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Open access publishing: 
a user perspective
Jo Verbeeck, EMAT, University of Antwerp
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EMAT, Antwerp, Belgium
EMAT, metrics
• 3 ERC grants
• ~ 70 collaborators
• >120 papers/y
• >3000 citations/y
• involved in 10 running EU projects
• strong collaboration with industry
publications/y
citations/y
Personal perspective
• a very busy researcher
• extreme pressure on quality research time (the driving 
force)
• critically dependent on external (public and private) 
funding (equipment is VERY expensive, people even 
more so)
• therefore critically dependent on reputation and 
visibility (the marketing aspect)
• responsibility towards general public (use of public 
funds)
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Open access publishing
• philosophy
• requirements (ERC, H2020, FWO, UA...)
• how to meet the requirements?
• who needs to pay?
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funder requirements on http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/juliet 
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journal rules on http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo 
Making your publication open access
• gold/green: rules are complicated (hence: sherpa)
• gold access can cost up to 5000 € 
• at 120 publications/y this would cost 600 K € /y
• In 5y this would cover the cost of a top of the range 
TEM instrument!
• Do we really want to spend public money on this?
• Do we really want to spend valuable research time 
figuring out the rules for different journals?
• Note also that the university already pays a very high 
amount on journal subscriptions (why pay twice?)
• so our strategy is to go for 'green' access unless we 
really can't avoid 'gold'
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Preprint/post print/as print
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the use of Arxiv
• what is Arxiv?
– open access repository for pre-prints
– unrefereed
– 1 million papers as of jan. 2015
– mostly physics/maths/computer science
– community funded (some institutions pay modest 
membership fee of the order of a few 1000 €)
• when to use it?
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Benefits
– you put a time stamp on your contribution even 
when the paper is still in a long referee process 
possibly with a few different journal
– other researchers will have the information sooner 
and can easily get to it which makes it more likely 
they will cite you later (opposite from embargo) [can 
be a factor 2-3 Harnad & Brody 2004]
– scientific progress can speed up significantly
– readers can discover flaws in the paper (rare but very 
useful)
– neat way to make things green open access and still 
have your paper in high IF journal (read fine print)
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Things to be aware of
• the referee process becomes more clear as readers can 
see different versions of the manuscript
• you can't retract an Arxiv paper!
• beware: your direct competitors also get an advance in 
time to catch up with you.
• certain journals don't allow Arxiv (in physics all allow 
pre-print, post print often also ok, sometimes with 
embargo)
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Do we need journals at all?
• approx. 50 million scientific papers published in total
• approx. 24.000 journals
• Pubmed stores one new article per MINUTE.
• hard to stay up to date, even in a limited field.
• The pressure on journal metrics has created a lot of 
'noise' on the channel.
• As a reader you might want guidance or quality 
selection by journals: you can't read it all.
• As a writer you want that your article sticks out and gets 
attention.
• compare to situation with newspapers vs. news provider
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Finding your own publications?
• in many places: Researchgate, Google scholar, 
mendeley, Arxiv, UA repository, EMAT website, own 
Mendeley database, Web of science, journal 
webpages, ...
• why is it important they are visible?
– the easier they are to find, the more likely they will 
be read and CITED
– the easier it is to see what you have been doing, the 
easier it is for jury's and referees to evaluate you
– as a researcher you can save an enormous amount of 
time if articles would be easy to get (they still are 
not)
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Creating a list of publications
• You will need to do this more often than you like
– project reports, web site, promotion, applying for 
positions, acquiring new projects, academic prizes...
• Every time there will be a new required style
• Need to include impact factor in the year of publication
• Number of citations
• Most researchers do this all manually and waste many 
days a year on this mindnumbing effort
• Citation analysis can be extracted from Web of Science 
(at least if your institution pays for this)-in future open 
access will greatly improve this situation.
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Open source software development
• Why bother?
• Why not commercial?
• Are you even allowed by your institution?
• Example of EELSMODEL
• What if, much later, commercial opportunities arise?
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Benefits generated
• strong reputation
• many invited talks and tutorials on the topic
• indirectly: scientific prizes, project funded, fixed position
• high amount of citations to the original work (80)
• ideal tool to develop new ideas: you are always a step 
ahead
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Downsides
• software is never finished: keeps taking time to debug 
and build new features. Time which is a lot more 
abundant when doing a PhD. as compared to being a 
professor
• software always grows to a complexity that becomes 
hard to maintain.
• user interface is important but generating articles about 
it is impossible.
• don't overestimate community contributions in a very 
specific field.
• may limit possibilities to commercial exploitation, but 
dual licensing is possible if you hold copyright. 
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Conclusion
• scientific results are becoming more accessible both for 
researchers and general public: great!
• this speeds up scientific progress and makes it more 
democratic: great!
• the more people know about your work the better it is 
for you (and for them)
• open access publishing is evolving, at the moment 
severe burden on researchers (time+money)
• administration surrounding publications is very 
inefficient (multiple databases)
• the way to build and evaluate reputation is changing
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