The Official PLoS Blog

One of the many joys of OA Week is the opportunity to reflect on the movement’s progress. It has been a watershed year for Open Access advocates as evidenced by the surge of momentum since last year.  Just this week a new study published in BMC Medicine shows that OA publishing is growing faster than previously thought. Last week,  the European Science Foundation’s (ESF) membership organization for all medical research councils in Europe, the European Medical Research Councils (EMRC) released a Science Policy Briefing (SPB) entitled ‘Open Access in Biomedical Research’ highlighting the need to accelerate the adoption of open access to research articles in the biomedical sciences across Europe. Governments, funders, publishers, and academic institutions are also leading the way by adopting Open Access policies more firmly than ever before. Here’s a snapshot of recent progress.

Government

In July, three concurrent announcements–Research Councils UK – RCUK; the government response to the Finch Report, and Higher Education Funding Council for England – HEFCE–established a framework for introducing Open Access to the UK over a short period of time with implementation starting in April 2013.  Also in July, the European Commission (EC) published its own set of documents on Open Access, which further raises the possibility that Open Access will become a prevalent mode of dissemination of scientific research, and widened the set of potential publishing models. In the U.S., Open Access advocates are eagerly awaiting a response from the White House after successfully garnering more than 27,000 signatures on a petition that urges expanding Open Access to research funded by all U.S. federal science agencies.

Funders

The World Bank announced an Open Access policy that went into effect in July in  which its data and publications will be licensed under Creative Commons copyrights and made free to the public. In June, the Wellcome Trust announced that it will more strongly enforce its Open Access policy. Noncompliance could result in final grant payments being withheld. Last month, the Budapest Open Access Initiative issued a new set of recommendations, which reaffirmed and expanded on the original Budapest Declaration:

Publishers

This summer also ushered in additional Open Access publishers that will contribute to our important cause. eLife and PeerJ are among those now accepting submissions. PLOS welcomes all new and existing publishing efforts that make research Open Access. Several other publishers are moving toward Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license licensing. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., announced revised licensing arrangements for proprietary journals published under the Wiley Open Access program. The journals will adopt the CC-BY, which allows commercial use of published articles. The Wiley Open Access portfolio also includes journals published with society partners, many of which will similarly transfer to the CC-BY license. A similar  development comes from Nature Publishing Group: Scientific Reports offers authors the option of using a CC-BY license. Scientific Reports published its 457^th article on June 14, its first birthday, making it Nature Publishing Group’s fastest-growing journal. Springer also shifted this year.

Academic Institutions

The Faculty Advisory Council at Harvard University announced that it can no longer afford to maintain its subscriptions to academic journals. The announcement offers advice on what staff can do to alleviate the problem:

Consider submitting articles to Open Access journals, or to ones that have reasonable, sustainable subscription costs; move prestige to Open Access. If on the editorial board of a journal involved, determine if it can be published as Open Access material, or independently from publishers that practice pricing described above. If not, consider resigning.

Purdue University passed a recommendation in 2012 for all faculty to follow Harvard University’s policy with similar licenses, requirements, and options. The recommendation includes modifying Purdue epubs, the existing university repository, as an Open Access repository.

In May, the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) became the latest academic institution to adopt an Open Access policy for scholarly publications.

The steady progress toward Open Access is encouraging but our work is not yet done. Let’s continue this momentum and transform research communication together.

Welcome to OA week, a celebration of Open Access principles and progress around the world. In preparation for this year’s activities PLOS, SPARC, and OASPA recently released the final version of the Open Access Spectrum guide. This resource outlines the core components of Open Access across the continuum from “open access” to “restricted access”. Its aim is to help authors make informed decisions on where to publish based on journal policies. It also provides a resource for funders and other organizations to help establish criteria for the level of open access required for their policies and mandates. Ultimately, the conversation must shift from “Is It Open Access?” to “HowOpenIsIt?”

To kick off OA Week, SPARC and the World Bank are hosting a live blog and webcast today at 4:00 EST.

PLOS will celebrate the week in a number of ways:

Monday, October 22

• Wide release of the Open Access Spectrum guide
• PLOS is a member organization of the The Humanitarian Centre,  which has launched its 2012 Cambridge International Development report. The report is a collection of original pieces from speakers and participants in the Humanitarian Centre’s ‘Global Health Year’: a year of events and activities designed to explore ways that people from different disciplines, sectors and countries can work more effectively together to tackle global health challenges.
• PLOS Advocacy Director, Cameron Neylon, examines the next phase of Open Access in a blog post: Free and Open Data as a Worldwide Economic Engine
• Guest blogger Barbara Fister provides an educator’s perspective in an post that considers open science as an alternative to the “science-as-property” model used in most schools and colleges

Tuesday, October 23

• Cameron Neylon publishes an editorial in PLOS Biology titled, “Open Access: Delivering on its Potential”
• Cameron Neylon, as a guest speaker at the University of Nijmegen, delivers a talk entitled, “More than just access: The road to delivering networked research”
• Guest blogger Daniel Mietchen, a research physicist, blogs on how Open Access transforms the way research is published, focusing on the importance of licensing in enabling reuse on Wikipedia

Wednesday, October 24

• Guest blogger Mark Thorley (Natural Environment Research Council and lead for Research Councils UK on their Open Access policy) provides a funder’s perspective on why Open Access matters when spending public funds to advance scientific research
• Cameron Neylon is a guest speaker at the University of Exeter delivering a talk entitled, “Realizing the full potential of Open Access: How I learned to stop worrying and love the RCUK policy”
• Kristen Ratan, PLOS Chief Publications and Products Officer, participates in an Open Access publishing day forum at the National Science Library, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Thursday, October 25

• To celebrate the 5^th anniversary of PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases,  the journal will be publishing a number of items around the theme of progress made in the NTDs field and challenges that remain. We will be publishing a commemorative Editorial, two collections, and a call for Historical Profiles and Perspectives submissions. The primary collection is called “The Geopolitics of Neglected Tropical Diseases”.  The collection is a compilation of previously published review articles focusing on the geographic distribution of NTDs by region, inspiring readers to think about the geopolitics of the infectious diseases affecting the most marginalized populations and the unique perspective of the burden of disease within a global context. A secondary collection compiles our top-viewed research articles from each year of publication to highlight the continued impact of our primary research.
• A Q&A with Peter Hotez and Serap Aksoy, Editors-in-Chief of PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, on how far the journal has come in the past five years.

Friday, October 26

• Guest blogger Christy Collins, Founder and President of M-CM Foundation, patient advocate, and parent, gives us a closer look at how patient advocates are using data from open source medical research
• Cameron Neylon is attending the launch of the Open Access policy at the University of Oslo

On behalf of PLOS, SPARC, and OASPA I want to thank everyone who contributed during the open review process of the Open Access Spectrum guide. In preparation for Open Access Week (October 22-28), we are issuing the final version today so that people can download and print it for their use next week and beyond. This resource outlines the core components of open access (e.g., reader rights, reuse rights, copyrights, author posting rights, etc.) across the continuum from “open access” to “restricted access”.  Its aim is to help authors make informed decisions on where to publish based on journal policies. It also provides a resource for funders and other organizations to help establish criteria for the level of Open Access required for their policies and mandates. Ultimately, the conversation must shift from “Is It Open Access?” to “HowOpenIsIt?” The phrase “HowOpenIsIt?” will be used for a family of offerings to foster and promote open access in research communications.  The Open Access Spectrum is our first program with more to come. Today’s content also includes an FAQ and a Chinese translation (Spanish translation coming soon).

The public comment period, which lasted two weeks, generated 60 responses from 11 countries. We received input from publishers, librarians, authors, editors, and research funders, among others. Of the 26 entries in the draft table, 18 were edited and improved as a result of this feedback. The most notable change was an additional entry to the “Copyrights” category. The draft version included four definitions along the Open Access Spectrum. The final version added a fifth: Publisher holds copyright, with some allowances for author and reader reuse of published version.

We deeply appreciate all the suggestions that we received. Your feedback provided greater clarity and precision to the final document.

Not all Open Access is created equal.  To move beyond the seemingly simple question of Is it Open Access?” PLOS, SPARC and OASPA have collaborated to develop a resource called HowOpenIsIt?” This resource identifies the core components of open access (OA) and how they are implemented across the spectrum between “Open Access” and “Closed Access”.  We recognize there are philosophical disagreements regarding OA and this resource will not resolve those differences.

We are seeking input on the accuracy and completeness of how OA is defined in this guide. Download the open review draft and provide feedback via the comment form on the SPARC site.  In its final form, this guide will provide an easily understandable, comprehensive, and quantifiable resource to help authors make informed decisions on where to publish based on publisher policies.  In addition, funders and other organizations will have a resource that indicates criteria for what level of OA is required for their policies and mandates.

This OA guide is aimed toward a wide audience of researchers, authors, and policy-makers.  Your feedback will help us more precisely define OA across a number of categories.  The goals of the guide are to:

•  Move the conversation from “is it open access?” to “how open?”
• Clarify the definition of OA
• Standardize terminology
• Illustrate a continuum of “more open” versus “less open”
• Enable people to compare and contrast publications and policies
• Broaden the understanding of OA to a wider audience

In 2002, the Budapest Open Access Initiative articulated the basic tenets of OA for the first time.  Since then, thousands of journals have adopted policies that embrace some or all of the open access core components related to: readership; reuse; copyright; posting; and machine readability

Why now and why this resource?

OA is gaining momentum and we are seeing a groundswell of support from authors and funders to colleges and governments. Despite this progress there is still confusion about OA.  With this guide we aim to provide greater clarity regarding its definition and components.  All suggestions will be considered and a final version will be released during Open Access Week (October 22 -28, 2012).  The comment period will close on Monday, October 8, at 5:00pm (EST).

PLOS is pleased to announce that Michael W. Carroll will join the PLOS Board of Directors, effective September 29, 2012. “As a leading advocate for unrestricted dissemination of scientific research, Michael brings significant expertise in article licensing, distribution, and reproduction to further our efforts to increase open access,” said board chairman Gary Ward.

Michael is a founding board member of Creative Commons, advising on initiatives in science and education. He is a Professor of Law and Director of the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at American University’s Washington College of Law. His research and teaching are in the areas of intellectual property law and cyberlaw. His prior experience includes membership on the faculty of Villanova University School of Law, serving as a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and practicing law at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington, D.C. He graduated from the Georgetown University Law Center and the University of Chicago.

Michael is one of the foremost experts on the Creative Commons Attribution License that PLOS uses to simultaneously acknowledge authors’ copyright ownership while granting unrestricted access to everyone in the world. In November 2011, he published a perspective, Why Full Open Access Matters, in PLOS Biology’s Open Access Collection. “Scientific authors who pay to publish their articles in an open-access publication should be congratulated for doing so. They also should be aware that they may not be getting full open access from some publications that charge for publication under the open access label,” according to the article.

PLOS is pleased to release its Progress Update 2011-2012, covering our developments, outreach, publishing highlights, financial information, and the surge of momentum in the open-access movement. Our growth and revenues continue to validate open access as a viable and sustainable publishing model, and enable us to invest in our mission to lead a transformation in research communication.

We increased publishing capacity to accommodate a growing volume of articles; provided publication fee assistance for authors unable to pay all or part of their publication fees; and worked on innovative developments such as Article-Level Metrics. For the third consecutive year PLOS is not increasing publication fees. We are grateful to our authors, readers, reviewers, editors, advisers, staff, and the community for their support of our mission.

PLOS is pleased to announce a program to increase the global participation of authors in open-access publishing. On September 4th, 2012, we launched the PLOS Global Participation Initiative, which aims to encourage submissions from researchers around the world who may previously have been prevented or limited in their ability to publish in open-access journals.

Our mission is to reduce and, if possible, eliminate unnecessary barriers (including cost) to the immediate availability, access and use of research while pursuing a sustainable publishing model in which openness, quality and integrity are central.

The first program in this new initiative aims to tackle barriers to publication based on cost, specifically addressing the lack of funding for publication faced by authors in many countries. The program is outlined below:

Low- and middle-income countries:

• Group One – countries on this list will not be charged
• Group Two – countries on this list will be charged a flat publication fee of $500

Upper middle- and high-income countries will continue to be charged our standard publication fees.

Please note: Our fee waiver policy remains unchanged. Editors and reviewers have no access to whether authors are able to pay; decisions to publish are only based on editorial criteria.

PLOS developed the Global Participation Initiative in consultation with its International Advisory Group (IAG), which is a group of eminent individuals from around the world whose aim is to ensure that we address issues that will encourage global participation. We analyzed multiple data sources to establish the parameters of the program by examining Gross National Income per capita and national expenditure on Research and Development.

Addressing the financial barriers to publication is an important first step towards the goal of ensuring the widest possible global participation in open-access publishing.

Please visit “Viewpoints” for more background on PLOS’ Global Participation Initiative.

You may have noticed some visual changes to PLOS. Given our growth, it was necessary to provide our well-known logo with a long overdue refresh.  We’ve simplified the “globe”, made it scaleable and modernized the typeface of our logo—small changes that make it easier for people to read and provide options for use in a variety of settings (both on and offline), today and in the future.

We have previously organized our journals according to subject areas (Medicine, Biology, and Interdisciplinary, i.e., PLOS ONE) and are now are taking the opportunity to give distinctive accent colors to each of these.  Furthermore, we are capitalizing “PLOS” to address community feedback regarding the difficulty with consistent pronunciation and writing our organization’s name. We will continue to put the name “PLOS” on everything that we do to show our presence and consistency as a nonprofit organization founded on the aim to build a “public library of science”.

Thank you for supporting PLOS and our mission to transform research communication.

PLoS is delighted to announce that our 50,000th research article was recently published. To everyone who has contributed to this achievement – from our authors, editors, and reviewers to our staff, board, and advocates at large– we’d like to offer a well-deserved thank you.

“This milestone represents a significant contribution toward the public resource of unrestricted scientific research now open for discovery,” said Peter Jerram, CEO of PLoS. “We are proud to publish high-quality, peer-reviewed research that anyone can freely access at any time.”

In our annual 2012 author survey, journal quality was cited as one of the top reasons authors chose to publish with PLoS. Authors also appreciate the fact that one of our core values is providing ways to overcome unnecessary barriers to immediate availability, access, and use of research.

We still have a lot of work ahead of us–only a small proportion of the world’s scientific and medical research is open access. However, the movement is gaining momentum. Governments, colleges and funders are beginning to fully understand its benefits both economically and to society as a whole. A recent petition calling for open access to government-funded research gathered 25,000 signatures in just 2 weeks, demonstrating widespread support for the idea that everyone should see the results of taxpayer-funded research.

The Public Library of Science was born out of a simple belief that the internet offered a better way to publish scientific and medical research. The huge community support we’ve garnered is testament to the success of PLoS as a publisher and to full open access as a business model that is leading a transformation in research communication.

PLoS is attending the ISMB 2012 International Society for Computational Biology meeting, in Long Beach, California, July 15-17.

Be sure to visit us at Booth 26 to meet PLoS Computational Biology staff Rosemary Dickin and Clare Weaver, as well as Raquel Iglesias from PLoS ONE. We’ll also host informal “Meet the Editors” sessions, so get your questions and suggestions ready and ask us about our “Topic Pages” that bridge the gap between PLoS Computational Biology and Wikipedia. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn more about the journal, PLoS, and OA.

Our booth giveaways include cool new PLoS apparel (while supplies last), as well as PLoS buttons, pens, and more.

You can register to attend ISMB 2012 on-site, beginning on Thursday, July 12, 2012 at 3:00 p.m, at the Long Beach Convention Center