University of Pretoria

APCs, IRs & the subscription problem: The UP library experience

Dr Leti KleynManager: Open Scholarship

MERENSKY LIBRARYUniversity of Pretoria

Open access (OA) is free, immediate, permanent, full-text, online access, for any user, web-wide, to digital scientific and

scholarly material, primarily research articles published in peer-reviewed journals. OA means that any individual user,

anywhere, who has access to the Internet, may link, read, download, store, print-off, use, and data-mine the digital content of that article. An OA article usually has limited

copyright and licensing restrictions.

The two different strategies are known as

•Gold OA where journal articles are published in Open Access journals which have no access cost, unlike Traditional Toll Access (TA) journals, the dominant publishing model.

•Green OA refers to journal articles that are deposited (self-archived) in institutional or subject repositories accessible to everyone.

Two routs to Open Access

OPEN ACCESS at UP (i)(i) Policy on University of Pretoria

electronic theses and dissertations (S 4844-46/08):

The University of Pretoria supports free access to research literature for all researchers worldwide and takes responsibility for the dissemination of its own research outputs. Because theses and dissertations are not formally published (grey matter) it is even more important that the University itself should provide access to them.

9 000+ currently in the UPSpace repository

OPEN ACCESS at UP (ii)

(ii) Policy to provide open access to research papers authored by University of Pretoria researchers (S 4845/08):

The University of Pretoria supports free access to the research literature for all researchers worldwide and takes responsibility for the dissemination of its own research outputs […].

12 000+ currently in the UPSpace repository

73rd in the

WORLD

73rd in the

WORLD

1st in Sub-Saharan

AFRICA

1st in Sub-Saharan

AFRICA

OPEN ACCESS IR at UP (iii)

OPEN ACCESS at UP (iv)

(iv) Policy on Open Access Publishing Article Processing Charges

The purpose of this policy is to facilitate open access publishing of research articles by members of the University of Pretoria, thereby making the University’s research more accessible, and increasing the visibility and impact of the research, for the benefit of both researchers and the University.

COMING IN 2015

COMING IN 2015

APCs at UP

(v) INSTITUTIONAL AGREEMENT BioMedCentral (BMC) at UP

BMC Citations (Web of Science, 2009–2015) indicates that citations for articles on the BMC platform are indeed growing:

APCs at UP

INSTITUTIONAL AGREEMENT BioMedCentral (BMC) at UP

GBP Rand Value Lowest/Highest

Articles

2011 ₤10 000 R125 000 ₤985/₤1 057 7

2012 ₤33 000 R451 500 ₤535/₤1 183 30

2013 ₤30 000 R435 00 ₤787/₤1 183 31

2014 ₤40 000 R722 00 ₤1 102/₤1 183 26

Total ₤113 000 R1 733 500 Average: R17 000

94

On average

R18 500Value loss of

30% since 2011

APC Benchmarking

R2m200 articles since 2011

• Eligibility – faculty staff; researchers; postgraduate students. • Co-authors (paying only for the UP author).• A pre-determined publication list of Open Access journals. • Pre-funded research – e.g. grant, donor or faculty funding that includes publication fees.• Partial funding – only funding a percentage of the APCs.• UP publications – exclude articles published in University of Pretoria Open Access Journals.• Publication dates – only articles published within the most recent calendar year.• NO embargoes (or other time restrictions).

Publication Fund Policy Issues

APCs at UP

A UP Pilot (Open Access) Publication Fund

earmarked with R3m for 2015

• obtained from the Library’s Information Resources Budget (capital budget) for 2015• to be administered by the Open Scholarship Office• within the parameters of a Publication Fund Policy

Sustaining this Publication Fund will require additional funding annually

RealityCHECK

RealityCHECK

RealityCHECK 1: Average price

Graph based on a dataset compiled by Jisc of 6,061 article processing charges (APCs) paid by 20 UK higher education institutions in 2014. It shows the average APC price paid to the top 20 largest publishers (largest in terms of number of APCs). The average price paid for an APC often differs from the prices listed on publisher/journal websites. Obtained from: http://figshare.com/articles/Average_APC_price_2014/1311650

The average APC is £1 581

X R18.54= R29 300+

BMC

PLOS

Statistics supplied by Sunette Steynberg, UP Research Commons

RealityCHECK 2: I choose where to publish

RealityCHECK 3: And so we still subscribe

R10 000 000.00+R 400 000.00+

R10 400 000+

OA Page Charges:$3 000 =

R35 500 +

Total e-journal subscription (2014):R50 130 520

Big Five (2014):R41 708 653

Largest Payment:R18 896 132

Statistics supplied by Soekie Swanepoel, UP Library Resources

RealityCHECK 4: And so we still subscribeA recap of recent incidents of selling open access articles, without the publisher acknowledging to the reader/buyer that it is an open access article:

Springer (April, 2015) Wiley (March, 2015) Elsevier (March, 2015) Elsevier (2014)

„It’s yet another nail in the coffin for hybrid OA – we simply can’t trust these publishers to keep this

content open and paywall-free.”

ROSS MOUNCE: http://rossmounce.co.uk/2015/04/27/springer-caught-red-handed-selling-access-to-open-access-

article/

RealityCHECK 5: The Institutional Repository

Statistics supplied by Hendriette Jansen van Vuuren, UP Open Scholarship Programme

Total articles

FinalPDF

Post-print Pre-print No permission

Awaiting permission

2015 671 27% 70% 1% 1% 2%

2014 2 370 48% 47% 2% 1% 2%

2013 2 233 52% 41% 3% 1% 2%

2012 2 060 54% 43% 0% 1% 2%

2011 2 037 46% 48% 1% 1% 3%

TOTAL/AVERAGE

9 371 45% 50% 1% 1% 2%

RealityCHECK 6: Permission from publishers

Statistics supplied by Hendriette Jansen van Vuuren, UP Open Scholarship Programme

RealityCHECK 7: Embargo periods

Statistics supplied by Hendriette Jansen van Vuuren, UP Open Scholarship Programme

• Support all initiatives from South African universities and institutions to reduce APCs • Support all initiatives form Government and NRF to take a stand on research output availability and APCs• Renegotiate fees together with other South African partners• Develop an internal institutional system that supports the (free) Green route optimal• Rethink copyright and poke holes in embargos• Consider the ethics of the situation• Join the revolution in support of affordable Open Access

Pursue EVERY avenue

“ ”The tipping point for African research innovation will not

be merely the ability to fully access and use the new abundance of global knowledge and ideas but to make

an active and significant contribution to its creation.

Piyushi Kotecha (in Abrahams, et al., 2008)