A presentation made to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s Office of Science & Engineering Laboratories on the current state of open access in the United States and how DOAJ is tackling issues of quality in open access publishing

1. The State of Open Access;
Ensuring Quality
Dom Mitchell
Community Manager
dom@doaj.org
DALS /OSEL Information Session
28 April 2015

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Overview

The State of Open Access

What is the DOAJ?

What is our aim?

Browsing and Searching

Our metadata

Ensuring quality

Volunteer for us

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The State of OA
“After a decade of often fierce debate over whether the
public should have free access to the scientific papers
produced by their tax dollars, advocates for so-called
open access celebrated a notable victory last month:
The National Science Foundation (NSF) unveiled a
plan to require its grantees to make their research
freely available. NSF's move meant that the federal
agencies that provide the bulk of the nation's basic
and applied research funding have now complied
with a 2013 White House order to make the peer-
reviewed papers they fund freely available within 12
months of publication.”
Science Magazine, April 10 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/348/6231/167.full

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The story began...

In 1991...

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Picture by gambit http://www.comicvine.com/profile/gambit474/

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The story began...

In 1991, the world's first free scientific online archive is created:
arXiv.org http://arxiv.org/

In 1997, the NLM makes Medline freely available as PubMed:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed

Three cornerstones of open access:
− In 2002 the Budapest Open Access Initiative is signed by
'leaders of the open access initiative'.
http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/participants
− In Apr 2003, the Bethesda Statement on Open Access
Publishing is signed by representatives in North America.
http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htm
− In Oct 2003, the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to
Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities is created.

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Today...

The concept of open access to knowledge and
research has spread its wings...

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Today...

Of 1.1 million articles included in a study in 2014, 80% were
available in some open access format
Laakso, M. (2014). Green open access policies of scholarly journal publishers: a study of what,when, and where self-
archiving is allowed. Scientometrics. In press.http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11192-013-1205-3

In a study of Scopus, open access journals made up only
12% of all journals
David J. Solomon, Mikael Laakso, Bo-Christer Björk, Journal of Informetrics Volume 7, Issue 3, July 2013, Pages 642–650

In 1,370 journals that published 100,697 articles in 2010,
the average APC was 906 US Dollars (USD) calculated over
journals
A study of open access journals using article processing charges. David J. Solomon, Bo-Christer Björk, Journal of the
American Society for Information Science and Technology, Volume 63, Issue 8, pages 1485–1495, August 2012

Follow the Dramatic Growth of Open Access series of
blog posts by Heather Morrison

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In The USA

In April 2008, NIH's policy for 'mandated' open access
to publicly funded research came into effect.

In 2012, the NIH announced it would enforce its Public
Access Policy by blocking the renewal of grant funds to
authors who don't follow the policy

Petition requesting free access to research gathers
64000 signatures in 2012
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/increasing-public-access-results-scientific-research

3rd
time lucky: the White House (OSTP) announces an
open access policy in 2013
http://blogs.nature.com/news/2013/02/us-white-house-announces-open-access-policy.html


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What does this mean
for you?

Funded research: may be mandated that a copy be
available in an open access repository such as
PubmedCentral

You can choose whether to publish in a wholly open
access journal or a journal that offers paid open access
options (Gold OA)

Many traditional publishers offer hybrid journals that
allow a mixture of open access and closed access
options

You can also make a copy of your paper available in a
[institutional] repository: self-archiving (Green OA).

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What does this mean
for the researcher?

It's a minefield!
− Publishers cash in on Gold OA
− Dense, unclear licensing terms with conflicting
copyright terms
− Author services: depositing copies but which
copy?
− Complicated subscription models with different
embargoes

Watch out! Gold OA model is abused: spam; scams;
fake journals, articles, editorial boards; no peer
review; poor quality

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What is DOAJ?

A curated database listing high quality, peer-reviewed open
access journals

No hybrid journals

A whitelist not a blacklist

Journals from ALL disciplines & all languages

A hub for the collection & distribution of metadata to 3rd
parties

Developed & hosted on standards-based, open-source
software by Cottage Labs
(www.cottagelabs.com)

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As of March 2015

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As of March 2015

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What is our aim?

To be the starting point for all searches for
open access journals or articles

To increase awareness around open access
issues

To increase visibility and awareness of
quality open access journals
− Online: social media, online learning environments,
collaboration spaces
− Offline: in the labs, in the libraries, conferences,

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What is our aim?

To increase our transparency through regular
comms:

DOAJ News Service
http://doajournals.wordpress.com

Public consultations

Social media
@doajplus

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Browse by subject

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Advanced Search

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Advanced Search - journals

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Search results - journals
http://doaj.org/faq#thetick

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Search results - journals

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Advanced Search – articles

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Our metadata

Uploaded by the publishers

Freely available to use, reuse, copy, distribute in
accordance with our Creative Commons license (CC BY-SA).

Available via the following methods:
− Downloadable CSV file
− Spidering/crawling (Major search engines; Google Scholar)
− OAI-PMH
− OpenURL

All major aggregators, library databases, journal databases.

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Ensuring Quality

DOAJ's new application form focusses on 3
different themes:
− Quality
− Openness
− The delivery or technical quality

Publishers must provide answers to 55 compulsory
questions to be indexed

Applications are reviewed and assessed using a

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DOAJ Application Form

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Ensuring Quality

It is impossible to measure the quality of a journal or its
publishing program

DOAJ uses standards, best practices and industry-
recognised tools to build a picture

9500 journals in DOAJ will reapply to remain indexed

The DOAJ Seal shows exceptional best practice and
adherence to standards

We encourage the use of DOI, archiving and preservation,
Creative Commons licenses, ISSNs, non-restrictive
copyright, open access

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Ensuring Quality

Unfortunately journals disappear, links rot,
journals change publishers, formats become
redundant

The community (librarians, aggregators,
users) informs us when it finds broken links
or incorrect information.
http://www.loc.gov/aba/pcc/conser/issues/Open-Access-Project.html

Ensuring the quality of peer-review is

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
October 2013

February 2014 – not just a problem with open access
Ensuring quality

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Ensuring quality
http://retractionwatch.com/

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
BUT interest groups are coming together to tackle
this problem

Communities are getting involved with open access

DOAJ uses a crowdsourcing model: we have over
155 volunteers reviewing journals and applications

We are always looking for volunteers, especially
multi-lingual ones: find out more and apply!
Open access: open to
everyone

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Thanks to
all the Consortia, Universities, Libraries and Publishers,
and to our Sponsors for their support
http://doaj.org/supportDoaj

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and Thank you!
dom@doaj.org