7 ms·

Caltech Announces Open Access Policy

267 points by kercker 13y ago

xvedejas 13y ago
I'm a student (and researcher) at Caltech — and very excited to hear about this. I hope Caltech continues to push for open access. I know that many undergraduates would like to have course lectures posted freely online like MIT's open courseware. I do wonder, how common is such a policy at other institutions? I assume this must be uncommon, since it's apparently newsworthy?
- weland 13y ago
  It is, unfortunately, fairly uncommon.
  - lsh 13y ago
    Indeed. It is becoming less uncommon, especially in the UK where I work with a national policy to require research papers arising from tax payer funded work to be published using OA. Also, the Universities are really leading the way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access_mandate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access_mandate UCL are exceptional in this regard and we work closely with the institution and many of it's students and alumni publishing their (OA) books and journal articles: http://www.ubiquitypress.com/ebooks http://www.ubiquitypress.com/ebooks and to download these books: http://www.doabooks.org/doab?func=publisher&pId=1194 http://www.doabooks.org/doab?func=publisher&pId=1194 OA shares many parallels with the rise of Free/Open Source software its uncanny.
- bello 13y ago
  Unfortunately, few Caltech classes have lectures that are actually worth it to be posted online (unlike the MIT ones, who are IMO far superior in teaching quality, for the most part)
  - WalterBright 13y ago
    I attended Caltech about 35 years ago. I kept my notes, but looking at them now without recalling the context of the lectures makes them a bit on the incomprehensible side. I sure wish those lectures had been recorded and I could refresh my memory on the more interesting ones. I've also seen some of the MIT online videos, and my recollection is the Caltech lectures I attended were of comparable quality.
- mjn 13y ago
  They're becoming more common. The entire University of California system already has a similar policy, of institutional open-access archival by default, but with a waiver process for a handful of cases where the author thinks it's needed: http://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-policy/ http://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-policy/
- BHSPitMonkey 13y ago
  It's a big topic at my institution, and here at the Libraries it's constantly being pushed and advocated with faculty and through conferences we play a part in. http://openaccess.unt.edu/ http://openaccess.unt.edu/
irollboozers 13y ago
Congratulations Caltech on a great move! This will only have positive effects for the future of scholarly publishing. Best part: >Faculty may still grant exclusive rights to their publishers, either permanently or for an embargoed period, but to do so, they must request a waiver from the open-access policy. At other institutions with open-access policies, such as MIT and Harvard, faculty have requested waivers for about 5 percent of the total number of papers produced, usually to comply with the requirement of a few publishers that want a formal waiver in order to even consider manuscripts for publication. 5%, and in those cases, because of dinosaur publishers. This is a very conclusive sign for the shift in mentality towards open access.
- mjn 13y ago
  One nice thing about even having the waiver process, even if it's granted to anyone who requests, is that it adds a slight bureaucratic roadblock that causes some authors to rethink a publication choice they might not have thought much about in the past. You go to publish with $big_journal, the journal sees you're from a university with an open-access mandate and asks you to get an open-access waiver before you can submit a manuscript, and in some percentage of the cases this might cause you to just redirect your manuscript elsewhere. In some cases that might be difficult; some sub-fields don't have as many respected journals as others, or your paper might be something unusual that's a perfect fit for a particular special issue and hard to publish otherwise. But those end up being minority cases.
  - marvin 13y ago
    This is incidentally a textbook example of how the regulation of free markets is supposed to work.
    - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
      This is a good thing in this case, but adding red-tape to intentionally alter incentives is merely one useful tool in regulating markets, not a panacea, and can easily be used, intentionally or not, to work against those aims e.g. of course you're allowed to to use any supplier, just fill in these forms in triplicate or use our preselected choice.
coffeemug 13y ago
The decision of our faculty to make their papers freely accessible online will ensure that the global community of researchers, students, and casual followers of science and engineering will learn about our work at earlier stages, enabling them to put it to use for the benefit of society. I love how they mention "casual followers of science". To me this is a huge deal. I'm not a member of academia, but I really enjoy reading papers from a wide variety of fields (in the spirit of "learn everything about something and something about everything"). I never intend to stop, and I know lots of "laymen" who do the same. The unavailability of papers, lack of centralized tools, and terrible search interfaces have been incredibly frustrating. I can't wait for a day when we get a centralized, non-profit, publish/subscribe consumer service for all the papers that ever get published by major research universities (with a good search tool). The value of such a service to the public and society would be enormous. As more and more people get educated and used to dealing with science, this could be as big a deal as wikipedia. We're not quite there yet, but this is a huge step by CalTech in the right direction.
- weland 13y ago
  > I love how they mention "casual followers of science" Me too. This is quite beautiful. After I left academia, subscribing to all the journals I used to have access to through my university became economically unfeasible, for obvious reasons.
  - laichzeit0 13y ago
    My alma mater's library has a proxy that you can go through, as if you were sitting right there in the library, and have access to any journal they subscribe to. The trick being you have to be a current student, or alumni student. Alumni membership per year is the equivalent of $40, you can take out books from the library and use that proxy. You should see if your university doesn't have something similar.
    - weland 13y ago
      This sounds like a great feature. I'm quite sure they don't have anything like this.
kjdfgkjsg 13y ago
While I'm sure it had worthwhile content, their header was so distracting that I never read what it had to say.
impendia 13y ago
> Indeed, some publishers, seeking to protect their own investment in scholarly work, have authorized third-party agencies to find articles posted in violation of their contractual rights and to issue Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notices that threaten legal action if articles are not removed from the web. Wow! Really? I am a math professor, and in mathematics I have never heard of this happening. It would strike me as professional suicide on the publishers' behalf: holding a knife to the neck of their golden goose. It seems that I was not alone in this perception: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9958/why-do-universities-tolerate-uploading-papers-on-their-websites/9968#9968 http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9958/why-do-univ... Although I am in 100% in support of Caltech's policy, I would have guessed that the issue was mostly theoretical and that they were only taking a stand on principle. Either Caltech is bluffing, or I stand corrected. I'm not sure which. But in either case, kudos to them.
- cscheid 13y ago
  Elsevier has been targeting academia.edu lately. HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6882290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6882290
bladedtoys 13y ago
Absolutely excellent, kudos! I only wish Aaron Swartz had lived to see it.
- niamh 13y ago
  Good point! Hopefully this paves the way for a movement among other universities. I don't know of any similar initiatives in Ireland.
001sky 13y ago
At other institutions with open-access policies, such as MIT and Harvard, faculty have requested waivers for about 5 percent of the total number of papers produced, usually to comply with the requirement of a few publishers that want a formal waiver <in order to even consider manuscripts> for publication. This is the one caveat. It would be great to out these journals. Seems likely is public/501c money going into the research on these, too.
robertwalsh0 13y ago
It looks like we'll be able to access the MS-Word looking version for free. For the "styled/typeset" two-column version it looks like people will have to pay for the paywalled version. At this point I'm left wondering: 1. Is the typeset version that much of a value add? Do people not realize how relatively easy it is to do these things on apart from publishing houses? 2. Is reading a single column version all that bad? We do it on the internet every day.

267 points by kercker 13y ago

I'm a student (and researcher) at Caltech — and very excited to hear about this. I hope Caltech continues to push for open access. I know that many undergraduates would like to have course lectures posted freely online like MIT's open courseware. I do wonder, how common is such a policy at other institutions? I assume this must be uncommon, since it's apparently newsworthy?

weland 13y ago
It is, unfortunately, fairly uncommon.
- lsh 13y ago
  Indeed. It is becoming less uncommon, especially in the UK where I work with a national policy to require research papers arising from tax payer funded work to be published using OA. Also, the Universities are really leading the way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access_mandate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access_mandate UCL are exceptional in this regard and we work closely with the institution and many of it's students and alumni publishing their (OA) books and journal articles: http://www.ubiquitypress.com/ebooks http://www.ubiquitypress.com/ebooks and to download these books: http://www.doabooks.org/doab?func=publisher&pId=1194 http://www.doabooks.org/doab?func=publisher&pId=1194 OA shares many parallels with the rise of Free/Open Source software its uncanny.
bello 13y ago
Unfortunately, few Caltech classes have lectures that are actually worth it to be posted online (unlike the MIT ones, who are IMO far superior in teaching quality, for the most part)
- WalterBright 13y ago
  I attended Caltech about 35 years ago. I kept my notes, but looking at them now without recalling the context of the lectures makes them a bit on the incomprehensible side. I sure wish those lectures had been recorded and I could refresh my memory on the more interesting ones. I've also seen some of the MIT online videos, and my recollection is the Caltech lectures I attended were of comparable quality.
mjn 13y ago
They're becoming more common. The entire University of California system already has a similar policy, of institutional open-access archival by default, but with a waiver process for a handful of cases where the author thinks it's needed: http://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-policy/ http://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-policy/
BHSPitMonkey 13y ago
It's a big topic at my institution, and here at the Libraries it's constantly being pushed and advocated with faculty and through conferences we play a part in. http://openaccess.unt.edu/ http://openaccess.unt.edu/

irollboozers 13y ago

Congratulations Caltech on a great move! This will only have positive effects for the future of scholarly publishing. Best part: >Faculty may still grant exclusive rights to their publishers, either permanently or for an embargoed period, but to do so, they must request a waiver from the open-access policy. At other institutions with open-access policies, such as MIT and Harvard, faculty have requested waivers for about 5 percent of the total number of papers produced, usually to comply with the requirement of a few publishers that want a formal waiver in order to even consider manuscripts for publication. 5%, and in those cases, because of dinosaur publishers. This is a very conclusive sign for the shift in mentality towards open access.

mjn 13y ago
One nice thing about even having the waiver process, even if it's granted to anyone who requests, is that it adds a slight bureaucratic roadblock that causes some authors to rethink a publication choice they might not have thought much about in the past. You go to publish with $big_journal, the journal sees you're from a university with an open-access mandate and asks you to get an open-access waiver before you can submit a manuscript, and in some percentage of the cases this might cause you to just redirect your manuscript elsewhere. In some cases that might be difficult; some sub-fields don't have as many respected journals as others, or your paper might be something unusual that's a perfect fit for a particular special issue and hard to publish otherwise. But those end up being minority cases.
- marvin 13y ago
  This is incidentally a textbook example of how the regulation of free markets is supposed to work.
  - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
    This is a good thing in this case, but adding red-tape to intentionally alter incentives is merely one useful tool in regulating markets, not a panacea, and can easily be used, intentionally or not, to work against those aims e.g. of course you're allowed to to use any supplier, just fill in these forms in triplicate or use our preselected choice.

coffeemug 13y ago

The decision of our faculty to make their papers freely accessible online will ensure that the global community of researchers, students, and casual followers of science and engineering will learn about our work at earlier stages, enabling them to put it to use for the benefit of society. I love how they mention "casual followers of science". To me this is a huge deal. I'm not a member of academia, but I really enjoy reading papers from a wide variety of fields (in the spirit of "learn everything about something and something about everything"). I never intend to stop, and I know lots of "laymen" who do the same. The unavailability of papers, lack of centralized tools, and terrible search interfaces have been incredibly frustrating. I can't wait for a day when we get a centralized, non-profit, publish/subscribe consumer service for all the papers that ever get published by major research universities (with a good search tool). The value of such a service to the public and society would be enormous. As more and more people get educated and used to dealing with science, this could be as big a deal as wikipedia. We're not quite there yet, but this is a huge step by CalTech in the right direction.

weland 13y ago
> I love how they mention "casual followers of science" Me too. This is quite beautiful. After I left academia, subscribing to all the journals I used to have access to through my university became economically unfeasible, for obvious reasons.
- laichzeit0 13y ago
  My alma mater's library has a proxy that you can go through, as if you were sitting right there in the library, and have access to any journal they subscribe to. The trick being you have to be a current student, or alumni student. Alumni membership per year is the equivalent of $40, you can take out books from the library and use that proxy. You should see if your university doesn't have something similar.
  - weland 13y ago
    This sounds like a great feature. I'm quite sure they don't have anything like this.

kjdfgkjsg 13y ago

While I'm sure it had worthwhile content, their header was so distracting that I never read what it had to say.

impendia 13y ago

> Indeed, some publishers, seeking to protect their own investment in scholarly work, have authorized third-party agencies to find articles posted in violation of their contractual rights and to issue Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notices that threaten legal action if articles are not removed from the web. Wow! Really? I am a math professor, and in mathematics I have never heard of this happening. It would strike me as professional suicide on the publishers' behalf: holding a knife to the neck of their golden goose. It seems that I was not alone in this perception: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9958/why-do-universities-tolerate-uploading-papers-on-their-websites/9968#9968 http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9958/why-do-univ... Although I am in 100% in support of Caltech's policy, I would have guessed that the issue was mostly theoretical and that they were only taking a stand on principle. Either Caltech is bluffing, or I stand corrected. I'm not sure which. But in either case, kudos to them.

cscheid 13y ago
Elsevier has been targeting academia.edu lately. HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6882290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6882290

bladedtoys 13y ago

Absolutely excellent, kudos! I only wish Aaron Swartz had lived to see it.

niamh 13y ago
Good point! Hopefully this paves the way for a movement among other universities. I don't know of any similar initiatives in Ireland.

001sky 13y ago

At other institutions with open-access policies, such as MIT and Harvard, faculty have requested waivers for about 5 percent of the total number of papers produced, usually to comply with the requirement of a few publishers that want a formal waiver <in order to even consider manuscripts> for publication. This is the one caveat. It would be great to out these journals. Seems likely is public/501c money going into the research on these, too.

robertwalsh0 13y ago

It looks like we'll be able to access the MS-Word looking version for free. For the "styled/typeset" two-column version it looks like people will have to pay for the paywalled version. At this point I'm left wondering: 1. Is the typeset version that much of a value add? Do people not realize how relatively easy it is to do these things on apart from publishing houses? 2. Is reading a single column version all that bad? We do it on the internet every day.