Assignment 2: Evaluating Open Access Support at Duke University
For this assignment, I am choosing to evaluate and provide recommendations for the state of open access support at Duke University. Compared to many other colleges and universities, Duke (and particularly Duke University Libraries, or the DUL) has a fairly long history of demonstrated support for open access research: not only does the DUL directly contribute to a wide variety of open access initiatives (“Duke-Supported Open Access Initiatives,” n.d.), but the university’s Academic Council also adopted an open access policy as early as March of 2010 (“Policy on Open Access to Research,” 2010), one which is cited as a particularly strong example of such a policy by Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center (“Drafting a Policy,” 2021). The policy is what is referred to by the Berkman Klein Center as a Type #1 policy, the type most strongly recommended by the center:
The policy grants the institution certain nonexclusive rights to future research articles published by faculty. This sort of policy typically offers authors a waiver option or opt-out from that license. It also requires deposit in the repository. (Ibid.)
Yet, despite the strength of this policy and this generally long history of open access support, I believe there are some key ways the policy could change to better support open access, especially since it has not been updated in 11 years. I will discuss a particular recommendation for the remainder of this paper.
First, the open access policy itself could be improved by including a formal codification of Duke’s adherence to the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity (COPE) program, described by Duke as
a program by universities to support equity in business models used for scholarly publishing. Each participating university commits to “underwriting reasonable publication charges for articles written by its faculty and published in fee-based open-access journals and for which other institutions would not be expected to provide funds.” (“Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity (COPE) Fund [Restricted to Duke Faculty, Post-docs, and Grad Students],” n.d.)
Under typical circumstances, a Duke scholar wishing to publish in an open access journal can be reimbursed up to $3000 for article processing fees in an academic year, and up to $2000 for an individual article (Ibid.). However, the fund is currently overwhelmed by “unprecedented demand in the 2022 fiscal year,” and no support is currently available; scholars at Duke applying for funds at this time are being placed on a waitlist (“Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity (COPE) Fund,” n.d.). While this demand shows that there is a strong interest in open access publishing at Duke, indicating some degree of success in the way Duke has chosen to demonstrate its support for open access, it would be preferable for the DUL and the university as a whole to allocate the resources necessary to avoid this complete draining of the fund. Codification of the fund’s existence in the policy, including a plan to sustain the fund as demand increases, could do much to keep the fund available to any scholar who wishes to use it, and thus more broadly encourage “gold” open access publication by Duke authors. The current policy requires only “green” open access publication—publishing one’s scholarly articles in Duke’s open access repository—but the Berkman Klein Center’s guidance on drafting an institutional open access policy notes that it is permissible for a “green”-focused policy to encourage “gold” publication as well, so long as the language around what is required of authors is explicit about the differences between “green” and “gold” publication (“Drafting a Policy,” 2021). This guidance even offers the example of noting the existence of a journal fund in one’s policy, as I am proposing Duke’s policy do:
A university with a green OA policy may (and we think, should) also launch a fund to help faculty pay publication fees at fee-based OA journals. But the green OA policy should make clear that it's separate from the journal fund, and the fund should make clear that it's separate from the green OA policy. Otherwise faculty might think that the policy requires faculty to submit new work to OA journals, a common and harmful misunderstanding. (Ibid.)
In the interest of improving existing institutional support for open access across the board, then, I think adding language about the existence of the COPE Fund to the policy would help strengthen it, in large part by codifying continued support for it as demand and author-side fees in open access journals continue to rise.
Of course, codifying sustained support of the COPE Fund in this way would likely pose something of a budgetary challenge for the DUL as this demand increases. As of the 2020 fiscal year, the DUL currently spends around $17 million dollars in materials expenditures, about 47% of the DUL's entire operating budget of about $36 million (“2019-2020 Annual Report,” n.d.). If the DUL continues to be tasked with the implementation of the university's Open Access initiatives, as Kevin Smith described it being in 2014 (“Open Access Expert Forum,” 2014), then this materials spending could serve as at least part of the source of these COPE funds. It is worth noting that already, around 1% of the collections budget is already allocated to the support of OA initiatives in general (“Duke-Supported Open Access Initiatives,” n.d.).
That said, the DUL is likely to face significant budget cuts over the next few years, so continuing to rely solely on the library—and its budget—in the support of open access at Duke in general may prove to be unsustainable in the future.[1] While it is difficult to imagine the library not shouldering a significant portion of open access support at the university, both materially and immaterially, it can potentially be supplemented by other arms of the university, including academic departments. There is precedent for this, too, as the COPE Fund at Duke is already supported by Duke's schools of medicine and nursing in addition to the DUL (“Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity (COPE) Fund,” n.d.). Planning for this change, however, would likely require changing the way open access is publicized within the university, which is in part why I would also recommend a greater emphasis on open access-related outreach by the library within the Duke community.
In making this addition to the existing open access policy at Duke, then, I would hope that the COPE Fund, and by extension continuing interest in open access publication by Duke scholars, would continue to grow and be supported by the university. But of course, codifying the Fund’s existence and continued support in the policy would likely not just require a one-time budgetary boost to the COPE Fund. Indeed, further evaluation would have to be done over time to ensure that this policy change is having the intended effect of increasing “gold” open access publication by Duke scholars. The current policy language describes a need for the policy and its service model to be reviewed after a three-year period (“Policy on Open Access to Research,” 2010). Such a periodic review could sensibly be extended to reviewing the continued support of the COPE Fund. In this way, support could be added or rescinded as the effect of including the COPE Fund in the policy on “gold” open access publication rates at Duke is continually assessed.
References
2019-2020 Annual Report. (2020). Duke University Libraries. Retrieved November 1, 2021, from https://library.duke.edu/sites/default/files/dul/users/Joyce%20Chapman/2019_-_2020_annual_report.pdf
Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity (COPE) Fund. (n.d.). Duke ScholarWorks. Retrieved November 1, 2021, from https://scholarworks.duke.edu/open-access/cope/
Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity (COPE) Fund [Restricted to Duke Faculty, Post-docs, and Grad Students]. (n.d.). Duke University Research Funding. Retrieved November 1, 2021, from https://researchfunding.duke.edu/compact-open-access-publishing-equity-cope-fund-restricted-duke-faculty-post-docs-and-grad-students
Drafting a Policy. (last updated 2021, May 28). Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Retrieved November 1, 2021, from https://cyber.harvard.edu/hoap/Drafting_a_policy
Duke-Supported Open Access Initiatives. (n.d.). Duke ScholarWorks. Retrieved November 1, 2021, from https://scholarworks.duke.edu/open-access/open-initiatives/
Open Access Expert Forum. (2014, April 22). University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Retrieved November 1, 2021, from https://ils.unc.edu/courses/2021_fall/inls700_001/Readings/UNCApril2014-OpenAccessExpertForumMinutes.pdf
Policy on Open Access to Research. (2010, March 18). Duke University Office of the Provost. Retrieved November 1, 2021, from https://provost.duke.edu/sites/default/files/FHB_App_P.pdf
[1] I am aware of these anticipated budget cuts as a DUL employee. I do not think the numbers and timeframe have been publicized yet, so I am not sharing those figures here.
I have neither given nor received aid while working on this assignment. I have completed the graded portion BEFORE looking at anyone else's work on this assignment. Signed Anna Twiddy