Research Article
Library
Supported Open Access Funds: Criteria, Impact, and Viability
Amanda B. Click
Business
Librarian
Bender Library
American
University
Washington,
District of Columbia, United States of America
Email: aclick@american.edu
Rachel Borchardt
Associate
Director, Research and Instructional Services
American
University
Washington,
District of Columbia, United States of America
Email: borchard@american.edu
Received: 13 Aug. 2019 Accepted: 12 Oct. 2019
2019 Click and Borchardt. This is an Open Access article
distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons‐Attribution‐Noncommercial‐Share
Alike License 4.0 International (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/),
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial
purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the
same or similar license to this one.
DOI: 10.18438/eblip29623
Abstract
Objective – This study analyzes scholarly
publications supported by library open access funds, including author
demographics, journal trends, and article impact. It also identifies and
summarizes open access fund criteria and viability. The goal is to better understand
the sustainability of open access funds, as well as identify potential best
practices for institutions with open access funds.
Methods – Publication data was solicited from
universities with open access (OA) funds, and supplemented with publication and
author metrics, including Journal Impact Factor, Altmetric Attention
Score, and author h-index. Additionally, data was collected from OA fund
websites, including fund criteria and guidelines.
Results – Library OA funds tend to support faculty
in science and medical fields. Impact varied widely, especially between
disciplines, but a limited measurement indicated an overall smaller relative
impact of publications funded by library OA funds. Many open access funds
operate using similar criteria related to author and publication eligibility,
which seem to be largely successful at avoiding the funding of articles
published in predatory journals.
Conclusions – Libraries have successfully funded many
publications using criteria that could constitute best practices in this area.
However, institutions with OA funds may need to identify opportunities to
increase support for high-impact publications, as well as consider the
financial stability of these funds. Alternative models for OA support are
discussed in the context of an ever-changing open access landscape.
Introduction
Libraries have
been supporting open access (OA) publishing for more than a decade, often by
administering funds dedicated to paying article processing charges (APCs). The
literature provides some insight into the design, implementation, and
evaluation of library OA funds, but no study has collected and analyzed the
scholarship published using these funds. This study involved building a dataset
of almost 1,200 publications funded by library OA funds collected from 16
universities. The authors compiled descriptive statistics and conducted an
analysis of the research impact of a subset of the publications. In addition,
the details and criteria of 55 active library OA funds were collected in order
to better contextualize impact and identify trends in funding models.
The scholarly
communications landscape is currently in a state of flux. Plan S was rolled out
in the fall of 2018, with the goal of “making full and immediate open access a
reality” (cOAlition S, n.d.). The University of California system has made
headlines by canceling access to Elsevier after failing to agree on funding for
OA publications (Kell, 2019). Librarians are exploring options and deciding how
to best support OA efforts, and this research will inform these efforts. Those
considering the implementation of a new fund, thinking about making changes to
funding support for OA, or designing marketing and outreach plans around OA may
find the results of this study to be useful.
Literature
Review
In Knowledge
Unbound, Suber (2016) defines the APC in this way:
A fee charged by some OA journals when accepting an article for
publication, in order to cover the costs of production. It’s one way to cover
production costs without charging readers and erecting access barriers. While
the invoice goes to the author, the fee is usually paid by the author's funder
or employer rather than by the author out of pocket. (p. 413).
University of
California Berkeley librarians laid out their argument for institutional open
access funds as early as 2010 (Eckman & Weil, 2010). That same year,
however, an opinion piece in D-Lib Magazine argued against institutional
funds for paying gold OA APCs in favor of green OA self-archiving mandates (Harnad,
2010). Regardless, North American libraries have been providing OA funds to pay
APCs since 2008, according to SPARC’s (2018) Open Access Funds in
Action report. Often these funds combine Gold OA with Green OA by
paying APCs but also requiring authors to deposit manuscripts in the
institutional repository.
The research on
open access funds is sparse, and generally focuses on surveying librarians
about perspectives on OA, or collecting feedback from fund recipients. There
are also a number of case studies describing the implementation of specific OA
funds (Pinfield, 2010; Price, Engelson, Vance, Richardson, & Henry,
2017; Sinn, Woodson, & Cyzyk, 2017; Zuniga & Hoffecker,
2016), which will not be discussed in this review of the literature. Similarly,
while concerns about the rise of so-called predatory publishing have been well
documented, their implications for open access funds have not been well
researched (Berger, 2017).
An international
survey of libraries published in 2015 showed that almost one quarter of the
respondents offered OA funding to authors provided by the institutional
administration, library or academic departments (Lara, 2015). Librarians
surveyed about their libraries’ funds all used these funds to promote OA on
their campuses to some degree. Monson, Highby, and Rathe (2014) found that
some were “ambitious advocates” who hoped for “significant changes in campus
culture,” while others simply hoped to convince faculty to consider OA
publishing a viable option (p. 317-318). A survey of faculty at large public
universities that explored opinions about and behaviors toward OA demonstrated
that respondents had varying expectations of library OA funding. Around 30% of
total respondents felt that the library should not be expected
to pay APCs, while half of the life sciences or medical faculty felt that it
was appropriate for the library to contribute from $500 to $4,000 for APCs (Tenopir et
al., 2017).
In 2015,
librarians at Grand Valley State University surveyed the 50 recipients who
received funds to pay OA article processing charges over the 4 years that the
fund had been active. Most faculty indicated that they chose to publish OA in
order to increase the visibility of their work. Many expressed support for the
OA movement, and noted that they would not have been able to pay the APC
without the library OA fund (Beaubien, Garrison, & Way, 2016). University
of California Berkeley librarians also surveyed the 138 recipients of APC
funding from the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII). Funding recipients
felt that “that their articles received more attention and had a greater impact
that they might have had in a subscription journal” (Teplitzky &
Phillips, 2016).
Aims
This study was
designed to explore the impact of the literature supported by library OA funds,
as well as summarize fund guidelines and criteria. Our research questions
include: What types of authors and publications are libraries supporting with
OA funds? What is the research impact of these publications? How are library OA
funds structured and maintained? Answering these questions allowed us to
consider of future viability of OA funds in academia, as well as identify
trends and potential best practices for institutions looking to establish or
evaluate an OA fund.
Methods
Using SPARC’s
2016 list of library OA funds, we contacted 63 college and university libraries
to request data on funded OA publications (Scholarly Publishing and Academic
Resources Coalition [SPARC], 2018). We provided a spreadsheet template (see
Appendix A for included fields) with instructions to either send existing data
or complete as much of the template as possible. The 16 libraries listed in
Table 1 responded. From these responses we built a dataset of almost 1,200
articles, including data on discipline, authorship, journal, publisher and DOI.
We chose a subset of 453 articles – those published in 2014 and 2016 – for
additional impact analysis.
Table 1
List of
Universities that Contributed Funded Article Information to the Study Dataset
|
George Mason
University |
University of
Massachusetts Amherst |
|
Johns Hopkins
University |
University of North
Carolina at Greensboro |
|
University of
California, Irvine |
University of
Oklahoma |
|
University of
California, San Francisco |
University of
Pennsylvania |
|
University of
California, Santa Barbara |
University of
Pittsburgh |
|
University of
California, Santa Cruz[1] |
University of Rhode
Island |
|
University of
Colorado Boulder |
Virginia Tech |
|
University of Iowa |
Wake Forest
University |
In March 2019, we
collected citation counts and Altmetric Attention Scores for each
article published in 2014 and 2016 using the Dimensions database (Digital
Science, n.d.-b). We also collected Journal Impact Factors (JIF) from Journal
Citation Reports and Scimago Journal Ranking (SJR) from ScimagoJR for
each journal, along with their inclusion status in the Directory of Open Access
Journals (DOAJ). Finally, we used Web of Science to identify the higher h-index
between the first and last author of each article for 450 of 453 publications.
We were unable to find author information in Web of Science for three articles.
To compare the
relative impact of the articles in our dataset to that of similar publications,
we measured the average weighted Relative Citation Ratio of all 2014/2016 PLOS
publications in our dataset as compared to all PLoS articles
published in the middle (late June/early July) of the same year (“Relative
Citation Ratio,” 2017).
Fund Identification and Criteria Analysis
The November 2018
version of the SPARC Open Access Funds in Action sheet listed 64 current and
former college and university OA funds (Scholarly Publishing and Academic
Resources Coalition [SPARC], 2018). To update this list, we searched Google for
additional funds, using the search statement “site:.edu ‘open access
fund.’” We found an additional 23 OA funds, for a total of 87 identified funds.
Note that the SPARC list is based on self-reported data, and thus its accuracy
depends on librarians knowing that it exists and also sending fund information
annually. Only 55 of the 87 funds appeared to be currently active - the
remaining 32 funds had either indicated a cease in operations on their website
or on the SPARC list, or no longer maintained a discoverable website. In July
2019, we collected information from these 55 websites regarding the funds and
their criteria, using Google to identify each individual fund website. We
entered information regarding each fund’s guidelines and criteria into a Google
Form (see Appendix B).
Findings
The average
number of funded articles per OA fund per year ranged from 3 to more than 46,
with an average of 21 and median of 16 articles.
Nearly ¾ of
funded applicants were classified as faculty. Seven of the responding
institutions tracked faculty status, and in those institutions, 56% of funded
articles were published by faculty classified as “tenure,” including
tenure-track faculty. Authors were predominantly affiliated with either
medicine/health, or science institutions or departments, with 69% of articles
in the dataset published in these combined categories. Similarly, ⅔ of the
journals in which funded articles appeared were classified as science or
medicine. Articles were published in PLoS One more than any other
journal, representing 19% of total funded publications.
The dataset
included payment data for 885 articles, demonstrating that these 16 libraries
had paid more than 1.2 million USD for APCs between 2009 and 2018. Note that
some of these funds had been in existence for close to a decade, and some for
just a couple of years. A few funding programs had ended by the time we
requested data on the supported publications.
For additional
demographic information and descriptive findings from the initial dataset,
please refer to slides from a 2016 presentation (Click & Borchardt, 2017).
To better
understand the impact of library funded OA publications, we analyzed several
metrics at the article, journal, and author level for articles published in
2014 and 2016. Additionally, in order to better contextualize some of these
citation counts, we compared citation ratios from PLoS articles in
our dataset with all PLoS articles published mid-year in the same
years.
Article citation
counts varied widely, with a range from 0 to 194 for the combined 2014 and 2016
article dataset. The average citation count was 8.9, while the median was five.
The Altmetric Attention Scores for our article subset ranged from 0
to 685. The average Score was 15.8, and the median was 2. The Altmetric Attention
Score is “a weighted count of all of the mentions Altmetric has
tracked for an individual research output, and is designed as an indicator of
the amount and reach of the attention an item has received” (Williams, 2016).
It includes mentions in policy documents, blogs, tweets, course syllabi, Reddit
and more (Digital Science, 2015). Figure 1 directly compares the citation count
and Altmetric Attention Score for all articles.
Figure 1
Comparison of citation counts and Altmetric Attention
Scores for all articles in the 2014/2016 publication dataset.
Breaking down
articles by journal subject category, we found a range of average citation
counts and Altmetric Attention Scores for each discipline. The
highest average citation count was for articles published in engineering
journals, at 11.66 average citations, while articles in science journals had
the highest average Altmetric Attention Score with 20.01, as shown in
Table 2.
Table 2
Disciplinary
Breakdown of Average Citation Count and Altmetric Attention Scores in
the 2014/2016 Publication Dataset
|
|
Agriculture |
Engineering |
Humanities |
Medicine/
Health |
Sciences |
Social
Sciences |
|
Average
Citation Count |
9.22 |
11.66 |
1.67 |
8.88 |
8.77 |
3.58 |
|
Average Altmetric Attention
Score |
10.61 |
8.72 |
0.33 |
14.95 |
20.01 |
11.25 |
The majority of
the articles (65%) in the 2014 and 2016 dataset were published in journals that
had Journal Impact Factors (JIF), ranging from .451 to 40.137, with an average
JIF of 3.7 and median of 3.234. For context, the mean 2016 JIFs for social science
journals was 1.199, engineering and technology 1.989, and clinical medicine
2.976, although a direct comparison with our data is not appropriate as the
subject categories are not necessarily defined in
the same way (Larivière & Sugimoto, 2019). By contrast, 90% of the
articles in the subset were indexed by SCImago and had Scimago Journal
Rank (SJR) scores. The SJR scores ranged from 0.106 to 18.389, with an average
of 1.75 and median of 1.455. See Table 3 for average JIF and SJR by discipline.
The range of JIFs and SJRs for all articles are displayed in Figure 2.
Table 3
Disciplinary
Breakdown of Average Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and Scimago Journal
Rankings (SJR) for Journals in the 2014/2016 Publication Dataset
|
Academic
Discipline |
Average JIF |
Average SJR |
|
Agriculture |
3.129 |
1.509 |
|
Engineering |
3.101 |
1.323 |
|
Humanities |
2.441 |
1.013 |
|
Medicine/Health |
3.761 |
1.675 |
|
Science |
4.002 |
2.061 |
|
Social Science |
2.933 |
1.036 |
Figure 2
Comparison of
Journal Impact Factor (JIF) and SCImago Journal Rankings (SJR) for
journals in the 2014/2016 publication dataset.
H-indices were
found for all but three publications in the 2014 and 2016 dataset. The h-index
is an “author-level metric calculated from the count of citations to an
author’s set of publications” (“H-index,” 2017). If an author’s h-index is
seven, this means that the author has published at least seven articles and
each of them have been cited at least seven times. In this study, we looked up
the h-index for the first and last author of each paper in the subset of
articles, and used the higher numbers. We looked at both because in some
disciplines the lead author is first and in others last. H-indices ranged from
0 to 108, with an average of 25.3 and median of 22.
Of the 87 funds
identified, only 55 (63%) were active as of July 2019. We collected and
summarized fund guidelines and evaluative criteria related to author
eligibility, publication eligibility, and funding details.
Nearly all of the
funds analyzed listed faculty as eligible fund recipients, with the majority
(50 out of 55) listing all faculty, with another four specifying tenure-track
or non-tenured faculty. Graduate students were the next most common group,
listed by 48 of the 55 funds (including 1 fund specifically for graduate
students), followed by staff and post-docs. Undergraduate students and
researchers were also listed at lower rates, with a few other groups, such as
emeriti and fellows, selectively mentioned. Several libraries give priority to
graduate students, early career faculty, and applicants who have not previously
received OA funding. Some require that the corresponding or lead author apply
for funding.
In total, 36% of
funds had some form of policy dealing with multiple authors. Often, these
policies indicated that the level of funding would be prorated by the number of
authors, and funding would only be given proportionately to the percentage of
authors associated with the institution.
Most of the funds
also specified that the funds only be used when the author had exhausted other
sources of funding, though this criteria was variously worded. While
most stipulated that library funds be considered “last resort,” some
specifically excluded researchers with grant funds, such as those with an NIH
grant.
38% of the funds
either requested or mandated that a version of the article be placed in the
institution’s repository. The wording often indicated that this step was
automated, usually by the library, as part of the funding process.
Every one of the
funds covered journal articles, though their journal inclusion criteria
differed as discussed below. It was found that 15explicitly cover monographs,
12 cover book chapters, 4 cover conference proceedings, and 3 cover datasets.
However, in the vast majority of cases these other publication types are not
specifically excluded - but neither are they mentioned - leaving their final
eligibility unknown (or perhaps simply untested).
Every fund listed
criteria the publication must meet in order to be eligible for funding, though
in many cases, several criteria were used in conjunction to determine
eligibility. The most common criterion mentioned was inclusion in the Directory
of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), followed by Open Access Scholarly Publishers
Association (OASPA) membership or compliance with OASPA membership criteria.
See Figure 3 for the most common publication criteria. Although we did not
track this specifically, we noticed that many funds require authors to include
an acknowledgement statement with their articles, such as “Publication of this
article was funded by the ABC University Libraries Open Access Publishing
Fund.”
Figure 3
Most
commonly-mentioned journal, article, and author criteria present on OA fund
websites.
Hybrid
publications, or journals which require a subscription but make individual
articles open access for an additional fee, were excluded by 50 of the 55
funds. Of the remaining five, two explicitly allowed for hybrid publication
funding, one evaluated hybrid journals on a case-by-case basis, and two were
unknown based on the listed criteria. One fund that allows hybrid publications
offers a higher pay rate for fully OA versus hybrid. In a previous survey with
a smaller sample, 6 out of 10 libraries declined to provide OA funds for hybrid
publications (Monson et al., 2014).
For 43 out of 55
funds, a definitive source or sources of funding were identified. Of those, 93%
indicated that funding came from the library, while 14% listed the Provost’s
office. Also listed were Offices of Research, Vice Provost or Vice Chancellor’s
offices, individual schools or colleges, Office of Academic Affairs, faculty
senate, and an emeriti association. A small survey of 10 universities published
in 2014 also found the Provost's Office and the Office of Research to be common
funding partners for OA funds (Monson et al., 2014).
Most of the
library funds (87%) have a maximum reimbursement per article, ranging from 750
CDN (570 USD as of 5 August 2019) to 4,000 USD. The most common reimbursement
maximums are 1,500 USD and 3,000 USD (see Figure 4 for more detail). The few
funds that specifically address monographs commonly have a 5000 USD limit,
although one offered 7,500 USD. In addition, ⅔ of the funds have a maximum
reimbursement per author per year, most commonly 3,000 USD. Interestingly, two
funds require that authors first request a waiver or reduction of publishing
charges prior to applying for library OA funds.
Figure 4
Distribution of
maximum reimbursement per article amounts present in OA fund criteria.
Discussion
We observed that
science and medicine largely dominated both the overall funded publication
output as well as impact metrics, which is generally consistent with
disciplinary trends in higher education (Clarivate Analytics, n.d.; Digital
Science, n.d.-a).
Looking at the
impact metrics, both the range of citation counts and h-indexes were broader
than we had anticipated. Clearly, some high-impact research is being funded
with library OA funds, despite two common fund restrictions that could limit
impact: The “last resort” requirement makes it less likely that a grant-funded
project would be funded (on the assumption that grant-funded projects have a
higher likelihood of being high-impact research), and the near-universal limit
of hybrid publication funding mostly eliminates the ability to fund articles
for publication in many of the highest-impact subscription model journals.
These high-impact publications confirm that faculty’s self-reported interest in
OA publishing to increase their visibility discussed earlier is legitimate, and
can result in not only a high citation count but also in a high Altmetric Attention
Score (Beaubien et al., 2016; Teplitzky & Phillips, 2016).
However, the RCR
comparisons for the PLoS articles indicate that, based on the limited
comparison, these funded articles have a slightly lower impact based on their
citation counts as compared to similarly published research outside the
dataset. This could be due to the two limiting criteria for funds described
above. Regardless, it represents an opportunity for libraries with OA funds to
increase outreach efforts to researchers and labs considered to be high-impact
at their institution. While we see some mixed results from overall relative
impact and attention of this dataset, messaging around visibility remains a
viable selling point to faculty considering OA publication, with plenty of
examples of high-visibility work being funded.
Effectiveness of OA Fund Criteria
In a 2015 study,
only ⅓ of the libraries that provide OA funding indicated that they had
evaluative criteria in place for funding requests. Some respondents noted that
funded articles must be published in fully OA journals and hybrid journals do
not qualify, with 35% requiring listing in the DOAJ. This study found that 27%
of the libraries simply provided funding on faculty request (Lara, 2015). Our
study observed a much higher rate of evaluative criteria, with virtually every
OA fund listing guidelines and requirements on their websites, indicating a
large trend toward the development of criteria in the past several years.
We were
interested to explore the effectiveness of these criteria, and did so by
checking the journals in our sample for predatory publishers. Predatory
publishers – sometimes called deceptive publishers – charge publication fees
but make false claims about their publication practices. These publishers,
which tend to be OA, may accept and publish articles with little to no peer
review or editing, falsely list scholars as editorial board members, and/or
fail to be transparent regarding APCs. Identifying predatory publishers can be
a challenge. Jeffrey Beall ran a popular website tracking predatory publishers,
which was deactivated in 2017 (Basken, 2017). Currently, Cabell’s provides a
blacklist of deceptive and predatory journals, using a list of criteria that
are categorized as severe (e.g., the journal gives a fake ISSN, the journal
includes scholars on an editorial board without their knowledge or permission),
moderate (e.g., the journal’s website does not have a clearly stated peer
review policy), and minor (e.g., the publisher or its journals are not listed
in standard periodical directories or are not widely catalogued in library
databases) (Toutloff, 2019). We used a different tool, however, to evaluate
journals in our sample.
We identified 20
journals in our 2014/2016 sample that were not indexed by ScimagoJR. We
used a list of questions from Think. Check. Submit to evaluate those 20
journals (e.g., Is the journal clear about the type of peer review it uses?)
and found 4 did not “pass” this checklist (Think. Check. Submit., n.d.).
However, we could not determine whether these four journals were predatory, or
simply struggling publications with unclear or incomplete information on their
websites. For example, one of the four journals is a Sage
publication, but does not provide APC information or discuss adherence to or
compliance with any open access initiatives such as COPE, OASPA, or DOAJ. The
lack of clarity for these four journals mirrors Jain and Singh’s (2019)
findings that predatory publishers are ‘evolving’ with criteria checklists,
making these kinds of evaluations more difficult, though they base their
findings on Beall’s criteria rather than Think. Check. Submit.
A 2017 commentary
in Nature Human Behavior discussing stakeholders affected by
predatory journals suggests explicit exclusion of predatory journals in OA fund
criteria as one mechanism for deterring researchers from predatory publication
(Lalu, Shamseer, Cobey, & Moher, 2017). Two older papers that
surveyed librarians also mentioned using Beall’s List in OA fund criteria to
identify predatory or low quality journals (Lara, 2015; Monson et al., 2014).
However, 2 of the 55 OA funds we examined still mentioned Beall’s list - a sign
that libraries have not entirely kept current with OA journal evaluation
practices (or, at the very least, that their websites are no longer accurate
reflections of current practice). Librarians and other OA funders must continue
to monitor evolving practices for evaluation of predatory publications, such as
Cabell’s and Think. Check. Submit, in order to maintain the effectiveness of OA
fund criteria.
37%t of the OA
funds that we identified via our data collection, SPARC’s OA Funds in Action
list, and Google searching are no longer active as of summer 2019. Given the
relatively short time that OA funds have been in existence, this rate of
default points to a potentially troubling viability for OA funds. Whether OA
funds will continue to be funded may largely depend on other concurrent OA and
library initiatives, such as big deal cancellations and Plan S compliance,
which could help determine the future OA landscape and more sustainable funding
models.
Funding sources
could also play a critical role in the future viability of these funds. In a
2015 survey of libraries that provide OA funding, 70% stated that OA funds came
from the existing materials budget, and 24% indicated that they came from a new
budget allotment unrelated to materials (Lara, 2015). We posit that, in the age
of uncertain library budgets for many libraries, identification of non-library
campus partners may be critical for the long-term continuation of these funds.
Examples of distributed funding includeIUPUI’s fund, which lists no
less than 13 campus partners contributing to the fund;and Wake
Forest, which cost-shares publication fees equally between the library, Office
of Research and Sponsored Programs, and the author’s department (IUPUI
University Library, n.d.; Wake Forest University Library, n.d.).
We observed
several cost-saving measures employed by OA funds, including maximum article
and author fees, as well as article funding at less than 100%, all of which may
also help contribute to the sustainability of these funds. In the 2015 survey,
“about 80% of respondents were unsure or stated that there is no established
maximum, 19% stated that there is a maximum fee in place. Nearly all of the
respondents whose institutions have an established ceiling for funding placed
the maximum price in the range of $2,000–3,000” (Lara, 2015, p. 7). This shift
from 19% in 2015 to the 87% of funds in 2019 with price capping suggests that
future viability may be dependent on limiting these funds, at least for now.
One of the more innovative approaches to price capping we observed was
University of Massachusetts Amherst’s OA fund, which started at 50% fee
coverage, with increased coverage earned through additional criteria, such as
early-career authors, first-time applicants, a non-profit or society publisher,
and having an ORCID (UMass Amherst Libraries, n.d.).
We see an
opportunity to further investigate OA funds in order to establish more concrete
best practices. We have seen shifts in criteria models used by funds - but have
these shifts contributed to the success or failure of individual funds? Are
funds with more distributed funding models more sustainable? Our findings hint
at these possibilities, but more research would help clarify these potential
best practices. We also see value in continuing to monitor institutional
funding for OA as the scholarly communications landscape continues to change.
Many possibilities for OA rely on financial support from libraries, and a
coordinated approach toward funding models may be the key to the success or
failure of broad OA adoption.
Alternative OA
support models are already emerging. For example, Reinsfelder and
Pike (2018) urge a shift away from libraries spending funds on APCs and towards
crowdfunded models like Knowledge Unlatched, SCOAP3, and Unglue.it.
They argue that $25,000 would pay approximately 12.5 journal APCs, but would
fund 471 new OA books through a Knowledge Unlatched pledge. Likewise, Berger
(2017) argues that advocacy by libraries for different funding models
de-commodifies scholarship, and will also “mortally wound” predatory
publishers’ viability. Some universities in the U.S. are starting to make this
shift. In 2019, the University of Arizona Libraries transitioned away from
their Open Access Publishing Fund, establishing an Open Access Investment Fund.
Instead of paying individual APCs for OA publications, the Libraries will now
pay for institutional memberships with specific publishers that include APC
discounts, as well as initiatives with “wide potential global impact”
like arXiv and the Open Textbook Network (University of Arizona
University Libraries, 2019).
Conclusion
Libraries in
North America are clearly dedicated to supporting the OA movement, and in
recent years this has meant providing authors with funds to pay APCs. This
study explores the articles published via library OA funds at 16 universities
and their impact, as well as the guidelines and criteria set forth in 55 funds.
Findings indicate that research impact is a useful tool for increasing faculty
support of OA and that existing fund criteria have been refined over recent
years to encourage publication in mostly high-quality journals. OA funds have
supported researchers in a wide range of disciplines and career stages, with
STEM fields and researchers being the most frequently-supported by these funds.
However, there is some evidence to suggest that these funds may not be
supporting the highest impact research, possibly as a result of fund criteria
restrictions. The overall OA landscape is shifting, and the APC model may not
prove to be viable. Price capping of funds and distributed funding models may
increase the sustainability of these funds in the future. Regardless of the
administrative details behind funding, the ways that institutions choose to
financially support OA will continue to evolve as the OA movement develops.
References
Basken, P. (2017, September 12). Why Beall’s list
died—And what it left unresolved about Open Access. The Chronicle of
Higher Education. Retrieved from https://www.chronicle.com/article/Why-Beall-s-List-Died-/241171
Beaubien, S., Garrison, J., & Way, D. (2016).
Evaluating an open access publishing fund at a comprehensive university. Journal
of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, 3(3),
eP1204. https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.1204
Berger, M. (2017). Everything you ever wanted to
know about predatory publishing but were afraid to ask. Association of
College & Research Libraries Conference Proceedings, pp. 206–217.
Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/conferences/confsandpreconfs/2017/EverythingYouEverWantedtoKnowAboutPredatoryPublishing.pdf
Clarivate Analytics. (n.d.). Field
Baselines, InCites Essential Science Indicators. Retrieved 13 August
2019 from https://esi.clarivate.com/BaselineAction.action
Click, A., & Borchardt, R. (2017). Follow
the money: An exploratory study of open access publishing funds’ impact.
Retrieved from
https://www.slideshare.net/AmandaClick/follow-the-money-an-exploratory-study-of-open-access-publishing-funds-impact
cOAlition S. (n.d.). ’Plan S’—Making full and
immediate Open Access a reality. Retrieved 9 August 2019 from https://www.coalition-s.org/
Digital Science. (2015, July 9). The donut
and Altmetric Attention Score. Retrieved 12 August 2019 from https://www.altmetric.com/about-our-data/the-donut-and-score/
Digital Science. (n.d.-a). The 2018 Altmetric top
100. Retrieved 13 August 13 2019 from http://www.altmetric.com/top100/2018/
Digital Science. (n.d.-b). Dimensions. Retrieved 5
August 2019 from https://app.dimensions.ai/discover/publication
Eckman, C. D., & Weil, B. T. (2010).
Institutional open access funds: Now is the time. PLoS Biology, 8(5),
e1000375. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1000375
Harnad, S. (2010). No-fault peer review charges:
The price of selectivity need not be access denied or delayed. D-Lib
Magazine, 16(7/8). https://doi.org/10.1045/july2010-harnad
H-index. (2017, July 23). Retrieved 12 August 2019
from https://www.metrics-toolkit.org/h-index/
IUPUI University Library. (n.d.). IUPUI Open
Access Fund. Retrieved 13 August 2019 from http://www.ulib.iupui.edu/digitalscholarship/openaccess/oafund
Jain, N., & Singh, M. (2019). The evolving
ecosystem of predatory journals: A case study in Indian perspective. ArXiv:1906.06856
[Cs.DL]. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/abs/1906.06856
Kell, G. (2019, March 6). Why UC split with
publishing giant Elsevier. Retrieved from https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/why-uc-split-publishing-giant-elsevier
.Lalu, M. M., Shamseer, L., Cobey, K.
D., & Moher, D. (2017). How stakeholders can respond to the rise of
predatory journals. Nature Human Behaviour, 1(12),
852–855.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0257-4
Lara, K. (2015). The library’s role in the
management and funding of open access publishing. Learned Publishing, 28(1),
4–8. https://doi.org/10.1087/20150102
Larivière, V., & Sugimoto, C. (2019). The
Journal Impact Factor: A brief history, critique, and discussion of adverse
effects. In W. Glänzel, H. F. Moed, U. Schmoch, & M. Thelwall (Eds.), Springer
handbook of science and technology indicators. Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.08992
Monson, J., Highby, W., & Rathe, B.
(2014). Library involvement in faculty publication funds. College &
Undergraduate Libraries, 21(3–4), 308–329. https://doi.org/10.1080/10691316.2014.933088
Pinfield, S. (2010). Paying for open access?
Institutional funding streams and OA publication charges. Learned
Publishing, 23(1), 39–52. https://doi.org/10.1087/20100108
Price, E., Engelson, L., Vance, C. K.,
Richardson, R., & Henry, J. (2017). Open access and closed minds?
Collaborating across campus to help faculty understand changing scholarly
communication models. In K. Smith & K. Dickson (Ed.), Open access
and the future of scholarly communication (pp. 67–84). Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield.
Reinsfelder, T. L., & Pike, C. A. (2018).
Using library funds to support open access publishing through crowdfunding:
Going beyond article processing charges. Collection Management, 43(2),
138–149. https://doi.org/10.1080/01462679.2017.1415826
Relative Citation Ratio. (2017, July 24).
Retrieved 5 August 2019 from https://www.metrics-toolkit.org/relative-citation-ratio/
Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources
Coalition [SPARC]. (2018, November). Campus open access funds.
Retrieved 1 July 2019 from https://sparcopen.org/our-work/oa-funds
Sinn, R. N., Woodson, S. M., & Cyzyk, M.
(2017). The Johns Hopkins Libraries open access promotion fund: an open and
shut case study. College & Research Libraries News, 78(1),
32–35. Retrieved from https://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/article/view/9605/10998
Suber, P. (2016). Knowledge unbound:
Selected writings on open access, 2002–2011. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT
Press. Retrieved from https://www.dropbox.com/s/ege0me3s7y24jno/8479.pdf?dl=0
Tenopir, C., Dalton, E., Christian, L., Jones, M.,
McCabe, M., Smith, M., & Fish, A. (2017). Imagining a gold open access
future: Attitudes, behaviors, and funding scenarios among authors of academic
scholarship. College & Research Libraries, 78(6),
824–843. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.78.6.824
Teplitzky, S., & Phillips, M. (2016).
Evaluating the impact of open access at Berkeley: Results from the 2015 survey
of Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII) funding recipients. College
& Research Libraries, 77(5), 568–581. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.77.5.568
Think. Check. Submit. (n.d.). Check.
Retrieved 12 August 2019 from https://thinkchecksubmit.org/check/
Toutloff, L. (2019, March 20). Cabells Blacklist
Criteria v 1.1. Retrieved 14 October 2019 from https://blog.cabells.com/2019/03/20/blacklist-criteria-v1-1/
UMass Amherst Libraries. (n.d.). SOAR Fund
Guidelines. Retrieved 12 August 2019 from https://www.library.umass.edu/soar-fund/soar-fund-guidelines/
University of Arizona University Libraries.
(2019). Open Access Investment Fund. Retrieved 9 August 2019
from https://new.library.arizona.edu/about/awards/oa-fund
Wake Forest University Library. (n.d.). Open
Access Publishing Fund. Retrieved 13 August 2019 from https://zsr.wfu.edu/digital-scholarship/open-access-publishing-fund/
Williams, C. (2016, June 30). The Altmetric score
is now the Altmetric Attention Score. Retrieved 12 August 2019
from https://www.altmetric.com/blog/the-altmetric-score-is-now-the-altmetric-attention-score/
Zuniga, H., & Hoffecker, L. (2016).
Managing an open access fund: Tips from the trenches and questions for the
future. Journal of Copyright in Education and Librarianship, 1(1).
1-13. https://doi.org/10.17161/jcel.v1i1.5920
Appendix A
Library Fund Data Collection Fields
|
Institutional
Details |
Publication
Details |
|
Journal Title |
|
|
Private or
Public |
Indexed in DOAJ
(Y/N) |
|
Carnegie
Classification (e.g., R2) |
Hybrid (Y/N) |
|
Author
Details |
Journal Impact
Factor |
|
Discipline |
Journal
Publisher |
|
Author Name |
Article
Details |
|
Co-Authors
(Y/N) |
Article Title |
|
International
Collaborators (Y/N) |
Reimbursement
Amount |
|
Status (e.g.,
faculty, grad student) |
Reimbursement
Year |
|
Tenure (Y/N) |
Publication
Year |
|
Email |
doi |
|
H-index |
|
Appendix B
OA Fund Criteria Data Collection Form
- Name of University:
______________________________________
- Who is eligible for these funds?
(check all that apply)
- Faculty (all)
- Faculty (tenure track specified)
- Staff
- Undergraduate students
- Graduate students
- Postdocs
- Researchers
- Other:
________________________________
- What types of publications are
eligible? (check all that apply)
- Journal articles
- Book chapters
- Monographs
- Other:
________________________________
- Which criteria must the publication
meet? (check all that apply)
- Peer reviewed
- Listed in DOAJ
- Listed in DOAB
- OASPA member or compliant
- Immediate open access
- Published fee schedule
- Policy for economic hardship
- NOT on Beall’s list
- No predatory publishers
- Agree to put in repository
- OA fund is last resort
- APC only (e.g., no submission fees)
- Other:
________________________________
- Hybrid allowed?
- Yes
- No
- Case-by-case
- Other:
________________________________
- Is there a maximum reimbursement per
article?
- Yes
- No
- What is the maximum reimbursement per
article? _____________________
- Is there a maximum reimbursement per
author per year?
- Yes
- No
- What is the maximum reimbursement per
author per year? ______________________
- Limited to 1 publication per author
per year?
- Yes
- No
- Multiple author policy?
- Yes
- No
- Source of funds? (check all that
apply)
- Provost’s Office
- Library
- Other:
________________________________
- Notes:
______________________________________