Open Access Week: Green OA Trends

Today's post looks at some open access trends and developments relating to Green Open Access.

OA figures on my blog (a microcosm!)

But first, here are the year-to-date (YTD) figures (i.e., January to mid-October 2018) for the different categories of OA literature that I track, compared with previous years:

                           2015   2017   2018   2019 (ytd)
- Gold OA*         163     246     269     225
- Green OA**       60       65      59        73
- Hybrid OA          21       61      99      102

*These figures do not include a count of articles published in issues of forced migration-specific gold OA journals, like Intervention and Refuge, or in special issues of other gold OA journals that focused on forced migration issues. Total article counts for these over the last three years are: 294 (2017); 358 (2018); 319 (2019 to date)
**49 were preprints, 26 were postprints

Green OA

While the total 2019 numbers will change by year-end, it is likely they will continue along the same trajectory. It is particularly nice to see the bump in Green OA. Unlike Gold and Hybrid OA, there is no publication fee associated with Green OA (which involves depositing a pre- or postprint in a repository of some kind) and it enables authors to publish in their journal of choice. Yet despite its appeal in theory, in practice, Green OA has seen slow growth in part because of publisher constraints that dictate when and where eprints can be deposited.

The "when" refers to embargo periods. Generally, preprints can be deposited immediately because they are versions of research papers that have not yet been published or peer reviewed. However, postprints are versions that have undergone peer review and have been accepted for publication, but have not yet been finalized for publication. Depositing postprints is usually subject to an embargo period of anywhere from 6 to 24 months, sometimes longer.

The "where" refers to the whether the eprint is being uploaded to a personal web site, an institutional or subject repository, or to an academic social network (ASN) like ResearchGate or Academia.edu. In general, embargo periods are the shortest for deposits on personal web sites and the longest for ASNs.

Check out this table for information about both the when and the where for Green OA in forced migration-related journals.

Eprint trends

For some authors funded by research bodies that require immediate OA to published results, the embargo period may effectively eliminate the green route as a viable OA option. However, two trends are changing the eprint landscape. First, some publishers are doing away with embargoes altogether, including SAGE (publisher of International Migration Review) and Emerald (publisher of International Journal of Migration, Health & Social Care). (Cambridge University Press, publisher of the International Review of the Red Cross, has also eliminated embargoes for Humanities and Social Sciences Journals; however, this is a moot point for readers of the Review, as issues are already made freely available on the ICRC's web site.)

Second, there has been a sizable increase in the number and variety of preprint platforms available. (For a list, see section 1.4.1 in this article.) The first preprint repository was arXiv, which caters to the physics, computer science and math communities. The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) and RePEc: Research Papers in Economics platforms were launched subsequently; both are used often by forced migration authors. This activity took place in the 1990s. But since 2012, many more eprint archives have appeared that cater to different subject areas, geographic regions and languages, including PsyArXiv, SocArXiv, Arabixiv, AfricArXiv, IndiaRxiv and INA-Rxiv (preprint server of Indonesia).

Some of the advantages of preprints are: quick and easy dissemination of research; opportunity to gain feedback from a wider audience; and free for authors to publish/free for users to read. (See these articles for two additional perspectives on the value of preprints: Magori, 2019 & Sarabipour et al, 2019.) In addition, a recent study of arXiv preprints found "that the text contents of the scientific papers generally changed very little from the pre-print to final published versions."

Perhaps most importantly, preprint repositories - particularly those that are region- and language-specific - have the potential to serve as "digital infrastructures which are truly equal, comprehensive, multi-lingual and allow fair participation in knowledge creation" (Tennant et al., 2019, p. 16).

So where were the 73 preprints that were referenced on my blog in 2019 deposited? SSRN is by far the most popular repository, especially for preprints. But other preprint platforms like platforms like PsyArXiv and SocArXiv are beginning to be used as well. Postprints tend to be deposited in authors' institutional repositories.

Tagged Publications and Web Sites/Tools.