Negotiating with governments: in search of pragmatic public access policy

Fred Dylla

Fred Dylla from the American Institute of Physics introduced the final session on day 2 of the ALPSP International Conference: Negotiating with governments. It provided an invaluable overview of policy around Europe and in the US.

Steven Hall, Managing Director of IOP Publishing, outlined the recent history of open access policy in the UK. Hall continues to be involved in the Finch group and was on the original committee, so has unrivalled insight into the process. The recommendations from Finch were endorsed by publishers, BIS and RCUK were included in the quid pro quo of 12 months embargo in order to make gold open access viable. There has since been criticism of RCUK by research institutions and the House of Lords over their implementation.

Meanwhile, implementation by HEFCE is running apace. Their public consultation on open access policy in relation to submissions post-2014 REF closes on 30 October 2013. Key proposals include outputs (journal articles and conference proceedings) should be accessible through a UK higher education institution repository, immediately upon either acceptance on publication, though the repository may provide access in a way that respects agreed embargo periods.

With the implementation by universities, policies are still evolving and guidance to authors is changing. There is no consistent policy across Russell Group universities. The majority explicitly favour green over gold, e.g. Bristol, Cambridge, Imperial, Oxford. Most of these are allowing 12 or 24 month embargoes, but some are stipulating green with a 6 or 12 month embargo. Some institutions are neutral, in different degrees, between gold and green, leaving the choice to authors, e.g. Exeter, UCL. The latter is also supplementing the RCUK block grant with additional funding. A very small minority are favouring gold over green e.g. Reading.

Generally, there is a pragmatic and practical approach from universities that publishers can work with. But when you consider why universities are going for green, it is primarily because of concerns over cost. There is growing demand for offsetting of APC costs against subscription and licence fees and a lack of data on numbers of RCUK-funded articles to inform budgeting. Policies and processes are still in development including how block grants should be allocated to researchers, processes for managing payments and compliance monitoring, payment of publication charges for collaborative publications.

SHERPA/FACT is a funder and author compliance tool from University of Nottingham's SHERPA service. It is funded by RCUK and Wellcome with links to SHERPA RoMEO for information on embargo policies. Its aim is to be a one-stop-shop for researchers wishing to find out about funding and open access policies.

What have we learned so far? Universities and researchers are nervous about this. We need close consultation and cooperation with all stakeholders - this is critical. Clear, consistent, unambiguous and actionable guidance for researchers is required from funders, universities and publishers. More work is required on forms of licence for gold and green. Policy needs to reflect the journey, not the destination.

Eric Merkel-Sobotta from Springer Science+Business Media reflected on whether Brussels think publishers add value? Don't forget that the EU is also a research funder. Horizon 2020 begins in 2014 and provides €70 billion over 6 years. They have implemented it primarily for economic growth, to build better and more efficient science that builds on previous results and avoids duplication and to improve transparency (involving citizens/society). Horizon 2020 makes open accesss the general principle for research funded by the EU (mixed green and gold open access). Gold APCs are eligible for reimbursement and the green embargo is for 6 months. 

Merkel-Sobata believes the UK has the most far reaching policy, that used a constructive process, with probably the best results for all stakeholders. In Germany, there was good progress during an 18 month dialogue on open access, but after grand-standing by both sides, it collapsed. Spain encourages open access repositories for research, however there is a lot of lobbying going on. In France, there is nothing concrete so far, but a government working group is discussing the options.

There will be more news to come from the EU. Currently, the three responsible Commissioners can't agree on potential objectives around Copyright reform. There are complex text and data mining working groups, but not all stakeholders are involved and the key work group for publishers may be disbanded, which could disrupt the process further. There is a sense that other industries and interest groups have far greater lobbying power in Brussels. The scholarly publishing community needs to raise its profile and influence in Europe and they must continue to engage with all stakeholders constructively.

Fred Dylla closed the session with an overview of US open access policy. In 2009 US House sponsored Scholarly Publishing Roundtable. March 2012 saw the publication of the OSTP report Interagency Public Access Coordination. The FundRef pilot program was announced by CrossRef in May of the same year and in June the Finch report was published in the UK. In February of this year the OSTP Memo was released - a short, but very nuanced report - increasing access to the results of federally funded research. It suggested 12 months as a guideline with a get-out clause that agencies can exercise flexibility to address challenges and public interests. It also stated the benefit and value of a successful publishing industry.

Overall, agency plans must provide for free public access to a full-text version of publications resulting from publicly funded research (after an embargo), contain a strategy for leveraging existing resources, fostering public-private partnerships, provide for archiving and long-term stewardship and identify resources within existing agency budgets for implementation.

Dylla outlined current projects and initiatives. PubMedCentral (PMC) database has for a decade been the public repository for articles resulting from NIH sponsored research. NIH will expand PMC to encompass the articles from research paid for by other federal agencies. This requires an investment of federal funds to expand PMC. Many publishers object to how PMC is operated because it duplicates functions of publishers.

The recently launched CHORUS Project's key objectives include:

• public access (publishers provide and host, using FundRef for front-end identification and CrossRef linking to the version of record or author's accepted manuscript)
• compliance: publishers ensure using FundRef, agencies, authors and research institutions can easily confirm
• archival preservation: multi-level solution, publishers archives with trusted third party back-ups (Portico, CLOCKSS)
• bibliographic search and discovery - FundRef, commercial search engines, library tools, and API support for agency-specific portals
• to be low cost or no cost for agency participation except for staff time on the CHORUS committees.

The American Association of Universities,  Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and Association of Research Libraries has developed an offer called SHARE. There are 3 things in common with CHORUS. Both agree they need persistent identifiers, the development of metrics and preservation.

What happens next? CHORUS is about to launch a pilot and there is hope that agencies will take it up. Some agencies will partner with PMC, but will need funds. All plans have to be reviewed and approved by OSTP/OMB and returned to agencies for full development and implementation in 2014-15. 

ALPSP Plenary Interview: Semantico's Terry Hulbert talks to Fred Dylla

We are delighted that Semantico are gold sponsors at the ALPSP International Conference and Awards 2013. In the run-up to the conference, their Business Development Director Terry Hulbert spoke to one of our key plenary speakers, Fred Dylla, about trends and insights in the policy arena. This is an extract of the interview. You can read the full article on the Semantico blog.

Fred Dylla

"We do not need a revolution to achieve open access, and in fact, we are already evolving toward a model of publishing where the public enjoys reasonable free access to federally funded research while journals continue to play a central role in science by publishing peer-reviewed research and maintaining the highest standards.

A similar evolution in publishing has already occurred over the last generation. Just 20 years ago, the business model of all academic publishers centered on print journals, and virtually none had any sort of online presence. Today the publishing industry has largely evolved into business models centered on the web. This didn’t happen overnight. There were many experiments and forays into digital archiving that came up short. But today researchers everywhere enjoy easy access to archives that would have been unthinkable a generation ago.

I think that public access policies will similarly evolve in the next five–10 years, and scientific publishers will be evolving alongside. There are plenty of examples in nature of creatures that co-evolve—like Darwin’s flowers and finches on those isolated Pacific islands. Co-evolution is the healthiest way forward for public access and scientific publishing. Kill off the finches, and the flowers may whither on the vine."

The ALPSP International Conference and Awards starts on Wednesday 11 September at The Belfry, near Birmingham. Follow the action via the Twitter hashtag #alpsp13 and bookmark this blog for updates.

Kurt Paulus on ALPSP International Conference: Making change happen

2012 ALPSP Awards winners

This is the fourth and final post in a series of reflections on the 2012 ALPSP International Conference by Kurt Paulus, former Operations Director at the Institute of Physics, and long time supporter of ALPSP. Our thanks go to Kurt for capturing the sessions. If this whets your appetite, book for the 2013 conference now.

Making change happen

References to what publishers might do to ride the crest of the wave of change have been scattered throughout the conference, so there is no lack of ideas. Indeed, as Stephen Pinfield noted in the final panel discussion, there is more experimentation now than ever before with technologies, services and business models, as publishers are overcoming their fears of the uncertainties  change brings with it. Anita de Waard put it this way:

• Experiment all over the place.
• Support scientists working at the forefront of information handling and networking.
• Join fora where scientists, publishers and librarians cooperate.
• Form partnerships and alliances where you cannot manage on your own.

But don’t expect your cherished organizational structures to survive the change process. All publishing roles will have to adapt. Close interaction with your customers and users may be hindered by the still prevalent functional set-up of many organizations. Skills – technological, analytical, social – will need to be reinforced. IT professionals will have to become more business aware and outward facing, and the concept of the IT department may disappear. All this requires complete reorientation of organizations.

“Work on your business as well as in your business.” Arend Welmers

Lost? Help is at hand from company doctor Arend Welmers of Quantum90 who gave the second keynote presentation with some simple messages:

• A common disease in organizations is functional thinking. Your role in your organization is not your job title.
• The job you may not be doing is helping your company to progress and make more money. You are hired to make the company successful.
• All organizations, whether for profit or not, are competing in a marketplace.
• ‘Employee engagement’ is just consultants’ eyewash. Employees must learn to behave as if they own their company and are individually responsible for making it succeed.

Arend’s recipe is called ‘Open book management’, where everyone is involved in running the company and has access to all information about company information, especially financial, presented in such a way that they know which levers they have to pull to improve performance and so that they can see the results. And if they are successful, why not let them share in the success by moving towards shared ownership?
Arend is a challenging and enthusiastic speaker, so much so that he was able to devote less time than he would have liked to his case study, the Springfield Remanufacturing Corporation, where the crux of his message is. In discussion it emerged that he had been working with the American Institute of Physics for a couple of years, and that might have been a better case study for this conference. The testimonial from Fred Dylla, CEO of American Institute of Physics, was complimentary!

Endnote

The winners of the ALPSP awards are given on the ALPSP website, but it is worth noting that the ALPSP Award for Contribution to Scholarly Publishing 2012 went not to an individual but to an organization, CrossRef, with the following citation (abbreviated):

“The Council of ALPSP was delighted to make this award to CrossRef, the independent not-for-profit organization set up and run by publishers to facilitate the linking between scholarly publications using the Digital Object Identifier. Launched in 2000, this system grew rapidly to hold 3 million DOIs in just a year and now holds metadata for 55.5 million conference proceeding articles, book chapters and journal articles right back to the first articles published in Philosophical Transactions in 1665. With over 4,000 participating publishers, CrossRef’s reach is international and it is very well regarded not just amongst publishers, but also the literary community and researchers.”

This happily reinforces one of the conference messages, that unity is strength and collaboration helps overcome weaknesses.

Kurt Paulus, 2012
Booking for the 2013 conference is open.

Kurt Paulus on ALPSP International Conference. Isn't change fun?

This is the first in a series of four reflections on the 2012 ALPSP International Conference by Kurt Paulus, now retired, formerly Operations Director at the Institute of Physics, and long time supporter of ALPSP. Our thanks go to Kurt for capturing the sessions. If this whets your appetite for the 2013 conference, book by Friday 9 August to avoid the late booking fee.

“Isn’t change fun?” Toby Green 

Toby Green, the ALPSP Chair, summarized the three key themes of the conference as “New, Change and Open”. Another formulation might be “Change and how to cope”. In uncertain times it is helpful to have some experienced guides, and Mary Waltham and Mark Ware were volunteered for these roles.

After a wide ranging review of scholarly publishing since ALPSP was formed 40 years ago, Mary pointed to some emerging factors which will strongly influence the next 40, or even the next 10:

• The geographical distribution of scholarly research and publishing is changing rapidly: in chemistry, China’s output has already overtaken the USA and other ‘developing’  countries are snapping at their heels.
• Technology has enabled the big deal and allowed the deployment of metrics that have assisted both publishers and customers to make better informed decisions and have facilitated access to information from developing countries. Technical solutions to remaining problems are never far away.
• “Publishers behaving badly”: publishers have been their own worst enemies in ploughing their own furrow, e.g. over journal pricing, and not taking care to keep their library customers on board by communication and engagement and by not helping them to make a better funding case.
• There are some underlying factors that have not changed: the continuing need for validation through peer review, the desire to find information quickly and accurately, the specific needs of authors for help with their professional work and for peer recognition often provided by scholarly publishing. In Fred Dylla’s words: authors will still give their first born to get their papers into Nature or Science.

“By 2020, all services will be digital, mobile, customizable, intelligent, interoperable with multiple revenue streams.” Mark Ware

Mark Ware has engineered many surveys of the developing publishing scene for employers and clients over the years and shared his views of some of the economic and technological factors that will drive scholarly publishing in the coming years:

• We are told that 25% of waking hours are spent on mobile devices: think about it!
• Understanding your users through ‘extreme analytics’ is crucial.
• Mergers and acquisitions are becoming smaller and more focused, possibly threatening smaller niche publishers.
• Aggregation, e.g. of different journals or books and journals leads to more value added products but also a need for  more user aware curation.
• Sales growth will be based on value added rather than just number of articles in the database.
• An in-depth understanding of user workflows  will be critical to the ability to add value.
• Change and competition will force us to move from product centric to service focused behaviour.
• Open (access, data, standards, platforms) will be the watchword.

Kurt Paulus, 2012
Booking for the 2013 conference is open.

PSP 2013: The Future Value in the Professional Association

The social media challenge ACS tackled

In the first session at the Professional Scholarly Publishing conference, Harrison Coerver asked if associations still have a future. The following panel outlined the value they provide in the internet age and what services they will have in 2018.

Madeleine Jacobs, CEO of the American Chemical Society (ACS), provided an overview of their membership and services. They have over 163,000 members, with 187 local sections and 32 technical divisions. 87% of members have degrees in chemistry and more than 60% of members work in business and industry. 15% of members live outside the US and the offices have two main locations in Washington DC and Columbus, Ohio. They have a governing board for publishing and run - wait for it - 485 programmes. That's a big association with a lot of programmes.

The ACS has four strategic goals:

1. Provide authoritative and indispensable information
2. Advance members' careers
3. Improve science education
4. Communicate chemistry's value

How are they tackling the Race for Relevance? One of the key initiatives they have focused on has been to set up a tech trends roadmap. They have a group of staff who monitor and review on an on-going basis what the latest technology can deliver and what is relevant for members. They identified four challenges and four solutions:

• embrace social media
• make information portable
• expand electronic publishing
• make ACS national meeting presentations more accessible.

They have launched award winning apps, expanded their electronic publishing, focused on providing information through the Chemical Abstract Service and continue to build more virtual services. With 92-93% of revenue coming from publishing, it is critical that they continue to adapt and deliver value.

Her final piece of advice? Hire the very best tech people you can find. Steal people from other organisations who have done well. And don't forget to empower great people you already have on staff.

James Prendergast, COO of the IEEE, outlined the historic merger between AIEE and IRE, driven in the main part because the IRE were moving a lot faster through their international reach and open welcome to students and young professionals, something Coerver advocates strongly. They were quick to adopt advances, the AIEE recognised this, so they merged in the 60s.

The IEEE has more than 429 members globally. Their Xplore Digital Library has more than 3.25 million articles, they have 900 active standards and 500+ standards in development. They held 1396 conferences globally in 2012 and have 572 already in places for 2013. (Cue sharp intake of breath from the audience.) They have interactive HTML full-text articles with unique and active features - not just vanilla HTML.

Jacobs, Prendergast and Dylla with Coerver

The IEEE has completely endorsed open access and provides options for all authors to do this. All their technical journals are now hybrid with subscription and open access options. They have a number of journals that are now fully open access and announced a new mega-journal in 2012 that will be fully open access and multi-disciplinary.

They launched OpenStand for their standards in August 2012. Informational webinars provide new ways to deliver content. Pre-university outreach portals such as TryComputing and TryEngineering are proving to be a big hit. TryEngineering received 12 million hits in 2012 with the average time on site exceeding 10s of minutes. They are fostering engagement through social media and have expanded online impact through an extreme programming competition and the IEEE Day.

Prendergast advised delegates to focus on mobile. Your services have to be at the right time and in the context of when and where members want to receive that information. As an organisation they provide too much information. They have to focus on getting it right and making services relevant and timely.

Fred Dylla, CEO of the American Institute of Physics outlined the history of the association and the particular, unique circumstances that make their situation unique and challenging: that they are an umbrella body of ten physics associations. They have a membership of approximately 165,000 scientists with 75% based in the US and 25% internationally.

In 2008 they undertook a key strategic re-evaluation. This included divesting the offer of publishing services to members. Post-2008 there was a lot of self reflection. He described their governance structure as akin to the Senate and House of Representatives structure which led to the governance review post 2010 they conducted with the support of BoardSource. This led to them recently establishing the wholly owned subsidiary AIP Publishing LLC.