 So good evening everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. This is the first open access 2016 week event for the official open access week This is our first year of a joint event between Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh and Duquesne University We decided to jump the gun earlier this year. This is actually our second open access week event. Our last event was last week marking off our schedule of this year Tonight's event is supporting open publishing the article processing charge funds of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh My name is David Shear. I'm the scholarly repository manager and research curation consultant here at CMU Joining me. I have my counter colleague at the University of Pittsburgh University Library System Lauren Collister as well as faculty from CMU and the University of Pittsburgh joining us this evening to talk about the APC funds of these two universities So very quickly we have a few slides that will go over a few concepts about what are Article processing charges What are the open access funds that are set in place to pay for these things at these two institutions? And then we'll have some questions to ask our panelists that are both recipients of funds from our two article processing charge funds So to begin What are article processing charges? Well an article processing charge better known as an APC is the cost paid by an author the author's institution or Funding source to cover the journal's operation costs so that it can publish an article In a peer-reviewed journal as an open access article upon publication What this means then is that the user the reader does not have to pay a subscription then to have access to these articles These articles are made hopefully available through these article processing charges So to cover these costs Institutions like CMU and Pittsburgh have set up article processing charge funds So the APC funds are open access funds pools of money set aside by the institutions Or other research sponsoring organizations at the institution to help to fray or cover the cost of either some or partial or all of the cost of the APCs While different institutions have different requirements for the various Applications the overall Reasons for using the fund and justification is that the articles are going to be published in an open access journal They are known that their policies are public and freely available so that The author as well as then the reader knows when the articles are going to be made open access And what the charges are up front prior to publication so that once the article has gone through the peer-review process Has been accepted by the journal for publication There's no surprise costs brought in at the end the costs are very much black and white And all this is to help to share a common goal of researchers making research more freely available globally for the public good so the article processing charge fund at Carnegie Mellon University has a couple requirements First off it's open to all graduate students and faculty So any graduate student faculty at the university could access and apply To use the fund as far as the journals go that are acceptable journals that can be Published with the fund the journals again have to be made open access We ask that they are listed either in the directory of open access journals the duaj Or the publisher is a member of the open access scholarly publishing association or alaspa Once it meets our requirements As i've mentioned that we at cmu have a a cap on how much each application can cover at cmu the apc fund will cover an article up to 80 of the apc Or no more than $1500 per article and then each applicant is eligible for up to $3,000 worth of funding each financial year And then the other 20 percent the remaining amount of the apc Is designated to be covered either by the funded author the funding author's department or school or discretionary funds or the grant That it may be a part of Then the last requirement is that once the article has been published and made Openly available a copy of the article must be deposited and made available through our institutional repository research showcase And here on the bottom of the slide you can see where you can find our open access fund the application is right there on the page So please take a look Along with having access to the fund and having this pool of money set aside for apcs The university libraries also has a number of discounts that one can Utilize to cover the cost of an apc lowering the cost of that apc prior to In coming to the fund with various memberships and subscriptions that the libraries have So there are a number of publishers that based upon our library subscription We receive a discount sometimes it's up to 25 percent 15 percent 10 percent each publishing house it varies As well as it will vary also if the author in question has a relationship to that publisher So whether they've been a past peer reviewer they've edited an article in the past for that that particular journal Or if they're an individual member as well And you can look at our apc discount page to look at a number of different discounts that are eligible for cmu authors Another means that the university libraries provides Open access publishing support is through our membership to peer j So peer j is a open access publisher that operates off a different type of gold open access model Where an author has the option of selecting one of two levels of membership to peer j And what those memberships Equal is either at the lowest level you're able to publish one article a year And a peer j journal and then the top tier which is being able to publish two articles per year in a peer j journal The membership actually is covered by the north city libraries We have a separate fund as a part of our apc fund that covers the cost of the peer j membership for our authors And predominantly what we do is if somebody applies to Become a peer j author the libraries will actually cover the full cost because it's it's a minor difference between the two for us to cover Once the membership fee has been paid That membership status retains with the author for life So even once they leave cmu they're able to publish with the peer j at other membership whatever was covered in the initial coverage So it's we've had a lot of success with this and we have a number of authors that have published with peer j And it's another option that we have through our apc fund Just to give you an idea about our apc fund here at cmu We've actually have been covering the cost of apcs for authors all the way back Starting in 2012 Our colleague actually here on the panel from cmu is actually the initial inaugural recipient of an apc charge fund So we'll get to talk more about that here in a minute, but Since 2012 the university libraries apc fund has covered 54 articles Coming from 43 unique authors that have applied for funding representing 17 of our academic departments research centers and institutes as well as 30 academic journals and 18 different publishers Just to give you an idea of what that means in a one year Just this year alone. So we're talking this past 2015 2016 fiscal year We had 21 approved apcs coming from 19 unique authors 11 unique departments 13 journals and 11 publishers in that fiscal year alone the university library's apc fund funded over $34,000 worth of apc charges I'm now going to turn it over to my colleague lauren coster to talk about the apc fund at the university library system at pittsburgh Hey, state. It's a little bit of a maze back here So at the university of pittsburgh, we have what we call the author fee fund. It's author fee is a synonym for our processing charge And we have very similar requirements by cmu. So One example of how we are similar is we require that any journal to be eligible must be listed in the director of open access journals or the publisher or member of oaspa the open access scholarly publishing association And we require that they have a publicly available fee schedule so that we know going into it how much is going to be charged And exactly for what and what is available for different kinds of authors We also do not fund any hybrid open access journals And these are journals that charge a subscription fee but allow authors to pay a certain amount To make their particular article open access and we view this as a sort of double dipping by the publishers where they're getting both subscription fees and these open access single article charges And we do not want to support that. We want to support fully open access work For eligible authors at the university of pittsburgh. We serve With our fund authors who are served by the university library system and the barco law library And they can be faculty staff or student status at pit Most of our fund has been taken advantage of by faculty, but we have had some graduate students Take advantage of that as well and at the bottom of the screen here. You can see the url I also on our swag table over there have some brochures So you don't have to remember that long url help you find that on our website if you're interested in checking it out So in terms of our funds available, we do have an institutional account for bio med central Which allows authors to use a code to get their article processing charge or their author fee paid for But we will fund other publishers as long as they meet our requirements and Authors do apply and they tell us what article it is what journal it's going to be and give us a link to the page And anybody who has their Application approved gets their entire fee covered and that is slightly different from cmu system We do cover the entire fee. However, this this Both systems have their benefits and their drawbacks. So there's a limitation So for us, we have a cap on our fund of $30,000 per fiscal year And applications are approved on a first come first serve basis So the practical upswing of that is that the fund for 2016 to 2017 has actually already been exhausted Believe that or not So many people have taken advantage of it and we've funded a lot of different articles And there's enough interest that it has been used this much. So we're currently exploring some Other options for the future And if you want to see what kind of information that Applicants have to submit here's a link to our application right here Just a little bit by the numbers for us. We have some numbers here from the last year. This would be the This is the 2016 Information so this is for the current year that has already been reached. So we have funded a total of 24 articles Or no, we've sorry. We have funded a total of 16 articles and you can see the breakdown by school here You can see the school of engineering and eight and our representative here from the school of engineering is Is one of those that we fund a lot. We like him. He's a frequent flyer But we do have what I think is really interesting about this here in particular is that you can see the orange Part of the pie there is our Johnstown campus of the University of Pittsburgh So that's one of our regional campuses and we do fund people from our regional campuses As long as they meet our our requirements and this is from the Johnstown arts and sciences school So we're funding all the way across the state And our average cost of a funded article for this past year was $1,338 Which I think is really interesting because that is Strikingly close to the maximum amount that cmu will fund with just $1,500 which I think we're getting the same kind of averages from both sides So that's a little bit about our fund. I want to say that we also support other kinds of publishing models So notably the open library of humanities is one that we support This journal it's actually a mega journal with several sub journals underneath it in the domain of the humanities It's free for everybody to read and reuse and there are no article processing charges It's supported by libraries worldwide. So we pay What is a sort of support fee for the open library of humanities? It's much less than the subscription costs and the result is that all of the articles are free for everybody So it does the world a lot of good I full disclosure I'm actually a published author in the open library of humanities It's a really good experience if anybody wants to know more about Publishing with them and we're also support scope three So the sponsoring consortium for open access publishing and particle physics is an interesting project Where they try to flip Journals in particle physics from subscription to open access and we support that endeavor as well So these are just a couple of other publishing models beyond the apc that we support And we heard about another one pure j earlier So there are several different kinds of models out there in addition to apc's so With that in mind Do we need to introduce our panel since i'm standing up here might as well So we have a couple of faculty members from each of our institutions who have used our fund So from Carnegie Mellon, we have professor david cresswell Who is from the department of psychology and from the university of pittsburgh professor ervin sedgick Who is from the department of electrical and computer engineering bioengineering and biomedical informatics And he has used our fund. I think since its inception And we have several questions for our panelists, but we'll also open it up to the audience So if you have any questions about these funds or about experience using these funds or article processing charges or Any kind of uh thing related to that we're happy to take them for the panel So gentlemen thank you again for joining us this evening The first question I have for you is Can you tell us a bit about the article or articles that you've published using the apc funds? And ervin if you'd like to start off So, uh, I guess my first experience was uh, 2012 when the I just initially joined pitt and I actually came from canada to the us So some of the canadian schools actually have joined funds To enable faculty members and graduate students to publish in open access journals And for many canadian institutions is actually at that time. So early 2010s and early 2000s They were encouraging authors to especially some of the engineering Fields to publish in these open access journals for one particular reason They would kind of give us a faster response to initial submission Uh, as you may have known that some of the engineering journals were notoriously Notoriously slow when it comes to decision making I had articles that were on you know in under review for about two years. So it's uh When open access journals came out it was a great way for us to speed up some of the Publishing process because by the time your article comes out it was also really obsolete because it's stuff you did three years ago So that's how I started it became involved in Open access and especially for us. I'm a on a brink of engineering and medicine. So for it's not medically enough to be published in medical journals which tend to have faster Kind of turnover rate, but it's not purely engineering to be published in the old So these open access provided kind of a new winning venue for us to publish our contributions Yeah, so, um, again, I'm David Cresswell. I'm in psychology here. Um Yeah, so I I think I've had two papers with you guys Three. Okay. Geez. I don't remember the third one. Um, so, uh, the two that I'm thinking of were in the plos journals The public library of science, which is a you know popular outfit for many of us and across many domains Um, and uh for those who are not familiar with the process of getting funds at least here at CMU I would say it's about a five minute online template that you have to fill out. I mean, it's a very quick process and Usually within 48 or so hours at least that's what it was for these last couple I get a really nice email back saying sure we're willing to you know cover part of the cost So it's a very easy process and it's You know the apc has been really instrumental in helping to phrase some of the costs of Some of the undergraduate honors theses to come out of my lab So some really motivated bright undergraduates did some some wonderful work And uh, you know, we got it published and we didn't really have funds to cover cover this So that was a really um helpful way for us. So although they say it's for graduate students and faculty I mean, I think that if the faculty member is the sponsoring, you know, um, You know pi for the work, they're happy to fund it But it's been a great way to really get the work out there and it was a very easy process in all cases So urban you mentioned a bit about Your interest was in looking at the open access Publishing models. I guess for both of you What interests you about Publishing in an open access journal that would make the articles openly available, you know, what what seemed appealing to you about that Yeah, I mean, I think the bottom line for for us as scientists when we publish our work is to Make an impact and you know, one of the ways that's measured is whether people are citing your work And I don't know if people have done the, you know, quantitative studies, but it's certainly from my my perspective You get your your citation counts up much faster with these with these open access journals They get the work out to a much broader audience much faster typically than our our usual Journals. So, you know, I think in 20 years, we're all going to look back on like do you remember that time We were sitting at CMU in that meeting talking about, you know, open access when I think it's going to become our dominant model I mean, I just think it's a much much better model. You were sort of speaking to You know a three-year turnaround and with these open access journals they really I think all of them push to Get the articles online Even before they're, you know, fully baked copy edited versions. So, I mean, they're really trying to get the work out quickly and you know, we Here in the us, you know, have access to resources and journal subscriptions fairly easily but Most people across the world, you know, don't have easy access to, you know, journals that require subscription costs So, you know, I've noticed I get a lot more emails from people from, you know Developing countries about our work when we publish an open access journal It's just because that, you know, article is available for free to them. So, you know, I think it's a really good model I'm I'm you know, I'm seeing a proliferation of more of these types of journals I just it's the way it's going to be so we need to find ways As an institution to support, you know, support open access publishing. So this is great Yeah, it's the same kind of as I alluded before The reason I started in open access journals It was just faster for us to publish because we would cut down the To print from three years to a few weeks And I think what open access journals did Not intentionally is they forced other Prescript kind of journals for fee journals to start posting accepted versions of the papers online so now Most of the journals that I publish even if they're like you have to pay the prescription for it They actually post the accepted version online, which is nice because suddenly you have the access At least in North America the American and Canadian institutions you can access those Accepted papers online The others as David said, it's actually helping us disseminate science I'm strong believer that if it's a publicly funded science It should be accessible to by public I still don't know why we're allowing These publishers to You know be multinational corporations that publish these scientific journals When in fact most of the publications are driven by taxpayers either in the states, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand So and all of these institutions have to pay the hefty prescription fees, right? So In my mind, it's also kind of a Way to give back to the community what they paid for Because I sometimes feel that we as a scientist are the only community that we charge for something and then we keep the results close A kind of unusual process, but One other thing I was just thinking, you know, it is a new frontier open access publishing and we have some outlaws among us I mean Many of you probably know that there's a lot of you know pay-to-play journals that are Maybe not all that reputable. In fact, they'll sort of push through Any garbage and literally, you know scientists have test this by sending garbage papers to journals and getting them Published and of course the you know, these quote-unquote journals will charge something like a three thousand dollar, you know fee to Publish there, you know, I think we need to figure out a way to kind of Moderate this new forum and I'm kind of concerned about that And even some of our top journals I sort of feel like the plos journals do a pretty good job You know fair fees good peer review process, but the frontiers journals I don't know. I have some concerns with their fees are much higher and Their review standards are a little bizarre, but in fact frontiers is considered to be a highly credible journal But we kind of have these issues we have to play around with so if you are you know in the position of moving to the open access model be Thoughtful I think in sort of picking You know reputable journals for the panelists And we'll take questions from the audience if any of you have a question just please wave at me and I'll give the microphone to you But building off of that as scholars, how do you evaluate a journal? In terms of how reputable as you mentioned a couple of things about the fee and the review when you get You know a paper that you want to publish What kind of things do you look for in a reputable journal if it's open access? I know for me if I get an unsolicited email in my inbox from somebody I've never heard of That's an instant indicator that it's probably not reputable, but what are some other things that that you look for? Yeah, I mean You know, I clearly look at impact factors which sort of indicate the relatives, you know citation rates for these journals You know, we have we have some kind of main players in the open access movement And you know, you sort of look for reputable groups of people that are driving the editorial boards of those Those journals I each year there's new ones that come out, you know sage has a new What do they call it sage open? That's been getting a lot of buzz and what is it e life? You know all and these are You know, they don't quite have impact factors yet because they're pretty new but You know, you look at the editorial boards and you're saying hey, these are colleagues that I really, you know value their their their guidance So, you know, it's sort of a mix of factors For those of us that are more junior, you know, you have to be sensitive to You know is your department gonna value this so there's kind of a bit of You know talking to colleagues in your field and in your department about whether this is going to be a An outlet that's that's suitable for helping your promotion case, but um, you know, those are sort of factors that I think about Similarly, I look at the publishers. For example, nowadays you even have nature has its own open access journal scientific reports Science has won science advances right through whatever it's called IEEE one of the largest electrical engineering publishers. They also have a Open access journal, which I just published in thank you very much for approving So looking at the impact factors looking at the publishers the track of the Public library of science has most of their journal all of their journals are They go you get the rigorous peer review process going on But as David alluded, there are some predatory journals and predatory schemes that Tend to so we have to sometimes sift through the noise and make sure that Uh, it is actually a legit open access journal Sheila coral university of pittsburgh um In school of information sciences I just wanted to add to to your your comments about the predatory publishers that I think that Graduate students and junior faculty are particularly vulnerable to these publishers because they're often You know really keen especially phd students. They're just finishing up They're really keen to get some things on their cv and very tempted by this and some of them are totally unscrupulous I mean, they just make up impact factors and sort of claim that they have You know a certain metrics which are completely untrue and they also often put names on the editorial boards without people even knowing that So I think it's really important that um, you know, those of us in more senior positions Advise our, you know colleagues and and students to You know contact the library if they're they're being approached by a journal they've they're not familiar with or they haven't seen their Their advisor publishing and for example because I think the library can do a good job and sort of sussing out some of these rogue publishers You know, both of you kind of indicated that you look at who are on the editorial board You know, what is the impact factor? What are the costs? I wonder if you've looked at any of the other Publication lists like the directory of open access journals because the the comment from the audience is very Important because that list is something that is is looked by a third party To give full disclosure. I'm a managing editor of the doaj And I oversee a team of editors that review All that information about each journal and the publishers that supply that to ensure that Just as we pointed out that if they supply information about what their practices are is that They are actually practicing those practices So the question is do you look at other List of publications or other Ways to find open access journals in your disciplines to see if they are open access or potential journals to publish with So I tend to also look at the Thompson Reuters impact factor list Your the doaj whatever it's called I keep forgetting I always google it I do look for alternative sources Just to make sure and I again Looking for some of my colleagues Publish if they publish in open access. What are the journals? Most of my senior colleagues if they Decide to publish in open journal Open access journals. They actually know what they're doing. So I'm trying to follow their footsteps rather than picking up some of secure new journal in my Maybe I'm less known than anybody else, but I rarely get Editors emailing me and soliciting my articles so That's the first kind of red flag for me that Uh, because most of the invited articles that I had I knew people very well. So Uh, so that that's a red flag for me if somebody sends me and Starts the email with the team dr. Sadish, then I know that it's probably a red flag But in general, yeah, it's always kind of a A combination of a few different resources and sources to say Yeah, I don't have any I don't have any systematic strategy here. I'm sort of hearing you say that and I'm like, yeah, that wouldn't hurt to Cross-list the the journals that we're targeting with You know lists of you know regulatory groups that you know try to police these things. I mean we've been fairly Careful about picking journals that we know are very reputable journals Open access journals and trying to go with those So we haven't moved down the list of you know, what would be Probably considered to be more of these, you know lower impact journals that that may or may not be credible So since both of you were kind of early adopters of the fund I I wondered if you could speak about your experience prior to having access to the apc fund If the funds didn't exist and we didn't neither institution had an apc fund Um How else would you get the costs covered for these apcs? Could you get it covered? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean I probably beg my department head to pay You know sort of saying these are undergraduates that you know want to get their work out there And you know trying to hustle some money together. So, you know the apc has been a huge resource for us and You know, I've been a proponent of it in our faculty meetings saying that folks should use it I mean, it's it's a it's a sweet sweet deal and from a university perspective, you know, it's I think a really important Way that we can support more open access publishing and starting to You know shift the the tide away from subscription models where you know, you have to pay I don't know how much we pay for journals, but it's got to be pretty expensive from an institutional standpoint What's that It's it's it's got to be a staggering amount and you know, um, I don't know if anyone's read I think wasn't there an Atlantic article that came out on el sevillet as a publishing model and how they They pocket like millions of dollars every year Publishing our you know our research that is publicly funded. So, you know, I mean they're like it's like a total scam Wait, is this being recorded? Uh Yeah, but you know, I mean There's and not to down downplay the fact that you know the the editing process and managing journals Is you know something that's going to require funds to support but you know making millions and billions of dollars Um, and a for-profit model doesn't seem right, you know, if this is publicly funded research, um that we want to make available to folks to Ultimately improve the health and you know well-being of of our society So, you know, I I guess I I feel like we need to do everything in our power to try to to to shift this away from the subscription models More of a comment. Um, I'm tim deli Anita. Some director of the office of scholarly publishing Scholarly communication and publishing at pit um, and my colleague lauren didn't mention one of the Strategies that we're using to support new models for publishing and that is being a publisher We publish 40 scholarly peer reviewed journals and what we're trying to do is um provide that quality peer review process And then openly share the results worldwide Through open access But do it in a way that doesn't require a 40 percent profit margin That a company like Elsevier collects every year. So we do it using technology and elbow grease and some volunteer labor, but um working in a way that's that's um More cost effective for the whole ecosystem. So that's one thing that um, That I think libraries could could do much more of and And contribute to a change in this whole whole model And I wanted to also make a plug for oaspa that that I think both lauren and david mentioned um, which is the open access scholarly publishers association and that's a trade association that does police um, this area of predatory Publishers and helps maintain quality for for all of us. So It's also an organization that's very supportive of open access publishing but at the same time Looking looking out for um the integrity of the publishers that That use the name open access so So both of you have talked about Your experiences with working with um traditional publishers and and working with open access publishers Could you talk a bit about the differences that you saw or if any differences really existed? About publishing with one versus the other and what would you say to authors that are considering? having an open access article that have said that well Articles published in an open access journals are of less quality or they don't do as much work as the traditional publishers What would you say to that? I would actually as strongly argue against it because uh, if you consider that nature has open access journal and we It's fairly difficult to get into that journal so I don't foresee why an open access would be Any less stringent than the subscription based journal because at the end both are there to make profit It's just with an open access you pay up front rather than hiding the costs somewhere in the library um in both scenarios you actually have volunteer peer reviews And again given that most of the difficult work is done by volunteers in both cases I still don't understand why we have the subscription based journals because They make a profit out of everybody else's work uh So I don't I think uh, that was a bit of a law being done by the Some of these publishing houses that the when the open access Movement started they wanted to kind of scare people away and you know how academics tend to be scared easily uh, so In my mind I actually got sometimes more uh Stricter reviews with open access rather than traditional journals. So Again, the quality of journal Is always the same if it's a good quality a good journal. It's a good journal If it's a bad journal that publishes garbage and garbage out, it's a bad journal It doesn't matter whether it's a traditional based journal or it's a new open access journal at least in my mind Yeah, I mean, you know with any Journal process after you submit a paper and it's accepted you want a very efficient streamlined copy editing process where They're getting the page proofs to you back Um, you know, I'm in a couple of weeks max and that they're very receptive to You know turning that around and getting it back out again And you know, I've had no with the PLOS journals. I've had no no issues whatsoever. Um, you know, they've done a very good job um, and so I've seen no difference in terms of the kind of post acceptance process to you know getting the the proofs out um compared to Subscription based journals. So that's certainly a myth. I agree completely with what you said Based on something you guys have said both of you about so david you said that you've no idea Um, how much libraries pay for subscriptions for journals, but it's got to be a lot. It is a lot And urvin, you said that you know, you pay the cost up front rather than hiding it in the library So after having your experience with publishing open access and seeing these article processing charges Are you more aware of the cost of publishing than you were before? Did you ever before you had to deal with apcs? Did you ever think about how much a journal would cost to access or to publishing? well, I had a Kind of an idea as a graduate student because there were discussion at least at some of the canadian universities about the access to all of the journals because Canadian universities actually pull their money and pay one giant fee to different publishers so And there was a question Do we have to really have to have the access to every possible journal there is or we can cut down the number of journals and decrease some of the fees So I was aware of the multi-million dollar scheme that was going on at the time So with an open access, I think it's becoming fair I do understand that these are companies. They have to make profit. They have to pay their workers. So That you have to pay for it. But I think the fact that it's an open Access so anybody can access The published work which was paid by the taxpayers. I think that's a big plus for me Again, I still don't understand why traditional journals are not already open access because we anyway, we don't pay the per article Subscription fee, but we pay one giant lump when it probably when you average it out. It comes very close to that 1300 that We already pay for these so Yeah, I mean, I think the writing's on the wall and that Every major even the subscription based journals are now offering open access lines so you can Pay once you get, um, you know your article accepted there to have it be open access on that journal So, I mean, it's just a matter of time. I think before This becomes the the gold standard and it's going to be interesting to see how that changes is the The publishing landscape for these subscription based journals because I think they're sort of seeing That they're going to lose this over time I really hold that in you know, 10 to 20 years We're going to look back on this and be like, I can't believe we had a meeting about you know apcs and open access journals because it will be the you know, it will be the the model David to kind of build off of your comments Since we know that not all journals that A researcher in a faculty may be publishing and maybe an open access journal Had has publishing in an open access journal and using the apc funds Made you rethink about your other scholarship since both funds Dictate that you can't use the fund for a hybrid journal so a journal that can be made open Without having to pay an apc Have you thought about your other scholarship and maybe practice more a green open access model? So making a version of that other work available have either of you done Had that experience. What do you mean by other work? So other articles that are published, but not in an open access journal So maybe another traditional journal That operates with the subscription fees that doesn't have an open access model. Have you thought about making That work open, you know as another means. I don't know if we can say this on I'll add the caveat through your institutional repository of your institutions Yeah, so so two comments about the institutional repository. Well first to be totally open about my practices I post all of my articles as pdfs on my website and I have the standard I think disclaimer language that may or may not be legal, but I don't care I'll just go to jail if someone really wants to press me on this Because I really do feel like this work is important to get out to a broader audience So that's the policy I've put into place now. I'll probably get a call from legal tomorrow Telling me to take them down. So the other option, of course, as you mentioned is the cmu library's repository Which I think is a a great model, you know, it gets with the The trolling that they do for google scholar, you know, that'll usually pick up the cmu Repository pdfs, which is great. So, you know users and can find your articles. So that's great. Love that feature thing I don't like about the cmu repository is that It in the past has also put up our undergraduate honors theses, which are usually not fully baked articles And so I've had concerns about You know getting emails from colleagues saying, oh, I see you have this new paper and I'm like, well, you know We're kind of working on that paper. It's not quite ready for prime time yet And it's now available as a pdf online. So we need to be I think careful about When we do and don't post I think maybe that policy might have changed. I'm not sure Because I was I I raised a big stink about it. Sorry about that But I think it was important that we, you know, do some policing of what does go up onto that. So I think it's great overall Yeah, I do the same thing as David. So I might get a call tomorrow morning as well I actually post pdfs of Our own versions of published Papers I feel that it should go out to the Community and if they want to Read it, they should be able to read it in some form. I'm strongly Supporting nyh's effort Or they release all the articles after a year So in my mind, I think we should encourage I know there is I do the same thing I posted this Miscellaneous statement that I found somewhere on the some website that how this is just a preliminary draft of the things This should be available to the community and we should realize that When some of these policies have been instituted 20 30 40 years ago most of this was accessed by Researchers in the United States and Canada in one of the most developing countries If you look at the some of the reports made by available by the White House on the Artificial intelligence deep learning They were just released last or a couple weeks ago when the president was here You have more papers now coming from China Than the United States on certain topics So not being able to disseminate these To such a broad Nation is keeping your results closed and not being actually able to communicate the newest results with the rest of the world So I think we should encourage this to make these either through the institution or Some other means Making these PDFs available in either preliminary form or accepted form who cares but at least Just letting people know that all right. Well, this has been done You know take the next level from this where I left off you guys should start there so Judy Brink head of the engineering library at Pitt when I first met you Irvin one of your first questions to me was about the open access fee fund Which we had just talked about a month or two before But we didn't even have that that fund available yet But you had come from an institution where that was the culture And so if we are to in 20 years reach the point where Most of the journals are open access. What is it that the library can do? To change the culture In addition to paying for the apc charges. What else can we do? To persuade your colleagues and and to work with graduate students I think there is a still bit of a bad rep associated with these open access journals and A nice outreach program might change many minds What I found that junior Faculty members are more open to publishing in open access journals. I guess it's just a generation change I know that some of my more senior colleagues are kind of staying away and Thanking god knows what is going on there and that we are paying that These are articles are not peer reviewed. So there were some discussions about what is in open access So I think kind of an outreach program to different departments Would be I think a nice way for libraries And library staff to kind of tell the other faculty what is going on and especially in these More traditional non-school of medicine departments, which may have makes of both Half junior half senior faculty and you sometimes have junior faculty being scared of publishing in open access journals because They know that senior faculty is not supportive of those efforts. So kind of getting everybody at the same level would be great Yeah, I mean it's an interesting question what libraries can do I think that there needs to be a five-year plan and a 10-year plan here. I think the five-year plan consists of Getting more money into the apc. I just think that it's going to be more and more used Um, I mean, you know, I sat down at a faculty meeting. I said listen the library has free money for your publications You know and uh, you know people perked up at that. So I mean, it's like You know, it's a no-brainer But that that is something that libraries can do to support this effort around open access publishing because you're right There is a barrier around okay. How am I going to pay for this if I do go this route? And if there is an apc that's that's flush, you know People are going to it's going to be a nudge that's going to be really valuable over the next five years So I think that's the five-year plan I think the 10-year plan is to expect that we're going to move to an open access model And how are we going to support that and I think there's going to be a tipping point where Libraries have to evaluate do I want to continue paying the subscription fee? For this for this journal this a journal over here, or do I want to pay? You know, do I want to delegate the funds for a different a open access journal? And you know, I think we're going to have to you know in the in the 10-year 20-year plan evaluate how we shift You know that sort of funding model for our libraries so that you know at some point I really do believe these guys are just going to fall off the map We just no one's going to be wanting to go to these subscription based journals because I think open access Um is going to be better now. I think science and nature will probably always be a subscription based Set of journals. Oh, maybe not maybe not in 20 years But you know, I think there there's a different plan for the the the sort of 10-year plan But in the short term let's provide every possible nudge for people to have support to publish and open access journals And I I mean you guys have the access to all the numbers For example, I would invite you to just calculate the cost per article For traditional base Publisher like IEEE You guys probably have the list of published articles in IEEE from pit faculty. You know exactly how much you pay the subscription So we can actually come up with a number and I think you'll come up with very close number Not for all publishers, but some of these publishers Will definitely be on that level about 1300 The problem with um moving from The subscription basket to the open access basket that cost per article is a moving target And these large publishers are working very very hard To monetize open access as fast as they can To keep their profits at the same same level. So we're fighting against that um and Uh to david I I would say um That I agree with you. I'd love to see these the allocation for apc charges increase But it's going to be difficult decision because we will have to cut subscription based journals to do that We'll have to make decisions so My colleagues in the university library system that That manage collections and hold the purse strings They've got a very difficult path to to um Move money from one one basket to another because it will be painful for certain Portions of our population in the universities Just to add to that I think something that a lot of faculty are not aware of is the much more complicated Landscape now compared even with 10 years ago Because publishers it used to be quite simple For libraries were relatively so in that you know, you'd have a list of journals you subscribe to annually And you'd have a subscription charge for each individual title Now the publishers all have them all in great bundles And so I mean they tell you you have you many more journals available But you don't necessarily want them all And if they you know, you can start calculating the cost per journal that way But it gives you a false figure. It's a misleading figure because you have to take the complete set of their bundle And if you want to change that it's not just an annual basis You're often locked in for quite lengthy subscription periods And so the whole thing is incredibly complicated And that's why the system is moving quite slowly and as fast as the oa movement tries to Bring about change the publishers as tim was saying I'm just trying to come up with new ploys to make it more difficult for everybody, but we just got to keep pushing for it Yeah, I mean it'd be interesting to look at these portfolios of you know, what subscription bundles we carry as institutions But um, I suspect that there are some bundles that have pretty low frequency use Across the university that even just cutting like one of those for example and relying on interlibrary loan as a way to Catch people who need to get those articles and then dumping all that money into an apc fund You know even just one bundle, you know could make a huge difference. No, I don't know I don't know how much bundles cost but they're massive plans that include high use journals and low use journals together mixed And these publishers are smart the way that Yeah Very calculation So the complicating thing is sometimes you're really not buying it sometimes you're just licensing it When rick said oh, yeah, it's like a cable. Yeah, it is a lot of times you if you license properly You may have long-term access to the digital But there are some things that we've had to license where in fact if we cancel it we lose access to everything we've ever had I mean So it's a brave new world out there One of the things that I think was going to change. I mean with the interlibrary loans and I sometimes rely on them but mostly for old publications With the newer publications. I directly email authors and say hey, can you send me a pdf? I want to reference it and they send you 10 different pdfs Of relevant things that you So I think with the kind of newer journals and your contribution it's gonna be I personally have a research gate account I think it's a waste of everybody's time but They are becoming quite useful in a sense that it's a I've been the moment I publish and Some of these subscription journals they post The news that my article is published. I get that one or two requests for those Articles right away We are research gate. I don't like their practices of mass emailing you 10 times a day And Telling you that your colleagues have recommended you for something But I think there is a change in the culture how some of these Articles will be accessed and I think with more the share of this knowledge Given via email or any other means I think it's gonna prompt some of these public shares to actually move away from Of course, he's gonna take probably five to 10 years, but Well, some of the publishers aren't strictly publishers the way you think of them. So my current The person that the organization I'm currently most irritated at is IEEE I know are you a member? No, yeah So they have some of the most Bizarre ways of trying to license with you there's no basis It's just like pick a number and that's what they charge you. I don't know if that's you feel that's true judy But I know here. I mean essentially they've told us we don't charge per head We don't charge FTE It's a number we've come up with. I mean honestly, that's what they've said And that number I'm not going to go into the messy licensing We're in right now But you know if you're not here in Pittsburgh, they want us to pay another 32,000 dollars For a handful of people that are at different programs That cmu has outside of Pittsburgh. It's just And 32,000 dollars. I'm not sure what that per Article use really comes out to but it you know, it's pretty expensive So these have been some great questions and comments To kind of leave us now with our final kind of final thoughts for the audience Irvita and David What would be your comments or recommendations to others that are thinking of publishing in an open access journal and thinking of using the open access funds? Well, I'm gonna certainly against my colleagues against it so I actually can use it more Because now that I know we are running out of funds there So but joking aside, I think I'm a very Kind of one of the guys Advertising this service to my colleagues and I keep telling all my junior colleagues guys, there is a way if you need to publish an open access Journalists there is a way the university supports it take advantage of it The service is great for us all the all the interactions have been great So I would strongly support. I know there is gonna be very soon an issue of money Where you're gonna probably next fiscal year spend all your money in first two months and then we'll have to wait 10 months So I think we have to generally start kind of Uh pushing our chairs pushing our deans to put some money aside and contribute to the library Uh and say hey, this is a service that we use and this is a service that we need because Based on some of those publications. I actually applied for grants So it's not just me publishing for the sake of publishing. So having another Paper I actually use those results to get grants. So Yeah, I mean, I don't have anything else really to add except to say that people should publish an open access journals and use these funds. I think it's a A no-brainer and it's um, you know A win for everyone and I think we do have to be Thoughtful particularly the the libraries have to be thoughtful moving forward about you know, what is the advertising campaign? I almost feel like the better move for for libraries is to um Let the dust settle here. I think You know, I think that the the groundswell is enough really We're seeing this in the last four years where people are shifting to these open access models And these new open access journals are competing and winning. So, you know, I think you know, let's Let this play out and as a library have plans in place for when the tipping point hits and we can say we're going to dump that whole crappy cable plan that we have of those Elsevier journals And you know, what what is that going to mean for for supporting folks who who want to publish another journal? So well Y'all join me joining thanking our panelists for this evening's conversation Thank you all again for coming. We do have some refreshments still left over as well some materials about both our institutions So again, thank you again