Supporting Researchers with OA Publishing
Funders should go beyond simply having OA policies in place. They should maintain the infrastructure—people and systems—within their organizations to actively assist researchers with finding an appropriate OA venue.
A good example of this is the Chronos tool developed by the Gates Foundation. The tool helps authors through every stage of the publication process from identifying appropri ate locations in which to publish and submitting payment to producing grant-level reports of all publications associated to a project (chronos.gatesfoundation.org). And staff of fund ing organizations can actually follow up with researchers to ensure that publications have been made openly accessible, dishing out incentives for compliance or consequences for noncompliance as appropriate. Right now, the Gates Foundation’s Chronos tool is only available to Gates Foundation grantees, but a tool such as this would be helpful for researchers having to comply with a host of policies.
Funders can also assist by creating new outlets for OA pub lications. For instance, the Gates Foundation has launched Gates Open Research (gatesopenresearch.org), and the Well come Trust has launched Wellcome Open Research (wellcomeopenresearch.org)—both developed on the F1000 platform (f1000.com).
Moving Past Publications to Include Data
One of the key elements of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation policy is that it requires the data underpinning publications to be made immediately openly accessible (gatesfoundation. org/how-we-work/general-information/open-access-policy). Within the past few years, more policies have been headed in this direction. While publishers have been working to make publications openly accessible for the last 10–15 years, open data is a relatively new concept.
Open data is not a one-size-fits-all solution and should be thoughtfully and carefully implemented. Rather than having one standard open data policy, one of the benefits of a group such as ORFG is that member organizations have the ability to learn from each other and share concerns that they’re hearing from their own researchers. Scientists are still raising new issues related to ethics, privacy, and confidentiality, as well as the potential political and social ramifications of publishing selected datasets. The ORFG organizations have the ability to work through these challenges together.
While it is more of a stretch than some of the other measures, the ORFG could advocate for changing the reward system for researchers. Right now, tenure for academic researchers—and promotion for researchers who work in non-academic environments—is based in large part on where research gets pub lished. Funders can—and should—take a more active role in promoting uptake and usage of research instead of relying on the ISI Journal Impact Factor.
Tipping the Balance
The establishment of the Open Research Funders Group as an ally in the OA movement could well prove to be a defining event in the push to make research more available to those who need it the most. By coordinating their efforts, group members can work together on issues they identify as key, and they can use their considerable combined influence to help reshape the research publication marketplace.
