as they are most likely to pay for regional access. Who else might want to is an interesting question. But there may be a rich versus poor issue here.

Given that OA is seen as a public good it makes some sense that governments should pay for it. The people as a whole, as it were, rather than just readers, universities or authors. It does however make subscription a policy decision, hence political. Among other concerns this introduces a well known element of volatility. This could make pricing difficult.

One interesting prospect is that countries might see OA as a competitive advantage, or even a necessity. If there were a resulting race to subscribe this might well break the present logjam, where many nations are going green rather than gold.

I have to wonder about the technical feasibility of keeping reads and downloads within the country that pays. Is that really possible given how the Internet works? If so how expensive is the process? Can small journals and publishers afford it?

There is certainly a lot to consider. The above is just a small start.

My best to all,

David

http://insidepublicaccess.com/

[David Wojick]

Ambiguity alert! In my paragraphs 4 & 5 by subscription I mean paying for regional OA, while in para 1 I use the term to mean present day individual subscriptions. Perhaps the term ROA subscription is needed.

David

[Hersh, Gemma (ELS-LOW)]

Hi David

 

You raise many excellent and important questions, all of which would need to be worked through if this was something of serious interest.  I would add however (as I have the floor, not because you implied otherwise) that any model – including the two we touch on – will need to address the broader points we explore in the article: how to make any model workable in a world where there is no unified approach to OA. Some questions that flow from this include: how do stakeholders manage the structural challenge that means needing to subscribe if you want access to content publishing by non-gold OA countries?  How do factors such as how much you publish relative to how much you consume impact whether any model is financially viable now and in the future? How do we reach a shared view about realistic costs, which would include recognising that APCs will likely need to increase in the future? And of course, who pays?

 

This area is complex and nuanced and important, which is why it can only really be worked through in close dialogue. This articles doesn’t have the answers – nor does it suggest one single model as the future - but suggests a basis for further discussion.

 

Best wishes

Gemma

[Rick Anderson]

> As this space continues to evolve, how useful are all these distinctions

> anyway---green this, hybrid that, orange, purple, delayed, etc.? Does it

> really matter (except to an economist or an industry analyst) by what

> path material is becoming open, as long as it gets there?

 

I think it does matter, and I think at least some of these distinctions are important, for several reasons. Among them:

 

1. There’s still wide disagreement on what “there” (i.e. “open”) is. Perhaps the most significant continuing disagreement is about reuse rights: is an article “open” if it’s made available under any terms more restrictive than a CC BY license? Some say yes, some say no, and the implications of that disagreement are pretty significant, both for authors and for readers.

 

2. A distinction between unembargoed and embargoed access is going to matter a lot to the reading customer, because embargoes have a direct impact on the customer’s access to the content.

 

3. A distinction between APC-funded Gold OA and institutionally-funded Gold OA is going to matter a lot to the author (who is also a customer), for obvious reasons.

 

4. Questions about what constitutes genuine OA will grow in importance as funders continue to make OA provision a condition of future funding. The Gates Foundation, for example, cares a lot about what constitutes “real” OA, and its decision has a concrete impact on the researchers who rely on that foundation for funding. (Same goes for the Wellcome Trust, the Ford Foundation, etc.) The fact that US government funders require “public access” rather than “open access” represents a terminological distinction that has significant real-world impacts on researchers and on the people who access the funded scholarship.

 

I do think it’s possible to get too far into the weeds with terminology, but that doesn’t mean that terminology doesn’t matter. Words are the only tools we have for discussing these issues, and words are much less useful if we don’t agree on what they mean.

[Glenn Hampson]

I agree with you Rick that all of this matters and should matter to the people working to make the changes. I guess my concern is that from a marketing perspective, this isn’t the kind of information that should go on our open access “sales brochures” (i.e., the resources we’ll be developing as a group). If our goal is to put together a program that really moves the needle on open, then eyes are going to glaze over with all these details. It’s like the fine print in the drug commercial that the announcer reads monotone and real fast (“side effects may include….not all patients will experience…see your doctor…”). If---and this is a big if---our intention is to start getting a lot more information out of hiding and onto the OA spectrum, this approach would involve, figuratively, throwing open the stadium doors, filling the seats with excited customers and then working to explain what’s involved in getting to the next level (working to make everything more open through education, incentives, resources, competition, and so on) instead of screening out half the audience at the door because they believe in embargos, or a different kind of copyright, or public instead of open access.

 

Does this make sense? Lots of mixed metaphors here.

 

Best,

 

Glenn

 

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

2320 N 137th Street | Seattle, WA 98133
(206) 417-3607 | gham...@nationalscience.org | nationalscience.org

 

 

 

From: osi20...@googlegroups.com [mailto:osi20...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Rick Anderson
Sent: Monday, October 2, 2017 7:51 AM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>; 'Hersh, Gemma (ELS-LOW)' <g.h...@elsevier.com>; Toby....@oecd.org
Cc: mi...@indexdata.com; r.k...@wellcome.ac.uk; osi20...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Working towards a transition to open access

 

> As this space continues to evolve, how useful are all these distinctions

--

[Rick Anderson]

Hi, Glenn –

 

I definitely agree that our communications need to be tailored to our various audiences – we’re not going to get equally far into the weeds of terminology with everyone we communicate with. However, it’s important that in the event someone (anyone) does ask us a basic and reasonable question like “Wait a minute, what do you guys mean when you say ‘open access’?”, we have an answer ready. And it should probably be an answer with which everyone formally affiliated with OSI agrees -- or at least one that we have explicitly accepted as a provisional answer for OSI’s purposes.

 

(If we want to be taken seriously, we probably can’t have a situation where one OSI delegate says “When OSI says ‘open access’ we mean X” and another says “When OSI says ‘open access’ we mean Y.”)

 

---

Rick Anderson

Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication

Marriott Library, University of Utah

Desk: (801) 587-9989

Cell: (801) 721-1687

rick.a...@utah.edu

 

From: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Date: Monday, October 2, 2017 at 9:58 AM
To: Rick Anderson <rick.a...@utah.edu>, "'Hersh, Gemma (ELS-LOW)'" <g.h...@elsevier.com>, "Toby....@oecd.org" <Toby....@oecd.org>
Cc: "mi...@indexdata.com" <mi...@indexdata.com>, "r.k...@wellcome.ac.uk" <r.k...@wellcome.ac.uk>, "osi20...@googlegroups.com" <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: Working towards a transition to open access

 

I agree with you Rick that all of this matters and should matter to the people working to make the changes. I guess my concern is that from a marketing perspective, this isn’t the kind of information that should go on our open access “sales brochures” (i.e., the resources we’ll be developing as a group). If our goal is to put together a program that really moves the needle on open, then eyes are going to glaze over with all these details. It’s like the fine print in the drug commercial that the announcer reads monotone and real fast (“side effects may include….not all patients will experience…see your doctor…”). If---and this is a big if---our intention is to start getting a lot more information out of hiding and onto the OA spectrum, this approach would involve, figuratively, throwing open the stadium doors, filling the seats with excited customers and then working to explain what’s involved in getting to the next level (working to make everything more open through education, incentives, resources, competition, and so on) instead of screening out half the audience at the door because they believe in embargos, or a different kind of copyright, or public instead of open access.

 

Does this make sense? Lots of mixed metaphors here.

 

Best,

 

Glenn

 

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

[David Wojick]

Hi Gemma,

My interest is public policy so I will just focus on that aspect. (To which end I have snipped off most of the preceding messages.) I agree that it is complex, but perhaps not nuanced, as nuanced public policy is probably an oxymoron. Congress is never nuanced.

As you point out, the EU is going gold while the US has gone green. The result is a policy mess. On reflection is strikes me that ROA might be very attractive politically, which makes it a realistic solution. As they say, all politics is local, so I can see both the US and EU opting to make scientific literature free to their respective peoples, perhaps simply to promote economic development. If that happened most countries would likely follow.

As for cost, if the total publishing cost were something like today's ($10 billion?) and that were spread among the nations of the world, or even just the wealthier ones, the per nation cost would be virtually negligible.

My IT Dept. (and wife) tells me that this sort of thing is already the rule in streaming videos. So it looks technically feasible, although I do not yet know what the cost factors might be.

The request to Congress would probably have to come from the research libraries, which are presently paying most of the subscription bills. Same for the EU, etc. I think the argument for national OA looks good on paper. As a breakthrough it could happen pretty quickly, say in 5 - 10 years.

How does this sound?

Good luck,

David

At 10:14 AM 10/2/2017, you wrote:

Hi David
 
You raise many excellent and important questions, all of which would need to be worked through if this was something of serious interest.  I would add however (as I have the floor, not because you implied otherwise) that any model – including the two we touch on – will need to address the broader pointts we explore in the article: how to make any model workable in a world where there is no unified approach to OA. Some questions that flow from this include: how do stakeholders manage the structural challenge that means needing to subscribe if you want access to content publishing by non-gold OA countries?  How do factors such as how much you publish relative to how much you consume impact whether any model is financially viable now and in the future? How do we reach a shared view about realistic costs, which would include recognising that APCs will likely need to increase in the future? And of course, who pays?
 
This area is complex and nuanced and important, which is why it can only really be worked through in close dialogue. This articles doesn’t have the answers – nor does it suggest one single model as the future - but suggests a basis for further discussion.

[Glenn Hampson]

Yes---agreed. Looking forward to what the task force on this comes up with.

[Joyce Ogburn]

There is also a temporal dimension to openness that isn’t captured unless we are going to use these tools going forward, starting at some identified point  everything before that point might be coded differently because of various circumstances due to different policies, technology, support, etc.

Joyce 

Sent from my iPad

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2320 N 137th Street | Seattle, WA 98133
(206) 417-3607 | gham...@nationalscience.org | nationalscience.org

 

 

 

From: osi20...@googlegroups.com [mailto:osi20...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Joyce Ogburn
Sent: Friday, September 29, 2017 5:06 PM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Cc: rob.johnson <rob.j...@research-consulting.com>; The Open Scholarship Initiative <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Working towards a transition to open access

 

I am bypassing emails that created a long trail since this email because I want to us this email to remind people that there are other open spectra, such as SPARC HowOpenIsIt: https://sparcopen.org/our-work/howopenisit/

 

Also: http://www.oaspectrum.org/?source=%7B%22query%22%3A%7B%22match_all%22%3A%7B%7D%7D%2C%22sort%22%3A%5B%7B%22total%22%3A%7B%22order%22%3A%22desc%22%7D%7D%5D%2C%22from%22%3A0%2C%22size%22%3A10%7D

 

Joyce

Joyce L. Ogburn

Appalachian State University

218 College Street

Boone NC 28608-2026

 

Lifelong learning requires lifelong access 

 

On Fri, Sep 29, 2017 at 11:17 AM, Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org> wrote:

Hi Rob, Everyone,

 

Pasted below my signature is the open spectrum framework proposal from OSI2016 and the amended proposal from OSI2017.  At its core, this framework is called DART, which stands for discoverability, accessibility, reusability, and transparency. The 2017 group recommended adding “sustainability” as an important additional metric. Here’s a graphic showing the “spectrum” for the first four of these (I haven’t created one yet with the new sustainability measure included):

 

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One of the benefits of adopting this approach---please see the reports for the fine grain details because this is a bit general---would be to stop talking about green this and gold that and just focus on seeing where scholarship exists on this spectrum by institution, country, discipline, etc., and then seeing (hopefully more clearly) where we need to focus to do more and do better. The OSI2017 Standards Workgroup, in fact, went so far as to propose that OSI adopt this approach:

 

Proposed: The Opens Scholarship Initiative envisions a scholarly community where all parts of the research lifecycle are openly available. In order to achieve this vision, OSI adopts the following principles in order to evaluate policy proposals and actions: research products must be made more Discoverable, Accessible, Reusable, Transparent, and Sustainably supported. Policies that increase openness among one or more of these dimensions, while having no net decrease on any other, are aligned with the mission and purpose of OSI delegates and member institutions.

 

Best,

 

Glenn

 

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)

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