Publishing Open Access isn’t the End of the Story

Publishing Open Access isn’t the end

of the story

Rachel Young

Maney Publishing

r.young@maneypublishing.com

Enormous increase in OA publishing

Source poeticeconomics.com

Why publish OA?

Ethics

• Research on public assets and/or community

cultural heritage/identity

• Research has an impact on public policy

• Research publicly funded

• Results of use to diverse, non-academic

audiences

Public understanding of archaeology

• Huge, committed avocational audience

• Many and diverse interest groups and local

societies globally

Funder mandates

• Acceptable embargo period

• Acceptable licence

• Funds for Gold OA?

• If so, any publication limits (within funded

period?)

Visibility to colleagues

• Research consensus

• HTML downloads increase, around 2 -2.5 times

• PDF downloads from the journal increase too, but

by a lesser factor

Increase citation

• But historically the evidence for Open Access

increasing citations has been mixed..

• Looking at key, frequently cited studies..

Nature Publishing Group and RIN (2014)

• 2008 articles in Nature Communications

• Launch in 2010 to 1st July 2013

• Biological sciences, chemistry, earth sciences, physics

• 38% of papers published open access, highest proportion biosci

• ‘Slightly’ higher citations in all disciplines except chemistry

• BUT median no. cites increased by 4 (medians ranged between

2-11)

• Launch/commissioning effect

• Quality differences between OA and non-OA papers?

Eysenbach PLoS Biology (2006)

• PNAS articles Jul-Dec 2004

• Study controlled for author profile,

circumstances, location and discipline

• OA articles twice more likely to be cited 4-10

months after publication.

Other literature observing an increase in

citations

• Walker Nature web focus (2004)

• Antelman College and Research Libraries

(2004)

• Harnad and Brody D-Lib 10 (2004)

• Norris et al. J Am Soc for Info. Sci. and

Techn. (2008)

Conversely..

Gaulé & Maystre (2011) Research Policy

• Looked at OA and non-OA articles published in PNAS

• Optional OA fee $1000

• Observed no significant increase in citations for OA articles

• BUT

• Very widely subscribed journal

• Green OA embargo only 6 months

Phil Davies, The FASEB Journal (2011)

• Large randomised study making some articles OA

• Jan 2007 – Feb 2008

• 20 science and 16 social sciences journals

• Variety of publishers but all on Highwire

• 3245 articles of which 712 made OA

• HTML downloads doubled in the first year of free access and

PDF downloads increased by 63%

• Increase in breadth of readership (unique IP addresses)

• No increase in citations or reduction of time to first citation

Why no research consensus?

• Most academic articles published for highly specialised

audience in well-defined niche

• Many studies could not check for self-selection of articles

• Academic social networking less well developed at time studies

were made

• Citation differences between STM and HSS not always taken

into consideration

• Studies conducted in early days of open access, when OA

channels were fewer and less diverse

Archaeology lends itself to OA

publishing

• Archaeology has unique breadth of discipline

• Employs theory and methods from many

different subjects

• Multiscalar

• Diverse audiences, including professional

and avocational audience who do not have

university library access

• Top archaeology journals stuffed with papers,

slowing down publishing times

• Some parts of the scientific archaeology

community have very different expectations of

publishing speed

• For molecular geneticists 6 weeks to publish from

acceptance is normal

So what can OA publishing bring you?

• Green and gold

• Visibility

• Breadth of audience

• Impact – if in right journal and promoted by you

• Compliance with your funders mandates

Gold OA funds – that’ll do nicely sir..

• Appropriate scope and quality

• A relatively high impact vehicle (REF etc.)

• Sophisticated online platforms with good search visibility

• Swift peer review, possibly innovative

• Developmental review and editing

• Rapid publication

• Automated repository deposition

• Article promotion

• Tools to self-promote

Relatively high impact publication..

Impact factors

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2.5

3

3.5

4

4.5

5

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

PLOS One

Journal of Archaeological Science

American Antiquity

Antiquity

Impact factors

Data from Thomson Reuters JCR

Archaeology is a relatively low impact

subject

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Nature

Science

PLOS One

BMC Biology

PNAS

Journal of Archaeological Science

American Antiquity

Antiquity

Impact factors

Data from Thomson Reuters JCR

Plenty of space!

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Nature

Science

eLife

PLOS One

BMC Biology

PNAS

Journal of Archaeological Science

American Antiquity

Antiquity

No. citable articles published

Data from Thomson Reuters JCR

What will the future bring?

• Fees for incremental services

• Increase in academic ‘partner’ OA journals

• OA as a service to members