ALLEA ALL E uropean A cademies Ethical Aspects of Open Access: A Windy Road WORKSHOP REPORT December 2018 Published in Berlin by ALLEA December 2018 ALLEA c/o Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities Jaegerstr. 22/23 10117 Berlin Germany [email protected] www.allea.org Redistribution, including in the form of extracts, is permitted for educational, scientific and private purposes if the source is quoted (unless otherwise explicitly indicated by the article in question). Permission must be sought from ALLEA for commercial use. Acknowledgements ALLEA would like to thank the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts for hosting this event as well as all the speakers for their valuable contributions. Great attention was paid in the compilation of this report to ensure an accurate reflection of the discussions of the workshop held in Brussels on 1 February 2018. The opinions mentioned in this report may not necessarily reflect ALLEA’s opinion or those of its Member Academies. ALLEA ALL E uropean A cademies Ethical Aspects of Open Access: A Windy Road WORKSHOP REPORT December 2018 Table of Contents Foreword.......................................................................................................................................7 Keynote: Ethical Aspects of Open Access – László Fesüs................................................................8 Editorial Responsibility in an Open Access World – Chris Graf........................................................14 Open Data: Balancing Transparency with Resilience – Stephan Lewandowsky.............................20 Questionable and Unethical Publishers: How to Spot Them and Enable Researchers to Avoid Being Trapped – Lars Bjørnshauge...............................................................................................26 Research Assessment in Open Science – Michele Garfinkel...........................................................32 Dealing with the Challenges of Openness – Stakeholder Perspectives...........................................36 Workshop Programme.................................................................................................................40 About the ALLEA Permanent Working Group Science & Ethics.....................................................42 About ALLEA...............................................................................................................................44 Foreword Ever since the Berlin Declaration in 2003 marked It is therefore high time to think about improving a milestone in the proliferation of open access open access publishing, to develop stronger publishing, the topic has attracted large interest mechanism against fraud, and to enable researchers among the scientific community and beyond. to freely share the fruits of their labour with their The idea to provide results of research funded peers and the general public. by taxpayer money free of charge to the general This report on ethical aspects of open access public is as simple as it is enticing. Yet, in the past summarises the outcomes of a workshop which 15 years, a variety of different models and forms of was attempting to do exactly that. Throughout access have created a vast, and at times confusing, the various presentations, given by a variety of system leading to uncertainty among the research stakeholders, solutions from different angles are community about this, at its heart, very laudable provided. We are deeply grateful to our hosts, the development. Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and The advent of open access coincides with increasing the Arts, for welcoming us in Brussels, to all of our pressures on the academic community to publish or speakers, who have made invaluable contributions perish, whereby researchers feel the need to publish to the topic, to the audience for their lively and as many research articles in as many impactful interesting participation, and to the members of journals as possible in order to further their careers. the ALLEA Permanent Working Group on Science Predatory journals have taken advantage of these & Ethics on whose initiative this workshop came to existential pressures and prey on researchers to be. circumvent established practices of good research We do hope that this report can serve the reader conduct. as a comprehensive overview on the state of the However, open access is here to stay, as the ethical debate on open access and the various European Commission’s plans to publish all of the actors involved in the process to achieve that research funded within its research framework European research will in the future be as accessible programmes in open access by 2020 clearly show. as possible. Professor Göran Hermerén Professor László Fésüs Chair of ALLEA Permanent Working Group on Lead workshop organiser; member of Science & Ethics ALLEA Permanent Working Group on Science & Ethics 7 WORKSHOP REPORT ETHICAL ASPECTS OF OPEN ACCESS Keynote - Ethical Aspects of Open Access Publishing László Fésüs, Hungarian Academy of Sciences The rise of open access publishing in the past 15 practices, both of which we can find in the open years or so has been a laudable development access world. in general, though lack of clear guidelines and open access publishing has become a global absent harmonisation procedures on how to industry based on the gold access publishing publish correctly in open access and with whom model, with the Directory of Open Access Journals have provided a breeding ground for unacceptable (DOAJ) estimating that there are currently around and unethical publishing practices. 10.000 OA journals in existence. This presentation will reflect on the trends and Nevertheless, the growth of open access publishing developments in open access publishing; the has not exactly proceeded as anticipated or ethical concerns and issues derived from open predicted. According to a 2017 analysis, only access publishing; and the reaction of the scientific around 15% of journals publish all accepted articles community to these challenges. as open access (Else, 2018) - financed by charging Trends and Developments in Open per-article fees to authors – and just less than Access Publishing half have adopted a ‘hybrid’ model of publishing, whereby they make papers immediately free to read for a fee. Open access cannot be looked at in isolation. Rather it is a development that went hand in In 2011, it was predicted (in a presentation made hand with the digitisation of academic research by Peter Binfield, of PLoS to the Society of and, more recently, the involvement of Big Data. Scholarly Publishing meeting in 2011) that 50% of Increasingly this enables researchers to collaborate STM (Science, Technology, Medicine) publications more easily across national boundaries and would be published by around 100 megajournals in academic disciplines. At the same time, scientific open access by now. However, the actual number output is shifting away from the Western World, is closer to a mere 3% of STM publications. Open as evidenced by the fact that there are now more access publishing has created an explosion of titles, scientific papers published in China than in the most of which seem to be competing for a small United States (US National Science Foundation, slice of a fixed pie (Davis, 2018). This competition 2018). Involving more people in the scientific has only stiffened further with the arrival of big endeavour, spread across more disciplines and publishing houses in open access. Arguably, open countries, undoubtedly is beneficial to the quality access had its roots in a reaction against the very of research. Yet, an ever-growing system with monopoly of those big publishers, yet by their little to no regulation may either lead to confusion sheer market force and competitive advantage, among researchers or to questionable business they have managed to assert themselves in the 8 WORKSHOP REPORT ETHICAL ASPECTS OF OPEN ACCESS field of open access publishing. “The small number questionable dominance of scientific publishing by of elite journals with far more submissions than richer institutions. they can possibly handle in their toll-access flagship 2. The ‘green’ model of OA publishing emerged, can use this cascading model to reassert themselves requiring authors to deposit their manuscript or in the marketplace” (Esposito, 2015). its accepted version in a public repository within a It has to be emphasised that rigorous quality predetermined period of time. control, information, dissemination, innovative The article is generally made available free of charge technologies in publishing and archiving are not free, after an embargo period which may vary depending somebody has to bear the costs. The more selective on the research funders: mostly either 6 months to the editorial process is, the more costly it becomes 1 year in the natural sciences and between 1 to 2 to publish high quality journals. “In the absence of years in the social sciences and humanities. external support, an open access journal has to be either selective and expensive, or inexpensive but Uncertainty about open access publishing models less selective. Highly selective journals running makes compliance cumbersome for researchers. in the open access mode struggle to break even, Open access mandates (gold or green, different whereas large-volume, low-selectivity open access repository requirements, reporting) set by publishing generates substantial profit” (Leptin, institutions, funders and governments