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Open Access Pt. III: How to make your work more open
Elizabeth Johnston
Former Graduate Academic Assistant, UBC Library & UBC Learning Exchange
MLIS graduate, UBC iSchool
So, we heard that you’re actively looking for more ways to make your work more accessible! This is music to our ears, and we’re hoping that soon enough this will be the way that all research is published. We’ve put together this news post to answer the big and little questions that you might have about the wild, wonderful world of Open Access. If you don’t see the answer to your question here, feel free to contact us at mrai.info@ubc.ca. Or you might want to read one of our previous posts in this series introducing Open Access and its history.
Photo by Samuel Pagel via Unsplash.
What is Open Access? Why is it important?
I will take this moment to extend an advocacy branch your way. Like a many other things in life, publishing and academia sort of fall under the umbrella of “but we have always done it this way”, and changing these practices typically involves a real structural shift. Which is what the Open Access community is trying to do, along with the help of researchers like you! A big part of this change is making it clear to publishers that Open Access is a priority, and even more, taking back some of the power from these big publishing houses who are setting steep paywalls and holding onto the copyright of the articles within their journals. In a way, it is kind of like using your purchasing power; after all, it is your work.
How can I make my work and research more accessible?
The simple answer is self-archiving in an Open Access institutional repository, like UBC’s institutional repository, cIRcle, will ensure that your work is easily accessible online for the long-term. Institutional repositories are designed to showcase and preserve the work of their community partners, including faculty, students, and staff, and all content is freely available online to anyone, regardless of whether they are affiliated with the university. This is a great first step towards expanding the conversation around Open Access, however it does come with some limitations.
Don’t forget, you can always send your work related to the DTES to us here at the MRAi, or we will identify it and reach out to you. We can help you get your work in cIRcle and also the RAP, where it will be accessible to a much wider audience!
What are the limitations to self-archiving in a university repository?
The simple fact is that institution is still an institution, and there are certain barriers to access that go along with it. It is still a recommended practice, and it typically fulfills your publishing requirements if you have received a Tri-Council research grant. Aside from that, there are no fees associated with self-archiving, as all the publishing costs are covered by the existing subscriptions libraries pay to get access to the journal as a whole. Another critical thing to note here: the publisher determines whether or not you can self-archive into a repository without any copyright infringement. If it is allowed, there are usually a strict set of rules and regulations involved, such as waiting the duration of an embargo period, and only depositing a permissible version of your work, which is typically the manuscript and not the final published copy.
Are you a UBC affiliated researcher?
You might qualify for a discounted OA publishing rate! There are also some funds available for specific UBC faculties and will completely the cover the OA Article Processing Charge (or APC) fees. Other institutions also have similar funds to help support the publication of Open Access research, like this one from SFU.
I’ve seen several big-name journals offer Open Access options. What does this mean?
Within the established subscription-based publishing houses (like Elsevier, Taylor and Francis, etc), there is the option to make your work Open Access. You may have come across the terms: gold, hybrid, or green Open Access, which lets you choose the level of access depending on how much you would like to pay.
- Gold Open Access is the cherry on top, so to speak. It gives immediate Open Access to the published version of an article in an online journal and uses either a commercial or non-commercial user license. Since it is allowing access to the published version with all the final formatting and publisher insignia, this Gold pathway typically has a fee associated with it, which will vary from journal to journal. This is where grant money can really help, as the fees can sometimes be a bit costly.
- Green Open Access allows authors to self-archive manuscripts in institutional or independent repositories, but typically only after an embargo (wait) period. Notably, there is no fee associated with this as publishing costs are covered by existing library subscriptions.
- A hybrid model allows authors to pay a one-time fee to make a particular article Gold Open Access, even if the journal is typically subscription based (and thus not usually an Open Access model).
So, should I just choose one of these Open Access options?
You might be thinking, “the publishers don’t sound fantastic, but looks like they’re making some steps in the Open Access direction and have some really handy options for me to choose from.” You’re not wrong! It’s been a big shift to have the publishing powerhouses offer alternative pathways and start to change their ways. However, they are still subscription-based journals that charge libraries and other institutions hefty fees in order to get access to the contents within. So, it’s Open Access, but not equitable access. Breaking it down, university students pay money to the institution to attend classes, where they write papers to get on the academic path and then pay to get published in one of these journals, who then in turn charge the same institutions large amounts of money for the same academic community to have access to the articles that they are writing. It’s a broken wheel! While there are positive changes happening in the scholarly publishing industry, paying OA fees still largely maintains this “broken wheel” and doesn’t allow for a much larger structural shift to happen.
Other considerations
Whatever journal or publisher you go with isn’t always within your control, and the pressure to choose a high impact journal is real. However, there are certain ones that will automatically deposit articles into Open Access repositories (like PubMed Central) as part of their publishing mandate. These are great options! Where it gets tricky is that some publishers will only automatically deposit if the journal or the authors have paid an Open Access fee, so it is something to look out for.
Where should I be looking instead?
With that said, what you really want to keep an eye out for are Open Access journals who have open and equitable access at the core of their business model. They still charge a fee, which varies from journal to journal, and covers the cost of publication, peer review, production, online hosting and archiving. Now you may be thinking, why am I paying a fee for Open Access publishing? Isn’t the point to get rid of paywalls? Again, you’re not wrong…and hopefully one day this will no longer be the case, but until then, paying an Open Access fee through an Open Access journal ensures that the general public gets access to the final version of your article, helps to advance the aim and overall goal of Open Access in your field, and works to promote a better model of scholarly publishing. This is where grant money can come in handy again, and many of these OA journals offer publication fee assistance programs to help with funding.
Which journals are doing this already?
Journals like PLOS are a good example, here is a wiki link to a comprehensive list of all OA journals published by libraries. The main page is an Open Access Directory that provides information, everything from definitions to directories, about OA and is maintained by the OA community around the world. The Directory of Open Access Journals and Open DOAR are other great places to start.
A final note
Beyond publishing in OA journals, some other effective ways to advance openly accessible research is to hold onto your author manuscript. The author manuscript is still the one of the easiest items to make openly accessible, even if there is an embargo period involved. Secondly, consider writing infographics and plain language summaries. Academic writing is still important and necessary, but creating supplementary or additional items is a good way to make your work more accessible to a diverse audience. These infographics and plain language summaries share the key findings and principal message of your work in an easier to understand format. What’s more, these genres are often not restricted to the same copyright laws as full articles, and can be more easily distributed.
Where can I go to find out more information?
If you’re now curious about the possibilities and potential of Open Access, the Office of Scholarly Communication at UBC has a number of different resources available, as well as two librarians that can help answer your questions and navigate OA publishing. If you’re keen to learn more about the broader impact of Open Access, this short list of international advocacy organizations committed to making research more accessible is a good place to start: SPARC , BiomedCentral , Sherpa Romeo, and Plan S. We use and consult these sources regularly!
Thank you for joining us on this three-part series through the many different sides of Open Access, it’s a big field and it’s growing all the time! As it changes, so do we, and we’re always eager to learn and develop more ways of making research and information as widely accessible as possible. We hope that this series has inspired you to look a little more closely at publishers, ask questions of the status quo, and look for ways that you might challenge the system!
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Do you have questions or feedback about this article? Do you have an idea for the news section or suggestion for the collection? Please reach out to community engagement librarian Nick Ubels at nick.ubels@ubc.ca.
References:
Buranyi, S. (2017). Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science?. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science
Forgues, B. & Liarte, S. (2013). Academic Publishing: Past and Future. M@n@gement, 16, 739-756. https://doi.org/10.3917/mana.165.0739
Science Blog. (2027). Untangling academic publishing. https://blogs.bl.uk/science/2017/06/untangling-academic-publishing.html
TEDx Talks. (2019). Research culture is broken; Open science can fix it Rachael Ainsworth | TEDxMacclesfield. [Video]. Research Culture is Broken; Open Science can Fix It | Rachael Ainsworth | TEDxMacclesfield
