909d/2010

PREFACE: ANU Position Statement on Open Access

The Australian National University considers the dissemination of research findings to be an important part of the research process, passing on the benefits to other researchers, professional practitioners and the wider community.

The University has an obligation to share research outcomes with the global community, many members of which do not enjoy the same level of investment in research experienced in Australia. The ability to participate and share in scientific and cultural advancement is a declared human right[1].

Traditional publication channels do not necessarily place scholarly works into the public domain promptly and at low cost to the user. The University supports prompt open dissemination where possible to avoid these barriers.

The University endorses open access principles. While there are many definitions of open access[2], this position statement defines open access dissemination to be:

The full text results of scholarly research are made promptly, freely and permanently available to anyone with access to the internet.                                       

The University recognises that researchers are best placed to choose the publication and dissemination option for their work. It urges members of the scholarly community to subsequently make their work available in an open access format.

The University has established a repository within ANU Research for the deposit of research output [http://research.anu.edu.au/access], and encourages researchers to submit their work. However, it recognises the appropriate means to achieve open access dissemination may vary according to the discipline, and supports the continued use of disciplinary repositories and the submission of work to open access journals if appropriate.

This Position Statement supports and complements existing ANU policies, such as the Policy: Responsible Practice of Research[3] and the Policy: Intellectual Property[4]. 
 

1. Introduction

The dissemination of scholarly findings is an important part of academic work, passing on the knowledge and benefits to other scholars, professional practitioners and the wider community. This document sets out the expectations and responsibilities of both the authors of scholarly works and the University, in relation to publication and dissemination of peer reviewed and informal scholarly work undertaken at the Australian National University.

2. Principles

This document set out expectations relating to publication and dissemination  of scholarly work at the University.

• Supervisors of Higher Degree Research Students must guide candidates in the process and strategies of scholarly publication.
• There are significant differences between the communication practices of different disciplines. This may result in variations of interpretation of sections of this Code of Practice.
• Scholarly publication is changing rapidly, owing to the growth of on-line access and open access regimes. The University will revise the Code in line with changes in technology and community expectations.

3. Responsibilities

3.1 University

The University will support scholarly publication and dissemination by:

• Providing a sustainable repository for the deposit and dissemination of scholarly work
• Retaining and maintaining content submitted to the repository
• Staffing the repository to identify and abide by publishers' policies relating to copyright
• Providing advice regarding scholarly copyright licence addenda and use of open access journals
• Providing an opportunity for ongoing scholarly dialogue about emerging trends in scholarly publication.

3.2 Colleges

Colleges will support scholarly publication and dissemination by:

• Promoting dissemination of scholarly findings amongst their staff and postgraduate students
• Incorporating scholarly dissemination and community access to scholarly work into the College strategic plans
• Ensuring HDR students and academic staff are aware of current issues in scholarly publication and dissemination
• Adopting suitable dissemination instruments - subscribing to appropriate disciplinary repositories

3.3 Academic community

The University academic community should:

• Be familiar with relevant University policies
• Provide a consistent form of institutional affiliation and address for the author(s) when submitting work for publication, so that the output of the Australian National University will be easily identified and retrieved from bibliometric databases (such as Web of Science and Scopus). The suggested format, subject to the style guide of the chosen outlet, is:
• Dr A B Surname
• Address 1 (eg: Department)
• Address 2 (eg: Research School)
• Address 3 (eg: College )
• Australian National University
• Recognise the increasing availability of parallel dissemination options when publishing scholarly work in order to reach the widest audience
• Retain and file their final post-peer reviewed and corrected version of articles sent for publication
• Consider using license addenda when signing copyright agreements with publishers
• Notify repository staff when a submitted item is subject to embargo
• Ensure that mentoring and training of HDR students incorporates discussions about scholarly dissemination.

4. Scholarly Publication

4.1 Scholarly Work

Many different kinds of scholarly outputs are disseminated through a broadening range of communication channels. Approaches to scholarly communication vary markedly among the disciplines.

Scholarly Work as defined in the University IP Policy is a particular form of scholarly communication, characterised by the presence within it of knowledge that is new or little-known.  The IP policy is designed to focus on such work, in view of certain (property) rights relating to that new knowledge.  This Code is also directed especially at Scholarly Works, but provides advice about other scholarly publication.

In many disciplines, the traditional (or "formal") modes of scholarly publication encompass monographs, edited books, peer-reviewed journal articles, conference papers and proceedings, reports and creative works of art.  There exist also many forms of scholarly communication that are less formal which are nonetheless considered part of the scholarly output of the disciplinary community.

The University encourages members to engage in public discourse about their areas of expertise using publication means that extend beyond the publication of  Scholarly Work, and beyond communication within the academic community (for example: newspaper articles, blogs, being interviewed for television and radio programs etc). This form of dissemination does not replace traditional scholarly publication, but as explained in Policy: Responsible Practice of Research it supplements it.

4.2 Authorship and publication practice

The Policy: Responsible Practice of Research discusses publication and dissemination of research findings and authorship, including the requirement that authorship of work be acknowledged in the Form: Responsible Practice of Research (ANU Authorship) (http://policies.anu.edu.au/forms/responsible_practice_of_research_anu_authorship/form).

4.3 Guidance in authorship and publication

A critical aspect of professional development in scholarship is mentoring and guidance in respect of publishing and disseminating Scholarly Work.  It is a core tradition of academia that senior academic colleagues and supervisors provide support and direction to HDR students and early career staff in:

• The choice of publication outlet (journal, conference, web-site etc)
• The implications of certain choices, (for example journal impact factors, or awareness of the relative scholarly prestige of conferences or journals)
• How ‘publication points' are calculated in the Higher Education Research Data Collection
• Assistance with the development, structure and writing of an article, paper or presentation
• Approaches to dealing with the editors and assessors of scholarly works
• Support in the face of rejection and critical attacks in the discipline.

Supervisors of Higher Research Students have a responsibility for the professional development of their students, as described in: Policy: Code of Practice - Supervision in Higher Degrees by Research, Guidelines: Supervision and Candidature of Doctoral Research Students, and Policy: Responsible Practice of Research.

4.4 Theses

The primary purpose of a research thesis is to examine the candidate's scholarly proficiency against the University's requirements. The Research Award Rules set out a variety of acceptable formats for the examination of research theses at the University.

The University is moving systematically to adopt examination practices supported by electronic transmission and retention. Accordingly, all HDR students commencing their candidature on 1 January 2011 will be required to deposit a digital version to the University in addition to their final bound printed copies. The bibliographic information and abstract for every thesis will be made available through the ANU Research repository.

Candidates depositing their final bound thesis after 1 January 2011 who are completing their candidature under the previous Rules will be encouraged to deposit a digital version of their thesis to the University in addition to their final bound printed copies. This will diminish the need for the University to have these work subsequently scanned if there is a request for a loan of the thesis.

5. Dissemination of scholarly outputs by Open Access

5.1 Benefits of open access

The University encourages broad dissemination of scholarly work in the Policy: Responsible Practice of Research. Broad dissemination entails three considerations: (1) the existence of the work must be readily discoverable, (2) a copy of the work must be readily accessible, and (3) the cost of access to the copy by the user must be negligible. Insofar as the dissemination channels adopted by an ANU scholar permit, the University provides for each of these factors through its repository of scholarly work. The primary purpose of scholarly communication is to share information with the community, including academic and non-academic users. Open access offers an opportunity to more broadly meet this aspect of scholarly communication.

Making work openly accessible may also benefit the author/s as it increases exposure of the work to a wider audience. Research on open access publication shows that open access increases use of the work[5].

Open access can generally be arranged to reveal work promptly after the completion of peer-review processes, rather than waiting until it is published in the archival outlets. 

Many funding bodies, including the Australian Research Council[6] and the National Health and Medical Research Council[7], encourage researchers to place a version of any publications arising from funded research into a publicly accessible repository. An explanation is required in the final report if the researcher chooses not to do so.

5.2 Means of achieving open access: Publishing Twice

The University encourages authors to make the Accepted Version of their work available through open access after it has been peer reviewed and accepted by their outlet of choice. Such open-access publication can be regarded as "publishing twice" - once through the formal scholarly publication channels, and once through one or more open-access channels.

The University encourages authors to publish through open access channels such as:

• Submitting work to the ANU Research repository (http://www.anu.edu.au/research/access),
• Depositing work in subject repositories, and
• Publishing in open access journals

5.3 Copyright, plagiarism and open access

Concerns raised in the academic community about disseminating work through open access often relate to loss of copyright. Copyright is a collection of legal rights that attach to an original work when it is created. Copyright allows the copyright owner to control certain acts to do with their material and to prevent others from using the protected material without permission[8]. At the University, copyright is addressed in the Policy: Intellectual Property.

Commonly, when an author sends their final peer reviewed corrected version of the paper (referred to as the ‘Accepted Version') for publication they assign their copyright to the publisher. Most publishers, including Elsevier and Springer, allow authors to deposit the Accepted Version and others, such as Wiley-Blackwell, allow authors to deposit the original (pre-peer review) version they sent to the publisher (the ‘Submitted Version'). Some outlets embargo open publication before critical dates.

The University encourages authors to retain copyright in their work where possible by not assigning copyright to the publisher.  While many publishers' agreements request transfer of copyright, authors can attach an addendum which modifies the publisher's agreement and allows authors to keep key rights to their articles, including placement into the ANU Research repository.  Author's addenda can be automatically generated from the Science Commons Scholar's copyright Addendum Engine:  http://sciencecommons.org/projects/publishing/scae site.  An example of an author addendum is attached as Appendix 1.  The University supports publishing and copyright agreements that allow authors to retain copyright by only taking a licence to publish or by allowing authors to self-archive.

The University accepts responsibility for managing the copyrights of deposited work. Wherever possible, an item in the repository will have a link to the published edition.

Another concern regarding open publication is that it might facilitate plagiarism.  However, while it might be easier to reproduce original material that is available in digital form, it is also easier to identify plagiarised material in digital publications.  Unfortunately, plagiarism occurred in the era of printed materials held in physical libraries, and recourse to open publication seems unlikely to invite a greater risk.

5.4 Open access to Theses

The University encourages HDR candidates to disseminate their thesis as open access through the ANU Digital Theses Collection (http://dspace.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/45738). This Collection is harvested into Australian Research Online (http://research.nla.gov.au/) and by search engines.

5.4.1 Copyright

The candidate will need to declare they have permission to use any third party copyrighted work contained within the thesis. The University will provide information and assistance to students and supervisors with the process of obtaining third party copyright.

5.4.2 Thesis by Publication

The University encourages candidates submitting a thesis by publication to deposit the Accepted Version of their articles into the ANU Research repository.

The open access version of a thesis by publication may differ from the printed and bound version because of publisher's copyright restrictions. If this is the case, a notification should accompany the open access version.

5.4.3 Thesis by Creative Work

There are particular implications for making theses by Creative Work openly accessible. The candidate may wish to consider making the thesis available without providing open access to the artefact itself.

5.4.4 Concerns

If an HDR candidate anticipates publishing a monograph or refereed article based on material in their thesis, it is important to consider the potential adverse impact of prior publication. There have been cases where publishers have requested the removal of work from the open access repository because it is about to be published, but no reported cases of publishers refusing to publish because the work had previously been available in an open access format.

Candidates should recognise that open access publication of their thesis will enable wide access to the work over the long term.  Ideas presented in the thesis will have been formed during a period of research training and graduates may later find themselves justifying changes and evolution of their ideas.

5.4.5 Take-down policy

The University will comply with reasonable requests to remove a thesis from the repository. Where it is appropriate to do so, the University will also endeavour to have electronically archived copies taken down by the archive manager. 

To avoid loss of information about the provenance of electronic versions, all transactions of this kind will be recorded in the repository.

[1] The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 27 - http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a27

[2] These include the Budapest open Access Initiative - http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities - http://oa.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html

[3] Section 4 - Publication and Dissemination of Research Findings - http://policies.anu.edu.au/policies/responsible_practice_of_research/policy

[4] Section 6 - Open Access  http://policies.anu.edu.au/policies/intellectual_property/policy

[5] Open Access Citation Advantage: An Annotated Bibliography - http://www.istl.org/10-winter/article2.html

[6] Funding Rules: http://www.arc.gov.au/pdf/DP08_FundingRules.pdf

[7] Statement at: http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/grants/policy/dissemination.htm

[8] OAK Law (2007) ‘A guide to developing open access through your digital repository" - http://www.oaklaw.qut.edu.au/node/32

[7] Funding Rules: http://www.arc.gov.au/pdf/DP08_FundingRules.pdf

[8] Statement at: http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/grants/policy/dissemination.htm

[9] OAK Law (2007) ‘A guide to developing open access through your digital repository" - http://www.oaklaw.qut.edu.au/node/32

Appendix 1 - Sample author addendum

 Sample author addendum is attached.  

Appendix_1_-_Sample_Addendum.doc (1.6 MB)