The Open Advantage for 
Early Career Researchers
by Dr Ross Mounce
@rmounce
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3520-2046
www.okfn.org 
A bit about myself, for context...
I’m an evolutionary biologist into fossils & phylogenetics
* Vocal advocate for open scholarship (not just access!)
* Awarded Panton Fellowship 2012-13
* Submitted PhD @UniOfBath Oct 2013
* Now BBSRC-funded Postdoc at Bath, text & data mining
* On Organising Committee of:
(2013)
(Washington, D.C., November 2014)
http://www.opencon2014.org/
Why do I care about Open Access?
The abundance of paywalls seriously obstructs my 
ability to do rigorous research.
I believe charitably and publicly-funded research should 
be available to all, to read and re-use, at no extra cost. 
(~80% of academic research is public-funded)
I want my research to be read and re-used by others, 
rather than locked-away behind a paywall.
Why do I care about Open Data?
In my fields (palaeo, phylogenetics) data sharing is 
improving but still poor: ~4-16% of papers publicly 
share usable data.  
I believe charitably and publicly-funded research 
outputs including data & software should be 
available to all, to read and re-use, at no extra cost. 
(~80% of academic research is public-funded)
I want my research data & scripts to be re-used & cited 
by others, rather than languishing on my hard drives.
Avoid the shame 
of having your work paywalled!
$113 !!!
5 page article
Source: http://dx.doi.org/10.1166/jbmb.2012.1234 (still available at that price, UoBath has no access)
OA hugely benefits text & data mining
I’ve had my access to at least one publisher (BioOne) cut-off 
before. My 'crime' – downloading more than 25 PDFs in 5 
minutes.  
The paywall system and its 
rate limitations create artificial 
obstacles for researchers. 
In contrast, OA publishers have no
problem with you downloading ALL
their content. Many even actively
facilitate this. I have all of PLoS
on a USB stick.
Practical steps:
Avoid monopolistic publishers
When articles are published the publisher often takes the copyright of 
the work. After this, no-one else can publish copies of it, not even the 
author(s)! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_transfer_agreement
N.B. Don’t sign away your copyright! Journals do not need to take away your © 
Aim for newer, better journals
It’s a myth that gold OA is ‘expensive’
‘gold’ open access simply means journal-mediated OA
Most OA journals do not charge (APC’s) to publish with them* 
Have Fee Waivers
Low cost,
High quality
  Cost-Free
(for Authors)
AMNH Bulletin
Journal of Economic Perspectives
IZA Journals
Royal Society Open Science
*Source: Solomon, D. J. and Björk, B.-C. 2012. A study of open access journals using article processing 
charges. J Am Soc Inf Sci Tec 63:1485-1495. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/asi.22673
My experience with OA - ‘gold-route’
Stoltzfus, A., O'Meara, B., Whitacre, J., Mounce, R., Gillespie, E., Kumar, 
S., Rosauer, D., and Vos, R. 2012. Sharing and re-use of phylogenetic 
trees (and associated data) to facilitate synthesis. BMC Research Notes 
5:574+
Mounce, R 2013. Open access and altmetrics: Distinct but 
complementary. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science 
and Technology 39:14-17.
Poisot, T., Mounce, R., and Gravel, D. 2013. Moving toward a sustainable 
ecological science: don't let data go to waste! Ideas in Ecology and 
Evolution 6.
Vos, R ... Mounce, R. et al 2014. Enriched biodiversity data as a resource 
and service. Biodiversity Data Journal 2:e1125+
Fee-waiver
Cost
Free
Free
Free
My experience with OA - ‘green-route’
Mounce, R. and Wills, M. A. 2011. Phylogenetic position of Diania 
challenged. Nature doi: 10.1038/nature10266
Mounce, R. and Janies, D., 2013. Synergistic sharing of data and tools 
to enable team science. In: Zander, J. and Mosterman, P. J., eds. 
Computation for Humanity: Information Technology to Advance Society. 
CRC Press, pp. 437-447. [book chapter]
Mounce, R. and Wills, M. A. 2011. Methods of determining cranial and 
postcranial character congruence. doi: 10.6084/m9.figshare.88864 
[conference poster]
Stoltzfus A, O'Meara B, Whitacre J, Mounce R, Gillespie EL, Kumar S, 
Rosauer DF, Vos RA (2012) Data from: Sharing and re-use of 
phylogenetic trees (and associated data) to facilitate synthesis. Dryad 
Digital Repository. doi: 10.5061/dryad.h6pf365t [DATA]
Available in full at:
OPUS (UoBath) 
&
Academia.edu
OPUS (UoBath) 
&
Academia.edu
Tools!
Use these to your advantage!