News from the Collective

• An excellent Open Access quiz that covers many of the key issues https://www.lepublikateur.de/2018/08/27/open-access-quiz/
• A recently-released film about Open Access in academia, ‘Paywall: The Business of Scholarship’ https://paywallthemovie.com/
• An introduction to Open Access by Peter Suber http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm
• A set of Open Access resources by the Authors Alliance https://www.authorsalliance.org/resources/open-access-portal/
• A list of blogs that discuss Open Access and related issues http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Blogs_about_OA
• Directory of Open Access Books https://www.doabooks.org/
• Directory of Open Access Journals https://doaj.org/
• OAPEN Library http://www.oapen.org/home
• Registry of Open Access Repositories http://roar.eprints.org/
• Radical Open Access Collective https://radicaloa.postdigitalcultures.org/ (including an information portal – primarily of interest to publishers but useful for academics too https://radicaloa.postdigitalcultures.org/resources/)
• Two online resources aimed at making UK copyright law accessible https://www.copyrightuser.org/ and https://copyrightliteracy.org/
• Understanding and Negotiating Book Publication Contracts, an Open Access book by the Authors Alliance https://www.authorsalliance.org/2018/10/15/announcing-the-authors-alliance-guide-to-understanding-and-negotiating-book-publication-contracts/
• A rights statement selection decision tree from rightsstatements.org ly/RightsTool
• A report produced by Universities UK in July 2018 on Open Access monographs https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/policy-and-analysis/reports/Documents/2018/open-access-monographs-report.pdf
• ‘Open Access Monographs Misrepresented’, a blogpost by Martin Paul Eve https://www.martineve.com/2017/08/03/open-access-monographs-misrepresented/
• Two recent posts on Plan S from Danny Kingsley https://unlockingresearch-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=2163 and Martin Paul Eve https://www.martineve.com/2018/10/03/on-the-practical-implementation-of-plan-s/

This blog post is part of a series for academics who want to find out more about Open Access. Click here for the other posts.

Photo by William on Unsplash

In the past, Open Access publishing has been accused of being akin to vanity publishing or self-publishing, while the term ‘predatory publishing’ describes a phenomenon in which a publisher charges expensive fees for guaranteed publication while failing to provide peer review or even basic editing.[1]

Reputable Open Access publishers clearly advertise their quality-control systems. For example at OBP we emphasise our rigorous peer-review system, as well as the high standard of our editing and production work – and this is evident in our publications, which are easy to check precisely because they are Open Access. Meanwhile the well-established publishers who produce Open Access work, such as Cambridge University Press, do not throw their quality control out of the window when they publish books or articles on an Open Access basis.[2] Continue reading "Reputation, reputation, reputation – quality control and reward systems"

When you create original work, you possess the copyright.[1] When you wish to publish that work, some publishers might ask you to sign the copyright over to them as a condition of publication, so that they can disseminate the work exclusively and therefore maximise its profitability. However, you do not have to agree to this – you can ask to retain copyright, or to transfer only a limited number of your rights to the publisher.

Pay attention to the contract the publisher is asking you to sign, make sure you understand it, and negotiate if you are unhappy with any of the terms. Be aware that signing away exclusive rights to the publisher might mean that you are not able to republish the work yourself in future, if for example you wish to republish a journal article as a chapter in a book. Continue reading "Copyright and licensing – what do I need to know?"

There’s a lot of jargon surrounding Open Access publication, and as with all jargon it can confuse and obfuscate. Here is a simple glossary: Continue reading "Green, Gold, Diamond, Black – what does it all mean?"