[Open-access] [open-science] Elsevier: some facts, by Tim Gowers

ANDREW Theo Theo.Andrew at ed.ac.uk
Wed Apr 30 11:19:03 UTC 2014


Regarding the release of APC data from UK universities- the report on the RCUK 2013/14  open access block grant expenditure is due end-July. The RCUK block grant ran from 1st April 2013 - 31st March 2014, however the reporting period has subsequently been extended by a few months.

Some institutions have pre-empted this by publishing their yearly figures, but I suspect most will wait until July. Due to the way that each block grant is managed by institutions some will not be easily able to report expenditure on an direct APC basis like the Wellcome Trust data is structured. The RCUK have asked for expenditure on a per publisher basis.

Informally I'm aware that some institutions have already received FOI requests asking for this information but since this data will be published soon they are not obliged to release the information right now.

So, a clearer picture should start to emerge in July of the scale of the open access APC market in the UK. Some synthesis work and reporting of these figures is in order and it would be useful if it was co-ordinated in some way.

Theo


-- 
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.


-----Original Message-----
From: open-access [mailto:open-access-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Michelle Brook
Sent: 30 April 2014 10:36
To: Richard Poynder
Cc: Rafael Pezzi; Bjoern Brembs; open-access at lists.okfn.org; alangsmello at gmail.com; open-science
Subject: Re: [Open-access] [open-science] Elsevier: some facts, by Tim Gowers

In total agreement here.

In the UK, the recent Wellcome Trust author processing charge data release was very useful. (More info: http://access.okfn.org/2014/03/24/scale-hybrid-journals-publishing/ and http://access.okfn.org/2014/04/01/wellcome-trust-apc-data-thank-you/)

A few Universities have released some of their APC data (Cambridge and Queens Belfast) - at least the costs that have been born through libraries (although this misses the chunk paid through grants) Although I've not had time to explore this data fully yet.

I'm hoping that soon we will be in push for other UK libraries to release similar data.

I'd love it if anyone had time to help push for these data releases, or to explore the University data already out there.

I imagine this is something that could be replicated in other countries also?

M

> On 30 Apr 2014, at 10:21, "Richard Poynder" <ricky at richardpoynder.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> Another question to ask perhaps is one that the Australian Open Access Support Group is currently puzzling over: How much is the research community spending on OA publishing? 
> 
> http://aoasg.org.au/what-are-we-spending-on-oa-publication/
> 
> 
> 
> Is there anything else we need beyond these figures? What am I missing?
> 
> Legacy publishers: US$5000
> SciELO: US$90
> Arxiv: US$7
> 
> Multiplied by the number of papers published, this is what we would be paying, if we used one of these exclusively:
> 
> Legacy: 10b
> SciELO: 0.18b
> Arxiv: 0.014b
> 
> Do we need any figures beyond that? Rather than focusing on one publisher, we ought to perhaps, if anything, focus on the individual countries, so we can say to each citizen: "you are wasting this much of your taxes on legacy publishing". 
> 
> I must be missing something that people spend so much time on Elsevier, when we already seem to have all the numbers we need. What am I missing?
> 
> Bjoern
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Björn Brembs
> ---------------------------------------------
> http://brembs.net
> Neurogenetics
> Universität Regensburg
> Germany
> 
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