Mandates

Alejandro Santos, our Librarian, explained us the basics of Open Access. Starting with the funding agencies mandates and their obligations:

• The European H2020 mandates says that any published article should be deposited in a repository, and open access to the deposited publication should be ensured within a maximum of six months.
• The Spanish "Plan Estatal ICYT" and "Severo Ochoa" mandates says that the availability of the article in open access should be possible within a maximum of six months. 

Gold and Green routes

He then explained the two basic routes of publishing in Open Access:

• Golden route: publishing in Open Access Journals, or in Hybrid Journals, by paying the APC (Article Processing Charges) to make it open
• Green route: self-archiving the article in repositories. In this route, usually it is the POSTPRINT (accepted, peer-reviewed manuscript) the one that is valid; not the PREPRINT (which is the submitted article), nor the final PUBLISHER VERSION (PDF in Editorial Format). 

Embargo

Even is some articles are in the repositories (such as DIGITAL CSIC), some Publishers have an embargo period (usually 12 months, but can be 6 or 24 months), which makes that the article is still not available until the embargo time finishes. The embargo time can be checked in SHERPA-ROMEO website. 

Copyright

Another important thing of publishing Open Access is that you can keep the copyright of the article (Open Access uses Creative Common Licenses), whereas when publishing not in Open Access, the copyright ownership is transferred to the Journal Editors. 

DIGITAL CSIC is the CSIC Institutional repository and is where our Librarian deposits all the articles in POSTPRINT (usually). When any of our researchers publish an article, a POSTPRINT version should be send to our Library so it can be deposited there. 

CSIC Support Agreements

The CSIC has some support agreements to publish in Open Access is some journals. The more importants are:

• The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC): the agreement covers 100 % of the publication fees (APCs) for CSIC reseachers
• There is a discount of US$ 250 for article published at the Americal Chemical Society (ACS) journals
• Other discounts: MDPI (25%), Frontiers (25%), Springer Open (40%), PNAS (discount of $ 350)

Open Acces at the ICMAB

The following graph shows the data related to Open Access publication at the ICMAB in the period 2016-2019 (until 22/10/2019). 

ICMAB researchers have published 207 articles (24 % of their production in this period) in Open Access journals in the last four years (Gold Route), an average of 52 articles per year.

In addition, according to the mandates of the project financing agencies, articles are regularly deposited, in the versions allowed by the editors, in the DIGITAL CSIC institutional repository, a total of 411 articles since 2016, which, together with the articles in Open Access journals and taking into account editorial embargos, add up to 462 articles that are open today, 54 % of the center's production from 2016 to the present day.

Benefits and Drawbacks

Finally, Mariano Campoy-Quiles emphatised some benefits and drawbacks of publishing in Open Access:

Benefits: 

• Open Access articles (when found in digital repositories) receive 20-30 % more citations, so they are more visible.
• Other researchers from all over the world can read your research
• Open Access is interesting for companies or industries, that can develop the reserach. Technology Transfer is enhanced.

Drawbacks:

• Publishers earn money by two ways: charging for the subscription fee to the Institutions, and charging the APCs to the researchers! 
• We have to be aware of the Predatory Journals, who take profit of the Open Access to publish any type of paper, without even having peer-review. With the pressure of publishing, maybe some researchers are attracted to publish in this type of journals.

Thank you to the speakers and to the audience for coming!

More information:

• Librarian email (Alejandro Santos): This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
• ICMAB Manuel Cardona Library website: https://departments.icmab.es/sdib/
• Digital CSIC: http://digital.csic.es/
• Micro-MOOC Twitter: @moocmicro https://twitter.com/moocmicro
• Download here the presentation