The Cost Crisis

The rise in scholarly journal prices over the last two decades means that most universities can no longer afford subscriptions to all of the journals that their faculty and researchers need. Even if a journal is available online this does not mean it is freely available: university libraries pay large subscription fees to allow their academics to easily access journal materials online. Price rises that are many times the rate of inflation continue to be imposed each year, further restricting access to journal articles. The situation is worse in the developing world, where journal subscription prices mean that many institutions simply cannot afford access to up-to-date research.

 Open Access is . . .

If an article is Open Access it can be freely accessed by anyone in the world using an internet connection. Advocate Peter Suber adopts the shorthand definition “free availability and unrestricted use” to characterize the Open Access movement. This means that the potential readership of OA articles is far greater than for articles where the full-text is restricted to subscribers. Evidence shows that making research material OA increases the number of readers and significantly increases citations to the article. Proponents also argue that OA promotes the democratization of information and allows the same research to be made available to all communities, regardless of economic boundaries by removing access restrictions.

How Does OA Work?

Open Access proponents recommend two complementary strategies:

I. Self-Archiving:
Scholars deposit their refereed journal articles in open electronic archives (self-archiving) and institutional repositories. When these archives conform to standards created by the Open Archives Initiative, search engines and other tools can treat the separate archives as one. Users then need not know which archives exist or where they are located in order to find and make use of their contents.

II. Open Access Journals:
Many scholars are also focused on launching a new generation of journals committed to open access, and helping existing journals make the transition to open access. These new journals will no longer invoke copyright to restrict access to and use of the material they publish. Because price is a barrier to access, these new journals will not charge subscription or access fees, and will turn to other methods for covering their expenses.

OA and Peer Review

OA does not affect peer-review; articles are peer-reviewed and published in journals in the normal way. OA archives and repositories supplement and do not replace journals. Some authors have feared that wider availability will increase plagiarism. OA proponents make the case that the opposite is true: when material is freely available the chance that plagiarism is recognized and exposed is that much higher.

Why this works for you as a faculty?

Miriam will write this up.  The advantages of OA… (and disadvantages spun in a good light: a short embargo period; author fees vs. vanity publishing; institution mandates/options/recommendations).

http://openaccess.commons.gc.cuny.edu/about-open-access/

Portions of this text were amended from “What is Open Access” on the Sherpa website a thttp://www.sherpa.ac.uk and CUNY Academic Commons (Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License CC-BY-SA)

The traditional scholarly communication model has created a situation where knowledge, rather than being disseminated widely, winds up locked behind toll gates available only to the privileged few.  This infographic summarizes the problem:

 (Image credit: Les Larue, Content credit: Jill Cirasella)

The college and university, the library and you as an author and reader are all affected deeply by these standard procedures in publishing.   There is a movement in scholarly communication to make publications "open access" so that they can be accessed online regardless of a reader's institutional affiliation.

There is a growing movement in response to the obstacles of traditional publishing that has provided authors with an opportunity to publish their work in ways that make it available to anyone with an internet connection. Authors are now publishing their articles in open access, electronic journals, or insisting that their articles be open in hybrid journals that include both subscription-only and open content.

Click for A Very Brief Introduction to Open Access.

To see a growing list of open access journals, visit the Directory of Open Access Journals.

The open access community maintains a list of publishers that publish open access books. Many of these publishers work with the Open Access Publishing in European Networks Library to guarantee quality control, dissemination and preservation of the books.

The Directory of Open Access Books organizes ebooks that are available to read free of charge on the internet. It includes books published by academic, peer reviewed books via Open Access licenses.

Authors are often concerned that open access means that the journals are not peer-reviewed.  This is not true.  Open access journals can be peer-reviewed or not.  It is a decision of the editorial board to set the standards for their publication, just as it has always been since the time when most journals required a subscription for access.

Authors are also concerned that open access journals may not have the same impact factor as some highly regarded subscription journals in their field. The impact factor measures how often the articles in a journal are cited.  Numerous studies have shown that the increased visibility of open access publications has increased the impact factor of the journals.  In fact, open access seems to have played a role in the quality of the articles that have contributed to the impact factor of the journal.

For an extensive annotated bibliography of studies that examined the effect of open access on article impact, visit the Open Citation Project.

New models of publishing, open access publishing in particular, require new economic models both for journal publishing and for book publishing.  

Issues facing authors with a book to publish may be

• finding a publisher for a new work
• republishing a work that has gone out of print
• regaining the right to the copyright for a previously published work
• getting support to publish a book

and a whole range of other concerns.  The public themselves may be the driving force to bring a publication forward, as in the case of GlueJar. Funds raised through crowdsourcing will purchase the rights to a book from the rights holder and make it available as an open access publication to all.

Funding for open access books may also come through grants or endowments.  The Brooklyn College Office of the President is offering grants of several thousand dollars to faculty developing open access textbooks.

A very common business model among open access book publishers such as Open Book Publishers and Flat World Knowledge is to offer full-text OA editions alongside priced, print-on-demand (POD) editions.

CreateSpace is a free Amazon platform that allows authors to self-publish.

Follow developments in the field of open access at the Harvard Open Access Project.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/research/hoap

For further reading on developments in scholarly publication and open access, see also the SPARC (Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition) website:
http://www.arl.org/sparc/

Another way an author can make his or her research and writing generally available is to place it in an institutional repository or to self-archive.  Institutional repositories are platforms maintained by a research institution such as a university, a research center, a professional organization, a library, a museum or some other organization that stores, organizes and makes available documents and other media produced by affiliated individuals.  The Brooklyn College Library web site offers a brief list of institutional repositories.  Use the extensive Directory of Open Access Repositories to find one that is right for your publication.  Plans are in the works for a robust institutional repository to serve Brooklyn College and the City University of New York.

SHERPA/RoMEO helps users determine what self-archiving permissions different publishers give in their normal copyright transfer agreements.

To locate scholarly (peer-reviewed) academic journals for your discipline, search by subject or keyword the Serials Directory, available through the Brooklyn College Library.  Journal Rate is a free web site that allows you to search for journals within your field, along with finding the impact factor of the journals that interest you. You can also check with professional associations to find journals published in your field.  The Serials Directory will list if a journal is peer reviewed.  For additional information regarding the standards and requirements of the journal, check for author guidelines or “About” the journal on the journal web site.

For monographic publications, the Association of American University Presses provides links to the web sites of over 130 academic publishers. Newpages.com is a directory of academic and independent publishers.

In traditional journal publishing, authors almost always signed away the copyright to their work.  The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) provides an author addendum that will modify a traditional publisher’s contract and allow you to reproduce the article or parts of the article for non-commercial purposes. For example, you may later want to include sections of your article in a new publication, give copies to your class or colleagues, or include the article in an online institutional repository. 

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved."

Why Open Access textbooks?
The cost crisis in publishing is not just limited to scholarly communication.  Students feel the pinch every time they buy a new textbook for a course.  Textbook costs have gone up so, that it is not unusual for an accounting or chemistry textbook to sell for several hundred dollars. Some CUNY students pay more for their textbooks than they do for a semester of tuition!

Read in the March 2013 issue of the Clarion Nancy Scola's article, "Joint Action on Textbook Costs By Faculty and Students at Brooklyn College" to lean more about the problem of skyrocketing textbook costs and efforts at Brooklyn College to keep textbook costs down.  Open access textbooks can be part of the solution.

What is an Open Access textbook?
An open textbook is an openly-licensed textbook offered online by its author(s). The open license sets open textbooks apart from traditional textbooks by allowing users to read online, download, or print the book at no additional cost.

For a textbook to be considered open, it must be licensed in a way that grants a baseline set of rights to users that are less restrictive than its standard copyright.  A license or list of permissions must be clearly stated by the author.

Generally, the minimum baseline rights allow users at least the following:

• to use the textbook without compensating the author 
• to copy the textbook, with appropriate credit to the author  
• to distribute the textbook non-commercially
• to shift the textbook into another format (such as digital or print)

Many authors also grant rights such as:

• to add, remove or alter content in the textbook, often on the condition that derivative works must  have the same license
• to copy and distribute the textbook without giving credit to the author to use the textbook commercially

Source: [http://www.openaccesstextbooks.org/model/appendixA.html]

Who creates Open Access textbooks?
Faculty and researchers from colleges & universities around the world. Those who create or contribute to OA textbooks are often motivated by the conviction that content-particularly for educational purposes—should be open. There is a movement to recognize OA publishing for tenure and promotion.

Advantages of Open Access textbooks
Easily customizable. In contrast to traditional textbook where if only a few chapters are used in the course – students are sent to different places for readings and materials.

Open textbooks provide flexibility to modify and customize them for specific course designs as much or as little as you desire. Corrections are immediate. If you want to make edits or append content, make sure the licensing allows that.

Distribute to your students. Select the best format to distribute to your class: online, downloadable PDF, print-on-demand via either your campus bookstore or from the online repository.

Tremendous cost savings for students and thus lowering one economic barrier to postsecondary education.

Guide to Open Access textbooks
A guide to initiatives and organizations that support the development and promotion of open access textbooks, as well as catalogs and databases of open access and low cost e-books and textbooks. http://instr.iastate.libguides.com/oats

Finding Open Access textbooks
The amount of free, high-quality online educational material is growing. Currently, there are no tools for searching across all open access textbooks but the following is a list of some excellent resources.

University of Minnesota Open Access Catalog

MERLOT is a huge cooperative of learning materials for all education levels.

Smarthistory is an example of an outstanding multimedia open access textbook.

OpenStax College is a nonprofit organization committed to improving student access to peer-reviewed learning materials. OpenStax College is an initiative of Rice University and is made possible through the generous support of several philanthropic foundations.

Open Access Textbook Resource is a guide to initiatives and organizations that support the development and promotion of open access textbooks, as well as catalogs and databases of open access and low cost e-books and textbooks.

Evaluating Open Access textbook
The same way you evaluate traditional textbooks. Since the textbook is already published, it might be more appropriate to call this process peer validation—where knowledge experts “review” the material post-publication. Many OA textbook resources include reviews by other faculty.

How to create Open Access textbooks
Easy to use software tools for writing an OA Textbook!

Creating an OA textbook

Connexions is a non-profit start up launched at Rice Univ in 1999. This software reinvents how we write, edit, publish, and use textbooks. Connexions is a global repository of educational content where people can create educational materials, contribute them to the repository; others are free to copy and customize the material.

Thousands of digital humanities sites are available with content that you can use in your OA textbook.

Open Access @ CUNY is a website and blog that highlights and advocates open access scholarship and publishing across the university.

A CUNY Academic Commons group for CUNY faculty, staff, and graduate students interested in open access publishing for scholarly communication.

When your use of a copyrighted work does not fall within the parameters of fair use, you will need to obtain copyright clearance. In order to obtain copyright clearance, you will need to identify and contact the copyright owner or owners. Remember to keep a detailed, written record of the steps you take.

Identify the copyright owner(s).

• Beware, especially with music and media, multiple parties may hold the rights and each party must be accounted for when obtaining permission.
• Remember, the absence of a copyright notice does not mean that the work is in the public domain.  See public domain chart.

 Contact the copyright owner(s) and secure permission.

• Contact the owner directly, or
• Use a collective rights organization such as the Copyright Clearance Center. A collective rights organization may be the only way to get permission in some cases.
• Special Case--Orphan Works:  In an attempt to gain permission for a copyrighted work, you may discover that the work in question is what is known as an “Orphan Work.”  An orphan work is an entity whose copyright owner cannot be found.  This may be because the owner is unknown, not traceable, or unresponsive.  The individual or corporate body may be deceased or defunct, without reachable heirs, or merely not responding to a request for permission.  In such a case, you might conduct a risk-benefit analysis.  For a fuller explanation of orphan works and risk-benefit analysis see: http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/permissions/if-you-cannot-find-the-owner/. 

TIPS:

• Request permission only for the portion of the work you need.
• Fees are often based on how many copies will be needed and the length of time copies will be in use.
• You may want to replace the materials with alternative works available via open access or other less restrictive licenses.
• For Orphan Works: After an extensive search determines that that the work is an ‘orphan,” you may find that you are can reevaluate the document in light of “fair use” because it is likely that the rights holders are deceased or beyond the reach of the information community.  If there is no one to pay, the “effect on the market” (the fourth “fair use” factor) disappears.     

Here's a great site where you will find samples of permission letters:
http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/permissions/requesting-permission/model-forms/.