Learning to share: mandates and open access

Abstract

PurposeOnline open access (OA) to research publications comes to scholarship as a vision that makes sense and is congruent with the aims of science and scholarship. It is argued that research, often funded out of the public purse, should be a public good. Given its visionary characteristics and its congruence with the aims of scholarship, this paper examines why OA is not practiced by all researchers, all the time, or more encouraged by library managers?MethodologyThe findings reported in the paper are built upon analyses of the literature, the current discussion occurring in e-lists and other public forums, and upon qualitative research using observation, document analysis, interview techniques and thematic analysis conducted as part of a PhD study in two Australian universities.FindingsOne of the universities had a long-standing institutional mandate to encourage open access and the other did not. In terms findings, of the universities studied, the institution with the mandate, not only had a far greater proportion of its research output in its open access institutional repository but also the researchers and authors interviewed there had a deep understanding of, and engagement with, issues surrounding not just scholarly publishing but also OA and other publishing options. Further, OA and the mandate policy were reported by university executives as providing benefits both to individual researchers and to the institution as a whole.Originality/ValueIn analyzing the relationships and entanglements that exist between authors, universities, publishers and other actors we see how these reinforce the current publishing paradigm. While proposals for mandates are not new, this paper illustrates how one is acting in practice. It proposes that despite reservations among academic library managers a mandate can work in practice. Sometimes, a new actor, such as a mandate or deposit policy is required, to assist library and repository managers, to encourage authors to look beyond their existing frames and embrace open access.

Riding the Wave of Open Access: Providing Library Research Support for Scholarly Publishing Literacy

“…As Kennan (2011) outlines, there is a symbiotic relationship between researchers and publishers. In scholarly publishing, publishers provide infrastructure, marketing, copy editing and publish research outputs.…”

“…In addition, librarians have been advocating for, and have been actively involved in, the development of open access, particularly in the management and promotion of institutional repositories (Kennan 2011;Kingsley 2013b Notwithstanding the active engagement and current good practices of university libraries and librarians in supporting scholarly publishing, a range of issues need to be further addressed. These issues are discussed below, in relation to the 'what', the 'how' and the 'who' of scholarly publishing literacy.…”

“…They store and distribute existing peer-reviewed research outputs to researchers and the public. As Kennan (2011) highlights, depending on the situation, research outputs can be self-deposited at either the pre-or post-review stage. The purpose is to provide access to other researchers without subscriptions to the journals, to the public, and to increase visibility of the work through search engines such as Google and Google Scholar.…”

Políticas de acceso abierto a la ciencia en las universidades españolas

“…En primer lugar, se tienen que destacar las valiosas aportaciones de Peter Suber (2007Suber ( , 2009, difundidas en el SPARC Open Access Newsletter y también en sus informes anuales sobre acceso abierto. También se pueden citar un estudio cualitativo de Kennan (2011), que analiza el papel del mandato en las universidades y demuestra como éste, al lado de otras actuaciones, puede mejorar las cuotas de autoarchivo; otro de Furnival (2010) que destaca también la importancia de las políticas y mandatos para fomentar el acceso abierto. Finalmente, Ghosh (2011) efectúa una revisión bibliográfica focalizada en promoción (advocacy) y analiza algunas acciones de fomento del acceso abierto llevadas a cabo por bibliotecas de distintas instituciones.…”

The UK Scholarly Communication Licence: Attempting to Cut through the Gordian Knot of the Complexities of Funder Mandates, Publisher Embargoes and Researcher Caution in Achieving Open Access

“…Whilst mandates are complex, many argue they make an important contribution to OA uptake [9,31,32]. Jubb et al, have recently produced a report highlighting the rapid rise of green and gold OA uptake in the UK-rises which can be reasonably attributed, at least in part, to strong OA policy mandates [8].…”