Open Access Week 2016

Open Access Week is a global event, now entering its eighth year. It is an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access (OA), to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research.

Our director of publishing, Dr Emma Wilson, explains what the Royal Society of Chemistry is doing about Open Access…

Our overall mission is to advance excellence in the chemical sciences; one way we do this is by the dissemination of chemical knowledge, via our publishing programmes.

Naturally we want this research to reach the widest audience; so we support all sustainable models of access. One model is Gold Open Access, so we want to shape OA publishing in the chemical sciences, as well as to support and inform our community during the transition to a more open research environment.

In terms of taking a leading role, we lead by example.

In 2015 we converted our flagship journal Chemical Science to an OA journal and waived the article processing fees (APCs), allowing authors to publish for free and enabling everyone to access the cutting edge science it publishes.

Last year we entered into a collaboration with the Royal Society on their journal Royal Society Open Science. Our role is to shape the journal’s chemistry section by commissioning articles and managing the peer review.

Finally, this summer we announced the conversion of our largest journal – RSC Advances – to an OA journal, and there are more details on this exciting development below.

To support and inform our community, we provide easy-to-find, jargon free, up to date information and guidance for our authors and potential authors. We have recently refreshed our open access pages to make them easier to use and navigate. 

Do you think Open Access publishing is sustainable?

Yes, I believe Gold OA is sustainable and there are many examples of successful OA publishers, for example BioMedCentral (now part of Springer Nature ) and the Public Library of Science (PLoS) that operate sustainable businesses.

Although we facilitate both Gold and Green routes, we support Gold due to its sustainable and proven model.

For RSC Advances, we have set one of the lowest article processing charges in the industry, to make sure affordability does not become a barrier to impactful work getting the international recognition that it deserves. The APC is £750. For the first two years, this will be discounted to £500, with further discounts and waiver options also available, particularly for counties that are still developing their chemical sciences research infrastructures.

Where is Open Access going in the future?

Always difficult to predict! Science and our chemistry community are global, however in terms of policy and funder requirements for OA there is no unified, global view. This means that policies and requirements differ between countries (and sometimes within the same country), some countries prefer Green OA, and others Gold OA.

As there is yet no clear preference towards one route or the other, it is inevitable that there will be both subscription journals and OA journals for some time. However my view is that the number of OA journals will continue to grow and it will increasingly become the “norm” to publish in them.

Having said that, the number of chemistry articles published in OA and hybrid journals is relatively modest at the moment, but the number of OA chemistry journals is growing. In addition to our conversion of two of our journals to OA, other chemistry publishers, such as the ACS and Wiley-VCH, have launched OA journals. Coupled with increased APC support for authors from their funding agencies, this will encourage more OA chemistry publishing.

Open Access is not happening in isolation – the research environment is becoming more open and transparent – OA is part of this spectrum and, as open research behaviours are encouraged and rewarded, this in turn will stimulate OA publishing.

In chemistry I see the hybrid journal remaining an important part of the OA publishing landscape for some time. Authors like hybrid journals, as they are often very well-known publications with mature editorial process and established reputations.

An interesting development is “off-setting” deals that librarians (particularly in Germany, the Netherlands and the UK) are negotiating with publishing partners. These deals have both pricing elements for access to subscription content and APCs, enabling researchers at that institute to publish their articles in the publisher’s hybrid OA journals.

We are speaking to a number of customers, including the Max Planck institutes about these sorts of arrangements. These deals have the potential to support and stimulate Gold OA publishing; however they are likely to be attractive to certain regions and may not have universal appeal.