OASPA News and Commentary

Background
This comment is submitted on behalf of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, OASPA. OASPA is a membership organization for scholarly publishers engaged in Open Access scholarly journal publishing (see www.oaspa.org). Our membership includes recognized non-profit organizations such as the Public Library of Science (PLoS), University Presses such as Utrecht University Library, Igitur, for-profit publishers such as BioMed Central and the Hindawi Publishing Corporation, as well as smaller publishing organizations and a large number of scholar publishers (scholars or small groups of scholars who are self-publishing a journal). Our membership also includes mixed model publishers such as Oxford University Press, SAGE Publications, and the BMJ Group, who manage portfolios that include both open access journals as well as subscription-based journals. Our members are based in the United States as well as many other countries, but all publish manuscripts produced by American researchers, many of whom have received federal funding from the United States Government.

OASPA has not had an opportunity to submit comments during the earlier phases of this discussion, but is pleased to offer our general comments on the nine aspects of public access that have been addressed. These comments reflect OASPA’s general position in relation to public access to research. This position is strictly in relationship to open access journals publishing. We recognize that some of our members may wish to submit comments on these questions in relation to their subscription journal programs, either independently or through other associations.

Free re-use is as important as free access

OASPA defines an open access journal as a journal that provides immediate access to original research at no cost and is free from access barriers (i.e. no subscription or need to register), and grants users re-use rights, at least for non-commercial purposes, and ideally for all commercial purposes as well. Our members must comply with this definition as well as to a Code of Conduct that covers ethical and practical issues (see http://www.oaspa.org/conduct.php) of publishing. OASPA believes this definition can offer a standard for recognizing serious open access publishers that provide maximum benefit to the scientific community and tax payers. As an example, we have learned that Harvard University, a co-founder of the Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity (http://hul.harvard.edu/news/2009_0914_compact.html), has adopted the OASPA criteria as a basis for considering whether a publisher’s publication fee will be covered by its central funds.

One of the key motivations of Open Access publishing is to maximize the potential impact of any piece of published research by removing any barrier to access or reuse of that work. The best way to achieve that is to attach a Creative Commons Attribution license to each and every publication. Among other things, the use of a CCAL assures that researchers and institutions are free to post the final published version of that work in any repository, archive, etc., removing concerns about the circulation of multiple versions of a particular article. Moreover, from an Open Access publishing perspective, archives and repositories also provide additional channels for disseminating authors’ work and encouraging re-use, leading to greater impact.

The role of open access publishers is to support dissemination

OASPA members meet the demands of the scholarly community by providing outlets for publications and managing these publications. From an open access publisher perspective, our role is to provide a valuable service to our clients (scholarly authors) in part by ensuring appropriate peer review, a clean layout, typesetting and XML mark-up to facilitate various publishing and archiving standards, disseminating that article to the greatest extent possible in order to achieve maximum impact for the author, enhancing an author’s visibility, and preservation of the work. The activities involved in the publishing system have been mapped by Bo-Christer Björk and colleagues at http://www.oacs.shh.fi/; this same model provided the basis for the JISC Report: Economic Implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models; http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/documents/economicpublishingmodelsfinalreport.aspx). To assist authors in complying with policies such as that of the NIH is part of our role as this contributes to the broadest possible dissemination, as well as the preservation, of scholarly research outputs.

Recommendation: Free access policies should be grounded in article publishing in journals

Publishing articles in journals remains the key means of disseminating, registering and validating findings for scholars in most fields (the Arts & Humanities might be an exception. See e.g.: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/apa.htm). As noted in a January 4 blog post by Michael Clarke, publishing in journals also remains the primary vehicle for validation, filtration and designation. We would agree with Clarke that although technological advances have altered scholarly publishing in many ways, the tradition of publishing scientific articles in journals has not been seriously disrupted and is unlikely to become so for some time. This is evidenced by the growing number of open access journals published by scholars themselves. As such, free access policies should be aligned with scholarly journal publishing rather than seeking an alternative publishing system. Publishing in open access journals is not incompatible with depositing work in repositories and archives. Publishing and archiving are complimentary activities that fulfill different roles in the scholarly communication system.

Recommendation: Free access policies should support open access publishing

We would encourage any public access policy to include publishing research in open access journals as one outlet for complying with public access demands.
To support publication in open access journals one must recognize that publishing activities do require resources. Some OASPA members charge publication fees (or article processing fees) to cover the costs of managing the publication of articles in their OA journals. Other members are able to offer free publication to authors because of their own volunteer efforts or external support from institutions. In the case of university libraries that provide publishing platforms to independent journal editorial teams, funding and other resources can derive from a variety of sources.

We highly encourage funders and policy-makers to explicitly allow grant monies to be used to cover open access publication charges. Moreover, we encourage policy-makers to provide extra funding to institutions covered by federal funding to establish central funds for those researchers who are not currently working under a specific grant that would cover such open access charges. The policies developed by the Wellcome Trust in the UK, for example, include the provision of funds for researchers wishing to publish in open-access journals (http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/About-us/Policy/Spotlight-issues/Open-access/Policy/index.htm).

Recommendations related to compliance

Should a public access policy provide for funding to cover open access charges, OASPA would encourage the adoption of formal guidelines regarding the nature of the publication and the publisher. As noted above, OASPA hopes that its membership criteria can be used as a baseline for making such an evaluation. Such a measure helps to ensure that authors publish with reputable publishers who strive to take advantage of the dissemination opportunities afforded by open access to achieve the greatest possible impact.

Open access is moving much more slowly within the Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities than in fields such as Biology and Medicine. OASPA would argue that a policy to support publishing in open access journals should be applied to all fields of research.

As noted above, OASPA favors Creative Commons Licensing (either CC-BY or CC-BY-NC) and would highly encourage any public access policy to provide funding for open access publication charges, and to require the use of a Creative Common License or similar license. Again, this assures that researchers and institutions are clear about their rights and are free to post the final published version of a work in any repository, archive, etc., and avoids the dissemination of multiple versions of an article.

Where national archives or subject archives such as PubMed Central (PMC) exist, most open access publishers are happy to assist authors or deposit published articles on their behalf. It should be noted, however, that smaller publishers can encounter financial difficulties in complying with archiving policies as that of PMC, for example, which requires an XML-DTD that by and large only professional typesetters are able to deliver. Preparation of files in XML generally incurs a significant cost to most publishers.

Working with publishers, as well as publishers’ associations, can greatly assist with levels of compliance. Groups like OASPA can provide input on mechanisms and suggested policies on the one hand, and on the other hand disseminate requirements of different funders and governments to their members.

Recommendations on coordination of policy

OASPA would suggest that common policies - at least at the level of a particular discipline - affecting researchers receiving federal funding would enable publishers to best support researchers in complying with those policies. Coordination at a Federal level can provide for common practices. Simplicity and consistency of policies and recommended practices will also encourage compliance.

Should a policy on public access to research in the United States include provision for open access publication fees, OASPA would suggest that an agency working with processing these fees examine the mechanisms by which such payments would be approved and paid for both under current conditions as well as in light of possible expansion of open access publishing activity in the future. These issues, however, have not been fully explored.

OASPA is currently working through a sub-committee on financing of open access publications to write a white paper on guidelines for publishers who handle open access publication fees. We are also looking to engage with funders and university institutions who manage central funding to identify appropriate and manageable mechanisms for handling these fees within an overall system to meet both present and future needs. We would invite any US agency involved in this area to join our discussions.

We applaud the Obama administration for consulting broadly with the scholarly communications community to develop policies that align aims and current practices.

With respect, on behalf of OASPA,
Caroline Sutton
President, OASPA
Caroline.Sutton@co-action.net

Last week OASPA welcomed two new publishers to the organization – The BMJ Group and Oxford University Press (OUP). Following our announcement the Board has received a number of questions about OASPA’s membership requirements and would like to answer some of these.

On what grounds did OASPA grant membership to the BMJ Group and OUP?
OASPA grants full membership to any publisher that publishes AT LEAST one full Open Access journal. According to the organization’s definition of Open Access, a journal must provide free immediate online access to all original research and allow re-use AT LEAST for non-commercial purposes. We highly encourage all applicants to adopt a Creative Commons License as a standard (see below) and in particular the most liberal license, the CC-BY. However, a CC-BY-NC or similar is also acceptable.

Applicants must also comply with the OASPA Code of Conduct. To ensure that they do, applicants are asked to provide information regarding their ownership structure, number of full OA articles published in their full OA journal(s) per year, links to their licensing and copyright policy, links to information regarding publication fees, and more.

Both the BMJ Group and OUP meet our criteria. The BMJ Group publishes the British Medical Journal (BMJ), which provides immediate free access to all original research and other materials online under a Creative Commons License (CC-BY-NC). OUP publishes six (6) full Open Access journals, also published under a Creative Commons License (CC-BY-NC). OUP publishes hybrid journals that offer authors the choice of paying for Open Access for individual articles, but this was not a point of consideration for their membership. Both publishers meet with our Code of Conduct.

Why a Creative Commons License or similar?
One of the key motivations of Open Access publishing is to maximize the potential impact of any piece of published research by removing any barrier to access or reuse of that work. The best way to achieve that is to attach a Creative Commons license to each and every publication.

Furthermore, as a trade organization for Open Access publishers OASPA seeks to contribute to setting standards that provide greater clarity and consistency within scholarly communications to the benefit of all stakeholders. Essential to scholarly communications is a clear understanding of what rights the users of scholarly texts have, and as such we regard standards on copyright and licensing to be an essential issue to address. Creative Commons Licenses are machine and human readable. They have been translated into numerous languages and are universally defined. By adopting Creative Commons Licenses, publishers make it easier for any user to understand their rights with regard to downloading and re-use.

An additional benefit of using a Creative Commons License, and particularly the CC-BY or CC-BY-NC, is that authors, and other parties, may archive the final version of their paper, removing concerns about the circulation of multiple versions of a particular article. Moreover, from an Open Access publishing perspective, archives and repositories also provide additional channels for disseminating authors’ work. Using a CCL lets librarians and archivists know that they can easily and without permission archive the article. In this sense, our standards can help support archiving and repositories.

OASPA feels that it has already made an important contribution with respect to setting standards and helping publishers meet these standards particularly in the area of licensing. At the time of application, OASPA works with applicants that do not meet our standards to provide assistance and explain the logic behind our requirements. This has resulted in several publishers adopting a CCL.

What about free Open Access journals that do not allow free use?
We invite all Open Access publishers to apply for membership in OASPA. A publisher that offers free access to content but restricts reuse (including non-commercial reuse) is asked to consider the adoption of a Creative Commons Attribution License or similar. The Board is happy to work with a publisher to consider options and provide guidance. Those publishers who choose not to adopt an applicable copyright and licensing policy may choose an Associate Membership in OASPA. The Board will also reconsider applications when a publisher has altered their practices.

Why offer membership to publishers and not journals?
First, OASPA is an organization for publishers and as such our members should be publishers. Second, the founders were concerned about creating an organization that would balance the interests of different publishers equally. OASPA has defined two publisher categories – Scholar Publishers and Professional Publishing Organizations. The former are defined as smaller groups of scholars working outside of publishing houses generally on a single journal, while the latter are organizations that employ full-time staff to work with journal publishing. OASPA also grants full-membership to “Other organizations” that provide services to OA publishers or that leverage OA content.

The OASPA board consists of nine (9) members. Three (3) board seats are reserved for professional publishing organizations, three (3) for scholar publishers, one (1) for “Other organizations” and two (2) positions are at large. Each member (publisher/other organization) has one vote With respect to membership of the board. This means that a scholar publisher with a single journal has an equal voice to that of a large publishing house with a suite of journals, only a handful of which might be OA.

Had OASPA granted membership based on journals, this would have led to an imbalance within the organization. Scholar publishers with single journals would be dominated by larger publishing houses with many votes. Even among the professional organizations an imbalance would result, e.g. PLoS publishes few journals but many manuscripts, while BMC and Hindawi publish many journals, but fewer articles per journal than PLoS.

Why would OASPA accept publishing organizations that publish only one OA journal amongst a suite of subscription-based titles?
OASPA’s mission is to support Open Access publishing through exchanging information, setting standards, advancing models, advocacy in the form of pointing to the advantages of OA publishing, education, and the promotion of innovation. The best way to accomplish this mission is by bringing together all those publishers who are seriously working with Open Access publishing.

Each type of Open Access publisher brings a different perspective to the organization. Publishers with subscription journals who have begun publishing full Open Access journals are an important category to include. Information about why these publishers have chosen to engage in some OA publishing at this time and what potentially is holding them back from expanding their OA publishing programs offers insight into the remaining challenges that need to be addressed. Moreover, through an exchange of best practices with other OA publishers, this group might experience more positive outcomes from their Open Access journal publishing programs, experiences that could potentially offer encouragement to other publishers who remain cautious or skeptical about testing the waters.

Shouldn’t you make the grounds upon which publishers have been accepted clearer, and reveal the level of commitment each publisher has made with respect to OA publishing?
Yes, we should. Earlier this year the OASPA interim board agreed that we should provide information on the OASPA website about each of our members, based on the information collected through the membership application, as a means of providing greater transparency. Because we are a new organization and have a working board, this has taken longer than we would have liked. The board is in the process of identifying technical support to help us achieve this goal more quickly. We look to be able to provide this information during 2010.

Have additional questions about OASPA membership? Feel free to reply to this blog item or write to info@oaspa.org.

For OASPA,
Caroline Sutton, President

PRESS RELEASE

OASPA Welcomes British Medical Journal and Oxford University Press

1 December 2009,The Hague: The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, OASPA, is pleased to announce two new members, The British Medical Journal (BMJ) and Oxford University Press (OUP).

OASPA President, Caroline Sutton is pleased to welcome the new members stating: “OASPA’s mission is to support and represent the interests of Open Access (OA) journals publishers globally in all scientific, technical, medical and scholarly disciplines. These publishers represent important perspectives within Open Access publishing that will enrich our exchange of information and support OASPA’s work to set industry standards and advance business and publishing models, among other things. As a leading publication in the medical field, British Medical Journal (BMJ) was early to adopt free online access to original research, while Oxford University Press (OUP)’s openness in sharing details of the economics of its full and hybrid open access journals has played a valuable role in allowing the economic viability of open access models to be assessed.”

BMJ Editor-in-Chief Fiona Godlee views BMJ’s membership as a reflection of the journal’s long-time commitment to Open Access: “The BMJ has been an active supporter of open access from the outset. The journal provides immediate worldwide free access to the full text of its peer reviewed research articles and has done so since 1998. The BMJ was one of the first journals to sign up with PubMed Central and continues to deposit research articles with PubMed Central from the day of publication. The BMJ was also a pioneer in letting authors retain the copyright to their work. We are delighted to be joining OASPA.”

“Oxford Journals is committed to fair and sustainable pricing models and we see open access as one means of achieving this,” explained Martin Richardson, Managing Director of OUP’s Journals Division. “We support the OASPA’s desire to share experiences and best practice for open access publishing, so we’re pleased to be able to join its community.”

The BMJ and OUP bring OASPA’s membership to 29 Full Members and 24 Associate Members, with additional membership applications pending. The organization looks to expand membership further during 2010.

For more information, contact: info@oaspa.org; or ring Caroline Sutton at +47 90 69 05 06. More information about the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association OASPA can be found at www.oaspa.org.

OASPA was launched just over a year ago, on Open Access Day, 14 October 2008. Last month we celebrated Open Access Week once again, together with our own one-year anniversary.

Since its launch, OASPA has become a visible and active member of the scholarly publishing community, as evidenced by two events that were hosted this fall: the 1st Conference on Open Access Scholarly Publishing (COASP) and the Open Access Week Webinar: A Q&A session with five publishers working with Open Access publishing. Both events were quite successful and attracted a broad range of individuals and organizations from across the globe. Of the 40 or so persons that gave me their feedback after the COASP, for example, the word that was most used to describe the conference was “energizing”. Given the work we have ahead of us, I can think of no better compliment!

The conference and webinar accomplished many things. First, they have revealed OASPA’s core values and what the organization stands for. Second, they have contributed to bringing together the open access publishing community, initiating discourse and sharing of information. Finally, they have provided a great deal of feedback and input to OASPA that will help the Board define priorities as we move forward during our second year.

Core Values

Despite rumors, OASPA is not an anti-subscription lobby. Indeed, OASPA is not an anti-anything. OASPA is a positive organization that is FOR supporting open access publishers globally across all disciplines. By “open access publisher”, we refer to any individual, group or organization that is publishing at least one libre one open access journal. This means that we welcome all those who are seriously investigating open access models, including mixed model publishers, to join our discussions and contribute to building best practices. By bringing together the entire community we can share experiences and knowledge to the benefit of the entire publishing arena and the scholarly communities we serve.

We are open and inclusive. But we are also critical. Peter Suber stated in his key note address at COASP: “The launch of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) is a mark of movement maturity and a promise of mutual support, wisdom-sharing, and self-regulation for OA journals and OA publishers.” We agree. OASPA aims to become the stamp of quality for open access publishing.

As economic models to support open access begin to prove themselves, there will be those who seek to take advantage of a market opportunity. As well, Open Access remains new for many groups who may not be knowledgeable of the standards that have already become widespread and expected, such as the application of a Creative Commons License. To address these issues, the founders created a Code of Conduct and established membership criteria against which each applicant to the organization is scrutinized. We work with publishers to alter their practices to align with our criteria to the benefit of the publisher and the research community. Publishers can be assured that they are meeting industry standards through their membership, while the scholarly community can feel secure in their publishing choices when they select to publish with our members.

Sharing experiences and best practices
One of the most important outcomes of bringing together the publishing community interested in open access publishing is that dialogue will be stimulated that will lead to sharing of best practices and useful information. At this stage we have much more to win by sharing than by hiding our good ideas. We are building a new arena within publishing that will only grow and prosper through our exchanges with one another. What is working, what is not? What are the main issues to be resolved to move OA publishing forward?

At this week’s webinar we consciously invited panelists that represented very different publishing perspectives in order to capture a breadth of experimentation and best practices. For-profit and non-profit publishers, publishing organizations and library presses, scholar publishers, Europeans and Africans, and even a mixed model publisher were represented. The recording of this event is available here . Unfortunately some technical issues were encountered at the end of the webinar, but overall the session was successful and OASPA looks to follow up this first webinar with new sessions in the future.

COASP was a real catalyst for sharing knowledge. An important outcome of the conference was the need to prioritize the establishment of sub-groups within OASPA. While all open access publishers face the ten challenges outlined by Peter Suber in his key note address, different types of publishers, different regions and different disciplines face more specific challenges and opportunities. In response, OASPA has established a sub-group for mixed model publishers headed by David Ross from SAGE Publications. A sub-group for scholar publishers is also being established, building upon the energy and dialogue established amongst this group at COASP. The need to address open access books publishing was also clearly expressed and OASPA will support the establishment of a sub-group within the organization. We expect proposals for other sub-groups over the next year.

Because an exchange of information should also extend beyond our own membership, OASPA has also established groups in LinkedIn and on Facebook. One need not be an official member of OASPA to join these forums, they are open to anyone. We invite the community to post topics, links to examples and research, etc.

The OASPA blog will also be an important forum for exchanging information. Occasionally blog posts will be from OASPA, but more often blogs will be posted by invited guests to present new activities they are engaged in, etc. Paul Peters of Hindawi Publishing Corporation will edit and coordinate the blog. If you’d like to share something new that your organization or group is working with, let us know.

Looking Ahead
During the next month the OASPA board will hold a special board meeting to discuss the establishment of a sub-committee focused on the financing of open access publishing. In a breakout session at COASP librarians and administrators called upon publishers to aggregate their pre-payment and membership programs, and to possibly work through library consortia to negotiate centralized Open Access funding sources. Professional publishing organizations arrived at a similar suggestion during their session, and this common view of the situation by these two stakeholder groups lends hope to the possibility of creating sustainable funding sources to centrally support Open Access publishing at an institutional, consortial, or possibly even national level.

OASPA members can also expect to see new membership benefits added. A contract has been negotiated with CrossRef to provide scholar publisher members with DOIs through OASPA. This contract will be signed once OASPA is officially registered later this year. A sub-committee is working to define the practicalities of issuing DOIs and we will share information as soon as details are in place. Knowledge Exchange has also offered a discounted rate for OASPA members, and we look to establishing additional arrangements with other organizations supporting OA publishing.

As the newly elected President of OASPA I am excited by the fact that OASPA is taking an active and positive role in the broader community and I look forward to expanding our work in the year to come. On behalf of the Board, I thank all of you who have shown your support during this first year and who will help us move forward into our second year. A special thank you to SPARC Europe for supporting the launch and administration of OASPA.

Caroline Sutton

President, OASPA

The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) is calling for greater clarity from research funders and institutions on the payment of open access publication fees. With an ever growing number of high quality open access journals available to authors there is still confusion regarding the funding streams that authors can use to pay publication charges. OASPA therefore welcomes the publication of a recent guide from the Research Information Network (RIN) and Universities UK (UUK): Paying for Open Access Publication Charges.

The Guide makes a number of helpful recommendations to both research funders and institutions. In particular, the existence of funds out of which open access publication charges can be made should be communicated to authors and the criteria under which these funds may be used should be clearly defined.

Alerting authors to the existence of publication funds allows authors to exercise greater choice in deciding which journals to submit their work to and ensures that publications compete on quality, services to authors and readers, and value-for-money. A recent series of studies by Professor John Houghton and co-authors has suggested that open access may provide greater returns on the investment tax-payers make on research than other access mechanisms.  To realize these benefits funders and institutions should work on removing the barriers to the free uptake of open access.

OASPA will work towards providing greater clarity and transparency on the payment of open access publication charges and this is one topic that will be discussed at the First Conference on Open Access Publishing to be held in Lund, Sweden in September.

The recent case of a computer-generated prank paper reportedly accepted by a new open access journal, The Open Information Science Journal, published by Bentham Science, calls attention to the vital importance of sound and ethical editorial practice for all scholarly publishers.

Such good practice is clearly required whatever the business model of the journal concerned. Indeed, the inspiration for this particular prank was the well-known Sokal affair,  in which a deliberately nonsensical paper created by physicist Alan Sokal was accepted for publication in 1996 by the subscription-only journal, Social Text, published by Duke University Press.

The success of the open access publishing model has led to a profusion of new journals and publishers, which means that there is a particular need to ensure that authors and readers can have confidence in the editorial standards enforced by these new journals and publishers. This was one of the key drivers that led the foundation of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA).

Publishers which seek to become members of OASPA must demonstrate that their journals operate peer review, and that appropriate editorial processes are in place. The OASPA  code of conduct also requires that members are responsible in their marketing practices. OASPA’s mission statement reflects this:

“OASPA will…
Promote a uniform definition of OA publishing, best practices for maintaining and disseminating OA scholarly communications, and ethical standards.”

Bentham Science is not a member of OASPA.

While no system is perfect, and many reputable journals have experienced problems with scientific fraud, most publishers take the responsibility to vet articles before publication very seriously. Several OASPA members are active participants in publication ethics organizations such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME). We encourage all responsible open access publishers to participate in these organizations, to enforce their recommendations with respect to editorial good practice, and to apply for membership of OASPA.