Re: Four Seminal Swan/Brown JISC Reports on Open Access

[Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

                 ** apologies for cross-posting **

Below is Swan & Brown's 2nd international, cross-disciplinary Open Access
Author Survey, which, I am fairly certain, will prove to be a milestone
and historic turning point in the worldwide research community's progress
towards 100% Open Access.

   The JISC findings will be reported at the International Conference
   on Policies and Strategies for Open Access to Scientific Information
   Beijing, June 22-24, 2005

http://libraries.csdl.ac.cn/Meeting/MeetingID.asp?MeetingID=7&MeetingMenuID=39

1S Short introduction to 2nd OA Author Survey

    Swan, A. (2005) Open access self-archiving: An Introduction.
    Technical Report, JISC, HEFCE. 

    Accessible from:
    http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11006/

    Powerpoint versions:
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/alma-amst.pdf

The link to the full JISC version comes next (below, followed by its
abstract), then the link to a brand-new JISC Open Access Briefing Paper,
and last, two versions each of Swan, Brown et al's two classic papers: the
1st JISC survey and JISC report of their strategic and cost/benefit
analysis of institutional vs. central repository self-archiving:

1L Full JISC version of 2nd OA Author Survey)

    Swan, A. and Brown, S. (2005)
    Open access self-archiving: An author study. 
    Technical Report, External Collaborators, JISC, HEFCE
    http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10999/

        ABSTRACT: This, our second author international, cross-disciplinary
        study on open access had 1296 respondents. Its focus was on
        self-archiving. Almost half (49%) of the respondent population
        have self-archived at least one article during the last three
        years. Use of institutional repositories for this purpose has
        doubled and usage has increased by almost 60% for subject-based
        repositories. Self-archiving activity is greatest amongst those
        who publish the largest number of papers. There is still a
        substantial proportion of authors unaware of the possibility
        of providing open access to their work by self-archiving. Of
        the authors who have not yet self-archived any articles, 71%
        remain unaware of the option. With 49% of the author population
        having self-archived in some way, this means that 36% of the
        total author population (71% of the remaining 51%), has not yet
        been appraised of this way of providing open access. Authors have
        frequently expressed reluctance to self-archive because of the
        perceived time required and possible technical difficulties in
        carrying out this activity, yet findings here show that only 20%
        of authors found some degree of difficulty with the first act of
        depositing an article in a repository, and that this dropped to 9%
        for subsequent deposits.  Another author worry is about infringing
        agreed copyright agreements with publishers, yet only 10% of
        authors currently know of the SHERPA/RoMEO list of publisher
        permissions policies with respect to self-archiving, where clear
        guidance as to what a publisher permits is provided. Where it
        is not known if permission is required, however, authors are
        not seeking it and are self-archiving without it. Communicating
        their results to peers remains the primary reason for scholars
        publishing their work; in other words, researchers publish to
        have an impact on their field. The vast majority of authors
        (81%) would willingly comply with a mandate from their employer
        or research funder to deposit copies of their articles in an
        institutional or subject-based repository. A further 13% would
        comply reluctantly; 5% would not comply with such a mandate.

        In a separate exercise we asked the American Physical Society
        (APS) and the Institute of Physics Publishing Ltd (IOPP) what
        their experiences have been over the 14 years that arXiv has
        been in existence. How many subscriptions have been lost as a
        result of arXiv? Both societies said they could not identify
        any losses of subscriptions for this reason and that they do not
        view arXiv as a threat to their business (rather the opposite --
        in fact the APS helped establish an arXiv mirror site at the
        Brookhaven National Laboratory).

2   JISC OA Brief

    Swan, A. (2005) JISC Open Access Briefing Paper.
    Technical Report, JISC, HEFCE. 
    http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11005/

3A  Journal version of institutional vs. central repository analysis

    Swan, A., Needham, P., Probets, S., Muir, A., Oppenheim,
    C., O'Brien, A., Hardy, R., Rowland, F. and Brown, S. (2005)
    Developing a model for e-prints and open access journal content in
    UK further and higher education. Learned Publishing 18(1): 25-40.
    http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11000/

3R Full JISC version of institutional vs. central repository analysis

    Swan, A., Needham, P., Probets, S., Muir, A., Oppenheim, C.,
    O'Brien, A., Hardy, R. and Rowland, F. (2005)
    Delivery, Management and Access Model for E-prints and Open Access
    Journals within Further and Higher Education.
    Technical Report, JISC, HEFCE.
    http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11001/

4A Journal version of 1st OA Author Survey

    Swan, A. and Brown, S. (2004) Authors and open access publishing.
    Learned Publishing 17(3): 219-224
    http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11003/

4R Full JISC version of 1st OA Author Survey

    Swan, A. and Brown, S. (2004) ISC/OSI JOURNAL AUTHORS SURVEY Report.
    Technical Report, JISC, HEFCE
    http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11002/

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The American Scientist Open Access Forum has been chronicling and often
directing the course of progress in providing Open Access to Universities'
Peer-Reviewed Research Articles since its inception in the US in 1998
by the American Scientist, published by the Sigma Xi Society.

The Forum is largely for policy-makers at universities, research
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Stevan Harnad
Moderator, American Scientist Open Access Forum