This is a list of active research projects on open access. To keep entries short, please link to online descriptions or project pages when possible. Please include contact information for the principal investigators.
Assessing of the Economic and Social Impact of the Public Domain in the Information Society
This is a project sponsored by the European Commission. Rightscom Ltd is the lead partner. More information on the project and the other project partners can be found here. The project is currently searching for any data sources that will help us to make estimates of the number of public domain works in the EU (literary and artistic works, music and audiovisual material). We are also interested in any data about how public domain works get used. If you can help please e-mail mark.isherwood@rightscom.com. Many thanks in advance.
Copyright negotiations between authors and publishers
The majority of the journals’ publishers require that the authors, whose articles have been accepted for publication, sign a license agreement transferring their copyright to the journal. Some authors are not in favor of this agreement and negotiate with the publishers over the copyright of their articles. This research will track these authors, record their stories, and highlight their experiences during the negotiations.
Defining and Measuring Success Variables of Open Access Journals
Investigators: Robin Peek (email) and Athanasia Pontika
Funded by the Hollowell Research Fund. Open Access (OA) journals are being developed at an aggressive rate around the world but the number of journals can be deceptive because no research has been done to analyze how successful these journals are in establishing basic attributes such as gaining sufficient submissions to keep and maintain a routine publication schedule. Concerns have been raised about how successful this influx of new journals can be (Crawford, August, 2008) [1] and if any predictor variables may explain why some journals are more likely to succeed than others. The ease by which new journals can be created can and does mean that a journal might even become nothing more than an empty shell the little or no submissions, while other OA journals thrive.
Quarterly figures for open access publishing and archiving, growth and analysis. Available in open data, commentary, and peer reviewed versions.
Gathering Firm Evidence on the Limits of Toll Access
Investigators: Bill Hooker (email) and Graham Steel (email)
This project commenced in Sept '08 whilst in 'beta' within a FriendFeed room. As such, this represents a very small fraction of STM academics whose research is 'buffered' by TA. That said, the Investigators report (here) that this is a solid foundation for additional building upon. Similar to the above, the first results of Phase One were collated, Dec '08.
As matters stand (May '09), there are now 86 members of the References Wanted room at FriendFeed. The Investigators are keen to roll this out a bit further, hence this inclusion in the OAD wiki.
initial statistics and some discussion of future directions here.
Society publishers with open access journals
Investigators: Peter Suber (email) and Caroline Sutton (email)
The project has two phases. Phase One is to make a comprehensive list of scholarly societies worldwide that support gold OA for their own journals. Phase Two will survey the societies discovered in Phase One in order to learn details about their turn to OA, their business models, and the financial and academic consequences of their OA policies.
The first results of Phase One were published in SOAN for November 2007. However, Phase One is not complete and we are still enlarging our list. The current version of our list is OA in an Excel spreadsheet under a Creative Commons Attribution license. We welcome additions and corrections. Phase Two has not yet begun.
