Philosophy - Matthew Nudds

The Open Access Officers interviewed Matthew Nudds, Head of Philosophy, to find out more about the overall Philosophy view on Open Access.

Do you know roughly when colleagues or maybe yourself used the Green route?

The term ‘Green route’ became more familiar to us last year when the RCUK policy was published, and I think they asked me to comment on it and the British Philosophy Association asked me to comment. Colleagues have been using WRAP.

What support did you receive from your peers and colleagues in order to publish in Open Access?

Everybody has been using WRAP as it’s been part of REF preparations so I have asked everybody to ensure that they have their REF materials uploaded onto WRAP. As a Department we support them in doing that, but also the Library supported it from their end.

What advice would you give to a colleague in your subject area who might be new to Open Access?

That they should be sure that their work is on WRAP. That they should be making use of things like PhilPapers, both to ensure things that they’ve published in journals is appearing in a place where people go to find literature; but also that drafts and things that they are currently working on that haven’t been accepted for publication. People in the profession are reading things before they’re published and it’s very useful for junior colleagues to be having their work read before it’s published.

As a general question, do you see there being any benefits to Open Access at all?

It makes it much easier in doing work, preparing teaching, to be able to access things easily and quickly.

Italian - Simone Brioni

The Library’s Open Access Officers met Simone Brionoi, Italian Department to talk about his experiences of publishing Open Access.

When did you first publish Open Access and which route did you choose (Green or Gold)?

I chose the Green route but my publication is not yet available.

What support did you receive from your peers and University to be able to successfully publish in Open Access?

The WRAP program is really effective, and it has improved the impact of my research. One of the people responsible for this program came to my office and carefully informed me about this great opportunity (to use WRAP).

What advice would you give to a colleague in your subject area who is new to Open Access?

I would strongly recommend it!

Why did you choose the Green publishing route over the alternative?

I believe that publications on paper benefit of a better reputation than online publishing at present, but this will change soon.

In a few words, what would you say are the benefits of Open Access publishing?

Online publications improve the accessibility to published work, the social impact of academic work, and facilitate interdisciplinary networking.

Economics - Mike Waterson

The Library’s Open Access Officers met Mike Waterson from Economics to talk about his experiences of Open Access.

Is this the first time you published Gold or have you used Green before?

It is the first time yes. As far as I am aware, it didn’t pop up in a significant way before as to whether I should do, but it will definitely crop up in the future because I have got another grant that I am working on. It’s an EPSRC grant.

What was the main reason for choosing Gold for your publishing as it was so new to you?

I looked at the journal and it had a very long embargo period, 36 months, and I thought that’s unlikely to be acceptable to the Research Council, so it seemed to make sense to go for Gold.

Yes, the 36 months is over the policy mandate on embargo periods. Was this an economics journal?

Yes.

What support did you receive along the process of getting approval for your publication, either from your peers or the University?

Well, actually, mainly from the Library. I think I asked our Research Administrator and I remembered we’d had this email a while ago (an email from the OA Officers).

What advice then would you give to a colleague in your subject area who might be new to Open Access?

Well, I suppose it would be to get in touch with people in the Library who are involved. For an academic, viewing it from my point of view, the big positive thing is the acceptance letter and then the bits afterwards are a bit of a nuisance, going through the proofs, that aspect. So it’s useful if it is a streamlined system.

Would you say that you experienced a streamlined and helpful process, or was it bureaucratic?

Well in my case it was surprisingly streamlined. You were here and got back to me the same day (OA Officer responded to the APC application).

What would you say are the key benefits of Open Access?

Well one obvious benefit is that you can put the journal copy up on your website. I suppose ultimately it would be nice to get more citations but it’s far too early to know that [if the process of Open Access would lead specifically to more citations compared to a non-OA route].

Is there anything else that you might want to talk about in general regarding Open Access?

I guess in principle it makes sense for people. I suppose like many people I tend to actually go physically to the Library very infrequently and so if something isn’t available on the computer you generally tend not to look at it.

CEDAR - Geoff Lindsay

The Open Access Officer talked to Geoff Lindsey in CEDAR regarding to discuss his experiences of Open Access publishing.

When did you first publish Open Access?

Must have been around 2011.

Was that a paper funded via the Gold route, or via the Green repository route here?

It was paid for by CEDAR. It wasn’t linked to any of the Research Councils. It was a paper I had published in one of the Open Access journals.

What support did you receive from your peers or colleagues from the University?

I didn’t need any as I had chosen the journal I wanted to publish in and it’s one from the BMC group (which are Open Access journals). It (the BMC website) pointed out that some Universities have a subscription (including Warwick).

Why did you choose the Gold route in particular?

My concern was simply to get a paper published. A colleague suggested this journal.

In a few words, what would you say are the key benefits of Open Access publishing?

In principle, Open Access must be better (for accessibility). It’s usually a year or so isn’t it (before an article is accessible)?

Response from OA Officer

Gold Open Access means immediate Open Access, so once the invoice has been paid, the article would be Open Access on the publisher’s website. It’d be different with Green because you’d have the 6-12, up to 24 month embargo period.

Is there any other feedback that you’d like to give?

I’m very pleased that my stuff is being put on (the WRAP system). I’ve been so busy recently, I haven’t been able to go and have a look at it, but I think that’s tremendous and clearly you can’t do that for everybody.

Response from OA Officer

The Repository Team take CV’s too. You could send your CV, they’ll look for the articles based on that, or you can send pre-pub versions, final versions, and they’ll go through them; so yes, the service is there.

Response from Geoff

Yes, once I’ve got the bulk in, then I could start to try to do it more regularly. At the moment, it’s not part of my default.

Like a work plan?

No, but it will be, because I update my CV all the time. Every time I do a paper I put it on the CV, because I know if I don’t, it’ll never get there. So yes, I think it’s (WRAP) a tremendous service.

Life Sciences - Ed Smith

When did you first publish Open Access?

First time was early this year, I think. There was one article I had that was BBSRC funded.

For that you chose the Gold route. Was there a particular reason for that?

I think it is always easier to read the formatted papers. If researchers are looking for papers then they will initially go to the journal if something is Open Access in the journal. It does also mean that the research is then open to everyone. We are publically funded so the public should be able to get access to the work that we do with their money; and people in institutions that can’t afford journal fees can read it as well.

What support did you receive from your peers and the University to publish Open Access?

Through the University it was the funding, and encouragement from peers, it’s silly not to use the opportunity. It will, hopefully, greatly improve impact of the work because more people get to read it.

In terms of informational or general support, did peers provide that or was there anything at the University that made you think about Open Access?

I’d seen the presentation on it a month or two months ago (Research Staff Forum in Life Sciences attended by the OA Officer).

What advice would you give to a colleague who might be new to Open Access?

I would tell them to contact you. I’d say if they have the opportunity to go for it then do. I don’t think there is a downside from a researcher point of view, so try and publish Open Access if you can. If you can’t go via the Gold method then the Green, through WRAP. I’d probably point them towards the Library web-site.

In a few words, what would be the benefits of Open Access to you?

Hopefully improved impact…..key benefits… greater dissemination because people are able to access your work globally. I guess the service to public services.

I guess impact relates to other things that academics are thinking about at the moment, perhaps like the REF.

Yes, we won’t know until two or three years unfortunately but I guess we have to come back on these things and see whether the Open Access papers generally get the higher impact than Non-Open Access papers.

Is there anything else that you would like to tell us about your experience of publishing Gold or any other feedback that you can give?

It has been really easy. It’s been completely painless. There hasn’t been any headaches.

Great! Pretty painless, that’s great! Is there anything else you’d like to add?

No I think that’s it.

Hispanic Studies - Kirstie Hooper

When did you first publish Open Access and which route did you choose?

Earlier this year (2013). I chose the Green route.

Was there any particular reason for using Green route?

Because it was available here via the University of Warwick’s WRAP, and it was a question of getting my back catalogue of already published articles on WRAP.

What sort of support did you receive from your peers within the University to be able to publish via Open Access?

I worked with Yvonne Budden (e-Repository Manager at the time) and her team WRAP who made it incredibly easy actually, really, really easy. I had an initial meeting with Yvonne and we talked about what WRAP do and then I sent her a list of files, and her team were able to go away and they contacted publishers and did everything. They made it really very easy to do.

So that was really successful for you then, that they could take everything and do it, and that was something that was important to you?

Yes absolutely, rather than me having to contact every publisher. They have the information at hand.

What advice do you think you would give to a colleague in your subject area who might be new to Open Access?

In terms of the Green Open Access through the repository, I think it should be a part of every academic’s work plan. In terms of Gold Open Access, I think I have more reservations because I think that the funding system is not necessarily sustainable.

Was there anything else that maybe prompted why you might have chosen Green, or any other ideas around Green or Gold?

To be honest, I have quite a large web presence. I’ve been following the discussions around Open Access and some of the experiments around repositories. I think as researchers we all perhaps get frustrated that an article might come out and it’ll be read by a few people then essentially they vanish because they’re inaccessible. I came to Warwick and WRAP is very robust and very well managed and so that was the way I decided to go.

In a few words then, what would you say, maybe are the key benefits of Open Access?

One is that anyone can read your work. That’s the most important one and it gets the work out there. It is the most important thing: making the work available. I specialise in Galicia, and at the moment the whole of Spain is currently going through a huge economic crisis. Galicia is one of the worst affected places, one of the least wealthy regions, so a lot of my work is on electronic platforms, but is not accessible to colleagues in Galicia. As a result, it’s important that as quickly as I’m able to get things up online via Open Access. It’s very important that the people I am writing for can access my work.

Are there any other thoughts you have around Open Access in general, or anything you’d say in addition to the questions?

One of the things I haven’t talked about is the pragmatic question of academic careers and prestige, which I think, particularly for the early career researchers, is one of the big worries around Open Access. There are the new Open Access platforms being opened up, like the Library of Humanities, but of course they don’t currently have a track record so as an early career researcher you’re probably going to be advised not to publish your work in those.

PAIS - Nicola Pratt

When did you first publish, or your colleagues first publish Open Access?

The Department as a whole...we were given an instruction to use WRAP a few years ago.

What sort of support did you receive from your peers and colleagues to be able to publish Open Access?

The main support came from the people who are responsible for WRAP. Once you’ve been told where the website is I think the instructions are fairly straightforward to understand, and then someone from WRAP will contact you if there’s any problems. I think this is rather complex (copyright permissions) and it’s good there are people working on WRAP who I’m sure understand what the difference is between different journals policies. The support of the people at WRAP is very important in order to be able to tell you ‘you can publish this but you can’t publish that version.’

What advice would you give to a colleague at PAIS who might be new to Open Access?

I think my advice would be that, first of all, do you know that the University has a policy on this (a reference to Warwick’s Open Access policy), so actually, the University expects you to deposit your output. I think that the WRAP system is really good in terms of getting your articles into an Open Access format.

What would you say are the benefits of Open Access?

I think the most important benefit is that your article is available publicly if anybody wants to read it who doesn’t necessarily have an institutional affiliation or access to journals through libraries. Open Access further publicises your work, and more people have access and hopefully more people will cite your work. The third benefit is that is doesn’t cost me anything! It’s a fairly straightforward process.

Would you say you have any other feedback to add? Is there maybe anything in the process of WRAP? Some people also talk about how they manage the submission process? Do you have a work plan, that you do it on a yearly basis, or ad-hoc?

I’m a bit more ad-hoc at the moment. I think the REF sort of prompts you into it because you’re reminded, when you have to report to the Department about what your outputs are for REF.

Psychology - Elizabeth Wonnacott

When did you first publish Open Access and which route did you choose?

I used the Gold route, and it was last term (Spring 2013). I happened to be at a talk because I was an early starter in the University, about research in the University. Somebody mentioned that there was this funding available and so I thought well why not. So I went for Gold because the money was there to do it basically.

What support did you receive from your peers, from your Department or from the University?

Some notices started to go around. We started getting notices in our mailboxes. I emailed Helen (OA Officer) and she helped me to sort it out basically. It was fine once we got in contact.

What advice would you give a person who is a colleague or anyone who is new to Open Access in your subject area?

I would advise them to email and find out if funding for the Gold route is available, because people just assume that if their grant doesn’t have the funding they cannot do it. I would say email and find out because it doesn’t hurt to ask. They can say ‘no’ but I think it’s worth quite a lot to have it so you might as well ask. In the end it’s maybe 20 minutes of your time to fill in some forms and send emails.

I think you answered our next question a little bit already, about why you chose Gold.

I guess I knew about the WRAP system and felt ‘oh I should do that’. But I went with the Gold when I heard the money was there.

What would you say are the key benefits of Open Access publishing for you?

As an actual researcher, from your own career perspective: your citation rates. Secondly, I do believe from a public well-being perspective that it’s preposterous that the Government funds all this research and then no-one can get at it from outside the university - that’s just silly isn’t it?

I think you answered our next question a little bit already, about why you chose Gold

I guess I knew about the WRAP system and felt ‘oh I should do that’. But I went with the Gold when I heard the money was there.

Is there any other feedback you can think of? Anything you’d like to add?

I think just making it clear to people exactly what’s available.

Institute of Education - Leslie Francis

When did you first publish Open Access and which route did you choose?

I suspect the only route I have chosen has been the WRAP route at Warwick.

What support did you receive from your peers and the University to be able to publish Open Access?

Mainly the WRAP system. I produce too much material as you may have noticed. I have around 26 articles per year and around half a dozen book chapters.

So you chose the Green route because it allowed you to place all the articles into WRAP all in one go?

When we started doing that, I asked my Secretary. She pushed the stuff through for me (deposited the work to WRAP).

What advice would you give to a colleague in your subject area who is new to Open Access?

My advice would be that the Gold route enhances visibility, it enhances potential for citation, it complies with a range of policy incentives.

So if you were to describe in a few words what the benefits of Open Access might be, what would you say?

I think it’s about visibility and citation and if citation indices are important then there is a chance of enhancing that and another advantage of course is that it allows certain boxes to be ticked with funding councils as they gradually develop what they imagine good practice to be.

Would you have any other feedback that you would like to give us as part of your experience of publishing via the Green route?

I need to say that I rather appreciated the communication between you (the WRAP team) and my Secretary, and the way in which the material has been bettered, checked and made available for the WRAP system, which has caused me no effort at all.

That’s great and we are glad that you’ve had good experiences then using WRAP.

Thank you for that too, and for letting me cut myself out of the system as it were in the process of getting it done.

WMS - Pam Royle

When did you first publish via Open Access?

I just looked at my publications this morning. The first one was in 2005, in BMC Medical Research Methodology. I published two that year.

So that was Gold?

Yes.

And what support did you receive from your peers and colleagues from around the University in order to publish Open Access?

We had money that had come in from other bits of work we’ve done. So we’ve paid for it from that.

In terms of general support, was there anything particularly that you had in terms of informational support?

I’ve come to a couple of talks they’ve had, one in London with the Royal Society, and then they had a lunchtime seminar here.

Strategy Bites?*

Yes. Those were quite useful to get other people’s take on it.

What advice would you give to a colleague in your subject area that is new to Open Access?

I would think about the cost, seriously, and maybe look at the ones (journals) that the University has these discounts from, and get a list of those. Explore all avenues because I do think it’s worth going Open Access if you can. In terms of getting your work disseminated and the length of the publications allowed in Open Access journals, that’s an advantage. A lot of what we do has a lot of appendices, which in a conventional paper-based journal, you have a restriction on words.

Why did you choose the Green or Gold publishing route over the other?

I’ve chosen Gold for the speed, the turnaround, the length of the article’s quite important if you’ve got something quite complicated and we do secondary research, so there’s a lot of data extractions and appendices, quality assessments.

What would you say are the key benefits of Open Access publishing?

Speed, length, turnaround, citations.

Is there any other feedback that you’d like to give us?

I think there is still a perception amongst some people that it’s vanity publishing. You’ve paid to get published so the journal’s going to accept it. I think though that perception is changing but in the early days that was there. Open Access journals are getting really good impact factors now though, so they’re attracting more people to put their work in.

*The Strategy Bites session in June 2013 focussed on Open Access. See (insert link of SB session). It is anticipated that another Open Access Strategy Bites session will take place next year (2014).

Psychology - Julia Carroll

When did you first publish via Open Access?

Well, if you’re including publishing in WRAP, then…about 5 years maybe.

So it goes back a few years then?

Yes, so initially, I think shortly after that was set up, I started putting papers in there when I was publishing new things and then more recently I’ve got a couple of papers in press in Gold open access. I think I remember seeing an application or two.

Was there any particular reason why you chose those routes at the time?

When I first started using the WRAP I don’t think I’d even heard of the Gold open access routes. So the WRAP was just an opportunity to make your research easier for people to access and a wider variety of people to be able to access it. I guess over the last few years there has been a lot of discussion with academics and Twitter and stuff and so on about Open Access. So when I heard there was funding to go with the Gold Open Access then I used that.

Response from OA Officer

We have funding from RCUK and we also have a funding from Wellcome Trust, and your funding came from the former, so it’s for research that’s funded by those Councils.

What support did you receive from your peers and from the University to be able to publish Open Access?

Well, in terms of my peers, everyone who I’ve worked with or co-authored with has always been very happy to publish Open Access. We’ve not had anyone who’s been negative about it, and then the University’s been really helpful with the WRAP. They actually email you and say ‘We see you’ve got a paper out, would you like to put it in WRAP, and check through the paper and check you’ve got, what the permissions are and everything?’, so it’s really, really easy.

Response from OA Officer

So they’ve actually asked you ‘oh I see you’ve got a paper out’ so pro-active?

Response from Julia

Yes. So they make it as easy as it could possibly be really with WRAP and then obviously financial support as well for Gold Access. Generally it’s all been quite well supported. Yes, I know colleagues from other Universities haven’t had that level of support.

If you think about newcomers to your Department, who haven’t maybe heard of Open Access, what advice would you give them about Open Access?

I’d definitely advise them to have a look at it. There were a couple of blogs I read from Dorothy Bishop. She’s quite a prominent blogger in Psychology. She did a series of blogs about why Open Access was useful. I guess for me, the primary benefit is that more people will look at your work, and that’s, that’s the main point of doing research I guess, is to get more people to find out about it. I’d advise them to look at the options, look at the support I guess because it’s the kind of thing that maybe you’d think is quite complicated or quite expensive if you just look on the publishers websites, but it’s relatively easy if you actually try and do it.

Response from OA Officer

Yes, and you said there, for those two papers, you had ESRC funding, so you used the RCUK fund. In those cases it’s reasonably straightforward if the journals are compliant, yes, because that’s one aspect we have to check this end in terms of the journal compliance that you submitted your article to.

What would you say are the benefits then of Open Access?

Having your research available to a wider range of academics, because it’s not all academics who can get hold of journals, and then also it’s available to non-academics who don’t have the, a Library backing to allow them to access journals (HA: and perhaps they might cite your work?), yes, yes potentially. I’m still at quite an early stage.

With the Gold Access, both of the papers are still in press, so I don’t, I can’t actually say directly that they’ve been cited more often. The Green papers, when you actually look at the download rates, the papers that are downloaded most often aren’t necessarily the ones that are cited most often. I think quite often they’re downloaded by undergraduate students or something, thinking about projects or whatever.

Is there any other feedback you’d like to give us that maybe we haven’t yet captured in the questions so far?

Not really. It’s been very positive for me so far but it is at quite an early stage I guess so I can’t be definite about the benefits I guess, the whole system is in the middle of changing really, and so I don’t know what it’s going to be like.

I know when the WRAP first came out there were a few people concerned about copyright issues and people citing the WRAP papers, like citing the website rather than the proper journal article or whatever. But I don’t those are major concerns really.

Response from OA Officer

When you put the accepted version into WRAP, on the front cover sheet they something like ‘you need to cite this as…’ (JC: Yes, it does say that), it just gives it, it gives a bit of reassurance. In terms of copyright, there would always be a copyright on an article that’s in a repository or via a website if it was Gold, and the Research Councils UK policy also has a certain licence type on it, there’s the CC-BY attribution licence. Your work in that Gold format would mean that it could be shared or reused, and that’s part of the Gold route via RCUK. So we checked your journal and then it was compliant with that licence type as well, so obviously you’ve got the copyright and then you’ve also got this licence which means you can share it etc., as long as you attribute back to the author, hence the name BY attribution, so there are protections and safeguards there.

Is there anything else at all that you wanted to add at this point?

No, not really. It’s been quite short.

Response from OA Officer

Ok. It sounds like it’s been a straightforward process by the sounds of it.

Response from Julia

I guess one thing I could say is that I’m also an Associate Editor on a journal and so part of the reason I’m quite positive about Open Access is because I’ve seen that angle, so when we have our meetings, we see how different articles are downloaded and how they’re cited ,and I can see quite clearly how Open Access ones are downloaded much more often, and they’re cited more often, but yes from my own personal experience I haven’t had that, but I have seen it with other articles.