Category Archives: Open Access

Brush Up on Your Open Access Knowledge With Our OA Handbook

Posted October 27, 2016

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Just in time for Open Access Week, we’re highlighting our guidebook, Understanding Open Access: When, Why, & How To Make Your Work Openly Accessible. This is the second volume in our series of educational handbooks, following on the success of Understanding Rights Reversion. Our goal is to encourage our members to consider open access publishing by addressing common questions and concerns and by providing real-life strategies and tools that authors can use to work with publishers, institutions, and funders to make their works more widely accessible to all. Here’s a short excerpt from Chapter 1 to get you started.

Are you considering making your work openly accessible?

Are you required to make your work openly accessible by an institutional or funding mandate?

If you answered “yes” to either of these questions—or just want to learn more about open access—then read on! Understanding Open Access is for authors of all backgrounds, fields, and disciplines, from the sciences to the humanities. Because the open access ecosystem in academia is particularly complex, this guide is largely geared to the needs of authors working for academic institutions or under funding mandates. However, many chapters are suitable for authors who write other in contexts, and we encourage all authors interested in open access to read those sections relevant to their needs.

This guide will help you determine whether open access is right for you and your work and, if so, how to make your work openly accessible. This primer on open access explains what “open access” means, addresses common concerns and misconceptions you may have about open access, and provides you with practical steps to take if you wish to make your work openly accessible.

For example, this guide will help you:

Learn more about open access and related options;
Comply with an open access policy from an employer or funding agency;
Select the terms on which you would like to make a work openly accessible;
Publish a work with an open access publisher;
Make a work openly accessible on a personal or group website;
Deposit a work in an open access repository;
Negotiate with a conventional publisher to make a work openly accessible;
And much more.

This guide is the product of extensive interviews with authors, publishers, and institutional representatives who shared their perspectives on open access options in today’s publishing environment. The information, strategies, and examples included in this guide share the collective wisdom of our interviewees, members, and other experts.

If you have questions or comments about open access, or wish to share your own experiences with open access publishing, get in touch and let us know!

Save the Date! “Publishing Your Dissertation” Event on October 25 at UC Berkeley

Posted October 3, 2016

Authors Alliance and the University of California are teaming up to present a workshop especially for graduate students on October 25. It’s one of many events taking place at UC Berkeley during Open Access Week. If you are a doctoral student (or hope to be one soon), you won’t want to miss “Publishing Your Dissertation: Maximizing Your Scholarly Impact through Open Access Publishing, and How to Publish Your First Book.”

The days of submitting a bound hard-copy dissertation (only to have it languish unread on a shelf or on microfilm) are long gone. Doctoral students are now confronted with an array of digital publication, data sharing, and dissemination options. While this presents a wealth of advantages and opportunities for early-career scholars, it also raises many questions about how to navigate the many options available.

An expert panel will address how you can shape what happens after you submit your dissertation, including:

How can you start getting cited by others, and boost your scholarly profile?
How can you publish and license your dissertation to expand your professional network and academic impact?
What are the implications of publishing your dissertation and subsequent “First Book” online?
How does publishing your dissertation online impact getting a first book contract?
What are the trends in Open Access publishing of first books, and how should you publish yours?

Our panelists are:

Reed Malcolm, Executive Editor at The University of California Press
Katie Fortney, Copyright Policy & Education Officer at the California Digital Library
Michael Wolfe, Executive Director of Authors Alliance

Rachael Samberg, the UC Berkeley Library’s Scholarly Communication Officer, will moderate.

For more information and to register, visit the event page.

We hope to see you there!

Is it time for authors to leave SSRN?

Posted July 17, 2016

Since we first heard of mega-publisher Elsevier’s acquisition of SSRN, the popular social sciences pre-print and working paper repository, we have expressed concern. Elsevier is not known to be an avid supporter of the open access publishing practices favored by many of our members, and has historically taken a restrictive stance toward author control and ownership of scholarship.

In response, we reached out to Elsevier and to SSRN with a set of principles the service could adopt that would reassure authors that SSRN could continue to be a go-to resource for those looking to refine and share their work. We have since heard back from SSRN: they would not commit to adopting even one of our principles. They offered more general reassurances that their policies would continue as before. We were not satisfied, but we decided to wait and see whether our fears would be borne out.

As feared, it now appears that SSRN is taking up restrictive and hostile positions against authors’ ability to decide when and how to share their work. Reports are surfacing that, without notice, SSRN is removing author-posted documents following SSRN’s own, opaque determination that the author must have transferred copyright, the publisher had not consented to the posting, or where the author has opted to use a non-commercial Creative Commons license. One author, Andrew Selbst, reported that SSRN refused his post even though the article’s credits reflected his retained copyright.

This policy fails to honor the rights individual authors have negotiated in order to put their work on services like SSRN. It misreads the Creative Commons licenses authors adopt in order to share their work. And it is a marked departure from the standard notice and takedown procedures typically used to remove user-uploaded copyright-infringing works from the web, eliminating both any apparent notice from the putative copyright owner and any clear recourse for the affected authors.

SSRN authors: you have not committed to SSRN. You can remove your papers from their service, and you can opt instead to make your work available in venues that show real commitment to the sharing, vetting, and refinement of academic work.

Just recently, SocArXiv—a new social sciences preprint archive built on the model pioneered in physics by arXiv—opened their doors to submissions. SocArXiv is supported by the University of Maryland, not run for profit, and formed with an explicit commitment to openness in academic writing. They are still in early days, but appear to be building a promising successor community to SSRN.

It is also important to remember that your work does not need to be restricted to any one venue. Try SocArXiv, but also see if you can host your work in an institutional repository or on a personal website. Make your work available wherever it can best reach your readers. It is also worth protesting the practices that would restrict your work’s availability and reach by leaving the services adopting them. If the reports about SSRN’s new practices are accurate, then it may be time to leave SSRN and adopt more author-friendly alternatives. Authors, tell us about your experiences with SSRN and other repositories by sending a note to info@authorsalliance.org.

Elsevier buying SSRN and the future of open scholarship in the social sciences

Posted May 18, 2016

In a move signalling further consolidation in scholarly communication, Elsevier announced yesterday its purchase of SSRN, a popular working paper and pre-print repository used by a large number of our members. For these members and for those in many scholarly fields, SSRN has been one of the most important platforms for publicly and openly accessible scholarship—the go-to source for posting and finding the latest work. Given Elsevier’s history of creating obstacles to open scholarship, Authors Alliance is among those concerned about the long-term effects of the acquisition.

Elsevier and SSRN have stated that the changes ahead won’t alter SSRN’s “ethos.” These assurances are welcome, but they are not enough. We will be asking Elsevier for explicit commitments to maintaining or improving those aspects of SSRN that have made it work for open scholarship. And we will be taking this opportunity to suggest that our members take affirmative steps now to ensure that their work is made available on their terms regardless of what happens to SSRN—or any other individual platform—in the future.

We will have more updates to come on both these aspects of the SSRN acquisition—watch this space for more. And please let us know your thoughts by emailing us at info@authorsalliance.org or tweeting us at @Auths_Alliance.

Update, 2016-05-19

The principles we are asking SSRN to uphold are now available here.

Understanding Open Access: Now in Print

Posted January 27, 2016

When we released our guide to Understanding Open Access this past fall, we published the guide as a digital file under a Creative Commons license with the goal of putting it in reach of anyone who might need it. You can find a free download of the guide on our website.

But digital can’t reach everyone and many of us find paper resources easier to read and navigate. For everyone with a preference for paper, and for those who want to support Authors Alliance’s continuing non-profit mission, Understanding Open Access is now available the old-fashioned way. After joining or donating, purchasing a guide from us is one of the best ways to stand behind our organization. Buy one today (below or in our store) and who knows, we might even throw in some stickers!

Understanding Rights Reversion, the first volume in our series of guidebooks, is still available via free digital download as well as in book format from our store.

Announcing the Authors Alliance Guide to Understanding Open Access!

Posted November 23, 2015

We are happy to announce the release of our Guide to Understanding Open Access—the second in our series of educational handbooks for authors. Building on the success of our Guide to Understanding Rights Reversion, which landed in browsers and on bookshelves earlier this year, our new book provides the most up-to-date information about when, why, and how to make your work openly accessible. Our goal is to encourage our members to consider open access publishing by addressing common questions and concerns and by providing real-life strategies and tools that authors can use to work with publishers, institutions, and funders to make their works more widely accessible to all.

We currently have a free online version available for download, with professionally printed copies on the way for those who prefer a hard copy reference. We’re proud of this latest effort to provide timely, useful tools for authors, researchers, and anyone who wishes to share knowledge for the public good.

Authors Alliance is currently seeking to reach its year-end fundraising goal. If you find our continued support and resources useful, please consider making a donation to enable our ongoing work.

Authors Alliance is registered as a 501(c)(3) organization that depends on public support. Gifts are tax-deductible according to IRS regulations. Gifts in any amount are welcome. If you have any questions about making a gift, please contact us at info@authorsalliance.org.

Editors of Lingua take a stand for open access

Posted November 10, 2015

Not long ago, the editorial board of the journal Lingua decided that it was time to end business as usual–and they resigned in protest in order to cut ties with Elsevier and establish Glossa, a new open access journal. Lingua, a respected linguistics journal with a distinguished 60-year history, was acquired by Elsevier in the 1980s. Even as publication costs were reduced by technology, Elsevier followed a publishing model that served owners rather than readers, which has driven up the price of access to the journal for individuals and for institutions. Faced with falling budgets and skyrocketing fees, a university library may find itself in the position of losing access to content provided by its own faculty, or forced into a “bundle” subscription that includes unwanted titles—not unlike a cable TV package that imposes a dozen unwatched channels for every one that a viewer actually wants.

Just as so-called “cord cutters” are moving away from cable packages thanks to shifts in technology, access, and public opinion, so too are researchers and scholars taking a stand against long-dominant business models that are falling out of favor as open access publishing gains ground in the academic community. Authors in many scholarly fields are pressing for open access options so that scholarly works in their fields can be more broadly accessible. We at Authors Alliance believe that empowered authors can contribute to innovative and sustainable publishing models that expand our opportunities to share knowledge with readers. We applaud the courageous decision of the Lingua editors to do just that by striking out on their own to to create Glossa. We wish them great success in this new venture, which could well point the way for other academic journals to follow suit.

Our new handbook, Understanding Open Access, will be released this month. In the meantime, if you have questions or comments, or wish to share your own experiences with open access publishing, get in touch and let us know!

Our Guide to Understanding Open Access is Coming Soon!

Posted October 23, 2015

OA Guide Cover

In celebration of Open Access Week, we are offering sneak previews of our forthcoming guide, Understanding Open Access: When, Why, & How To Make Your Work Openly Accessible. This guide is the second volume in our series of educational handbooks, following on the success of Understanding Rights Reversion. Our goal is to encourage our members to consider open access publishing by addressing common questions and concerns and by providing real-life strategies and tools that authors can use to work with publishers, institutions, and funders to make their works more widely accessible to all. We will officially launch the guide on November 3 during our workshop on “Writing To Be Read” at the New York Public Library. In the meantime, here’s a short excerpt from Chapter 1 about the scope of Understanding Open Access.

Are you considering making your work openly accessible?

Are you required to make your work openly accessible by an institutional or funding mandate?

For example, this guide will help you:

Learn more about open access and related options;
Comply with an open access policy from an employer or funding agency;
Select the terms on which you would like to make a work openly accessible;
Publish a work with an open access publisher;
Make a work openly accessible on a personal or group website;
Deposit a work in an open access repository;
Negotiate with a conventional publisher to make a work openly accessible;
And much more.

We hope these excerpts have been helpful, and we look forward to launching the guide in early November. Until then, if you have questions or comments, or wish to share your own experiences with open access publishing, get in touch and let us know!

Understanding Open Access:
The Human Side of Machine Readability

Posted October 22, 2015

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Removing legal restrictions on use is a key component of making your work openly accessible. Authors may also want to consider additional factors that shape how available their works are for readers to fully access, share, and reuse. Making a work available in a machine-readable format can increase readers’ ability to access and use your work and maximize its reuse.

Cory Doctorow is a fiction writer, activist, blogger, and journalist and a member of Authors Alliance. After making his novel Little Brother openly accessible, Mr. Doctorow received a braille copy of the book from Patricia Smith, a Detroit public school teacher of visually impaired students. Although braille versions may be permissible under one or more copyright exceptions, creating a braille version often first requires painstakingly entering text into a digital format. This obstacle prevents many works from being translated into braille. However, because the text of Little Brother is openly available without technical limitations to prevent its copying, printing, and sharing, Ms. Smith was able to directly run the book’s digital file through a braille embosser and make the book available to her visually impaired students.

Ms. Smith also included a note, which stated: “What I could not enclose is the gratitude from my braille reading students. For various reasons, most books in braille are aimed at younger children. My students are all between the ages of 12 and 15 and have no real interest in reading a Kindergarten level book. I was finally able to give them something interesting, compelling, and, most importantly at their grade level.”

Machine-readable formats enable search engines to index the entire text of a work, in turn making it easier for readers to search for and find works. Making metadata about your work available in standardized formats also enhances your work’s machine-readability and helps readers find it. Metadata includes information such as the author’s name, institutional affiliation, the title of the work, an abstract, and open access license terms. Open access repositories commonly include this metadata when a work is uploaded to the repository.

We will post excerpts from Understanding Open Access throughout the week. If you have questions or comments, or wish to share your own experiences with open access publishing, get in touch and let us know!

Understanding Open Access:
Can Monographs Be Openly Accessible?

Posted October 21, 2015

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Conventional publication and open access are not mutually exclusive. For example, many conventional publishers allow authors who publish with them to also upload the authors’ final versions of their works to open access repositories. In such cases, authors can benefit from the imprint of a well-established print publisher while still making their works openly accessible.

Many publishers are developing programs to make books openly accessible. For example, the University of California Press recently launched Luminos, an open access publishing program for monographs. Authors who publish with Luminos can make digital editions of their books openly accessible under the University of California Press imprint. Open Humanities Press has also launched an open access program for monographs, making the books it publishes in print available as full-text digital editions published under open licenses.

Book authors who are interested in open access may choose to negotiate with conventional publishers to publish their books in print but also retain the rights to make their books openly accessible. Authors who have already assigned their rights to conventional publishers may be able to exercise or negotiate for rights reversions that would allow them to make their books openly accessible. For more on this possibility, please see the Authors Alliance guide Understanding Rights Reversion: When, Why, and How to Regain Copyright and Make Your Book More Available.