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Research Impact Challenge: Day 2

This guide contains a set of challenges to help York researchers improve the discoverability of their research and scholarly outputs.

What is today’s challenge? Learn about the benefits of open access (OA), OA publishing models, Creative Commons licences, and how to use Sherpa Romeo to understand a journal’s OA policies.

How to complete today's challenge:

  • Step 1: Read each of the tabs on this webpage:
    • Open Access Benefits
    • Open Access Publishing Models
    • Creative Commons Licences
    • Author Rights & Sherpa Romeo
  • Step 2: Pick a favourite journal in your field and investigate the journal's OA publishing policies on Sherpa Romeo.
  • Step 3: Fill out the challenge form (click below button) to show that you completed today’s challenge.

Fill Out Challenge Form

 

 

Need help with your OA publishing questions? Email opendeposit@yorku.ca for help with understanding OA policies, selecting Creative Commons licences, or using Sherpa Romeo.

What is Open Access (OA)? “Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers" (Wikipedia).

Benefits of OA:

There are two main benefits for OA, which can be broken down into benefits for both authors and society as a whole.

Benefits for authors:

  • Increases the discoverability of research, enhancing impact
  • Greater control over published works
  • Eases sharing and reuse among students and colleagues
  • Depositing a version of a work in an open access repository guarantees long term preservation

Benefits for everyone:

  • Accelerates discovery / improves education
  • Equitable access to research
  • Increases transparency and accountability

Review the following image to learn about additional OA benefits!

Benefits of Open Access, includes: more exposure for your work; practitioners can apply your findings; higher citation rates; your research can influence policy; the public can access your findings; compliant with grant rules; taxpayers get value for money; researchers in developing countries can see your work

Image credit: Image by Danny Kingsley & Sarah Brown on Aarhus University website. Available under a Creative Commons Attribution licence.

Optional Activity: Learn more by watching this video on Open Access Business Models (10:50).

What are some common open access (OA) publishing models? They can be broken down into two categories: (1) Individual paper level; (2) Whole publisher level.

Individual Paper Level:

  • Gold OA journals:
    • All articles and related content are available for free immediately on the journal's website.
    • Authors are sometimes required to pay author processing charges (APCs).
    • Articles usually have a Creative Commons licence.
  • Green OA journals:
    • Self-archiving by authors is permitted under green OA.
    • This means that authors are allowed to post pre-print versions to some sort of scholarly repository or personal / institutional website. 
  • Hybrid OA journals:
    • Hybrid journals contain a mixture of OA & subscription-only articles.
    • Authors must pay an APC to make their articles OA.
  • Diamond/Platinum OA journals:
    • These journals publish OA articles that do not require the author to pay any APC.

Whole Publisher Level:

  • Transformative Agreements (sometimes known as Read and Publish Agreements):
    • An institution will make one payment to the publisher, which allows everyone affiliated with that institution to read all the articles from that publisher as well as allowing researchers from the institution to publish OA in the journals of that publisher. These arrangements often only include hybrid journals from the publisher and not Gold OA journals.

York University Libraries' Transformative Agreements / Read and Publish Agreements:

The list of York University Libraries' transformative agreements with publishers (and other Open Access supports) is here.  

Bonus! Review the following image or review a PDF version of it to learn more about OA publishing models.

Describes the decisions a researcher may make to publish either Green OA, Gold OA, or in a subscription journal. A PDF copy is available for full download.

“Scholarly Publishing Models (PDF)” by Canadian Research Knowledge Network. Available under a Creative Commons Attribution licence.

 

Learn about Creative Commons (CC) Licences!

What are CC Licences?

  • CC licences are a standardized way for copyright holders to give permission to others to share, reuse and remix their creations.
  • CC licences work within existing copyright legislation and do not require creators to give up their copyright. 

  • There are 6 CC licences to choose from; however, the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence (CC-BY 4.0) is most commonly applied to scholarly articles.

Before applying a CC licence to your work, consider the following:

  • You must be the copyright owner of the work or have the authority to license the work.
  • Make sure to review the terms of the licence and make sure you understand the conditions.
  • Remember that Creative Commons licences cannot be revoked.

The Range of Creative Commons Licences

  • The following image lists the six Creative Commons licences in order of least open to most open. At the top of the spectrum is the Creative Commons Zero designation (which is not a licence and essentially puts your work in the public domain). The bottom of the spectrum includes the all rights reserved copyright mark. Learn more on the CC website.

The Creative Commons licences in order of most open to least open, with the Creative Commons Zero designation at the top (most open), and the all rights reserved copyright mark at the very bottom (least open).

Image from Creative Commons, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.

Bonus! If you'd like to learn more about the Creative Commons licences, review the following interactive slide deck.

Tips for Retaining Your Author Rights

  • Identify how you want your scholarly work to be used in the future.
  • Examine the publisher agreement in detail before signing. 
  • Compare other publisher policies using the Sherpa Romeo database. 
  • Negotiate the publishing agreement to retain the rights that are important to you  
  • Use an author addendum or reach out to opendeposit@yorku.ca. One of our librarians can help you understand the range of rights up for negotiation.
  • Make use of an open license to specify the terms of use for your work.

What is Sherpa Romeo?

  • Sherpa Romeo is a website that contains the Open Access (OA) policies for thousands of scholarly journals.
  • This allows you to investigate where, when and how you’re allowed to post pre-prints or the author accepted manuscript for the articles you publish.
  • In other words, do you need to pay an article processing charge to make your article OA? Or can you post a pre-print or author accepted manuscript on your personal home page or in a institutional or disciplinary repository?

Taking a Closer Look at Sherpa Romeo

  • Let's take a closer look at Sherpa Romeo using the journal, Cognitive Therapy and Research, as an example.
  • When you examine the below image, you may find the icons to be daunting. However, you can hover your mouse over each icon to learn more. You can also expand each section to learn more.

Sherpa Romeo landing page for the journal, Cognitive Therapy and Research, with the '+" arrow highlighted beside the 'Published Version' icons to show that the page can be expanded.

Some Findings

  • When you review the Sherpa Romeo page for the journal, Cognitive Therapy and Research, you'll learn a few key things about this journal:
    • Published version of the article: Authors need to pay an article processing charge to make the published version of their article OA. This makes the journal a Hybrid OA journal.
    • Accepted versions of the article have two options:
      • Personal website: Authors can immediately self-archive the accepted version of the article on their personal website.
      • Institutional or Subject Repository: Authors can self-archive the accepted version of the article 12 months after the published version has been made available on the publisher's website.
    • Submitted version / Pre-print: The pre-print version can be deposited to a pre-print repository or an author's webpage immediately.

Complete today's challenge! Pick a favourite journal in your field and investigate the journal's OA publishing policies on Sherpa Romeo.

Fill Out Challenge Form

 

 

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