Open Access Developments
October 14 was the first international Open Access Day. In recognition of the day, several announcements were made:
1) BMJ celebrates 10 years of offering open access content online by formally declaring themselves as Open Access (OA) publishers.
In 1998, the British Medical Journal (BMJ), published by medical publisher BMJ Group, UK, became the first major general medical journal to provide free full text online access to its research articles; to deposit the full text in PubMed Central; and to allow authors to retain the copyright of their articles. While BMJ used to require authors to pay an author fee in order to make their work OA, they have evolved their business model so that now authors do not need to pay.
2) OA publishers form an Association.
The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, OASPA, seeks to support and represent the interests of Open Access (OA) journals publishers globally in all scientific, technical, and scholarly disciplines. This mission will be carried out through exchanging information, setting standards, advancing business and publishing models, advocating for gold OA journals publishing, education and the promotion of innovation.
Membership in OASPA is open to both scholar publishers and professional publishing organisations, including university presses and for profit and non-profit organisations. Members are expected to demonstrate a genuine interest in OA journals publishing by having signed either the Berlin or Budapest Declarations and must publish at least one full OA journal. Other individuals and organisations who support OA journals publishing or who are interested in exploring opportunities are also welcome. Membership criteria and an application form can be found on the OASPA website at www.oaspa.org.
The founding members of OASPA represent a broad spectrum of OA publishers and include BioMed Central, Co-Action Publishing, Copernicus, Hindawi Publishing Corporation, Journal of Medical Internet Research (Gunther Eysenbach), Medical Education Online (David Solomon), the Public Library of Science (PLoS), SAGE, SPARC Europe and Utrecht University Library (Igitur). Representatives from each of these publishers will form an interim board until a first General Meeting is held during 2009.
3) Effects of self-archiving to be examined in Europe.
Now that several European funders mandate manuscript deposit in OA repositories, it is timely to examine the impact this has on information access and publishing. PEER, the Publishing and the Ecology of European Research (supported by the European Union), has announced that it will investigate the effects of the large-scale, systematic depositing of authors’ final peer reviewed manuscripts (so called Green Open Access or stage-two research output) on reader access, author visibility and journal viability, as well as on the broader ecology of European research. The project is a collaboration between publishers, repositories and researchers lasting from 2008 to 2011.
Peer reviewed journals are seen to play a key role in scholarly communication and as essential for scientific progress and European competitiveness. The publishing and research communities share the view that increased access to the results of EU-funded research is necessary to maximise their use and impact. However, they hold different views on whether mandated deposit in open access repositories will achieve greater use and impact, and as to the most appropriate embargo periods. No consensus has been reached on a way forward so far.
And, of course, no event is complete these days without its own blog. If you are interested in learning more about Open Access Day, please visit the OA Day Blog, or listen to the Voices of Open Access video blog.