Are funder Open Access platforms a good idea?
Author and article information
Abstract
As open access to publications continues to gather momentum we should continuously question whether it is moving in the right direction. A novel intervention in this space is the creation of open access publishing platforms commissioned by funding organisations. Examples include those of the Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation, as well as recently announced initiatives from public funders like the European Commission and the Irish Health Research Board. As the number of such platforms increases, it becomes urgently necessary to assess in which ways, for better or worse, this emergent phenomenon complements or disrupts the scholarly communications landscape. This article examines ethical, organisational and economic strengths and weaknesses of such platforms, as well as usage and uptake to date, to scope the opportunities and threats presented by funder open access platforms in the ongoing transition to open access. The article is broadly supportive of the aims and current implementations of such platforms, finding them a novel intervention which stand to help increase OA uptake, control costs of OA, lower administrative burden on researchers, and demonstrate funders’ commitment to fostering open practices. However, the article identifies key areas of concern about the potential for unintended consequences, including the appearance of conflicts of interest, difficulties of scale, potential lock-in and issues of the branding of research. The article ends with key recommendations for future consideration which include a focus on open scholarly infrastructure.
Cite this as
2018. Are funder Open Access platforms a good idea? PeerJ Preprints 6:e26954v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.26954v1Author comment
This is a preprint submission to PeerJ Preprints. The authors welcome comments.
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Additional Information
Competing Interests
TRH is Editor-in-Chief of Publications (ISSN 2304-6775), an open access journal on scholarly publishing published quarterly by MDPI
TRH is Senior Researcher at Know-Center GmbH, Graz, Austria. The Know-Center is funded within the Austrian COMET program—Competence Centers for Excellent Technologies – under the auspices of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology, the Austrian Federal Ministry of Economy, Family and Youth, and the State of Styria. COMET is managed by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency FFG.
BS is affiliated with the OpenAIRE initiative at the University of Göttingen. OpenAIRE is an EC-funded initiative to implement and monitor Open Access and Open Science policies in Europe and beyond. OpenAIRE has contributed to a tender submission for the EC's Open Research Europe platform.
BS and BK are members of the current Horizon 2020 expert group on Future of Scholarly Publishing and scholarly Communication (E03463).
BK, at the time of writing the manuscript, was seconded at the Ministry of Ministry of Education, Culture and Science of the Netherlands.
All authors are committed advocates of Open Access and Open Science.
Author Contributions
Tony Ross-Hellauer conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Birgit Schmidt conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, prepared figures and/or tables, performed the computation work, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Bianca Kramer conceived and designed the experiments, performed the experiments, analyzed the data, contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Data Deposition
The following information was supplied regarding data availability:
Zenodo. "Wellcome Open Research - Exploration of year one data" https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1249402
Funding
The authors received no funding for this work.
