July 1 2024
Open Access Australasia responded to the call for feedback issued by the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA) on its draft recommended practices to increase equity in open access.
GOAL #1: ENABLING OPEN ACCESS FOR ALL SCHOLARS
As an advocacy organisation for Open Access, Open Access Australasia is committed to working towards diverse approaches to open access that support equity – both to read and publish research. We believe that the equitable pursuit of knowledge and its dissemination should be at the core of any scholarly publication model and applaud OASPA’s past and present work on openness and equity.
We would like to raise the following observations in regard to Goal 1: Enabling open access for all scholars:
- We note that these principles are intended for global application and therefore would like to draw attention to the need to include recognition that Indigenous rights may take priority over requirements to make their research open, and to subscribe to the the global principles of Indigenous Data Sovereignty, when research involves indigenous knowledges. Therefore, where relevant, we recommend applying the “open as possible closed as necessary” approach using the CARE principles for Indigenous data as a model. An explicit recognition of this crucial caveat to ‘open access for all scholars’ in regions where it is relevant would strengthen and clarify goal 1.
- We would also like to raise the need for copyright reform to ensure that authors and institutions retain the rights over their work and the ability to share it openly. As the legal context around author and institutional rights retention varies by country there is no one single best approach but rights retention and author/creator protections need to be built into the scholarly publishing system and reflected in the principles underpinning them. Open access publishers have a key role in supporting broader rights retention efforts by adopting flexible non-exclusive licences, allowing rights retention, and licence choice with a preference for the most flexible (CC-BY or similar).
- We also recognise the expanding influence in all aspects of research practice of AI, and understand that the current challenges being posed by LLMs with regard to copyright and reuse are just the beginning. The reproduction of bias in AI tools has been much discussed and mitigates against equity in all areas that employ these technologies. In the scholarly publishing arena, policies and measures need to be put in place to render transparent the use of these tools, or disallow them altogether, and to ensure that when used, human supervision of results is sufficient to ensure accuracy and redress of any bias.
GOAL #5: REDUCING BURDENS IN OA PUBLISHING WORKFLOWS
We commend OASPA emphasising the need for simplicity and transparency for authors navigating submission processes, particularly with respect to the payment of fees for open access. We would like to add that authors also are faced with the burden of understanding how to comply with complex licences which often limit their ability to share their work once published, and additional clarity and simplicity here would also be of great benefit.
Repository supply of outputs to institutions using standard metadata and/or open tools that integrate with institutional repositories is a must.
OVERALL COMMENTS
Looking externally (at the landscape outside your own organisation / your context), what are the top 3 most likely external barriers to adoption of these practices?
- In Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, the lack of national policies to promote and implement an integrated open research environment, including effective incentives and monitoring and compliance mechanisms. Government departments and funding agencies in the United Kingdom, United States, European Union and Latin America have already adopted open access and open science policies and mechanisms required for their implementation are being developed.
- A research culture concerned with institutional global rankings, journal impact factors and individual researcher metrics. Prioritising such rankings in research assessment and evaluation inhibits innovation, and serves to further entrench commercial interests in the dissemination of research. Moreover, the ranking system has been shown to preference already established institutions and researchers at the expense of research approaches and bodies representing marginalised groups and Other Knowledge Systems. Allied to this there is a critical need for reform of research assessment and incentives. The diverse range of research outputs does not easily fit into current research assessment practices in a way that recognises their diversity and value, and that support open research practices. We encourage consideration of research assessment principles as discussed by the DORA Declaration (Declaration on Research Assessment,) COARA (Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment) and the Hong Kong Principles, in order to change research culture incentives and assessment practices to value diverse research output and Indigenous knowledges.
- Lack of awareness of the need for bibliodiversity and the need to support the entirety of scholarly research outputs. It is essential to provide access to and preserve the entire breadth of research output including journal articles, books, theses, data, software, and creative media. An open research ecosystem needs to be supported, including diverse mechanisms for dissemination beyond journals. Diverse pathways to open access are currently being practised, which are essential to ensure that diverse communities of publishing can thrive, including academic led approaches and those that serve underrepresented communities such as Indigenous research. Agreements with commercial publishers have increased the rate of open publications but this is just one approach. Additional approaches are needed, more innovative ways of making research available, including investment in national repository infrastructure, and local journals and book publishing initiatives. It is important that these types of initiatives are allowed to flourish and that control of these sits within the research community, rather than within commercial organisations.
What practices, perspectives, or progress measures have we missed in these recommendations to increase equity in OA?
What links / sources / studies / efforts or other references should OASPA know about when considering and revising this body of work?
In 2022, UNESCO, the International Science Council (ISC), the Open Access 2020 Initiative (OA2020), cOAlition S and others combined to organise a series of workshops on equity in open access to be convened in three broad geographical locations: Europe and Africa; Asia Pacific; and the Americas. Open Access Australasia hosted the Asia Pacific workshop to discuss the challenges to equitable open access in this region and to explore potential solutions.
The four most prominent challenges identified in the Asia Pacific workshop report resulting from the workshop were:
- The cost of publishing open access and transparency (or lack thereof) around APCs and related publisher expenses
- Incentives for researchers to publish open access and the difficulties of providing these in the current academic culture based on rankings and metrics.
- Ways to support Indigenous research.
- Read and publish agreements and the corporate control of publishing.
We see OASPA’s draft Recommendations as effectively addressing the first of these concerns and we have raised the second and third issues in this response as continuing to require attention. The corporate control of scholarly publishing remains the overarching challenge.