By: Heidi M. Nickisch Duggan, Associate Director
The Galter Library’s annual collections budget for books, journals, and databases in all formats is a little over $2 million annually. In FY10 and FY11, our collections budgets were reduced and a yearly collections inflation rate of 8-14% effectively means an additional annual erosion of our acquisitions budget. This is clearly unsustainable from an information access perspective, yet pressure appropriately rests on the library to provide all the literature that our faculty, students, residents, and staff require at the point of need and at a moment’s notice to support research, teaching, and clinical practice endeavors. Through traditional promotion and tenure expectations at academic institutions, faculty members are also expected to publish in widely-read, well-respected, peer-reviewed, high impact factor publications. Given these realities, we need alternatives to the status quo.
We encourage you to consider a publishing model that can improve the prominence and impact of your research. This model will permit you to access the literature you need for your own research immediately upon its publication and at no cost to you. Finally, this model allows you to control the copyright and future use of your own publications.
Open Access, or OA, is a form of publishing in which publications are published online and are free to access and read. OA publications tend to have fewer copyright restrictions and faster production schedules than their more traditional print and online counterparts. In a traditional publishing model, most content is protected under legal and economic constraints and copyright restrictions are controlled by the publisher; in contrast, OA publishing fosters free, open, and timely communication among scholars.
Increased citation rates with OA
OA improves the prominence and impact of research by leading to increased citation rates (Swan, 2010). This can directly lead to increased funding and intra- and inter-institutional collaboration opportunities. Because OA content is not under the lockdown of institutional subscriptions, it is crawled by Google and other Internet search engines, making the research content available to anyone, anywhere, at any time. Recent research indicates an OA citation advantage of 36%-200% in all disciplines and over 50% in the health sciences alone (Harnad, 2008).
Quicker access to the research literature
OA allows you access to the literature you need to support your research enterprise immediately upon its publication with no embargo period. The publishing model is paid for up front via institutional memberships, grant funding, author page charges and other means, but is free to the end-user (unfortunately, current OA publication fees often match or even exceed author publication fees for traditional publications). Even the best-funded research libraries cannot afford to purchase access to all of the publications their faculty and students require. In fact, worldwide research output has doubled in the last two to three decades and journal subscription rates increase at an average of 9-10% annually (Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook). This is not a sustainable information access model, particularly in a time of eroding collections budgets. OA may be one possible solution.
Authors’ rights retained over their own publications
OA will allow you to control the copyright and future use of your own publications, either through Creative Commons licensing or via rights negotiated directly with publishers. Consider the long-term impact of retaining the right to reproduce, distribute, or publicly display your work, and to choose when and how to allow others to do so. Under traditional publication models, the publisher often retains the copyright, limiting even your own use of your research in teaching, public dissemination, and further research. (The library is offering a class on authors' rights in publication on October 19.)
In conclusion
Open Access publishing can lead to the swift, widespread dissemination of knowledge to readers around the world. One small step you can take to encourage the long-term, free, and world-wide availability of Northwestern University’s creative and research output is to seek an Open Access journal in which to publish your next article. At the very least, negotiate with your selected publisher to retain your author rights. The Galter Library’s Open Access Resources Guide provides more information on Open Access and links to author copyright addenda you can use next time you have an article accepted for publication.
For more on Open Access publishing, see Galter Biosciences Librarian, Pamela Shaw’s recent article on Open Access, Impact Factors and Scientific Publication. Galter Library is also hosting a seminar series on Open Access topics during Open Access Week, October 18-24.
References and OA Resources
Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) Author Addendum
Directory of Open Access Journals
Galter Health Sciences Library’s Open Access Resources Guide
Harnad, S., Brody, T., Vallières, et al (2008). The Access/Impact Problem and the Green and Gold Roads to Open Access: An Update. Serials Review, 34 (1). Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.serrev.2007.12.005 on October 1, 2010
Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook
Scholarly Communications at NU
SPARC: The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition
Swan, A. (2010) The Open Access citation advantage: Studies and results todate. Technical Report, School of Electronics & Computer Science, University of Southampton. Retrieved from http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18516/ on October 1, 2010
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