(→‎Reviews)
* This is the home page for my book, [http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/open-access ''Open Access''], MIT Press, June 2012. I use it for posting reviews, updates, supplements, and other notes. — [http://bit.ly/petersuber Peter Suber].
| style="background:orange; color:black" | This book is now itself OA. The book came out in mid-June 2012, and the OA editions came out one year later, right on schedule. [http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/open-access MIT Press released four OA editions], one in [http://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/9780262517638_Open_Access_PDF_Version.pdf PDF], one in [http://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/openaccess/Suber_05_toc.html HTML], one in [http://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/9780262517638_Open%20Access_ePUB_Version.epub ePub], and one in [http://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/9780262517638_Open_Access_Mobi_Version.mobi Mobi]. The paperback edition is still available as well. I'm working on my own OA edition of the book, which will incorporate my updates and supplements (below). When it's ready, I'll link to it from here. Watch this space.
* The book was released in June 2012 and became OA in June 2013, one year after publication. MIT Press itself hosts [http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/open-access four OA editions], in [http://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/9780262517638_Open_Access_PDF_Version.pdf PDF], [http://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/openaccess/Suber_05_toc.html HTML], [http://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/9780262517638_Open%20Access_ePUB_Version.epub ePub], and [http://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/content/9780262517638_Open_Access_Mobi_Version.mobi Mobi] (Kindle). The same editions are [http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:10752204 available in DASH] (Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard), and other places around the web. The Internet Archive hosts [http://archive.org/details/9780262517638OpenAccess eight OA editions], adding [http://archive.org/download/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access_daisy.zip Daisy], [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access.djvu DjVu], [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access_djvu.txt plain text], and [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access streaming]. The streaming edition in [http://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/bookreader BookReader] supports deep links to individual pages, and I use that edition below when I link directly to pages and chapters of the book.
* The [http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/open-access inexpensive paperback edition] remains available as well.
* See my [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/~psuber/wiki/Writings_on_open_access other writings on OA].
<!-- * For a review copy, [mailto:publicity@mitpress.mit.edu send] your request directly to MIT Press, and indicate the publication or site for which the review is intended.
* Some of the best solutions will only work when I have an OA edition of the full text. But I'd also like to find a good solution for the first year when I won't have an OA edition of the full text. -->
* Benjamin Caraco, [http://oadesk.hypotheses.org/233 Le petit livre orange du libre accès], ''Le comptoir de l'accès ouvert'', October 1, 2013. Also [http://lectures.revues.org/12330 here]. ''"[Suber's] écrits, activités et engagements font de lui l'un des spécialistes les plus respectés et écoutés sur la question du libre accès. Dans son dernier livre, Open Access,...il propose une introduction raisonnée au libre accès dans un langage clair, alliant la pédagogie au pragmatisme."'' In Google's English: "[Suber's] writings, activities and commitments made ​​him one of the most respected and listened to on the issue of open access experts. In his latest book, Open Access,...[he] offers a reasoned introduction to free access in clear language, combining pedagogy [with] pragmatism."
* Some of the updates and supplements didn't fit into the book. The book is deliberately short and I was already over my wordcount. Others were too late to put in the book. They cite publications or developments that hadn't occurred by the time my text was final in the spring of 2011.
<!-- * I'll keep adding updates and supplements as I find time.
* I'm taking advantage of the digital medium by linking from words and phrases, not imitating the format of printed endnotes by spelling out URLs. -->
* The first print edition uses an "all rights reserved" statement and a CC-BY license icon. The digital editions clarify the book's copyright status, and the clarification will appear in future print editions. Basically, the book incorporates some material I previously published in the ''SPARC Open Access Newsletter'' under a CC-BY license and a copyright owned by SPARC. That material remains CC-BY. The all-rights-reserved copyright on the first print edition applied only to new parts of the book, and even those parts shifted to a CC-BY-NC license on June 17, 2013, one year after the book appeared in print.
** [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n20/mode/2up Section 1.1: What Makes OA Possible?]
* At [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n17/mode/2up p. 5], I say, "Even...authors [who don't sell their work and want to share it as widely as possible]...tend to transfer their copyrights to intermediaries &#151;publishers&#151; who want to sell their work. As a result, users may be hampered in their research by barriers erected to serve intermediaries rather than authors." Add this note.
** See my article, [http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:8592166 Open access and copyright], ''SPARC Open Access Newsletter'', July 2, 2011. "For example, here are some copyright reforms that would help the cause: [1] Shorten the term of copyright, or at least prevent it from becoming even longer every time Mickey Mouse is about to fall into the public domain. [2] Ban the retroactive extension of copyright to works in the public domain. [3] Allow OA for orphan works, with a takedown requirement if the rightsholder steps forward and complains. [4] Permit the circumvention of DRM in pursuit of non-infringing uses. [5] Recognize that some creative works generate revenue for creators, and some don't, and that creators of the former type are harmed by unauthorized copying while creators of the latter type are harmed by the default prohibition of copying. That is, stop making royalty-free literature collateral damage in the war against revenue leaks. [6] Allow green OA, at least for royalty-free literature, within a certain time after publication, regardless of the publishing contract the author signed with a publisher. [7] Allow digitization and search indexing without permission when they result in no dissemination, or when the dissemination consists of nothing more than fair-use snippets. [8] Make the penalties for copyfraud (false claim of copyright) at least as severe as the penalties for infringement; that is, take the wrongful decrease in the circulation of ideas at least as seriously as the wrongful increase in the circulation of ideas."
* At [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n36/mode/2up p. 24], I say, "Not all plagiarists are smart, but the smart ones will not steal from OA sources indexed in every search engine....OA deters plagiarism." Add this note.
** [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n55/mode/2up Section 2.2: OA as Seizing Opportunities]
* At [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n42/mode/2up p. 30], I start subsection #2 in which I offer data showing that researchers do not have access to all the research they need. Add this note.
* At [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n42/mode/2up p. 30], I say, "[C]umulative price increases...forced the Harvard Library to undertake 'serious cancellation efforts' for budgetary reasons." In endnote 5 (note text at [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n194/mode/2up p. 182]), I cite two sources. Here are seven, including the original two, in chronological order.
* At [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n42/mode/2up pp. 30-32], I say, "Several sub-Saharan African university libraries subscribed to zero [subscription-based scholarly journals in 2008], offering their patrons access to no conventional journals except those donated by publishers." Add this note.
** In endnote 13 (note call at [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n49/mode/2up p. 37], note text at [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n196/mode/2up p. 184]) I cite a study showing that the value of this unpaid labor, worldwide, came to about £1.9 billion/year in 2008, or about $3 billion/year. However, the URL for that citation points to a news article about the study, not the study itself. First, the URL to the news article has changed to this: [http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/402189.article http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/402189.article]. Second, here's the full citation and proper link to the study itself: [http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/communicating-and-disseminating-research/activities-costs-and-funding-flows-scholarly-commu Activities, costs and funding flows in the scholarly communications system], Research Information Network, May 19, 2008. Third, here's excerpt from the study at p. 8: "We have estimated the unpaid non-cash costs of peer review undertaken in the main by academics at £1.9bn globally each year [about $3bn]. If payment were to be made in cash to meet these costs, there would be a significant transfer of funds to academics and the HE sector globally. If universities were able to capture the payments made to peer reviewers, it might be possible to make these payments neutral in terms of university budgets. But our assumption is that the majority of payments would in effect form additions to salaries. Since the estimated breakeven price of a major discipline journal would increase by 43%, the result would be an increase in the costs of subscriptions to academic institutions globally of the order of £1.4bn. The estimated increase in the costs of subscriptions to UK libraries in the HE sector would be of the order of £53m, a rise of 45% compared with their current subscription expenditure."
** See Mathias Dewatripont, Victor Ginsburgh, Patrick Legros, and Alexis Walckiers, [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1162/jeea.2007.5.2-3.400/abstract Pricing of Scientific Journals and Market Power], ''Journal of the European Economic Association'', April-May 2007. Quoting from the [http://sites.google.com/site/awalckiers/jeea.2007.5.2-3.pdf self-archived edition]: "We classified these journals into three categories: (a) FP journals published by for-profit publishers, (b) NFP journals managed by not-for-profit publishers (scientific societies, university presses, etc.), and NFPP journals published and distributed by FP firms on account of scientific societies....Our empirical investigation documents the following: [1] There exist large price differences across fields. [2] These differences seem to be correlated with the market power of publishers. The larger the concentration ratio, the larger the average price in a field, the price to which should be added the large difference between FPs, NFPPs and NFPs. [3] As a general rule, FP journals charge four times as much on average than NFP journals, for a given number of citations, age, language, number of articles, and field (or concentration ratio). Journals of scientific societies managed by FP publishers (NFPP) are twice as expensive as NFP journals (scientific societies exercise some control on prices). [4] Prices are positively correlated with quality measured by the number of citations they receive (even when citations are instrumented), and this effect is larger for FP journals....We take the first finding as indicative of the fact that substitution possibilities across journals are limited, allowing for a significant amount of discretion in the setting of journal prices....We confirm earlier research concerning the large price difference between FP and NFP journals, and show that prices of NFPP journals are somewhere in between. Moreover, we show that prices increase with citation counts and we have argued that costs should tend to fall when citation counts rise. This is consistent with "value-based pricing" (à la McCabe 2002, 2004) rather than with cost-based pricing, and is again indicative of publishers' ability to exercise discretion in price setting, because journals and papers are hardly substitutes, and researchers need all of them...."
* At [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n67/mode/2up p. 55], I say, "Most publishing scholars will choose prestige over OA if they have to choose. The good news is that they rarely have to choose. The bad news is that few of them know that they rarely have to choose....There are two reasons why OA is compatible with prestigious publication, a gold reason and a green one...." Add this note.
** On the first part of this assertion, that publishing scholars will choose prestige over OA, see the [http://www.sr.ithaka.org/research-publications/ithaka-sr-jisc-rluk-uk-survey-academics-2012 UK Survey of Academics 2012] from Ithaka S+R, JISC, and RLUK, May 14, 2013. At pp. 69-72 the authors interpret the results presented in Figure 40: "Three factors &#151;all closely related to the prominence and reach of the publication&#151; were rated as very important by more than 4 in 5 respondents: that the current issues of the journal are circulated widely, are well read by academics in their field, and have a high impact factor....And other factors &#151;the journal's accessibility in developing nations...and the journal making its articles freely available online so there is no cost to purchase or read them&#151; were rated as important by less than a third of respondents overall." Ithaka reported similar results in its [http://www.sr.ithaka.org/research-publications/us-faculty-survey-2009 US Faculty Survey 2009] (April 2010); see pp. 25-26 and Figure 23. I discuss the 2009 version of the results in [http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:4723857 Unanimous faculty votes], ''SPARC Open Access Newsletter'', June 2, 2010: "I don't dispute the Ithaka findings. In fact, I've often argued myself that scholars will choose prestige in their field over OA, when they have to choose. I've only tried to make clear that they rarely have to choose [here omitting citations to four earlier articles]....[I]t's not hard to reconcile this evidence with the evidence of the unanimous faculty votes [for university green OA policies]. The Ithaka finding is about gold OA, and the unanimous faculty votes are about green OA. Green OA policies allow faculty to submit their work to the journals of their choice. One of the primary reasons why OA mandates focus on green rather than gold OA (or repositories rather than journals) is precisely to [http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/04-02-08.htm#principles preserve this sort of academic freedom]. When the high-profile journals in a field are TA, then a green OA policy allows faculty to have the best of both worlds: prestige from the journal publishing the article and OA from the institutional repository. It's not at all surprising that faculty, or faculty who understand their OA options, will take the best of both worlds when they can. That explains both the preference for high-profile journals and the support for green OA. Meantime, more and more OA journals are moving into the top cohort of prestige and impact in more and more fields, a second reason why authors rarely have to choose between prestige and OA...."
** Note 20 at [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n203/mode/2up p. 191]. ''Correction.'' I cite a [http://www.doaj.org/?func=licensedJournals page] within the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) on the tally of DOAJ-listed journals using CC licenses. That URL is now dead. In its place, please see this [http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=byLicense&uiLanguage=en newer page] within the DOAJ on the tallies of DOAJ-listed journals broken down by the CC licenses they use. For a summary of the numbers nine months after the book came out, confirming the diagnosis made in the book, see my [https://plus.google.com/109377556796183035206/posts/iSR2spVGFUL blog post] for March 27, 2013.
* At [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n92/mode/2up p. 80], I start discussing rights-retention mandates. It should be clear from the text, and from many of my previous writings, that this is the model I favor. I reiterated and elaborated my position in October 2012 when Stuart Shieber and I released the first version of our guide to [http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/hoap/Good_practices_for_university_open-access_policies Good practices for university open-access policies]. The guide distinguishes six kinds of policy, unlike the book which only distinguishes four. It explicitly recommends rights-retention policies with waiver options, and explains why that model is preferable to other models.
* At [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n101/mode/2up p. 89], endnote 16 (note text at [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n208/mode/2up pp. 196-197]). Here I'm documenting the claim that "Alma Swan's empirical studies of researcher attitudes show that an overwhelming majority of researchers would 'willingly' comply with a mandatory OA policy from their funder or employer." Add a note.
** See Marisa L. Ramirez and four co-authors, [http://crl.acrl.org/content/74/4/368.abstract Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Social Sciences and Humanities?], ''College and Research Libraries'', July 2013: "The findings indicate that manuscripts that are revisions of openly accessible ETDs are always welcome for submission or considered on a case-by-case basis by 82.8 percent of journal editors and 53.7 percent of university press directors polled....Only 4.5 percent of all respondents indicated that they would never consider an ETD for publication...."
* At [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n129/mode/2up p. 117], endnote 17 (note text at [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n216/mode/2up p. 204]). Here I'm citing research showing demand among lay readers for access to cutting-edge medical research. Add these notes.
* At [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n145/mode/2up p. 133], I say, "Many publishers who oppose OA concede that OA is better for research and researchers than toll access." Add this note.
* At [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n146/mode/2up pp. 134-136] I discuss the "widely varying estimates in the literature on what it costs a university to run an institutional repository." Also see Chapter 7, endnote 4 (note call at [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n148/mode/2up p. 136], note text at [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n220/mode/2up pp. 208-209]). Add this note.
* At [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n151/mode/2up p. 139], I say, "Moreover, even within the minority of fee-based OA journals, only 12 percent of those authors end paying the fees out of pocket. Almost 90% of the time, the fees at the fee-based journals are waived or paid by sponsors on behalf of authors." Here I call note 8 (note text at [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n221/mode/2up pp. 209-210]). In that note I cite Suenje Dallmeier-Tiessen et al., [http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.5260 Highlights from the SOAP project survey. What Scientists Think about Open Access Publishing], arXiv, January 29, 2011, Table 4. But I should have included these details from Table 4. Publication fees were paid by the author's funder 59%, by the author's institution 24%, and by the author out of pocket 12%. Also add these new notes.
** When interpreting data on authors who pay publication fees out of pocket, remember that only about 30% of peer-reviewed OA journals overall charge publication fees (Chapter 7, endnote 8, pp. [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n221/mode/2up pp. 209-210]). Hence, the SOAP result that only 12% of authors at fee-based OA journals paid the fees out of pocket really means that only about 12% of authors at 30% of OA journals overall, or only about 3.6% of authors at OA journals overall, paid fees out of pocket. We should also remember that about 50% of the articles published in peer-reviewed OA journals are published in fee-based journals (see the supplement below to Chapter 10, p. 170). Hence, if we count by article rather than by journal, then the SOAP result that only 12% of authors at fee-based OA journals paid the fees out of pocket really means that only about 12% of authors of 50% of the articles published by OA journals overall, or only about 6% of authors of articles published by OA journals overall, paid fees out of pocket. I summarize and extend some of this analysis in a [https://plus.google.com/u/0/109377556796183035206/posts/KEff1VvD7Ur blog post] from February 1, 2013.
** See Roger Clarke, [http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2048/1906 The Cost Profiles of Alternative Approaches to Journal Publishing], ''First Monday'', December 3, 2007. "For–profit publishers have higher cost–profiles than not–for–profit associations, because of the additional functions that they perform, in particular their much greater investment in branding, customer relationship management and content protection. The difference is particularly marked in the case of eJournals — a computed per–article cost of US$3,400 compared with US$730. This point is sufficiently significant that further examination is warranted....[I]t would appear that open access journal publishing is achievable through not–for–profit channels far more cheaply and efficiently than through for–profit organisations....But the primary beneficiaries of these features [higher–quality branding, more active marketing, more aggressive customer management, and content protection] are the publisher and its owners [not authors or readers]." Also see the summary of Clarke's findings by Lee C. Van and Kathleen Born in their [http://web.archive.org/web/20080502034859/http://www.libraryjournal.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleID=CA6547086 Periodicals Price Survey 2008], ''Library Journal'', April 15, 2008: "Commercial publishers have a hard time realizing the economies because they are locked into expensive practices that offset them, including higher quality branding and marketing, more aggressive customer management, and costly content protection systems. Taking those added costs into account, it takes a commercial publisher about $3400 to produce an article for an e-journal, while a nonprofit publisher could produce the equivalent article for about $730. The study suggests that it is easier for the nonprofit association to flip its business model to OA than it is for the large commercial publisher."
** See the [http://poynder.blogspot.com/2011/03/plos-one-open-access-and-future-of_08.html statement from the Public Library of Science] published by Richard Poynder on March 8, 2011. "Publishing in the conventional system is estimated to cost the academy around [http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/communicating-and-disseminating-research/activities-costs-and-funding-flows-scholarly-commu $4500 per article]. What PLoS (and for that matter BioMed Central, Hindawi, Co-Action, Copernicus and other successful open-access publishers) is showing is that high-quality publishing can be supported by publication fees that are substantially less than the costs of the conventional system...."
** For the evidence on increased citations, see Chapter 1, endnote 6 (note call at [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n27/mode/2up p. 15], note text at [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n190/mode/2up pp. 178-179]).
* At [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n166/mode/2up p. 154], I say that even when users have privileges at a library subscribing to a journal containing a needed article, "authentication is a hassle." Add these notes.
* At [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n169/mode/2up p. 157], I start a subsection entitled, "Some studies bear on the question of whether increased OA archiving [green OA] will increase journal cancellations." Add these notes.
** Also see the September 2013 [http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/business-innovation-and-skills/news/on-publ-open-access/ report] of the UK [http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/business-innovation-and-skills/ House of Commons Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills]. After reviewing the state of the evidence, the committee concluded in a that "there is no available evidence base to indicate that short or even zero embargoes cause cancellation of subscriptions" (Paragraph 44). "We note the absence of evidence that short embargo periods harm subscription publishers" (Paragraph 49).
** Also see the June 2012 [http://www.peerproject.eu/fileadmin/media/reports/20120618_PEER_Final_public_report_D9-13.pdf final report] of the large-scale PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research) study, supported by the European Commission's eContentplus program and coordinated by the International Association of Science, Technical and Medical Publishers. Norbert Lossau, the Scientific Coordinator of OpenAIRE and a member of the PEER Executive Committee, [https://www.openaire.eu/en/home/9-news-events/387-large-scale-deposit-in-repositories-increases-access-and-use summarized] the report this way: "[T]he economic research of the PEER project could not find any evidence for the hypothesis that self-archiving affects journal viability." Indeed, it found that green OA created a modest ''benefit'' for publishers. From the final report at p. 11: "A Randomised Controlled Trial indicates that making preprints visible in PEER repositories is associated with ''more'' traffic to the publisher sites at the aggregate level, but this varies by publisher and subject. Overall, PEER is associated with a significant, if relatively modest, ''increase'' in publisher downloads, in the confidence range 7.5% to 15.5%" (emphasis added).
* At [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n170/mode/2up p. 158], endnote 9 (note text at [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n228/mode/2up p. 216]). ''Correction.'' The URL I cite for this ALPSP report is now dead, and the ALPSP provides no redirect. Here's a new URL: [http://www.alpsp.org/Ebusiness/ProductCatalog/Product.aspx?ID=26 http://www.alpsp.org/Ebusiness/ProductCatalog/Product.aspx?ID=26].
* At [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n172/mode/2up pp. 160-161], I say, "If publishers acknowledge that gold OA can be sustainable, and even profitable, and merely wish to avoid making lower margins than they make today, then their objection takes on a very different color. They're not at risk of insolvency, just reduced profits, and they're not asserting a need for self-protection, just an entitlement to current levels of profit. There's no reason for public funding agencies acting in the public interest, or private funders acting for charitable purposes, to compromise their missions in order to satisfy this sense of publisher entitlement." Add this note:
* At [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n179/mode/2up p. 167], I say, "Even if we acknowledge the need for cultural change in the transition to OA &#151;far more critical than technological change&#151; it's easy to underestimate the cultural barriers and the time required to work through them." Add this note.
Also see Michael Taylor, An altmetric attention advantage for open access books in the humanities and social sciences, Scientometrics, October 10, 2020 (perma.cc link): "Both OA books and chapters have significantly higher use on social networks, higher coverage in the mass media and blogs, and evidence of higher rates of social impact in policy documents. OA chapters have higher rates of coverage on Wikipedia than their non-OA equivalents, and are more likely to be shared on Mendeley."
For evidence that the OA advantage also applies to articles whose preprints were OA, see Stylianos Serghiou and John Ioannidis, Altmetric Scores, Citations, and Publication of Studies Posted as Preprints, Journal of the American Medical Association, January 23, 2018 (perma.cc link): "The sample of 776 published articles with preprints was matched to 3647 published articles without preprints. Published articles with preprints had significantly higher Altmetric scores than published articles without preprints (median, 9.5 [IQR, 3.1 to 35.3] vs 3.5 [IQR, 0.8 to 12.2], respectively; between-group difference, 4 [IQR, 0 to 15]; P < .001) and received more citations (median, 4 [IQR, 1 to 10] vs 3 [IQR, 1 to 7]; between-group difference, 1 [IQR, −1 to 5]; P < .001)."
Also see Darwin Y. Fu and Jacob J. Hughey, Meta-Research: Releasing a preprint is associated with more attention and citations for the peer-reviewed article, eLife, December 6, 2019 (perma.cc link): "[W]e found that articles with a preprint had, on average, a 49% higher Altmetric Attention Score and 36% more citations than articles without a preprint. These associations were independent of several other article- and author-level variables (such as scientific subfield and number of authors), and were unrelated to journal-level variables such as access model and Impact Factor."
Also see Nicholas Fraser et al., The relationship between bioRxiv preprints, citations and altmetrics, Quantitative Science Studies, June 25, 2020: "bioRxiv-deposited journal articles had sizably higher citation and altmetric counts compared to nondeposited articles."
Also see Boya Xie et al., Is preprint the future of science? A thirty year journey of online preprint services, arXiv, February 20, 2021 (perma.cc link): "[We find] that papers with preprints have more citations in any year regardless whether they have a published version. On average of all years, a journal or conference paper with a preprint version (P-JC) has median citation of 14.8, while a non-preprint counterpart (JC-only) receives 2.6 citations, which results in 12.2 citation difference (five times more). All preprints (P-all), regardless whether they have been published in journal/conference, have 0.7 more citations than papers without a preprint version (JC-only)."
For evidence that the OA advantage shows up in altmetrics, not just in citation counts, see Daniel Torres-Salinas et al., Open Access and Altmetrics in the pandemic age: Forescast analysis on COVID-19 literature, bioRxiv, April 26, 2020 (perma.cc link): "OA publications tend to receive the largest share of social media attention as measured by the Altmetric Attention Score." Also see the 2018 Serghiou and Ionnadis study cited above.
Also see Jessica G.Y. Luc et al., Does Tweeting Improve Citations? Annals of Thoracic Surgery, June 3, 2020 (perma.cc link): "One-year follow-up of this...prospective randomized trial importantly demonstrates that tweeting results in significantly more article citations over time, highlighting the durable scholarly impact of social media activity."
Also see Tahereh Dehdarirad, Could early tweet counts predict later citation counts? A gender study in Life Sciences and Biomedicine (2014–2016), PLoS ONE, November 2, 2020 (perma.cc link). An article's tweet count weakly predicts or boosts its later citation count, and the correlation is stronger for women authors than men authors.
See Éric Archambault et al., Research Impact of Paywalled versus Open Access Papers, n.d. but captured by the Wayback Machine on August 7, 2016: "Publishing in paywalled journals without green archiving is never an effective impact maximization strategy....In total, and for all these fields, publishing in paywalled journals with no additional green archiving always yields below average citedness....Publishing in paywalled journals is the least impactful strategy overall, and the least impactful in 16 out of 22 fields....On average, open access papers produce a 50% higher research impact than strictly paywalled papers....In all these fields, fostering open access (without distinguishing between gold and green) is always a better research impact maximization strategy than relying on strictly paywalled papers....Having a green copy of a paper is the most impactful research communication strategy overall and the best strategy in 19 fields out of 22....Green is nearly always more effective than relying strictly on gold (20 out of 22 fields)....Gold is the best strategy in biology and biomedical research and very close to green in clinical medicine (likely a reflection of the NIH and Wellcome Trust OA mandates)....Gold has the least impact in six fields."
See Heather Piwowar et al., The state of OA: a large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles, PeerJ, February 13, 2018 (perma.cc link): "Comparing the average relative citation impact of different access categories, the OACA [Open Access Citation Advantage] is corroborated: Papers hidden behind a paywall were cited 10% below world average (ARC [Average Relative Citation] = 0.90), while those that are freely available obtain, on average, 18% more citations than what is expected (ARC = 1.18). However, citation impact differs between the different manners in which papers are made available for free: those that are only available as Green OA (ARC = 1.33) and Hybrid OA papers (ARC = 1.31) are cited the most with an impact of more than 30% above expectations, those available as Bronze are cited 22% above world average, while papers published as Gold OA obtain an ARC of 0.83. This constitutes an average relative citation impact of 17% below world average and 9% below that of articles hidden behind a paywall. Figure 5 below describes these findings."
See Mirjam Curno and Stephanie Oeben, Scientific Excellence at Scale: Open Access journals have a clear citation advantage over subscription journals, Frontiers, July 11, 2018 (perma.cc link): "In general and across the last three years, Open Access journals receive on average 7% more citations than subscription journals (Figure 3). Interestingly, Open Access journals published by traditional subscription publishers are generally achieving more impact within the same publisher."
See Dan Pollock and Ann Michael, Evaluating Quality in Open Access Journals, DeltaThink, August 2018 (perma.cc link): "While the proportion of fully OA journals is growing over time, the proportion of higher-performing fully OA journals [measured by journal impact factor] is growing faster than the average performers....The data show that an increasing number of fully OA publications are attaining higher impact factors at faster rates than their subscription and hybrid counterparts....There is nothing preventing an OA journal from being 'high quality', and based on this data, a fully OA journal's Impact Factor now appears more likely to be above average for its field." Also see the later article by the same authors, Open access mythbusting: Testing two prevailing assumptions about the effects of open access adoption, Learned Publishing, January 24, 2019. "An increasing number of fully OA publications are attaining higher Journal Impact Factors at faster rates than their subscription and hybrid counterparts."
See Yang Li et al., Will open access increase journal CiteScores? An empirical investigation over multiple disciplines, PLoS ONE, August 30, 2018 (perma.cc link): "This paper empirically studies the effect of Open Access on journal CiteScores. We have found that the general effect is positive but not uniform across different types of journals. In particular, we investigate two types of heterogeneous treatment effect: (1) the differential treatment effect among journals grouped by academic field, publisher, and tier; and (2) differential treatment effects of Open Access as a function of propensity to be treated. The results are robust to a number of sensitivity checks and falsification tests. Our findings shed new light on Open Access effect on journals and can help stakeholders of journals in the decision of adopting the Open Access policy." Also see the summary in the LSE Impact Blog on October 30, 2018 (perma.cc link), emphasizing the effects of a journal flip or conversion to OA.
See K.C. Kazikdas, M. Tanik, and A. Ural, Changing trends in otorhinolaryngology publishing, ACTA Otorhinolaryngologica Italica, March 25, 2019 (perma.cc link): "The aim of this study is to compare the changes in impact factors and citation numbers of Open Access (OA) vs subscription-based (SB) journals between 1999 and 2016....There was a statistical difference as the proportion of OA Journals were not equal to the proportion of SB Journals throughout the years 1999 and 2016, and it showed the tendency to increase greater compared to SB Journals (p < 0.01). Although the overall level of impact factors of SB journals was generally high, by comparing two regression models, it was obvious that the level of increase of the impact factors of OA journals were significantly higher (p < 0.01)."
See Cui Huang et al., The effect of "open access" on journal impact factors: A causal analysis of medical journals, Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, November 1, 2019 (perma.cc link): "OA enhances JIFs." As I put it in a tweet about this article, "OA journals can play the JIF game and win, even if it's better not to play at all."
See Nuria Bautista-Puig et al., Do journals flipping to gold open access show an OA citation or publication advantage?, Scientometrics, June 13, 2020 (perma.cc link): "[We found] robust evidence...that flipping journals tend to have an OA Citation Advantage compared to non Gold-OA journals, and that this advantage is already visible a few years after the switch. It corroborates the conclusions from a series of previous studies on OA flipping....Whether this citation advantage also occurs in relation to non-OA journals in general, excluding hybrid OA serials, remains to be assessed in a follow-up study....[We found] no statistically significant evidence that journals switching to OA increase their publication output faster than non Gold-OA journals do. Therefore, there is no solid evidence for an OA Publication Advantage, nor for an OA Publication Disadvantage."
See Yi Xiang Zhan et al., Evaluation of articles in metabolism research on the basis of their citations, Biochemia Medica, December 15, 2020 (perma.cc link): In a study of metabolism journals with high and low citation rates, "most of [the open-access journals] were ranked in the top 25% for citation rate, and none were ranked in the bottom 25%. This suggests that publishing in an open access journal that provide better access to articles can increase the citation rate."
See New research from Springer Nature confirms value in 'Going for Gold', Springer Nature, October 27, 2021 (perma.cc link). Both green and gold OA show the advantage, but gold significantly more than green. The advantage extends beyond citations to downloads and altmetric scores. "Gold OA articles achieve greater impact compared to subscription articles with earlier versions available e.g. via Green OA routes. On average, the latter type only achieves 1.07 times higher citations than non-OA articles, compared with 1.64 times higher achieved by Gold OA articles....Gold OA articles achieve far greater attention and awareness with nearly five times higher Altmetric Attention Scores compared to non-OA articles, while subscription articles with earlier versions available e.g. via Green OA routes only have two times higher Altmetric scores than non-OA articles in hybrid journals....Gold OA articles continue to be used more with results showing that they are downloaded over six times more than non-OA articles....Variations by discipline are seen but Gold OA exceeds the reach and impact of both non-OA articles and subscription articles with earlier versions available."
For real-time news and comment on the open-access citation advantage (for and against its existence), follow the oa.advantage tag at the Open Access Tracking Project.
For evidence that OA increases submissions, see Chapter 8, endnote 11 (note call at p. 159, note text at pp. 216-217). Also see the updates and supplements for p. 145, below.
At p. 17, I say, "In general, scholarly journals don't pay editors...either. In general, editors...are paid salaries by universities to free them, like authors, to donate their time and labor to ensure the quality of new work appearing in scholarly journals." Add these notes.
Journal editors acknowledge this point, and even emphasize it as part of an argument for universities (if not publishers) to better reward their important work. See Alan Rauch, Ecce Emendator: The Cost of Knowledge for Scholarly Editors, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 23, 2014 (perma.cc link): "[S]cholarly publishing is still a big business. University libraries make enormous outlays of cash to ensure that the faculty of each department have access to the very best and most recent research. But editors see none of that money. And their labor to support the mechanism is, more often than not, completely unrewarded and unsupported."
Also see James C. Alwine et al., What Is the Price of Science?, mBio, March 2, 2021 (perma.cc link): "Historically...[e]ditors and peer reviewers were provided minimal, if any, financial support. The scientific community considered these roles essential responsibilities to the scientific endeavor and served them voluntarily, a tradition that remains to this day."
At p. 18, I say, "Academic publishers are not monolithic...." Add this note.
See my article, Will open access undermine peer review?, SPARC Open Access Newsletter, September 2, 2007: "For convenience, I'll refer to those who raise [the objection that OA undermines peer review] as the publisher trade associations or lobbyists. I can't use the shorter term 'publishers' because so few have taken a position on it. Publishers are not monolithic, even if their lobbyists want to appear to speak for all of them. While some publishers do support the objection, some reject it, and a growing number of publishers embrace both OA and peer review."
See Library Loon, Pyrrhic publishers, Gavia Libraria, June 10, 2011: "[T]he Loon must note that 'publishers' is not a monolith. 'Publishers' are not suing Georgia State; SAGE, Oxford, and Cambridge are. However. The vast bulk of toll-access publishers have consistently ranged themselves behind mendacious attacks on open access, behind Washington lobbyists fighting against the NIH Public Access Policy and policies like it, behind these lawsuits, behind anti-ETD whisper campaigns. Only a paltry few have any excuse whatever to say 'we're different from the monolith' " (emphases in original).
At p. 18, I say, "This variety reminds us (to paraphrase Tim O'Reilly) that OA doesn't threaten publishing; it only threatens existing publishers who do not adapt." Add this note
See Barry Eisler, The digital truths traditional publishers don't want to hear, The Guardian, April 29, 2013. "We have to be careful not to conflate publishing services with the entities that have traditionally provided them. The services are essential; the entities are not. This would seem a fairly obvious point, and yet as thoughtful and experienced a person as novelist James Patterson is now calling for a bailout of the legacy publishing industry, apparently because he fears that publishing is dying. No. Publishing isn't dying; it is evolving. Authors understand this, and are embracing it. Legacy publishers need to do the same."
At p. 20, I say, "OA isn't an attempt to bypass peer review." Add this comment.
In this paragraph I say, "While OA to unrefereed preprints is useful and widespread, the OA movement isn't limited to unrefereed preprints and, if anything, focuses on OA to peer-reviewed articles." Today I'd rewrite that sentence this way: "While OA to unrefereed preprints is useful, widespread, and growing fast, the OA movement isn't limited to unrefereed preprints and focuses at least as much on OA to peer-reviewed articles."
At p. 21, I say, "OA is not an attempt to reform, violate, or abolish copyright." Add these notes.
I'm not denying that some OA proponents have recommended the reform, violation, or abolition of copyright law. Indeed, I recommend the reform of copyright myself; see my updates to an adjacent passage on p. 21, immediately below. In this passage I'm merely saying that supporting OA doesn't commit one to support any of these particular stances toward copyright.
In a blog post from September 21, 2008, on Aaron Swartz' Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto, I disavowed illegal tactics for attaining OA. "I don't oppose the illegal tactics because I think current copyright law is just. On the contrary, I think it is grotesquely unbalanced and unjust. Nor do I oppose civil disobedience. But I don't accept that copyright infringement is civil disobedience and, more importantly, I don't accept that advancing OA through deliberate violations of copyright law would do more good than harm. I have three basic reasons: (1) OA is already lawful and doesn't require the reform or violation of copyright law, even if it could leap forward with the right reforms. (2) OA activists will never match the publishing industry's funds for litigation. (3) One of the most persistent and harmful misunderstandings of OA is that it violates copyright law. We've come a long way in educating policy-makers out of that misunderstanding. But the Orwellian Fair Copyright in Research Works Act (a.k.a. Conyers bill) is just one recent piece of evidence that we still have a lot of educating to do and that publishers can still make a lot of hay from the misunderstandings which remain. A campaign to give the publishing lobby its first valid evidence that OA violates copyright is the last thing we need. For an earlier take on some of these issues, see my 2003 article, Not Napster for Science....I should say for the record that one problem with current copyright law is that it leaves the line between legal and illegal tactics very fuzzy. By criticizing illegal tactics, I don't mean to leave the impression that it's always easy to tell what they are. By recommending only lawful tactics, I don't mean that we shouldn't push the envelope." For more background on the Conyers bill, see my three critiques of it, one from October 2008, one from March 2009, and one from March 2012.
Also see my November 2009 article, Knowledge as a Public Good. "Copyright law originated in the 18th century when full-text copying of any lengthy text was a time-consuming and error-prone job. When copyright arose, and for centuries after, it prohibited acts that were difficult to commit. But today it prohibits acts that are easy to commit. That doesn't invalidate copyright law, as law. But it reduces the law's effectiveness as a barrier of exclusion, even if it ought not to reduce its effectiveness. The compliance arising from the difficulty of violation is no longer quite so invisibly blended together with the compliance arising from respect for the law. Hence our understanding of the extent of respect for the law is not quite so distorted. In fact, compliance is down. Way down. Speaking for the US, I doubt that we've seen more widespread and conspicuous violation of any laws since Prohibition."
Also see my March 2016 disavowal of Sci-Hub. "Sci-Hub leaves the false impression that OA requires copyright infringement, or that OA must be unlawful....Anti-OA publishers argued for years that OA, or OA policies, intrinsically violated copyright. They were wrong, and in my opinion most of them knew it. But it took years for widespread public correction to have an effect. I was one of many who took part in that effort....One result of that communal effort is that publishers have gradually stopped raising that false objection, and newcomers have gradually stopped making that false assumption. The risk of unlawful OA services is that they could trigger a new wave of false assumptions about (1) the lawfulness of OA, (2) the wide range of lawful options for researchers to make their work OA, and (3) the importance of persuading researchers to make one of those lawful choices."
At p. 21, I say, "OA would benefit from the right kinds of copyright reforms...." Add these notes.
See my article, Open access and copyright, SPARC Open Access Newsletter, July 2, 2011 (perma.cc link): "For example, here are some copyright reforms that would help the cause: [1] Shorten the term of copyright, or at least prevent it from becoming even longer every time Mickey Mouse is about to fall into the public domain. [2] Ban the retroactive extension of copyright to works in the public domain. [3] Allow OA for orphan works, with a takedown requirement if the rightsholder steps forward and complains. [4] Permit the circumvention of DRM in pursuit of non-infringing uses. [5] Recognize that some creative works generate revenue for creators, and some don't, and that creators of the former type are harmed by unauthorized copying while creators of the latter type are harmed by the default prohibition of copying. That is, stop making royalty-free literature collateral damage in the war against revenue leaks. [6] Allow green OA, at least for royalty-free literature, within a certain time after publication, regardless of the publishing contract the author signed with a publisher. [7] Allow digitization and search indexing without permission when they result in no dissemination, or when the dissemination consists of nothing more than fair-use snippets. [8] Make the penalties for copyfraud (false claim of copyright) at least as severe as the penalties for infringement; that is, take the wrongful decrease in the circulation of ideas at least as seriously as the wrongful increase in the circulation of ideas."
Idea #6 above (letting authors make their works green OA a certain number of months after publication regardless of the contracts they may have signed with publishers) has been proposed several times in Germany, for example in 2006 (from Gerd Hansen), in 2008 (from the German federal government), in 2011 (from the Social Democratic Party), and in 2013 (from the German federal government). This idea is now law in Germany, and took effect on January 1, 2014.
In January 2014, a similar bill was introduced in the Netherlands, and became law on July 1, 2015. (This is sometimes called the Taverne Amendment.) Also see the January 2014 defense of the Dutch bill by its leading proponent, Sander Dekker, State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science. Also see the January 2019 announcement that the Dutch Association of Universities (Vereniging van Universiteiten, VSNU) is helping authors deposit eligible works in OA repositories.
In December 2015, a similar bill was introduced to the French Council of Ministers. For the adopted version, see Article 30 of Loi pour une république numérique, October 7, 2016.
In February 2016 the Associazione italiana per la promozione della scienza aperta (AISA) began drafting a similar bill for the Italian parliament. On March 13, 2019, a bill of this kind was adopted by the lower house of the Italian Parliament and sent to the Senat