Report Looks At Open Access From Perspective Of Authors, Institutions, Publishers

A new industry report explores ways authors, research institutions and publishers are grappling with the increasing move toward open access mandates by governments.

The report, entitled, Making Open Access Work for Authors, Institutions, and Publishers [pdf], is based on an October roundtable hosted by the Copyright Clearance Center. It was written by consultant Rob Johnson.

The following is from the report:

Several years ago, funders issued new open access (OA) mandates, or began enforcing existing ones, requiring free access to the published output of research they funded. Today failure to comply means researchers, their institutions and ultimately publishers are putting their future funding at risk.

Understandably, the scientific, technical, medical and scholarly ecosystem have scrambled to set up policies, procedures and infrastructure to comply with these mandates, which are in a state of constant evolution.

Today, the payment and management of article processing charges, or APCs, are often fractured and inefficient because while funders provide money for research and the payment of APCs, they do not fund the creation of the necessary infrastructure to effectively meet their mandates at the industry level.

To address the gap, many publishers turned to Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) for help since CCC has been assisting publishers in collecting author charges for almost a decade.

CCC’s response was to assess the expanding market needs and quickly launch a next-generation open access platform that automates the collection of APCs and other author charges.

The CCC decided a dialogue was needed, and organised the roundtable. Policy changes in the UK are “driving a rapid increase in the number of article processing charges, or APCs, being paid to publishers in order to make articles open access,” the report says. This precipitated holding the event there.

The report addresses: author management, streamlining the APC process, copyright and licensing, management and billing of APCs, standards and interoperability, and reporting and compliance. It also provides some case studies.

The conclusion of the report is: “The current approach to APC management is highly fragmented and undermined by differences of approach between nations and academic disciplines, inefficiencies in process and scarcity of resources. Opportunities exist to overcome many of these issues through improvements in data-sharing and development of common identifiers and vocabularies, but these must be placed in the context of broader trends and continuing uncertainties over the future of academic publishing.”

In response to a question about the tie-in with the CCC, a spokesperson for the CCC noted:

“Open access presents a new business model in publishing, which is where Copyright Clearance Center comes in. Since the publishing community faces more complexities as open access grows, RightsLink for Open Access provides publishers, authors and institutions with a platform that streamlines the author fee transaction. You can find out more about RightsLink for Open Access here:”

• http://www.copyright.com/content/cc3/en/toolbar/aboutUs/newsRoom/pressReleases/press_2014/press-release-14-05-28.html
• http://www.copyright.com/content/cc3/en/toolbar/productsAndSolutions/open-access.html