Reaching OA’s potential

One of the principal aims of Open Access (OA) has always been to democratize knowledge by making research free to read; however, that should be the starting point, not the ultimate goal. Perhaps it’s time to step back and ask ourselves, “Are we in danger of becoming preoccupied with the ‘access’ aspect of open – neglecting the other components that make research successful?”

In our rush to remove paywalls and ‘financial barriers’, could it be that we are simply equating ‘freely available’ to ‘truly accessible’? How valuable is making research content accessible without it being discoverable? And how beneficial is it for an end user to find content if they don’t see its relevance, or if they can’t act on it?

Access alone isn’t enough. If research isn’t discoverable, understandable, or actionable for the people who need it (policymakers, practitioners, researchers across regions and community organizations), then OA has fallen short of its full potential. 

The ability to get research into the hands of those who can fully capitalize on it is a crucial factor to research success, but in practice, significant gaps and disconnects are evident – particularly from a data and systems perspective. We have made huge progress in terms of the volume of research that is technically ‘open’, however we now need to find out who is actually benefiting.

Current narrative suggests that OA articles are more likely to be cited – but our data suggests this isn’t universally true, or at least that there is more to the story. In addition, citations alone don’t tell us who’s engaging with the content or whether it’s reaching communities outside of academia.

If equity in research means the ability to publish and participate in research fairly, (regardless of location, career stage or discipline), should we accept that the measure of success is whether an article has been published OA? Or should we be measuring success based on whether the research achieves its intended aims, reaches its intended audience, and enables meaningful participation across global research communities?

This blog will look at what ‘access’, taken in isolation, is and what it isn’t. Using data from Dimensions, extracted from the Dimensions on GBQ environment alongside World Bank data on GBQ, we challenge the notion that emphasis on publishing OA is enough to ensure equitable participation. We explore what happens when we focus on access without discoverability. We assess whether research participation is happening in a balanced way or whether there are barriers to journal publication – including but not limited to Article Processing Charges (APCs) – and engagement.

To help us with this, we have conducted a benchmarking and data interpretation exercise to understand the wider problem of participation in research. 

SDGs case study

Let’s begin with a common assumption: that publishing is the ultimate goal for a researcher, and that lower-middle and low-income countries struggle to publish OA at the same rate as upper-middle and high-income countries due to the financial challenges associated with APCs.

The visual on the left (in Chart 1) shows us the number of gold OA articles published in 2023. This view alone might suggest that lower-income countries are being prevented from publishing OA compared to upper-income countries. However, benchmarking against the overall amount of research from these regions shows the reverse – low-income (LIC) and lower-middle-income countries (LMIC) are producing proportionately more OA content.

With this data in mind we dismiss the notion that a general analysis of open participation will drive further insight and shift to participation at journal level. For this analysis, it is useful to consider participation in these terms: where there is intent to contribute to a research topic, is that intent being met or prevented through journal selection and traditional impact measures?

To see this in action, we decided to focus this case study on Indonesian researchers’ contribution to SDG 4, Quality Education.

• We focused on Indonesia because in 2023 Indonesia was the second-highest producer of research articles among LMIC countries with a high amount of OA content. (NB: We will not delve into the reasons behind Indonesia’s high output in this piece.)
• We focused on SDG 4 because Indonesian researchers produced a substantial, and outsized, amount of Quality Education research. More than any other country and roughly 10% of overall research aligned to SDG 4 (as seen in Chart 2).

In a world where participation in global research was truly balanced and contributions to knowledge were reflected proportionally, if Indonesia contributes 10% of overall research to quality education, we would hope to see the 10% Indonesian representation happen at journal level as well.

To view this, we analyzed journals publishing the most research articles aligned with SDG 4 and benchmarked them against common markers for citation impact and attention. We then assessed the representation of Indonesian research within these journals. Specifically, we calculated the proportion of SDG 4-aligned research with at least one Indonesian-affiliated researcher, aiming for a 10% representation rate. The results are shown in the visual below (Chart 3).

Our journal-level analysis revealed that the desired 10% participation rate was not met. There was an imbalance within the journals around the level of Indonesian research present. Notably, this imbalance occurred across varying access types and associated publication fees. At the top, Education and Information Technologies, our highest-cited journal, a hybrid title, showed ~2% Indonesian representation. Education Sciences, a gold title that scored middle-ish for citation average, has less than 1%. The largest portion of Indonesian research appeared at the bottom left in two diamond-access, regional titles where we saw lower average scores in both citation and attention.

Therefore, a barrier may be the APCs; usually higher for market leading, established journals. (We’d highlight that Cogent Education is the closest to meeting the 10% participation rate and is a publication that does charge an APC but also offers waivers for LIC and LMIC countries.) However, this is just one of many potential barriers to equitable participation and one addressed by programs like Research4Life and publisher-led, global discounting practices. Our focus here was viewing the research holistically, taking into account how open practices have supported or hindered participation through both journal selection and research impact.

This view (Chart 3) highlights the challenge seasoned publishers face in balancing publication preferences, what motivates or prevents a researcher to select that journal, and readership habits, which encompass both accessibility and discoverability, the kind of discoverability established journals typically offer. The low metrics for the diamond OA journals (bottom left, Chart 3) illustrate the challenge for journals of ensuring research reaches readers.

Publisher mediation

To look closer at the intersection between the two sides publishers must mediate to ensure research meets its potential, we first focus on publication preferences. Many publishers aim to remove participation barriers so we can share quality research in a balanced, fully representational way. How can publishers work to ensure this proportional representation?

One approach is reducing costs of APCs, another is raising awareness. Emerald Publishing uses Dimensions data to benchmark the locale of research relative to our journal level subjects and try to balance Editorial Advisory Board (EAB) selection proportionally. This practice aims to inform publishers and editors where the research is coming from, without compromising EAB selection quality; addressing this at journal level regardless of access type or other unintended barriers.

The other aspect of this publisher mediation, and the one crucial to ensuring research is seen by the intended audience, is understanding reader habits. It is important  to understand the benefits of making research openly accessible versus accessible, findable, and usable. Access in isolation, without the presence of discoverability to ensure the work reaches the end user, is not enough.

Below we can see the average citations for the top 100 most productive countries by access type (Table 1). We conclude from this brief view that hybrid titles generate more citation activity as they are the established journals that have an established readership base.

It is probable that the imbalance in Indonesian representation is shaped by the age and prestige of journals themselves. For the most part, Open Access journals are younger than their subscription-based closed counterparts, and because Journal Impact Factors (JIFs) are based on a two-year citation window, newer journals (both open and closed access) are naturally disadvantaged.

As a result, newer journals that cover emerging or interdisciplinary areas, such as research aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), may find it difficult to achieve similar visibility and ‘reputation’. This creates a compounding effect: newer OA journals may be more inclusive and open to geographically diverse contributions, yet they lack the discoverability and citation momentum of older, established titles.

In turn, researchers from countries like Indonesia are more likely to publish in regional, Diamond OA journals – which remain under-recognized in global research metrics despite playing a crucial role in local knowledge and research ecosystems. 

This echoes the concerns raised in the Budapest Open Access Initiative 20th anniversary recommendations (BOAI20), which call for a more equitable and inclusive approach to Open Access – one that recognizes the value of diverse publication venues, fosters participation from underrepresented communities, and moves beyond outdated prestige indicators.

This points to a deeper issue: when discoverability and prestige are unequally distributed across journals, people may judge research quality based on where it’s published, rather than on the actual quality of the research.

A pattern emerges

This brings us to further consider the practice of prioritizing access above all else, how this may perpetuate bias in the system arising from assessing research quality based on its potential reach, and how that can be hindered by the journal itself.

We examined the quality of Indonesian research in high-output titles and found that when venue and discoverability practices align, Indonesian research citations are above average, dispelling any assumption about overall ‘quality’ that may arise from most Indonesian researchers prioritizing access when selecting journal (Chart 4).

This prompted a further question: Even when quality is demonstrable, is it being recognized globally? A parallel analysis examining citation practices across all low-income countries allowed us to test whether the patterns we observed with Indonesian research reflect broader systemic issues. We found a consistent pattern: research from low-income countries is often overlooked in citation practices, even when it is highly relevant and well-aligned with global priorities and even when it aligns closely with the focus of the citing publication.

In a parallel analysis, we found a consistent pattern: research from low-income countries is often overlooked in citation practices, even when it is highly relevant and well-aligned with global priorities and even when it aligns closely with the focus of the citing publication.

The parallel analysis examined global research output from 2013 to 2023, focusing on contributions to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), excluding SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being) given its high proportion of research. Using author affiliations from the Dimensions database, we categorized publications by author country and matched them to World Bank income group classifications. This allowed us to compare research priorities between high-income and low-income countries over this time.

As shown in the chart below, there are clear differences in thematic focus. Researchers in low-income countries disproportionately prioritize areas like SDG 2: Zero Hunger and SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation – topics that directly reflect the urgent, lived realities in these regions. In contrast, high-income countries show a stronger focus on SDGs such as Affordable and Clean Energy and Partnerships for the Goals. These differing priorities demonstrate the local expertise and indigenous knowledge embedded in lower-income regions – expertise that, as shown in our citation analysis, is not being adequately acknowledged or cited in global research outputs.

In critical areas such as Zero Hunger and Clean Water and Sanitation – topics where low-income countries often hold deep, practical expertise – our citation analysis reveals minimal inclusion of their work by researchers in high-income countries. Specifically, just 0.2% of references in high-income country publications on these SDGs cite publications where authors are based solely in low-income countries. In contrast, over 70% of the references come from publications with authors affiliated exclusively with high-income institutions (74% for Zero Hunger and 71% for Clean Water and Sanitation).

Even when we broaden the scope to include any contribution from a low-income country, the numbers remain stark: 1.41% for Zero Hunger and 1.22% for Clean Water and Sanitation. This is despite the fact that these regions face the most urgent realities tied to these challenges – and who are actively publishing in these areas.

These findings point to a clear disconnect between where expertise exists and where it is recognized. In both Zero Hunger and Clean Water and Sanitation, areas where low-income countries have direct, practical experience, we see how research is vastly under-cited by high-income country publications. This underrepresentation suggests a missed opportunity to draw on locally grounded knowledge that could meaningfully shape global solutions.

Conclusion

This isn’t about a lack of relevant research. It’s about discoverability, visibility, and deeply embedded citation habits. Open Access isn’t just about making research available, it’s about making sure that research is seen, used, and respected within the global knowledge ecosystem.

Emerald has recently launched the Open Lab, which looks at the research ecosystem and how open practices impact it. Its goal is to find real solutions to some of the problems not yet addressed by open practices and some of the problems created by them.

We hope this analysis encourages thoughtful discussion on where the focus should shift, thus allowing us to effectively evaluate the success of Open Access and help ensure that all research can meet its full potential.

Authors:

Ann Campbell, Technical Solutions Manager, Digital Science
Katie Davison, Insights Analyst, Emerald Publishing

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Gold Open Access—the model where authors (or their funders) pay article processing charges to make work freely available—has grown steadily over the past decade. But if you look closely, the growth is slowing. And what’s taking its place isn’t the altruistic, community-powered model many hoped for. Instead, Hybrid Open Access is filling the gap: a model where paywalled journals charge extra to make select articles open.

Diamond Open Access—where publishing is free for both authors and readers, supported by institutions rather than APCs—has been making headlines. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: we still don’t have enough data to know whether Diamond OA is actually growing or simply being talked about more.

A system stuck in the middle

Digging into Dimensions data layered on top of OpenAlex, a clear pattern emerges. Gold OA’s momentum is slowing. But instead of researchers turning to Green OA (self-archiving in repositories) or Diamond OA, many are choosing Hybrid OA instead.

Why?

Because researchers chase visibility, reputation, and prestige. That often means publishing in high-impact journals—many of which are owned by legacy publishers who now offer hybrid models. These options give authors a way to comply with funder mandates without sacrificing perceived academic clout.

Institutions and libraries, meanwhile, are under pressure to show open access progress. Hybrid OA, while expensive, is a politically safe way to do that. It’s the administrative equivalent of checking a box—even if it means paying twice.

Transformative agreements like Read and Publish deals have only accelerated this trend, redirecting subscription budgets to cover OA fees—effectively normalizing hybrid publishing in many disciplines.

A new vision emerges

But while the hybrid tide rises, a quiet revolution is underway.

In 2022, a coalition of organizations—Science Europe, cOAlition S, OPERAS, and ANR—launched a bold Action Plan to support Diamond OA. Their goal: to build a truly equitable, community-driven publishing ecosystem, where knowledge is a public good and the costs are shouldered collectively—not by individual researchers.

This vision took shape through the DIAMAS project and culminated in the creation of the Diamond OA Standard (DOAS). Think of DOAS as a blueprint: a framework to help Diamond journals measure, improve, and sustain quality.

It’s built on seven pillars:

• Legal ownership, mission, and governance
• Open science practices
• Editorial management and research integrity
• Technical service efficiency
• Visibility and impact
• Equity, diversity, inclusion, and multilingualism
• Continuous improvement

Together, these components aim to professionalize Diamond OA without compromising its values. They send a clear message: if scholarly communication is a public good, then it must be shaped and governed by the scholarly community itself.

The missing link: Measurable growth

Despite this momentum, the numbers tell a more sobering story.

Early data from OpenAlex paints the picture that Diamond OA has plateaued in terms of publication volume. Enthusiasm and infrastructure have grown—but the data doesn’t reflect this.

Why the disconnect? Part of the issue is visibility. At Digital Science, we would love a better way to track Diamond Open Access growth. DOAJ lists 1,369 journals as being “without fees”, but there seem to be many edge cases resulting in a landscape that isn’t black and white.

It is also true that many Diamond journals operate with limited marketing, uncertain technical infrastructure, and fragmented funding. And despite the ideals, many researchers still don’t see them as viable options for career advancement.

What comes next?

There are reasons for optimism. The DIAMAS project isn’t just advocating for Diamond OA—it’s building the scaffolding. Its service portal offers templates, best practices, and technical guidance to help journals align with DOAS standards and professionalize their operations. The European Diamond Capacity Hub (EDCH) serves as a coordination center for Diamond OA stakeholders in Europe. Launched alongside the EDCH, the ALMASI Project focuses on understanding non-profit OA publishing in Africa, Latin America, and Europe.

The pieces are falling into place for equitable open access solutions. What’s needed is adoption and quantification. Funders and Institutions should include equitable OA in their promotion criteria. Researchers must see it as a credible home for their work. If anyone knows of faster ways to get clean data for Diamond, please reach out.

The path forward exists. But like any path, it only becomes clear by walking it. If you are working in this space and have this data, we would love to disseminate it through our tools at Digital Science.

The post From gold to diamond: Is equitable Open Access still a mirage? appeared first on Digital Science.

Jon Treadway, Director at Great North Wood Consulting, delivered the opening keynote, outlining the challenges facing scholarly communication. He highlighted the shift towards isolationism in the geopolitical landscape, impacting scientific collaboration. Treadway emphasized that scholarly communication remains inefficient and fragmented, with AI advancements posing both opportunities and risks. He cautioned that AI’s rapid progress demands vigilance and noted that Open Access has yet to reach its full potential due to siloed discussions rather than collaborative efforts. 

The first panel focused on ensuring transparency and trustworthiness in research. Panelists included Leslie McIntosh, Vice President of Research Integrity at Digital Science; Laura Wilson, Head of Research Integrity & Ethics at Taylor & Francis; Jennifer Wright, Head of Publication Ethics & Research Integrity at Cambridge University Press; and Doug Melville, Technical Product Manager at Sage. Key concerns discussed were AI’s impact on research, the need for transparent licensing conditions, and the challenge of ensuring research security. The panel emphasized that publishers play a critical role in upholding standards, holding the “gold” in narratives and research culture. Collaboration across the industry, especially in disambiguating author identities and spotting bad actors, was stressed as vital to safeguarding integrity.

Ann Campbell, Technical Solutions Manager at Digital Science, and Katie Davison, Insights Analyst at Emerald Publishing, presented a case study on how they’ve worked together to leverage Dimensions on GBQ for data-driven insights. They demonstrated how combining Emerald Publishing’s strategic goals with Dimensions’ extensive dataset allowed them to uncover valuable insights about research trends, author collaborations, and institutional impact. By harnessing these insights, Emerald was able to identify key growth areas, refine their editorial strategies, and better align their publishing efforts with the needs of the academic community.

The second panel addressed how publishers are adapting their strategies in response to evolving social media platforms. The panel included Lou Peck, CEO & Founder of The International Bunch; Jitske de Vries, Head of Marketing at The Company of Biologists; Rowena Gordon, Senior Managing Editor at the British Ecological Society; Daisy Veysey, Social Media Manager at eLife; and Marion Schnelle, Social Media Manager at De Gruyter Brill. Discussions highlighted the emergence of platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky as an alternative to X (formerly Twitter). It was raised that in a poll of 6000 readers of Nature, 70% had moved over from X to Bluesky declaring the platform nicer, kinder and less antagonistic. The panel also raised a growing emphasis on community-building strategies over traditional marketing tactics among publishers. 

Next, Sarah Greaves, Director and Publishing Consultant at Sarah Greaves STEM Consulting, discussed the ongoing trend of consolidation in the publishing industry. She explored how mergers and acquisitions are reshaping the landscape, the potential benefits of improved efficiencies, and concerns about reduced diversity and potential monopolistic behaviors. 

Our lightning talks provided valuable insights into our latest innovations for publishers. Nicholas Bailey, our Senior Product Manager, introduced Dimensions Author Check, our new research integrity tool designed to help publishers verify potential authors, editors, and reviewers. Meanwhile, Mike Taylor, Head of Data Insights, showcased the Altmetric Journal Benchmark dashboard – a powerful resource for publishers seeking to measure success, benchmark their journals against competitors, and identify growth opportunities.

In the closing keynote, Jo Wixon, Director of External Analysis at Wiley, explored how publishers can actively contribute to advancing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). She emphasized the growing importance of aligning publishing practices with global sustainability efforts, showcasing strategies for integrating SDG-related content and metrics into editorial workflows, peer review processes, and publication strategies. By adopting these practices, publishers can amplify research that addresses critical global challenges while enhancing their impact within the academic community.

Our 2025 Publisher Day highlighted both the opportunities and challenges publishers face in adapting to AI advancements, strengthening research integrity, and responding to shifts in social media landscapes. With increasing consolidation and technological disruption, the industry must work collaboratively to ensure the integrity, accessibility, and credibility of scholarly communication.

The post Publisher Day 2025: Key insights on integrity, disruption, and innovation in scholarly publishing appeared first on Digital Science.

Traditionally, September and October have always been one of the busiest – and most interesting – times to be in the publishing industry. Back in the day, September would be the deadline for the first of the following year’s issues to be collated by editors, while in more recent times big events like the ALPSP Conference, the Frankfurt Book Fair and Open Access Week have set the agenda for the remainder of the year and beyond.

In 2024, this period has perhaps more intrigue than most given a number of deadlines and political events occurring in the next 12 months or so, many of them revolving around open access (OA) and its further adoption. But will things pan out the way people anticipate, and are there solutions that can be used to help forge a path through so many uncertainties about the future?

Conference season

At the recent ALPSP Conference in Manchester in September, there was a good deal of discussion about how open access had developed this year, and its potential progress in 2025 and beyond. Perhaps unsurprisingly at a conference full of publishers, the mood was a little downbeat when it came to the theme of OA, but not for the reasons one might think. Reading between the lines, there was a frustration at the shifting sands many felt they had to constantly navigate, in the shape of changing or newly introduced policies, and a sense that innovation was being stymied as a result.

For example, the tone for OA seemed to have been set by the JISC report on transformative agreements (TAs) which was published in the UK earlier in 2024. This made for somber reading, with the headline prediction that while the UK’s transitioning to OA was faster than most countries, based on the journal flipping rates observed between 2018–2022 it would take at least 70 years for the big five publishers to flip their TA titles to OA. 

With this in mind, the fact that there were deadlines for Plan S set for 2025 around transition that seemed unlikely to be met, and with the OSTP memo in the US mired in committees and a potential change on the cards in the White House, the belief among many publishers was that the move to OA was not happening at the pace or in the direction that many thought it would.

Geopolitical calculations

In addition to what is happening in the UK, Europe and in the US, events further afield are also causing publishers to take stock of their medium-to-long-term strategies. The publication of authors based in Russia has declined sharply since the invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, and collaboration between US authors and those based in China have also decreased, possibly due to policy changes by the Chinese government favoring publication in China-based journals, but also potentially due to fears about research security issues in the US and in other countries. 

China’s move to OA is also happening at a much lower level than many countries, which is significant as it takes up such a high percentage of published articles, passing the US a few years ago as the world’s most prolific publisher of research articles. As a result, despite the increase in the number of TAs being agreed with universities, publishers are still seeing a high degree of uncertainty in the transition to OA.

Forward motion

This uncertainty will be in the back of publishers’ minds when celebrating OA Week this year, coming as it does every year on the back of major conferences such as ALPSP and Frankfurt, and in the midst of fine tuning budgets for the following year. At Digital Science, we understand this predicament given how closely we work with publishers as customers, and also because many of us have worked in the publishing industry ourselves. As such, we have been analyzing how Digital Science solutions can help publishers steer a path forward on OA and transformative agreements, and have created this use case for Dimensions in support of our community.

This resource has been designed to reflect the period of change that the publishing industry is undergoing, supporting the need for publishers to create, evaluate and negotiate TAs by delivering a strong range of historical and predictive data through Dimensions. Using the Dimensions database – which now holds data on almost 150m publications as well as details on funding, grants and patents – publishers can easily find and analyze data surrounding authorship across categories such as country, geography, institution and funder. Understanding a given discipline’s current or future state of play can complement publishers’ own data and inform their strategies accordingly.

Solid state

The theme of this year’s OA Week – ‘Community over Commercialization’ – is a deliberately provocative one, and should engender a good deal of debate during the week and beyond. It should also broaden the conversation to adjacent areas such as open research and open science, as here we have policy and geopolitics making waves for everyone involved in the research ecosystem. 

The origin of some of these ripples can be seen in two upcoming reports from Digital Science. At the end of October, a new report on Research Transformation includes substantial input from those involved in academia on how OA is impacting on their work, while November sees the ninth annual State of Open Data report, tracking how researchers see open data issues developing as part of their work. Without giving too much away, both of these reports call for greater awareness of – and support using – the myriad of fast-developing technologies that are starting to impact academics and their institutions. As such, the community of interest that supports OA Week every year needs to work together in the ecosystem they all inhabit if those OA deadlines are to be met.

You can see a demo of Dimensions and its latest features and meet some of the Digital Science team at Charleston in November. To organize a meeting, send us an email.

The post Will 2025 be a turning point for Open Access? appeared first on Digital Science.

Wednesday 24 July 2024

Open data practices in African research institutions will be bolstered thanks to a new online course for librarians to coincide with International Open Access Week (21-27 October 2024).

The Open Data Management Foundational Course – to be offered entirely free over four weeks by open data experts – is a direct response to calls to strengthen the research data management capacity of librarians in Africa.

The course will be facilitated by AfLIA, th, part of the Open Infrastructure Program of the Training Centre in Communication (TCC Africa). Course leaders will include experts from Figshare, Digital Science and TCC Africa.

Participants in the four-week Open Data Management Foundational Course will gain an understanding of:

• the importance of open data management in Africa and open data principles – including the FAIR and CARE principles
• best practices in FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) data management – including persistent identifiers (PIDs), policies and plans
• data sovereignty
• open research data infrastructures.

To be delivered online using Moodle, the course will involve online contact with other participants, such as discussion forums and groups, and live Q&A sessions with course presenters. Participants will be issued a Certificate of Excellence on course completion.

Dr Helena Asamoah-Hassan, Executive Director of AfLIA, said: “Management of data is a critical know-how that African librarians need to improve upon in order to support the curation, preservation, accessibility, and ethical handling of research data. We have seen repeated calls from library and information professionals across Africa to help build or strengthen the research data management capacity in our region, and we are pleased to be responding to that call with this new foundational course.”

Ms Joy Owango, Executive Director of Training Centre in Communication (TCC Africa ) and Project Lead at the Africa PID Alliance, TCC Africa’s Open Infrastructure program, said: “This new foundational course goes in line with Africa PID Alliance’s Capacity Strengthening and Training Focal Area, whose purpose is to develop a skilled workforce capable of making significant contributions to FAIR scholarly infrastructure, particularly in the area of digital registration management and related services. This training will  directly support International Open Access Week’s subtheme, which is ‘Community over Commercialization’. We intend to reinforce the value of the research library community, which provides leadership on open research initiatives and vital support to researchers and their institutions.”

Dr Mark Hahnel, Fighare Founder and Digital Science’s Vice-President of Open Research, said: “The new course builds on a successful full-day workshop run by Figshare and TCC Africa earlier this year in Accra, Ghana, and reinforces the strategic partnership between Figshare and AfLIA to promote open data awareness and participation in Africa.”

Eligibility

Academic and research librarians from the African continent will be eligible to participate in the course. Other library and information professionals, and students interested in gaining knowledge in open research data management, are equally welcome to register their interest. 

Registrations of interest – coming soon

A call for registrations of interest in the course will be issued in late August 2024. An online form with further information will be shared by all partners involved in delivering the course.

Interested parties are asked to follow partners’ websites and social media for further information.

Update: Thursday 29 August 2024

Registrations of interest – now open

Registrations are now open for the new Open Data Management Foundational Course for African librarians.

To register your interest: https://web.aflia.net/registration-open-open-data-management-foundational-course-for-african-librarians-1st-cohort/

Deadline: 12 September 2024, 11:59pm GMT.

About AfLIA

AfLIA is an independent, international, not-for-profit organization which pursues the interests of library and information associations, library and information services, librarians and information workers and the communities they serve in Africa. The continental association works to build communities, develop capacities, advocate for libraries, and create an enabling ecosystem where libraries can be effective. Upholding principles of freedom of access to information, expression, and ideas, AfLIA implements programmes that position libraries as crucial institutions that enhance lives through equitable access to knowledge, information, and innovative services. AfLIA builds the capacity of African librarians to become knowledgeable, skilled, and passionate professionals to lead in opening up access to knowledge and drive quality and inclusive education in the continent at all levels to transform African communities. Learn more at web.aflia.net

About Africa PID Alliance

The Africa PID Alliance mission is to secure the future of African Innovation, Indigenous Knowledge and Cultural Heritage. We are also striving to support scientists and inventors to disseminate and commercialize their research innovations. Digitizing research outputs is a real challenge in Africa. Through the Africa PID Alliance innovative projects, we provide reliable open research infrastructure services which provides access to knowledge and metadata about digital objects closer to the wider communities, including indigenous knowledge and patent metadata, starting from Africa. Africa PID Alliance is part of the Open Infrastructure Program of the Training Centre in Communication (TCC-AFRICA).

About Figshare

Figshare, part of Digital Science, is a provider of repository infrastructure. Our solutions help organizations share, showcase and manage their research outputs in a discoverable, citable, reportable and transparent way. We support organizations in meeting the growing demands for research to become open, freer, FAIRer and more connected. Figshare provides the flexibility and control for you to create research management workflows that work for you. We take care of implementation, updates, security and maintenance – ensuring you can always depend on your repository, leaving you to focus on what really matters; research and its impact on the world.

About Digital Science

Digital Science is an AI-focused technology company providing innovative solutions to complex challenges faced by researchers, universities, funders, industry and publishers. We work in partnership to advance global research for the benefit of society. Through our brands – Altmetric, Dimensions, Figshare, ReadCube, Symplectic, IFI CLAIMS Patent Services, Overleaf, Writefull, OntoChem, Scismic and metaphacts – we believe when we solve problems together, we drive progress for all. Visit www.digital-science.com and follow @digitalsci on X or on LinkedIn.

Media contacts

David Ellis, Press, PR & Social Manager, Digital Science: Mobile +61 447 783 023, d.ellis@digital-science.com

Public Relations Team
Training Centre in Communication (TCC Africa)
(Through the School of Biological Sciences Linkage)
Gecaga Institute Bldg., 
Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Nairobi
Email: pr@tcc-africa.org, info@africapidalliance.org

Stanley Boakye-Achampong, AfLIA Communications: afliacomm@aflia.net

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So, it is truly remarkable that just a decade later, the majority of publications were Open Access publications. This idea that research can be akin to a large ship that is slow to change course appears to be outdated. 

Number of Open Access Publications per year

More recently eLife has taken a huge leap in reviewing its model of publication and becoming a hybrid pre- and post- peer review publishing house.

“We will publish every paper we send out for review as a Reviewed Preprint, a journal-style paper containing the authors’ manuscript, the eLife assessment, and the individual public peer reviews.” 

This is pretty much a professionalised version of Stevan Harnard’s Subversive Proposal, which is now nearly 30 years old and called for preprints on FTP servers as a way to create global Open Access. The difference is that the time is right. eLife has the advantage of online only infrastructure and consumers. The tools that allow eLife to thrive were not available 30 years ago. So 30 years on, was Harnad’s proposal right and does eLife finally have the answer?

Trust comes first 

Recently, I have experimented with visualising optimal academic dissemination. I soon realised my scoring system below was flawed – as trust in research trumps the content being open, quickly disseminated or cost effective. What it did highlight is that newer types of content, such as data or code publishing, benefit from not having legacy workflows, sustainability models or the concept of prestige. The cost and complexity to make data publishing ‘trusted’ is orders of magnitude less than to make traditional paper publication fast, open or cost effective.

Herein lies the problem, though. Treating each of these issues as equal can lead to propagation of non-trustworthy and even false research (sometimes with an agenda). Trust needs to come first. At UKSG this month, Chris Bennett of Cambridge University Press & Assessment highlights what has happened in attempting to fix scholarly publishing by ‘solving for x’, where x is ‘open’.

Open Access publishing is complex, partly because that is what it has become, a business model. If we solve for x, where ‘x’ is maximising article processing charges (APCs), we see an explosion of content, a lot in the form of special issues (invited papers). I would make the case that we are currently publishing too many papers.

Gates-keepers?

So perhaps the answer is to move all of the publishing to the other side of peer review and transform the way we talk about the Preliminary Scholarly Record and the Trusted Scholarly Record. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has updated its Open Access policy from January 2025 in a way that lends itself to this transformation:

• “Requiring preprints and encouraging preprint review to make research publicly available when it’s ready. While researchers and authors can continue to publish in their journal of choice, preprints will help prioritize access to the research itself as opposed to access to a particular journal.
  
• Discontinuing publishing fees, such as APCs. By discontinuing to support these fees, we can work to address inequities in current publishing models and reinvest the funds elsewhere.
  
• We will work to support an Open Access system and infrastructure that ensures articles and data are readily available to a wider range of audiences.”

In my opinion, the Gates Foundation is taking us in the right direction. eLife is already there. The problem lies in the murky middle. Preprints shouldn’t be treated as academic facts by the general public and news media. Researchers in the field can make their own decisions on whose research they trust in their field and why, as has been the case in arXiv for years. 

If we compare the path we have been on with regards to Open Access with some of the newer experimentation, a proposed transformative pathway emerges. Currently, we do not have a preprint for every paper. The Scholarly Record is made up of preprints, author instigated and publisher instigated peer reviewed publications. Not all peer-reviewed publications are Open Access.

If all papers were published as preprints before being submitted for peer review, the problem of un-checked research being picked up by news media or conspiracy theorists could cause a problem. Therefore, having community wide standards around presentation of and language describing the papers pre- and post- peer review should be established. We should have a ‘Preliminary Scholarly Record’ and a ‘Trusted Scholarly Record’. This author argues that a transformation of the Open Access pathway would lead to many benefits compared to the existing model. This is very inline with a proposed “Plan U” – “If all funding agencies were to mandate posting of preprints by grantees—an approach we term Plan U (for “universal”)—free access to the world’s scientific output for everyone would be achieved with minimal effort” (Server et al.)

Automatic for the people

The transformative approach also opens other areas to focus innovation on. I want to fix peer review. This is the area that I think can have the most impact in academic publishing in the next 20 years – that is not already being aggressively pursued (eg. data publishing). By establishing transparent and open quality checking of academic content, both humans and machines will be able to distinguish genuine research from fake, embellished or exaggerated findings. Automating trust markers can contribute to the bigger picture of framing.

Society will advance at a greater rate if academic research is published faster (maybe even if fewer papers were published faster). Every current model falls down at the point of peer review. Peer review is largely unpaid, and the incentive structures for doing it mean that senior researchers often pass on the work to those less experienced and the benefits to the researcher themselves are a grey area, if they exist at all. As such peer review is slow, a burden. This means that we cannot achieve the Shangri-La of “trusted, fast academic publishing”, without overhauling peer review. My desire for the next transformation in Open Access is to solve for “peer review”. You could argue we will just make things even more complex. However, going back to my Optimal Academic Publishing Model, I argue that it is much more cost effective and less complex to add trust to the existing open and quickly disseminated preprints than the alternative. That is, to reverse engineer openness and fast dissemination to the closed access publishing model.

Open Access has been transformative. That transformation cannot stop here. The job is half done.

References

Hanson MA, Barreiro PG, Crosetto P, Brockington D (2023) The strain on scientific publishing. arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2309.15884

Sever R, Eisen M, Inglis J (2019) Plan U: Universal access to scientific and medical research via funder preprint mandates. PLoS Biol 17(6): e3000273. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000273

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Mark Hahnel has been a thought leader in the Open Research space for many years as Founder and CEO of Figshare. Below Mark spells out that, far from reflecting on the progress made in this area, he is hungry to understand even more about how it can develop further.

My bio has for the last decade included the line: “Mark is passionate about open science and the potential it has to revolutionise the research community.” This is true.

I started Figshare 12 years ago and have been at Digital Science since 2012. I love Digital Science. The leadership has always encouraged open practices where possible. It is something that has been there since the beginning of the company. It is not something we pivoted to for financial gain. It is one of our driving challenges, of which you can read more about here.

At Digital Science, we believe that many of the different aspects of research need to be shared as openly as possible. Openness in research has the capacity to improve both research itself and its long-term societal impact.…Open research is not just about Open Access. It aims to promote transparency throughout the research lifecycle: from funding, through research methodology and data sharing, to evaluation and impact…The key to ensuring all research is reproducible is to document and report details of methods, equipment, analytical software, and data as accurately and openly as possible.”

Mark Hahnel

VP Open Research, Digital Science

As I was trained as an academic researcher, I have always been fascinated by the trends in research, hearing how my former colleagues still in academia talk about publishing, compared to those on the industry side. I think more dissemination of research is a net positive. I think the gamification of research dissemination for nefarious means has created a crisis point. I am obsessed with the incentive structure of peer review and how it shouldn’t work, but does, albeit with some issues. These issues are being amplified by the sheer scale at which research publication happens.

I want to know how we can make optimal dissemination of academic research in a way that is open, fast, cost effective and most importantly trustworthy.

I want to know how we can automate trust, or have better provenance for trusted research in a post-AI world.

And I want to celebrate open access in a way that is cost effective and equitable to all.

I have always felt at home engaging with the community, at events, online discussions and through representation on the DataCite board and the DOAJ advisory board. Through building Figshare and the State of Open Data Report, I know an awful lot about open research data; the reasons we need it, what it will take to make it ubiquitous. More recently, as Figshare has built out its traditional paper repository functionality, I have got up to speed with the nuances of open access publishing. 

But, I want to know more. 

As such, my role is expanding. I am now covering ‘Open Research’ for Digital Science as VP Open Research in the TL;DR team. To help with this transition, I have spent the past six months handing over operational control of Figshare to Jonathan Breeze – who many of you will know from Symplectic – and his team of fantastic leaders responsible for other Digital Science products which support research workflows. However, in my new role, I will continue to work as part of the Figshare team both formally as Digital Science’s representative with the GREI project and more broadly with Digital Science colleagues as we try to make fully open research happen faster.

So if you are working in any facet of Open Research, get in touch. If you are building cool features or tools for the space. If you are drafting policy documents. If you would like someone to come and offer (relatively) unfiltered views at an event near you, get in touch. I look forward to working with everyone who is pushing to move academia and humanity further, and faster through open research.

The post Open research at Digital Science appeared first on Digital Science.

How old is Open Access? In some ways it is as old as research itself, as at least some results have always been shared publicly. However, since the first journals were published in 1665, accessibility has been an issue, with distribution of paper journals limiting potential readership. When the internet came along, it lowered the barriers to access considerably and opened up the pathway towards Open Access. But that process has been a gradual one.

As a tutor for ALPSP and course leader for some of its industry training modules, I have to be wary of approaching topics such as Open Access. Not because it is especially contentious or difficult, but because as someone who has been involved in scholarly communications for over 20 years, it still feels relatively ‘new’ to me, whereas for most attendees it is simply part of the modern furniture of publishing.

However, as Churchill once said, the longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward, so this year’s OA Week seems as good a time as any to review how its development has progressed over the years. Luckily, in Dimensions we have a tool which can look at millions of articles, both OA and closed access, published over the last quarter of a century.

Back story

Pointing to a specific time to say ‘this is when OA started’ is difficult, as experiments with OA publishing arrived with the internet in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Perhaps the first rallying cry in support of OA came in 1994 when Stevan Harnad published his Subversive Proposal. However, in 1998 several things happened which started to shape the way OA would develop, including the setting up of a number of support networks for authors to advise how to follow the OA path, as well as the founding of the Public Knowledge Project (PKP). New tools and services introduced then started to re-engineer how academic publishing operated, which were only amplified by the global adoption of the internet.

Such developments were followed in subsequent years by major declarations from academics and institutions in support of OA, mainly from European cities starting with ‘B’ – both Budapest and Berlin were the basis for such declarations that propelled Open Access forward and firmly onto the agendas of all stakeholders. Some countries and academic cultures adopted OA principles quickly such as Brazil, however it wasn’t until the 2010s that we started to see significant policy changes in Global North countries such as the US and the UK. 

These OA policies have now not only become commonplace, but have strengthened with initiatives like Plan_S in Europe and the OSTP (or Nelson) Memo in the US driving forward the transition towards fuller OA. It feels like the rate of change has increased in the last few years, but is this true and what does the picture look like globally?

Ch-ch-ch-changes

As we can see in the chart below using Dimensions, growth in OA research article publications has been relatively steady over the last 25 years, with a steeper rise in recent years followed by a shallower rise in 2022. This can perhaps be attributed in part to the introduction of Plan_S in 2018 and the introduction of funder mandates, but also the impact of the Covid-19 epidemic which drove OA publications upwards in 2020 and 2021, not least through the avenue of OA preprints.

However, appearances can be deceptive. While the chart may seem to plot a steady increase, the 12-fold rise over 25 years is significantly faster than the four-fold rise seen from all research articles, with all OA articles now making up well over half of all articles.

Looking more closely at the type of OA article recorded on Dimensions, if we look just at Gold OA research articles over time (ie. those published in journals, typically after payment of an article processing charge (APC)), we see a similar development, albeit with a slower take off and steeper rise in recent times.

However, if we look at Green OA research articles made available over the same period, we see a much more complex development, with higher rates of adoption in the early years of OA following a shallower trajectory before a huge spike in 2020, driven by the aforementioned pandemic. 

We can see the change more markedly below if we look at all publications (as opposed to just research articles) in more recent years, with Green and Gold running neck-and-neck until they diverged over the last decade or so. For many early proponents of Green Open Access who were opposed to the high profit margins enjoyed by many, this highlights how Green OA has failed in comparison to Gold Open Access. 

Looking ahead

What do these data tell us about the next 25 years? Perhaps the key takeaway is that shifts in behaviour of authors can be caused by concerted policymaking. Indeed, even the commitment to future mandates can be a catalyst for change as publishers prepare the groundwork quickly for upcoming changes. However, the biggest single shift towards OA happened during something wholly unforeseen (the pandemic), and as geopolitics is in its most volatile state in the whole 25 year period, maybe the biggest changes in OA are just round the corner. 

The post From subversive to the new normal: 25 years of Open Access appeared first on Digital Science.

In December of 2022, Emory University in Atlanta hosted the fifth and final stakeholders meeting for TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem). 

TOME launched in 2017 as a five-year pilot project of the Association of American Universities (AAU), Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and Association of University Presses (AUPresses). The goal of the pilot was to explore a new model for sustainable monograph publishing, one in which participating universities commit to providing baseline grants of $15,000 to support the publication of monographs by their faculty, while participating university presses commit to producing digital open access editions of TOME volumes, openly licensing them under Creative Commons licenses, and depositing the files in selected open repositories.

The December meeting gave stakeholders (publishers, librarians, authors, and representatives from a number of societies and foundations) the opportunity to gather—both virtually and in person—and assess the outcomes of the initiative while also deliberating on next steps. In this post I briefly discuss one discrete piece of the assessment: What did we learn from the pilot about eBook usage and the impact of the OA edition on print sales.

Over the course of the pilot, more than 130 scholarly monographs have been published in OA editions with funding from the 20 participating TOME institutions. Given the long lead time associated with monograph publishing, most of the books (over 70%) were released in the final two years of the pilot, which means that any usage data collected by the publishers would be preliminary at best, so the initial analysis focused on the first 25 books, which were published between May 2018 and September 2019. Prior to the December meeting, the publishers of these 25 books were asked to collect usage data from each of the platforms hosting the OA editions. In addition, they provided print sales figures, both for the TOME editions and for comparable titles on their list. The resulting data were compiled into a spreadsheet for analysis. 

Not surprisingly, the main challenge to analysis of these data was the apples-to-apples problem. Some repositories and platforms collect downloads while others track views only. Some base their stats on single chapters; others on the entire book. Meanwhile, publishers do not all place their OA editions on the same platforms. As a result, the spreadsheet ended up looking a bit like a checkerboard with pieces on some squares but not others. For instance, here’s how a small portion of the spreadsheet looked when the data were filled in:

TOME’s usage stats stand out even more when seen alongside the sales figures for the print editions of the same titles.”

Peter Potter

Still, when all the data were collected, one thing was clear: the OA editions have been heavily accessed online. By July 2022, the first 25 TOME books tallied nearly 195,000 downloads and views. The average per book was 7,754.¹

These findings are in line with those of other OA book initiatives. In November 2022 MIT Press reported that the 50 books published OA in 2022 through its Direct to Open program were downloaded over 176,000 times.² This works out to roughly 3,520 per book. Likewise, the University of Michigan Press reported in January 2023 that the 40 Fund to Mission books released OA in 2022 were downloaded over 149,000 times up to the end of December, reaching an average of 3,826 per book.³ While the per book numbers for both D2O and Michigan are lower than that of TOME, the TOME books accumulated their stats over a longer period of time.

TOME’s usage stats stand out even more when seen alongside the sales figures for the print editions of the same titles. As can be seen in this bar chart, the average number of downloads/views per book (7,754) is significantly higher than the average unit sales per book (590). 

We also considered one of the biggest questions that publishers continue to ask about OA books: How does the OA edition affect sales of the print edition? With this question in mind, publishers provided not just the sales figures for TOME books but sales figures for comparable titles on their list. (Each publisher was left to decide what it deemed a “comparable” book.)  As this chart shows, the print editions of TOME books actually outsold their comps. 

The print editions of TOME books actually outsold their comps.”

Peter Potter

These findings should be taken with a grain of salt. As several publishers pointed out, identifying comps for any single title is mostly guesswork. Furthermore, the sample size (25) is too small to warrant drawing any firm conclusions. For instance, most of the 25 TOME titles had print sales between 300 and 500 copies. Only in four cases did sales exceed 1,000 copies, and if these four titles are excluded from the sample the average drops to a number more consistent with the comps. Understandably, therefore, most presses were reluctant just yet to draw any conclusions about OA’s impact on sales.⁴

Of course, we know that the impact of scholarly books goes well beyond downloads, views, and sales figures. A future post will look at the Altmetric data for TOME books to see what they tell us about alternative measures of impact. Meanwhile, a final report on TOME, including an in-depth examination of attitudes and motivations of the stakeholder groups, is due to be released in the coming weeks.

 ¹ The median was 5,243, with a minimum of 800 and a maximum of 27,470. 
 ² https://mitpress.mit.edu/mit-press-direct-to-open-books-downloaded-more-than-176312-in-ten-months/
³ https://ebc.press.umich.edu/stories/2023-02-01-so-how-did-they-do-in-2022/. These figures filter out a digital project with very high usage, which was considered an outlier.
 ⁴ A larger study of OA impact on sales, sponsored by the NEH, is forthcoming from AUPresses. https://aupresses.org/news/neh-grant-to-study-open-access-impact/

About the Author

Peter Potter, Publishing Director | Virginia Tech

Peter joined Virginia Tech’s University Libraries in 2016 after many years in university press publishing. He guides the library’s long-term planning in the area of publishing services, consults with faculty, staff, and students on their publishing needs, and advises prospective authors on all aspects of the scholarly publishing process. During most of the TOME pilot, he served as ARL Visiting Program Officer overseeing the initiative.

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The White House OSTP’s new memo (aka the Nelson Memo) will see this trend advance rapidly in the United States, stipulating that federally-funded publications and associated datasets should be made publicly available without embargo.

In this blog post, Symplectic‘s Kate Byrne and Figshare‘s Andrew Mckenna-Foster start to unpack what the Nelson Memo means, along with some of the impacts, considerations and challenges that research institutions and librarians will need to consider in the coming months.

Demystifying the Nelson memo’s recommendations

The focus of the memo is upon ensuring free, immediate, and equitable access to federally funded research. 

The first clause of the memo is focused on working with the funders to ensure that they have policies in place to provide embargo-free, public access to research. 

The second clause encourages the development of transparent procedures to ensure scientific and research integrity is maintained in public access policies. This is a complex and interesting space, which goes beyond the remit of what we would perhaps traditionally think of as ‘Open Access’ to incorporate elements such as transparency of data, conflicts of interest, funding, and reproducibility (the latter of which is of particular interest to our sister company Ripeta, who are dedicated to building trust in science by benchmarking reproducibility in research).  

The third clause recommends that federal agencies coordinate with the OSTP in order to ensure equitable delivery of federally-funded research results in data. While the first clause mentions making supporting data available alongside publications, this clause takes a broader stance toward sharing results. 

What does this mean for institutions and faculty?

The Nelson memo introduces a clear set of challenges for research institutions, research managers, and librarians, who now need to consider how to put in place internal workflows and guidance that will enable faculty to easily identify eligible research and make it openly available, how to support multiple pathways to open access, and how to best engage and incentivize researchers and faculty. 

However, the OSTP has made very clear that this is not in fact a mandate, but rather a non-binding set of recommendations. While this certainly relieves some of the potential immediate pressure and panic around getting systems and processes in place, it is clear that what this move does represent is the direction of travel that has been communicated to federal funders. 

Funders will look at the Nelson Memo when reviewing their own policies, and seek alignment when setting their own policy requirements that drive action for faculty members across the US. So while the memo does not in itself mandate compliance for institutions, universities, and research organizations, it will have a direct impact on the activities faculty are being asked to complete – increasing the need for institutions to offer faculty services and support to help them easily comply with their funders requirements.

How have funders responded so far? 

We are already seeing clear indications that funders are embracing the recommendations and preparing next steps. Rapidly after the announcement, the NIH published a statement of support for the policy, noting that it has “long championed principles of transparency and accessibility in NIH-funded research and supports this important step by the Biden Administration”, and over the coming months will “work with interagency partners and stakeholders to revise its current Public Access Policy to enable researchers, clinicians, students, and the public to access NIH research results immediately upon publication”. 

Similarly, the USDA tweeted their support for the guidance, noting that “rapid public access to federally-funded research & data can drive data-driven decisions & innovation that are critical in our fast-changing world.”

How big could the impact be?

While it will take some time for funders to begin to publish their updated OA Policies, there have been some early studies which seek to assess how many publications could potentially fall under such policies. 

A recent preprint by Eric Schares of Iowa State University [Impact of the 2022 OSTP Memo: A Bibliometric Analysis of U.S. Federally Funded Publications, 20217-2021] used data from Dimensions to identify and analyse publications with federal funding sources. Schares found that: 

• 1.32 million publications in the US were federally funded between 2017-2021, representing 33% of all US research outputs in the same period. 
• 32% of federally funded publications were not openly available to the public in 2021 (compared to 38% of worldwide publications during the same period). 

Schares’ study included 237 federal funding agencies – due to the removal of the $100m threshold, many more funders now fall under the Nelson memo than under the previous 2013 Holdren memo. This makes it likely that disciplines who previously were not impacted will now find themselves grappling with public access requirements.

In Schares’ visualization here, where each dot represents a research institution, we can see that two main groupings emerge. The first is a smaller group made up of the National Laboratories. They publish a smaller number of papers overall, but are heavily federally funded (80-90% of their works). The second group is a much larger cluster, representing Universities across the US. Those organisations have 30–60% of their publications being federally-funded, but building from a much larger base number of publications – meaning that they will likely have a lot of faculty members who will now need support.

Where do faculty members need support?

According to the 2022 State of Open Data Report, institutions and libraries have a particularly essential role to play in meeting new top-down initiatives, not only by providing sufficient infrastructure but also support, training and guidance for researchers. It is clear from the findings of the report that the work of compliance is wearing on researchers, with 35% of respondents citing lack of time as reason for not adhering to data management plans and 52% citing finding time to curate data as the area they need the most help and support with. 72% of researchers indicated they would rely on an internal resource (either colleagues, the Library or the Research Office) were they to require help with managing or making their data openly available.

How to start?

Institutions who invest now in building capacity in these areas to support open access and data sharing for researchers will be better prepared for the OSTP’s 2025 deadline, helping to avoid any last-minute scramble to support their researchers in meeting this guidance.

Beginning to think about enabling open access can be a daunting task, particularly for institutions who don’t yet have internal workflows or appropriate infrastructure set up, so we recommend breaking down your approach into more manageable chunks: 

1. Understand your own Open Access landscape 

• Find out where your researchers are publishing and what OA pathways they are currently using. You can do this by reviewing your scholarly publishing patterns and the OA status of those works.
• Explore the data you have for your own repositories – not only your own existing data sets, but also those from other sources such as data aggregators or tools like Dimensions.
• Begin to overlay publishing data with grants data, to benchmark where you are now and work to identify the kinds of drivers that your researchers are likely to see in the future. 

2. Review your system capabilities

• Is your repository ready for both publications and data?
• Do you have effective monitoring and reporting capabilities that will help you track engagement and identify areas where your community may need more support? Are your systems researcher-friendly; how quickly and easily can a researcher make their work openly available??

3. Consider how you will support your research ecosystem 

• Identify how you plan to support and incentivize researchers, considering how you will provide guidance about compliant ways of making work openly available, as well as practical support where relevant.
• Plan communication points between internal stakeholders (e.g. Research Office, Library, IT) to create a joined-up approach that will provide a shared and seamless experience to your researchers.
• Review institutional policies and procedures relating to publishing and open access, considering where you are at present and where you’d like to get to.

How can Digital Science help? 

Symplectic Elements was the first commercially available research information management system to be “open access aware”, connecting to institutional digital repositories in order to enable frictionless open access deposit for publications and accompanying datasets. Since 2009 through initial integration with DSpace – later expanding our repository support to Figshare, EPrints, Hyrax, and custom home-grown systems – we have partnered with and guided many research institutions around the globe as they work to evolve and mature their approach to open access. We have deep experience in building out tools and processes which will help universities meet mandates set by national governments or funders, report on fulfilment and compliance, and engage researchers in increasing levels of deposit. 

Our sister company Figshare is a leading provider of cloud repository software and has been working for over a decade to make research outputs, of all types, more discoverable and reusable and lower the barriers of access. Meeting and exceeding many of the ‘desirable characteristics’ set out by the OSTP themselves for repositories, Figshare is the repository of choice for over 100 universities and research institutions looking to ensure their researchers are compliant with the rising tide of funder policies.

Below is an example of the type of Open Access dashboard that can be configured and run using the various collated and curated scholarly data held within Symplectic Elements.

In this example, we are using Dimensions as a data source, building on data from Unpaywall about the open access status of works within an institution’s Elements system. Using the data visualizations within this dashboard, you can start to look at open access trends over time, such as the different sorts of open access pathways being used, and how that pattern changes when you look across different publishers or different journals, or for different departments within your organization. By gaining this powerful understanding of where you are today, you can begin to think about how to best prioritise your efforts for tomorrow as you continue to mature your approach to open access.

You might find yourself at Level 1 right now where you have a publications repository along with some metadata, and you’re able to track a number of deposits and do some basic reporting, but there are a number of ways that you can build this up over time to create a truly integrated OA solution. By bringing together publications and data repositories and integrating them within a research management solution, you can enter a space where you can monitor proactively, with an embedded engagement and compliance strategy across all publications and data. 

For more information or if you’d like to set up time to speak to the Digital Science team about how Symplectic Elements or Figshare for Institutions can support and guide you in your journey to a fully embedded and mature Open Access strategy, please get in touch – we’d love to hear from you.

The post White House OSTP public access recommendations: Maturing your institutional Open Access strategy appeared first on Digital Science.

How far has the scholarly communications industry come in helping African researchers to publish their work? Inroads have been made but there’s still a way to go – and Open Access has a major role to play.

A recent study showed that researchers using different article publication databases would not have access to the same level of content from the Global South (Basson et al, 2022). This has, sadly, always been the case, as Western countries’ researchers have dominated in terms of article numbers and their respective citations ever since the first journals appeared in England and France in the 17th Century. While India and China have increased their research output markedly in recent years, the imbalance with other developing countries is still significant.

In order to help redress this deficit, Digital Science and Dimensions has partnered with the Training Centre in Communication (TCC Africa) since 2019. TCC Africa is a research capacity Trust based in the University of Nairobi, Kenya. TCC Africa was the first African-based training centre to teach effective communications skills to scientists in 2006. Registered in Kenya, TCC Africa aims to provide capacity support in improving researchers’ output and visibility through training in scholarly and science communication. 

The key objectives for Digital Science and Dimensions in collaborating with TCC Africa were threefold: to increase use and awareness of Open Access (OA) content as part of the research discovery process; to increase OA data included in Dimensions’ database; and to increase African Journals and their research output in Dimensions Data through strategic African Higher Education stakeholder partnerships.

Vital to the delivery of these objectives has been the leadership of Joy Owango, Executive Director of TCC Africa, who has created strategic partnerships that has led to the capacity building initiatives. In 2021 and 2022, Dimensions has been launched in 12 African countries through strategic partnerships with national library consortia, research councils and university commissions. Continuous institutional training on effective access and use of Dimensions has been taking place with over 100 universities trained so far.

TCC Africa has been able to make huge strides towards meeting the original objectives of the partnership. Just in the first part of 2022, activities have included:

• Delivering workshops on using OA research discovery solutions to improve research outcomes in Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Nigerian, Kenyan and Tanzanian institutions
• Hosting webinars on OA discovery and utilising social media in a research context
• Presenting to higher education conferences in Rwanda and the UK.

The conference in the UK was noteworthy as it was co-organised by TCC Africa and the University of Bath, with a focus on Open Science and Research Inclusion, involving input from Joy as well as Figshare CEO and Founder Mark Hahnel and SciELo DIrector Abel Packer. Africa and South America were therefore leading the discussion not just on research inclusivity, but the important role Open Science and OA can play in this important issue. As Basson et al’s article pointed out, using Dimensions can help authors in the Global South, and “has the potential to be a more suitable platform for a more inclusive measurement of OA uptake, especially of publications by authors from outside North America, Europe, and Central Asia”.

Following the success of these activities that have engaged thousands of people across Africa and beyond, what’s next for TCC Africa? Joy has plenty more planned for 2022. “Our immediate step is to work with African Funders and Think Tanks to start indexing their output, thus increasing their visibility,” says Joy. She adds, “We are far from being done as continuous engagement with African higher education stakeholders builds trust  and community, which are the continents’ core cultural values and this process empowers African researchers through access to data but most importantly making their output visible for use.”

About Dimensions

Dimensions is a modern, innovative, linked research data infrastructure and tool, re-imagining discovery and access to research: grants, publications, citations, clinical trials, patents and policy documents in one place. www.dimensions.ai 

Links

TCC Africa: https://www.tcc-africa.org/portfolio/professional-services/open-access/

Basson et al, 2022: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0265545

International Centre for Higher Education Symposium on Open Science and Research Inclusion: https://uniofbath.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?tid=2326376d-ce7d-445b-99af-ae6300bd90b1

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To judge from the progress of Open Access (OA) journal articles, you could be mistaken for thinking OA was the new paradigm for all research: a swift look at the charts below tells you everything you need to know.

According to Unpaywall and Dimensions, one by one the disciplines have tipped from majority-closed to majority-open. Life Sciences was the first to tip in 2013; Medical and Health Sciences followed in 2016; then the Social Sciences and Physical and Mathematical Sciences in 2017. The Humanities joined the majority open in 2020; and Engineering and Technology were at parity in 2021.

So what of books? While we can say with confidence that rates of OA publishing for both monographs and collected works have doubled over the last 10 years, the proportion of OA books remains very low, barely troubling the dominance of the traditional pay model. It’s possible to see a small increase in the last two years – which could be a consequence of more publishers making books ‘freely available’ during COVID (but, lacking a CC- licence not matching the formal status of being ‘Open Access’). Whether or not this trend continues, in a post-pandemic world, is a question that we’ll need to return to in 2024…

Books are more complex, of course. The business models are more challenging, they’re slower to write, slower to gain impact – and are considerably more diverse than journals – in language, discipline, country and publisher. Some contributors might be in receipt of mandatory OA publishing, others may be unfunded. As long as paper book sales remain strong, ‘hybridity’ will need to be baked into the model.

The success of OA journal articles isn’t accidental. Rather it’s the consequence of policy: the graphs below make this clear. In the UK and the Netherlands, for example, several funders have taken dramatic steps to implement Gold OA – and this can be seen in the graphs below. The European Commission, in contrast, favours universal OA, without mandating any particular model, and tends to have strong Green / self-archiving policy. The consequences of funding policy are self-evident. Other funders have softer policies, and their data has followed suit.

To understand how funders are addressing this, we spoke to three funders who are shaping the way we think about OA books, about their experiences and of their hopes for the future.

For Victoria Tsoukala at the European Commission, the reasons for books’ slow adoption of Open Access is clear: books are considerably more complex than journals, and fulfil a different role in the minds (and hearts) of scholars. The EC’s policy is clear: OA is mandatory, of whatever type works. Practically speaking, this is more challenging for books than journals. As Tsoukala says, the paper product isn’t going away, “not for us, not for our children, perhaps for our grandchildren?”, and as a consequence, she doesn’t think we’re likely to see much more progress than organic growth – hopefully reaching 50% in the next few years. ”‘But while there’s paper, there will always be hybrid,” she adds, noting that scholars will always want to keep books, read them, refer to them, be inspired by them, note them, and treasure them on their shelves. Books clearly have an emotional value that goes beyond that of the journal article.

…while there’s paper, there will always be hybrid.”

Victoria Tsoukala

European Commission

The Wellcome Trust – long recognized as Open Access leaders – have taken a different view of OA book publishing, with OA policies evolving since 2003. According to Aki MacFarlane and Hannah Hope of the Wellcome Trust, their mission is to reduce the friction for OA book publishing to the lowest possible level. Their policy is a masterpiece of clarity, and as well as clear instructions, they’ve implemented a tool to support book publishers to make their content available and compliant.

Neither the EC or Wellcome Trust publish a fixed Book Processing Charge for OA books. In contrast, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) does: $5500, to be paid directly to the publisher, with $500 of that to go to the author. Brett Bobley of the NEH shared more details of their “Fellowships Open Book Program”, a project referred to as their ‘flagship program’. Curiously, their policy takes a different view of the payoff between sales and access: US-based publishers are welcome to ‘OA’ their books, and apply for the money, at any stage. The implication is that publishers are able to sell their books, and when they’re ready, make them available OA – as long as it’s through a recognised platform. The NEH has a good track record of working with publishers and scholars to develop policies, with several university presses being consulted with.

All three of the funders acknowledge a number of core issues: the complexity (and consequent friction) of the socio-economic role that books play, and the issue of discoverability.

This blog has previously reported the challenges of visibility and discoverability experienced by the scholarly monograph, estimating that approximately half of published output takes advantage of the open scholarly infrastructure systems, such as DOIs and ORCIDs.

Even organisations that mandate OA – and report strong compliance – have been known to struggle with discoverability. The EC’s metadata policy mandates use of DOIs and ORCIDs; the NEP mandates publishers to make their books available on at least two major digital distribution services; Wellcome mandates the use of NCBI Bookshelf and Europe PMC. Nevertheless, their aggregated percent of OA books from the last five years has not yet reached 2/3rds of funded books, these numbers falling short of what we estimate as being eligible.

The world of scholarly publishers is considerably more diverse than that of the journals world, with many hundred small and university presses producing a considerable percentage of the world’s academic book output. And this area is getting more complex, with many new business models being developed.

We hope that the next 10 years sees a similar change for books, as the last decade has seen for journals, while preserving the cultural and social role of the scholarly book.”

Mike Taylor

Head of Data Insights & Customer Analytics | Digital Science

All three of the funders interviewed emphasised their support for publishers, and the development of new business models: a point that came up in all three was the need to ‘assuage their fears’, ‘to reassure them…’, ‘to lower the bar…’ Publishers play an essential role in the development and distribution of the scholarly book, and OA or not, no-one sees them going away.

For me, it’s gratifying that three such important funders take the book seriously, and acknowledge this final fact. Much work still needs to be done to encourage the growth in OA publishing for books – as we’ve previously covered, OA books get far higher uses and achieve much higher rates of sharing and readership than non-OA books, while not noticeably having reduced sales – and these three funders are certainly playing a strong role in changing the environment.

As we have seen: policy drives change. In Figure 2, we can compare the change in OA for three countries with (respectively) strong, moderate and weak OA policies for journals – without similar clarity of purpose and policy, OA book growth is likely to continue in its current state. We hope that the next 10 years sees a similar change for books, as the last decade has seen for journals, while preserving the cultural and social role of the scholarly book.

This will not happen without clear policies.

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