Talking about Open Access: SMASH and Subtler Tactics

Talking about Open Access: SMASH and Subtler Tactics

Jill CirasellaThe Graduate Center, CUNY

[email protected]

Open Access Week 2014

Slides at: http://tinyurl.com/OASMASH

mailto:[email protected]

http://tinyurl.com/OASMASH


Brace Yourself…

But open access publishing is self-

publishing!

But open access journals charge fees, which means it’s vanity

publishing!

But I need my work to be peer reviewed!

But everyone says open access journals are predatory and

scammy!

But I have to publish in journals with an impact

factor!

But open access journals will destroy scholarly

societies!

But libraries should pay for journals! You’re trying to push the cost onto

me!

Brace Yourself… But why should I give away my work

for free?

But this university policy feels like Big

Brother!

But I give enough to the university!I’m supposed to give it my copyright

too?

But open access facilitates

plagiarism!

But I have to sign my rights over to the

journal!But I just don’t have time for

this!But I already put all my work on my personal

website!

Ha, you expect me to dig up the manuscript versions of my

articles?

Brace Yourself…

And my all-time favorite…

Brace Yourself…

You’re espousing Venezuelan economics!

*

* Yes, someone really did counter my open access arguments with that!

Why Open Access?

An Argument in Three Slides

1 Me

What Is the Problem?

university $ (taxpayer $, tuition $, etc.) + grant $

pay faculty to do research & record results in articles

faculty give articles & copyright to publishers for free(and other researchers peer review for free)

university libraries pay dearly for access to articles

publishers get articles, copyrights, and labor for free& publishers rake in all the $ (and it is BIG $)

2Me + Flickr

3 Me + Designer

Open Access Made It Better

Better content.Better for you.Better for me.

Open Access Makes It Better

For whom?For what?

How?

Who Benefits from OA?

Readers:

More content is available to everyone, regardless ofinstitutional affiliation or ability to pay

Students:

Students have access to the literature they need to master their fields, no matter what college/university they attend

Who Else Benefits?

Authors:

Increased availability More readers

More scholarly citations, impact in the field

Easy to link to More mentions/links in news, blogs, etc. Broader awareness in the world Greater control over own work No need to relinquish copyright to

publishers Publishers don't dictate copying,

sharing, etc.

The Colbert Bump“the curious phenomenon whereby anyone who appears on this program gets a huge boost in popularity”

— Stephen ColbertColbert Report, 6/21/07

Photo by David Shankbone

The Open Access Bump

Similarly, open access boosts the impact of articles:

easier to access read more cited more

It makes intuitive sense, but it’s also been studied and shown to be true.

Annotated bibliography of articles on the OA advantage:http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html

http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html

What Benefits from OA?

Libraries:

As OA becomes increasingly prevalent, libraries will be no longer be hamstrung by astronomical journal prices.

Institutions:

Institutions no longer pay twice for research:researchers’ salaries + journal subscriptions

In the case of public institutions, the tax-paying public no longer pays three times for research:salaries + research grants + journal subscriptions

What Else Benefits?

Fields of Study:

Greater access to information More informed research Better research

Articles made OA before they appear in journal Ends reliance on journal publication cycles Allows others to respond more quickly Speeds innovation

And What Else?

The Public:

Greater access to information Better informed doctors, teachers, journalists, etc. Better informed individuals, voters, etc. Healthier, better educated people A cleaner, safer, more evidence-based world

Another Tack…

@openaccesshulk

SMASH!

“Closed access means people die.” — Peter Murray-Rust, University of Cambridge

Read more at:http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2011/10/23/

open-research-reports-what-jenny-and-i-said-and-why-i-am-angry/

http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2011/10/23/open-research-reports-what-jenny-and-i-said-and-why-i-am-angry/

http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2011/10/23/open-research-reports-what-jenny-and-i-said-and-why-i-am-angry/

SMASH?

“Elsevier disseminates and preserves STM literature to meet the information needs of the world’s present and future scientists and clinicians — linking thinkers with ideas.”

from Elsevier’s Mission Statementhttp://www.elsevier.com/about/mission

http://www.elsevier.com/about/mission

SMASH!

“Elsevier disseminates and preserves STM literature to meet the information needs of the world’s present and future scientists and clinicians — linking thinkers with ideas.”

from Elsevier’s Mission Statementhttp://www.elsevier.com/about/mission Bullsh

*

t!

Know Your Audience!

Feeling outraged?SMASH doesn’t always work.

Feeling charitable?Appeals to altruism don’t always work.

Feeling broke?Arguments about costs don’t always work.

It’s not about what convinces us.It’s about what convinces them.

Know what rhetoric works on whom!

Know Your Audience!

Students:

Improving access to information needed for assignments.

Keeping course material costs down.

Improving access after graduation, when no longer affiliated.

Know Your Audience!

Faculty:

Increasing readership and impact

Improving online presence

Seeing download statistics

Satisfying funders’ OA requirements

Furthering social justice

Know Your Audience!

Librarians:

Tackling the cost crisis

Improving access & services

Ensuring ongoing relevance of librarians

OA is no longer a niche — it’s a necessity!

Know Your Audience!

Administrators:

Maximizing institution’s visibility, prestige, etc.

Better achieving institution’s mission

Collecting and quantifying scholarly output

Assessment! Metrics! Widgets!

Cost savings, eventually…

Know Your Audience!

Administrators:

Open access institutional repositories can “serve as tangible indicators of a university’s quality” and “demonstrate the scientific, societal, and economic relevance of its research activities, thus increasing the institution’s visibility, status, and public value.”

— Raym Crow, “The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper”

http://scholarship.utm.edu/20/

http://scholarship.utm.edu/20/

Know Your Audience!

Lawmakers:

Taxpayer access to tax-funded research

Demonstrating value of tax dollars

Promoting innovation

Know Your Audience!

Revolutionaries:

Access to information

Educational opportunity

Empowerment & equality

Retaining rights to one’s own work

Stopping profiteering off unpaid labor

Know Your Audience!

Traditionalists:

Ensuring legacy

Increasing impact

Becoming a public intellectual

Know Your Audience!

“Blah blah open access blah blah.”

Learn to talk about open access without constantly saying “open access”!

There is a Far Side cartoon that perfectly suits this slide. But Gary Larson dislikes online sharing and likes cease-and-desist letters. And it’s hard to say what counts as fair use when you’re dealing with a two-panel cartoon. So you don’t get to see it. Gary Larson wants to you go buy a book instead. If you could see this cartoon, maybe you would. But since you can’t, you probably won’t.

Well under 10% of the

cartoon

Know Your Audience!

Sneak open access into related conversations:

• Retaining rights to one’s own work• Exploring the future of scholarly communication• Updating tenure & promotion practices• Improving peer review• Rethinking indicators of quality• Modernizing the university press• Accelerating scientific discoveries• Abandoning unnecessary vestiges of print publishing• Reimagining the basic unit of scholarship• Linking publications to associated data• Allowing for multi-modal and interactive scholarship

Open Access @ CUNY

• 2005: LACUNY conference about open access• 2005-2010: Incubation period (personal pledges, first

workshops, etc.)• 2011: Scholarly Communications Roundtable created • 2011: Open Access @ CUNY blog started• 2011: University Faculty Senate passed repository resolution• 2012: UFS formed OA Advisory Group to make resolution a

reality• 2012: Four CUNY libraries approved OA policies• 2014: CUNY-wide OER workshop & incentive offered• 2015: CUNY-wide Scholarly Communications Librarian to start• 2015: CUNY-wide repository to launch

Sometime soon? • Pass a Harvard/Princeton-style policy?• Create open access fund to cover article fees?• Make university grants have open access requirement?

Open Access @ CUNY


workshops, etc.)• 2011: Scholarly Communications Roundtable created • 2011: Open Access @ CUNY blog started• 2011: University Faculty Senate passed repository resolution• 2012: UFS forms OA Advisory Group to make resolution a reality• 2012: Four libraries approve OA policies• 2014: CUNY-wide OER workshop & incentive offered• 2015: CUNY-wide Scholarly Communications Librarian to start• 2015: CUNY-wide repository to launch


TL;DR:

lots of evangelism +

slow, steady progress

Open Access @ CUNY


workshops, etc.)• 2011: Scholarly Communications Roundtable created • 2011: Open Access @ CUNY blog started• 2011: University Faculty Senate passed repository resolution• 2012: UFS forms OA Advisory Group to make resolution a reality• 2012: Four libraries approve OA policies• 2014: CUNY-wide OER workshop & incentive offered• 2015: CUNY-wide Scholarly Communications Librarian to start• 2015: CUNY-wide repository to launch


CUNY can make

huge impact but is

bureaucratic beast

Open Access @ Graduate Center

2012: Whirlwind of OA ideas and planning2013: Head of Public Services Head of Public Services & Schol Comm2014: Graduate Center repository launched

First repository projects:• New dissertations & theses (2014+)• Older dissertations & theses (1965-2013)• Computer science technical reports (2003+)• Library faculty publications & archival finding aids• Now accepting other faculty submissions• Soon to accept graduate student submissions

Related project:• Using Archive-It to preserve and make open (via Internet

Archive’s Wayback Machine) digital/online components of dissertations & theses



First repository projects:• New dissertations & theses (2014+)• Older dissertations & theses (1965-2013)• Computer science technical reports (2001+)• Archival finding aids• Now ready for faculty self-submissions• Soon: Graduate student self-submission



GC is more nimble

but can only do so

much without add’l

staff!






We’re making our

case to

administrators…






We’re making our

case to

administrators…

(SMASH?)

CreditsThis slideshow is licensed under a

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Specific graphics may have different licenses:

“What Is the Problem?” graphic,content by Jill Cirasella / graphic design by Les LaRue, http://www.leslarue.com/, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

Octopus image is adapted from http://www.flickr.com/photos/luca-beanone-barcellona/4776886666/

Open access advantage graph from Gargouri Y, Hajjem C, Larivière V, Gingras Y, et al.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0013636

Open Access Hulk image from https://twitter.com/openaccesshulk

“What We Say To Dogs / What They Hear” Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson

Stephen Colbert photo by David Shankbonehttp://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stephen_Colbert_2_by_David_Shankbone.jpg

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

http://www.leslarue.com/

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en_US

http://www.flickr.com/photos/luca-beanone-barcellona/4776886666/




https://twitter.com/openaccesshulk

https://twitter.com/openaccesshulk

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stephen_Colbert_2_by_David_Shankbone.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stephen_Colbert_2_by_David_Shankbone.jpg

Thank you!

Questions?

Jill [email protected]

Slideshttp://tinyurl.com/OASMASH

Open Access @ CUNY bloghttp://openaccess.commons.gc.cuny.edu/

mailto:[email protected]




http://openaccess.commons.gc.cuny.edu/

http://openaccess.commons.gc.cuny.edu/

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