A Lively Lunch debate between Denise Koufogiannakis and myself at the Charleston Conference, November 2013

1. Open Access Author Funds: A
Problem or Solution?
Tony Horava & Denise Koufogiannakis
Charleston Conference
Nov. 8, 2013

2. Open Access Author Funds: Many
Reasons to Support it
Tony Horava
AUL Collections
University of Ottawa, Canada

3. Snapshot of the University of Ottawa
 North America‟s largest bilingual university (English/French)
 One of Canada‟s top 10 research universities
 An ARL member
 About 200 undergraduate programs and over 185 graduate
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programs
Fall 2013 : about 43,000 students
Four libraries ( Arts & Sciences, Health Sciences, Law,
Management)
Collections budget: 15.7M
2,293,781 print books
727,610 Ebooks
~ 775 research databases

4. Compact for Open-Access Publishing
Equity (COPE)
Signatory universities commit to "the timely establishment of durable
mechanisms for underwriting reasonable publication charges for
articles written by its faculty and published in open access journals and
for which other institutions would not be expected to provide funds.“
“It is important to keep in mind that the goal of the compact is not to
increase access to the individual articles it underwrites. That goal is
already reasonably satisfied by the possibility of open-access selfarchiving that any author can unilaterally perform and that various
open-access policies such as that of the National Institutes of Health
promote. Rather, the goal of open-access funds as envisioned in
the present proposal is to reduce the disincentives to authors and
thus the risk to publishers of the processing-fee business model.”
- Shieber SM (2009) Equity for Open-Access Journal Publishing. PLoS
Biology 7(8): e1000165. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000165

5. OA Authors Fund (begun in 2010) Eligibility criteria*
Journal Articles:
 Authors are free to publish in the journal of their choice [NB - this is being reassessed
this year]
 Eligible articles may be accepted for publication in open access journals, hybrid
journals or traditional journals that allow self-archiving.
 Eligible open access journals must be listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals
or meet the DOAJ‟s selection criteria (found in the "About" section of their site).
 Eligible hybrid and traditional journals must make articles available immediately and
allow self-archiving of the publisher PDF immediately upon publication (no embargo
period imposed).
 The fee schedule must be publicly available online
*http://www.oa.uottawa.ca/uo-initiatives-afund-criteria.jsp?language=en

6. Eligibility criteria (cont‟d)
Books:
 The Fund also covers open access books up to a
maximum contribution of $2,500 per publication (research
and scholarly books only, no textbooks). The contribution
can be used for entire books or book chapters.
 Publishers must make content available immediately and
allow self-archiving of the publisher PDF immediately upon
publication (no embargo period imposed).
 Fund recipients must deposit their work in UO Research,
the University‟s institutional repository.
 Researchers can receive funding for a maximum of two (2)
publications per fiscal year (May 1 to April 30).

7. We surveyed our authors in 2010

8. Question: “Why did you choose to publish your article in an
open access or hybrid journal?”
 I want my research to be viewed by the entire research
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community.
Wider dissemination
Speed of publication because its an online journal.
Hybrid. It was a good journal which I publish in anyways. Since
the cost for open access was to be reimbursed through the
program, this allowed me to publish it with open access.
Greater access to policy makers. Our work is more likely to be
used and referenced in policy discussions and have a practical
impact.
It was the right readership for the topic and there are no other
similar journals with that focus.
Appropriate venue. Tried something new.
The concept is the way of the future! It also is very liberating to
know that one's contribution can be accessed internationally. It
makes research FUN and motivating!

9. More answers...
 Speed of review and publication is a real plus. There is nothing
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SO frustrating than waiting 2-3 years for a journal to publish
one's academic work.
It was by chance. I choose the journal for its quality, and it
offered open access as an option. It is nice because I often get
requests for reprints from people who do not have access to the
some of the journals.
I decided to publish in a hybrid journal before deciding whether
to apply to the Fund. When the article was accepted and I found
out the program was still running and could cover all the fees for
Open Access, I decided to apply to the program. Faster
publication, Open access for developing country research
partners, funder recommendations.
It allows people in developing countries to read articles. The fund
supports activities of scientific organization that publish journals.
It is important to me to provide information to all in the speediest
of ways and to everyone.
Speed of review process and the open access of the article.
Wider readership

10. 2012-13 data (by type of
publication)
Type of
publication
Number Dollars
%
OA
92
$179,884.01 71.7%
Traditional
with OA
option
32
$63,366.66
25.3%
Books/book
chapters
3
$7,509.86
3%
Total
127
$250,759
100%

11. Faculty
Publication Data
by Faculty
(2012-13)
Arts
Education
Engineering
Health
Sciences
Medicine
Population
Health
Social
Sciences
Science
Number of
reimbursement
s
1
2
3
28
Dollars
% of total
expenditures
6
5
19
Research
Institutes:
2
0.3
2.6
19.7
$10,188.4
4
$36,529.7
1
4
$1,925.25
60
$5,000
$793.24
$6,639.05
$49,412.7
0
$122,925.
88
$11,794.85
0.76
49
4.7
14.6
Bruyère
Research
Institute
1
$5,230.92
2.08
2
$3,090.60
1.23
OHRI
1
Ottawa Heart
Institute
127
$253,530.

12. Data organized by choice of major
publishers
Publisher
BioMed
Central
PLoS
Oxford
Springer
Frontiers
Numbe Dollars
r
35
$68,179.18
%
20
8
7
9
12.2%
9.1%
8.4%
5.6%
$30,438.15
$22,832.32
$21,185.60
$14,124.33
27%

13. What are the benchmarks of
„success‟?
 Increased awareness of scholarly communication issues
 Greater dialogue/better relationship with the Library
 Assisting faculty to publish who might not be able to otherwise,
hence enhancing the mission of the institution to advance
knowledge
 General satisfaction with the Library/reimagining the role of the
library
 Increasing the proportion of the Collections budget dedicated to
OA initiatives
 Influencing the economics of publishing, eg:
 Providing greater access to scholarly literature;
 Reducing the double-dipping of commercial publishers;
 Feeding into the broader public policy discourse on OA

14. Some arguments in favour of an OA
Authors Fund....
 Sowing seeds of awareness of scholarly communication issues and
Open Access
 Demonstrating Library leadership in promoting dissemination of
scholarship as a public good; aligning with our mission as stewards of
the scholarly record
 Engaging with younger researchers & graduate students who need
financial assistance to publish.
 Ripple effect: as these researchers move upstream into faculty
positions, this can be a catalyst for major changes in Promotion &
Tenure committee criteria for assessing value, i.e. changing the cultural
mindset re Open Access.
 OA author funds can help build a groundswell of support for OA in the
academic community (whether Gold or Green).
 In three years, we have benefited about 200 researchers in
disseminating their scholarship:
http://www.ruor.uottawa.ca/en/handle/10393/19706/browse?type=datecr
eated

15. Promoting broader access to Scholarly
Communications
“We believe that institutions (and the sub-institutional units that
manage collection funds) should be open to exploring alternative
funding
models for scholarly communication. Institutions should highly
value funding models that promote universal access to their
research output. And during an economic crisis, these institutions
should question the extensive financial and human resource
investments required by the subscription model, a model that
both excludes non authorized users and entails large-scale and
complex licensing and legal obligations. The time is now for
broad-scale adoption of
institutional OA funds.” [emphasis added]
- Eckman CD, Weil BT (2010) Institutional Open Access
Funds: Now Is the Time. PLoS Biol 8(5): e1000375.
doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000375

16. In Conclusion
 To echo the quote from Eckman and Weil:
“The time is now for broad-scale adoption of
institutional OA funds.”
• Support your researchers in their goal to
disseminate scholarship, and support OA Author
Funds!

17. Problems with libraries paying open
access author fees
Denise Koufogiannakis
University of Alberta

18. Snapshot of the University of Alberta
 Top 5 Canadian University
 ARL library ranking is 16th in North
America
 170 graduate programs, 200
undergraduate programs
 How we have supported OA
 Why we stopped paying author
fees via memberships

19. What does paying author fees
achieve?
 Immediate gold OA
 Helps out some individual researchers with costs

20. Assessing author fees

21. Assessing author fees
 Wildly divergent costs - $0 - $5000/article
 Only 26% of gold OA journals use an authors pay
model (Solomon & Bjork, 2012)
 Average per article OA charge - $906 (Solomon &
Bjork, 2012)
 What is the true cost of publishing? What is
reasonable?
 $188.39 (Edgar and Willinsky, 2010)
 £1136 (Research Information Network, 2008)
 By just blindly accepting whatever fees publishers
charge in order to reduce the “risk to publishers of
the processing-fee business model” (COPE), we
will drive fees even higher and make such high fees

22. Why paying author fees isn‟t a
solution
 Libraries supporting two systems – not
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sustainable
Same publishers making more money – the big
ones control the most and have the highest fees
Libraries preferencing the OA journals that do
charge fees – what about the non-fee journals?
No fundamental change to the way we
disseminate scholarship
Authors not taking ownership of “author fees” unlikely to change.

23. Practical considerations and
problems
 Randomness re: who receives the funding
 Randomness re: amount of funding given per
article or per researcher
 Small numbers of faculty that can be supported in
this way
 Cost of staff-time related to management of the
fund and processing work involved
 Is it sustainable?

24. What libraries can do instead that
may lead to greater change
 Support green OA initiatives
 Use money to support new initiatives, new
models that may lead to change
 Publishing initiatives at the Library Level – make
transformative change
 Work with faculty on making change to the
scholarly communication system - ultimately the
faculty drive this process.

25. In conclusion
 Support OA
 Don‟t pay author fees!

26. Your turn!

27. What do you think?
Questions to consider:
 Should libraries pay OA author fees? Why or why
not?
 What has your experience been?
 What is the best way forward for academic
institutions to effect change in scholarly
communications system?