Open Access and Scholarly Communications: Busting OA Myths
Created by Health Science Librarians
OA Myths
Reusing your own published work
Myth #1: Faculty can freely use their own published content in courses they teach.
Myth Busted
- This is often not true. If you transferred your copyright to the publisher at the time of publication, as most authors do, the publisher may restrict your right to re-use the content in teaching and publication.
Remedies
- Publish in an Open Access publication so that everyone immediately and always has free access to your work
- Publish in a journal that allows you to retain the rights you need to re-use your own work in teaching and publication
- Negotiate the specific rights that you need at the time of publication.
Resources
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Keep Your Copyrights: A Resource for CreatorsDesigned to help creators hold on to their copyrights and to license their rights on author-friendly terms and written by legal academics at Columbia Law School.
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SHERPA/RoMEOUse this site to find a summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement.
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SPARC Author AddendumSecure your rights as the author of a journal article.
Open Access journals have lower quality articles
Myth #2: Articles in Open Access journals are not peer-reviewed, are of lower quality, and are the equivalent of self-publication.
Myth Busted
- Scholarly Open Access journals follow peer-review procedures similar to other scholarly journals.
- There are many high quality Open Access journals. PLoS Biology's impact factor of 12.5 ranks it as #1 in 86 in the Journal Citation Report's biology category. BMC Biology, impact factor 5.2, is ranked #8.
- There is some scholarly debate over whether Open Access increases citation counts. There is also ongoing debate over whether citation counts should be the only measure of research impact.
- It is now possible to measure article views and downloads. Davis (2008) found that Open Access articles were accessed more frequently than traditionally published articles in the same journals.
- PLoS recently added article level metrics (article usage and citation counts) for each article to increase the transparency of impact measures.
Remedies
- Judge the quality of Open Access journals and articles the same way you would any other, by reading the content.
- Consider the impact of Open Access articles' demonstrated increased usage when you choose where to publish.
Resources
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More than one hundred BioMed Central journals now have impact factors"The 2010 edition of Thomson Reuters' Journal Citation Reports, released on June 28th 2011, provides further evidence that open access journals are delivering not only high visibility but also high rates of citation and impact. Altogether, 101 BioMed Central journals now have official impact factors. 21 journals recorded their first impact factors this year. Meanwhile, among the 80 journals which already had impact factors, 53 increased while only 27 declined."
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Open Access Citation Advantage: An Annotated BibliographyThis annotated bibliography lists studies and review articles that examine whether open access (OA) articles receive more citations than equivalent subscription; i.e., toll access (TA) articles. Wagner,Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, Winter 2010.
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PLoS Article Level Metrics"Article-Level Metrics, a new program started by PLoS in March 2009...puts relevant performance data on articles including online usage, citations, social bookmarks, notes, comments, ratings and blog coverage."
Open Access is just cost shifting
Myth #3: Open Access is just a way for libraries to save money by shifting the cost of scholarly publications to authors and funding agencies.
Myth Busted
- The price to purchase scholarly publications increased well beyond inflation for more than a decade. Library budgets are stressed, but librarians do not promote Open Access as a solution to a budget crisis. They promote Open Access as a new publication model that fosters increased access to research information.
Remedies
- Provide increased institutional funding to support and explore the impact of Open Access publishing.
- Support other models that increase access to scholarly publications such as institutional and subject repositories.
Resources
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Sticker Shock and Looming Tsunami: The High Cost of Academic Serials in Perspective (UNC-CH access)Philippe C. Baveye. "Sticker Shock and Looming Tsunami: The High Cost of Academic Serials in Perspective." Journal of Scholarly Publishing 41.2 (2010): 191-215.
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Campus-based Open-access Publishing FundsExplores why funds are being launched, the considerations and decisions involved in their creation, and how existing funds are being managed.
Open Access and Public Access are the same thing
Myth #4: Open Access and Public Access accomplish the same goal by making information freely available.
Myth Busted
- Only Open Access makes information freely available at the time of publication.
- Public Access, as implemented through PubMed Central and mandated by the NIH Public Access Policy, allows publishers to prevent open access to articles for up to one year.
- Public Access, as envisioned by the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), will allow publishers to prevent open access to articles for up to six months.
Remedies
- Publish in Open Access journals to provide immediate free access to your work for everyone.
- Comply with the NIH Public Access Policy on all articles published since April 2008 that were derived from NIH funding by depositing in PubMed Central to provide open access to the author manuscript after the embargo period as set by the publisher.
- Lobby for FRPPA and encourage legislators to keep the publisher's embargo period as short as possible.
Resources
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NIH Public Access Policy Toolkit (HSL Guide)Concise lists of links to help you comply with the NIH policy.
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Federal Research Public Access Act from the Alliance for Taxpayer AccessInformation about FRPPA and ways to express your support for passage of this legislation.
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Economic and Social Returns on Investment in Open Archiving Publicly Funded Research Outputs"The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) provided support for a feasibility study, to outline one possible approach to measuring the impacts of the proposed US Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) on returns to public investment in R&D...Preliminary modeling suggests that over a transitional period of 30 years from implementation, the potential incremental benefits of the proposed FRPAA archiving mandate might be worth around 8 times the costs."
Open Access does not work as an economic model
Myth #5: Open Access does not work as an economic / business model for scholarly publishing.
Myth Busted
- Open Access does seem to be working as a business model for a number of important science-techincal-medical journal publishers, for example, BioMed Central, Hindawi and PLoS.
- It is important to remember that Open Access journals do not have one business model, for example they do not all charge author fees. The Journal of the Medical Library Association is an example of an Open Access journal with no author fees.
- Recent research by Houghton (see link below) found that the author pays model would provide a net benefit over time.
Remedies
- More professional association and society publishers should study the options and impacts of moving their journals to an Open Access model.
Resources
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Open Access Journal Economic Issues BibliographyList of scholarly articles related to the economics of OA.
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Open Access – What are the economic benefits? Houghton (2009). Centre for Strategic Economic Studies."different publishing models can make a material difference to the benefits realised, as well as the costs faced. It seems likely that more open access would have substantial net benefits in the longer term and, while net benefits may be lower during a transitional period they are likely to be positive for both open access publishing and self-archiving alternatives (i.e. Gold OA) and for parallel subscription publishing and self-archiving (i.e. Green OA)."
UNC Scholarly Communications Office
The Scholarly Communications Officer provides guidance, policy development, and advocacy to faculty, students, and staff on the following issues:
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Copyright and fair use
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Authors’ rights
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Privacy rights
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Open access
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Policy related to scholarly material
For more information, visit the Scholarly Communications Office webpage, or contact Scholarly Communications Officer Anne Gilliland, MSLS, JD.
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