berlin5 : Alma Swan

The final keynote by Alma Swan, familiar to all in the OA field. How are we doing? (Alma does a lot of surveys, interviews questionnaires, etc.)
We are getting definition creep. There should be no qualification of OA – it’s either pregnant or not – not slightly pregnant.  OA is not “delayed OA”…
Awareness, in order:

• funders
• publishers (PLoS, BMC doing very good advocacy)

• peers (word-of-mouth
• library (often repositories are not well advertised)

• and the effect of OA

“self archiving gave my work instant world-wide visibility. As a result I was invited to … conferences … and authoring”
Proven Business model (PLoS, BMC, Hindawi) 70% rise in submissions over last 2 years. Hindawi is profitable, BMC break-even, PLoS OK on all except flagships. Bentham launching 200+ OA this year, and 100 next year
Moving the money around. Need to move from library budgets to author-end. Not trivial but vice-chancellors have to grasp this nettle. Experiments:

• Nottiingham
• Wisconsin
• Amsterdam

Reorganising rather than spending new money. 7 billion USD into scholarly publishing.
Learned societies. Not homogeneous. Sounds like publishing, but is NOT. Actually aligns with mission of a scholarly society. Target the scientific officers of society. Please try. Work with LS to help them embrace OA and concept of opening up scholarship. Show benefits. Discuss green and gold. Discuss evidence against damage to business. Be patient. Praise and encourge the ones which are moving. They are too coy about their achievements (e.g. APS and IOP(UK). Both have built mirror site for arXiv (doing this for benefit of community – let’s praise them.) Support members who are struggling to change. History will record who helped and obstructed.
Start by making Society conferences OA. ASCB (Am Soc Cell Bio), Ins Math. Stat.)
Peter Suber says 380 OA journals from 350 societies.
Digital Repositories. Family of types but shared purpose is dissemination of research in ways not possible up to now. Repositories are at centre of universe. Ingets tools, search and retrieve, aggregate/display, count/assess, peer review (might/not be publishers), editorial (publishers), other value adding
Repos are where content is going to start, at data creation stage.
We need a marketing message for each constituency:

• institution: visibility and impact. G-factor (Google rank or Web presence). Much higher in US. But Southampton is 3rd of UK universities. Mandatory deposit of research. Many links are to repo.
• funders. OECD says: boost innovation and better return if proceedings Open Access. Houghton. Drummond Bone – repos are vital to UK economy. EU: SME find it hard to get access to the basic research infortion they need. A small pharma: cannot pay for TA journals or 30GBP/article
• authors: WILL comply willingly, if mandated (81%). reluctantly (14%). Arthur Sale – QUT has over 50% in repo. Encouragment doe sNOT work. Mandate AT ACCEPTANRights:CE. The AUTHOR’S FINAL VERSION, even if not OA. Mandate DEPOSIT. Need author’s final version (as well as PDF)
• usage: UoCalif 2 million downloads. Interoperable Respistory Statistics (IRS) will help. Monthly download, Daily downloads, types of referrer, etc. Which universities are accessing. In some cases Wikipedia is top referrer. Authors love it

Rights: Shouldn’t be a block but it is. Promote author addendum. Most address data. Monitor copyright policies and addenda.
It’s about the Web, stupid:
BBC linked to Soton and links were out pf date. If Google on author’s name
One third of Soton ECS lack home page, same in MIT. Let the young people help.
Joined up strategy. It IS a web. Data theses, articles.
And work on lobbying:
it’s hard, but PRISM has backfired and this makes it easier. Now we have to SHOUT. need organizing centre. SPARC…
Personal Strategy – stay cheerful

• Peter Suber’s blog
• AmSci and SPARC OA lists
• David Prosser’s paper
• Alma’s OA calendar