I am thinking about bringing a paper to the Macquarie University Senate on Open Access, the subject of an earlier blog.

A draft of this paper appears below. I would like your feedback. Have I missed anything? Can the paper be improved?

For more information on Open Access, you might like to consult this guide.

DRAFT - Open Access at Macquarie

Scholarly research is one of Macquarie’s most important contributions to society. As academics, we all have an interest in disseminating our work to the widest possible audience. Historically, the only way to do this was to publish papers in peer-reviewed journals. The publishers of prestigious academic journals - a combination of commercial organisations and learned societies - have exploited their monopoly position.

Consider this, we academics do the research and write the articles that appear in scholarly journals. We review articles, serve on editorial boards and work as editors. Almost all of our work is done for free. Publishers then sell us back our own work - and we pay whatever price they ask. Or, to be more precise, our libraries pay. Prestigious journals are essentially monopolies and they are priced accordingly. Subscriptions can cost thousands of dollars per year for a single title; some cost $20,000 for a one-year subscription. Libraries in developing countries find themselves unable to subscribe to many journals; even in wealthy countries, subscriptions are being trimmed.

The ridiculous cost of journals has had a pernicious effect on scholarly books. To pay for exorbitantly expensive subscriptions, libraries have cut back the number of monographs they buy. Because they cannot sell their books to libraries, scholarly presses have cut back the number of monographs they publish. The result is that scholars in many fields find it impossible to get their book published.

In the online era, there are better ways to maximise the impact of scholarly work. For example, earlier this year, academics at Harvard University voted unanimously to make their scholarly papers available on-line to anyone with an internet account. In June, Stanford followed.

The Harvard and Stanford decisions are the latest salvo in an international battle for “open access” to academic research. It follows in the spirit of last year’s American National Institutes of Health (NIH) move to open access. Specifically, investigators whose work is funded by NIH grants must submit journal articles that arise from their research to PubMed Central, a database maintained by the National Library of Medicine .

In the UK, researchers funded by the Wellcome Trust, a massive foundation for medically related research, are also required to place copies of their scholarly articles in PubMed Central. Last year, the European Research Council (ERC) mandated that all primary research data and research articles produced by ERC-funded researchers must be made available on open access.

Australian funding agencies have not yet mandated open access but they are certainly moving in that direction. The Australian Research Council (ARC) and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) require the investigators that it funds to make their data accessible in a publicly accessible database or explain why they haven’t. Funds have been made available to universities to develop their own on-line repositories. Once these are in place, stricter regulations can be expected.

Although much of the impetus for open access has come from science-based disciplines, the humanities are coming on board as well. Open Humanities Press is a gateway to seven on-line journals.

The free exchange of information is a bedrock academic value, one that is supported by open access.

It is time for Macquarie University to join the ranks of a growing number of universities worldwide as well as a growing number of funding councils (ARC, NIH, ERC) to mandate that our refereed research output be deposited (“self-archived”) in Macquarie University’s Institutional Repository.

At a minimum, the mandate will only require us to deposit our refereed, revised, final drafts in the Macquarie repository immediately after its acceptance for publication. The electronic copy will provide a record of our research and can be used for government audits, promotions, report generation, grant applications as well as other purposes. In other words, no other data collection will be necessary; no other tiresome forms will need to be completed.

Depositing an article in the repository is not the same as making it accessible to scholars around the world. Articles in the repository will not be automatically accessible to outsiders. The author will determine who has access. This is necessary because some journals have policies that prohibit open access (in some cases, only for an embargo period) and academics need to be flexible in what they make available. Thus, for articles published in journals that do not yet endorse Open Access, or who impose an embargo, access to the deposit can be set as Closed Access permanently or for the length of the embargo. Under Closed Access, only the author has access to the full text. The metadata (author, title, date, journal name, and so on) will still be visible to all users webwide.

In practice, journal policies may not prove to be a major problem. The great majority of scholarly journals do not object to making authors’ self-archived papers “Open Access” immediately. (For a database summarising the policies of most journals, see here). Note, however, that some journals only make the Open Access option available on authors’ request.

For those who wish to fulfill user needs during the Closed Access embargo period, the Macquarie repository will have an “Eprint Request” button. Anyone webwide can press the button to send an automatic Eprint request to the author. The author can click to send one individual Eprint to the requester. Researchers have used this practice for many years, originally with paper reprints. (To see how this works, see here.)

Bibliometric studies have demonstrated repeatedly that Open Access significantly increases the citation metrics of articles, as well as enhancing other metrics of research usage and impact, in all disciplines.

To make our scholarly work available to all scholars including those in developing countries and those without access to expensive library subscriptions, and to ensure that the University has a record of its scholarly output, Senate resolves to recommend that Council:

1. mandates that all refereed, revised, final draft manuscripts be deposited in the Macquarie repository after its acceptance for publication;

2. mandates that all journal article manuscripts be deposited in the repository but monographs will be self-archived at authors’ discretion;

3. requires that, where permissible, manuscripts be made Open Access, available to anyone on the web; and

4. permit, where necessary because of journal policy, or the author requests, manuscripts to be made Closed Access until dissemination is permitted.

Filed under: Macquarie University, Research, open access by Steven Schwartz