[Image above] Credit: Alice Hampson, Unsplash
Open access, open data, open code—the future of research communications is poised to become much more open than the current system.
At its most basic level, open science is the free and global sharing of information in formats that are readable by both humans and computers. Open science promotes the ability to analyze and build upon knowledge more quickly by using new methods and new tools.
On a more personal level for the researcher, open-access articles are downloaded and read substantially more than subscription/paywalled articles. Wiley estimates a three-fold increase in readership.
While the infrastructure and protocols for open data and open code are under development, open-access publishing is firmly established and growing, although models for funding are still being explored by funders, publishers, and research institutions and consortia.
Wiley, ACerS’ publishing partner, is at the forefront of the open-science movement. They are establishing new technologies while negotiating and entering new transformational agreements at rapid paces. As of today, Wiley has transformational agreements with more than 2,000 institutions in more than 30 countries.
One of the biggest challenges in the transition to open access is the transformation away from the current “reader pays” model, which is funded when publishers sell subscriptions to reader institutions. The most common model of funding open-access articles today is the article processing charge (APC) model, in which authors arrange for payment for each article. While simple in concept, the model is fraught with difficulties that make it unsustainable.
In the name of speeding the transition to open access, transformational agreements are being made between the publishers and mostly consortia, such as California Digital Libraries or JISC (U.K.), though many individual institutions have entered them. They dictate how funding for open-access publishing is gathered, distributed among researchers, and ultimately transferred to the publishers.
In practice, the parties are using these agreements as laboratories to determine which methods of funding publishing will be most effective and efficient. It would take many pages to discuss the many models being explored.
Wiley uses a number of these models. In some agreements, the funders have allocated a fixed amount of money to pay the APCs for authors in their consortia. Typically short-term, this model helps to initiate the new processes for the consortia, member institutions, libraries, and research departments, among others, and determine parameters for larger and longer future agreements.
Several of the larger, longer-term “publish-and-read” agreements have been established between Wiley and consortia or individual research institutions around the world. In these agreements, the research institutions provide funding for authors to publish their work with the open-access licensing. In return, the institutions receive free access to Wiley Online Library as a whole or for certain titles. These agreements are typically uncapped, meaning unlimited numbers of papers can be published.
For many of these agreements, the consortia and institutions are working on their own models for funding open access. In some, such as DEAL, the consortium reallocates the funding for subscriptions from all its member institutions toward payments for open access, including publishing and digital curation of the articles in perpetuity. In others, the institutions fund a portion of the fees, while individual researchers and departments contribute a portion from research grants and other operating funds. Furthermore, each agreement has terms and conditions the researchers must follow, and these can vary quite a lot from agreement to agreement.
Because the open-access landscape is changing rapidly, we recommend that researchers consult resources from their own institutions and from Wiley to determine eligibility and requirements for open-access publishing. For your institution, suggested resources include librarians, research management departments, and individual department funding coordinators. Wiley has many resources online, including here and here.
For authors wishing to publish their articles open access, all four of ACerS journals allow open-access publishing, though the process for our three hybrid journals is different than for the fully gold OA International Journal of Ceramic Engineering & Science (IJCES).
For our three hybrid journals, authors must choose open-access licensing and arrange payments during the licensing phase, which occurs after submission. It is extremely important to sign—and pay for—the open-access licensing prior to publication of the version of record in Early View. Authors under transformational agreements only need to provide the institution code. Others need to arrange payments via credit card, purchase order, or another method.
For IJCES, the author must establish the method for funding the publication charges at submission. For those at institutions that have transformational agreements, this process is simple, requiring that the author uses the institutional code readily findable by links in our ScholarOne manuscript submission and review software.
For corresponding authors at institutions in Research 4 Life “free” countries, the fees are automatically waived. Authors who do not fall into either of these categories are contacted by Wiley to establish a payment method such as institutional purchase order or credit card.
Authors who do not have funding for APCs should note this in their cover letters and also in the explanation of discount/waiver request in the submission information section. ACerS and Wiley have a limited amount of funding to help underwrite unfunded authors.
Finally, you may have heard about the recent memorandum from the U.S. White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Briefly, the goal of the OSTP is to provide immediate access to federally funded research results in all forms, including articles and data.
The guidance has been issued to U.S. agencies, such as the Departments of Energy, Health and Human Services, and Defense, to establish policies and procedures for ensuring scientific integrity and making results publicly available. The first drafts of these policies and procedures are due from the agencies to OSTP by the end of February 2023.
We will continue to update you on the progress of open-science publishing policies as they occur.