Publisher Perspectives on Open Access and Licensing

SPARC Japan Seminar 2023

Publisher Perspectives
on Open Access and Licensing
Victoria Eva（Elsevier）

Abstract
Victoria will provide an overview of considerations that researchers and institutions may wish to make when publishing research, particularly as they think through open access options. Victoria will offer brief explanations
and context regarding models for open access, where licensing fits in and why, plus policy implications for open
access models and licensing.

Victoria Eva
As SVP of Global Policy and Industry Relations at Elsevier, Victoria is responsible formanaging Elsevier’s policies and strategy for access to research outputs, and for coordinating on global policy and legislative issues pertaining to Open Science. Victoria’s
team also manages and coordinates Elsevier's partnerships within the publishing industry
via trade and member associations. Victoria has a background in policy, publishing, andcommunications. Prior to joining Elsevier in 2018, Victoria managed policy at education
publisher Pearson Plc. Her previous roles include Head of Communications at trade body
The Publishers Association, and handling accounts as part of a Public Relations consultancy, specialising in media and copyright law firms.

I am a Senior Vice President for Global Policy
and Industry Relations at Elsevier.

I am here to-cal decision making across the global researches
and health ecosystems.

In everything we publish,

day to talk about open science and particularly

we uphold the highest standards of quality andbringing a publisher perspective on issues such as

integrity at scale to ensure value to the research

open access (OA) and licensing.

community including researchers, healthcare professionals, institutions, and funders.

Elsevier’s MissionJust to give you a quick overview of Elsevier,

Pillars Supporting Open Science

our mission is to help researchers and healthcare

Now, I am going to briefly introduce the context

professionals to advance science and improveand background of open science before I get into thehealth outcomes for the benefit of society.

details.

We real-ize this by facilitating customers’ insights and criti-

National Institute of Informatics

What is the open science?

Figure 1

shows a house with various pillars supporting open

SPARC Japan Seminar 2023 Nov. 28, 2023

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Publisher Perspectives on Open Access and Licensing
science overall structure. Open science is a meth-provides the information and explanation about

od to conduct research in an inclusive, collaborative,

how to share and reuse the article in crystal-clear

and transparent way.

terms to readers, users, and any third party.

But this must be held up byIn

those pillars or components of open science, which

this sense, Gold OA ensures the openness not only

include things like OA, open research data andby making research available but by clarifying thesharing of research data.

method to share and reuse the research to support

Today, I will talk about those pillars, open indi-both the author and the users.

Under Gold OA,

cators for responsible research assessment andthe costs of publishing are recovered in advance via

evaluation as well as supporting access to research

an Article Publishing Charge (APC).

for wider society for societal benefit.

Furthermore,

The other is Green OA.

There is a clear differ-

I will explain the tools, software, and infrastructureence between Green OA and Gold OA. Green OA

to support that open ecosystem.

is not a publishing model like Gold OA, but deriva-I hope you will

get a sense that there are a lot of elements thattive from the subscription model.

make up open science.

that an author chooses to publish under the sub-I will focus on just a few ofscription model.

those in this presentation.

There is a fact

Also, he/she can publish it for

free of charge unlike Gold OA model.
They might also want to make their research

Key Definitions in OA
I would like to give some definitions of OA before going into the details (Figure 2).

article freely available.

We have to strike a bal-This is theance here because as publishers we do need to en-core of what I will be talking today, which is thesure the sustainability and the viability of the sub-two forms of OA that particularly Elsevier, as wellscription model.

as most other publishers, would operate.

available to everybody other than subscribers, that

The first is Gold OA.

This is a publishing

If you make contents freely

will undermine the subscription model.

We want

model, which enables anyone to access the final

to balance with the understanding that researchers

version of a research article promptly and freely.

may want to share their research freely, but for

Another important aspect of Gold OA is ensuring

whatever reason may not have decided to choosethat the final article should be made available un-Open Access publication.

der a Creative Commons (CC) end user license.
The CC license is really important because it

In this situation, we say you can use the Green
OA route.

The author publishes by the subscrip-

Key definitions in open access

Open science

Open science describes a way of working that ismore inclusive, collaborative and transparent.
Elsevier partners with the research community toempower open science. We believe open sciencecan benefit research and society and drive research
performance.

Gold open accessGreen open access Final version of an article is immediately

 A version of a subscription article is madeaccessible to everyone

Open science

freely available The article is made available to readers under aCreative Commons end user license
Openaccess

Today I’ll focus primarily on the first two pillars ofopen access and open data, and related licenses.

Open dataandtransparent
reportingOpen
indicatorsand researchevaluation

Science andsociety

 Relies on the subscription model to continue tooperate Cost of publishing is recovered, typically via anArticle Publishing Charge (APC)•

Usually after an embargo period•

A non-commercial Creative Commonsend user license is applied to theAccepted Manuscript

Open tools and software

Other types of open access exist, including: Diamond open access and Bronze open accesswww.elsevier.com/open-science(Figure 1)

National Institute of Informatics

More information: www.elsevier.com/open-access(Figure 2)

SPARC Japan Seminar 2023 Nov. 28, 20232

Publisher Perspectives on Open Access and Licensingtion model, and make the earlier version of theshare, disseminate, and maximize the impact ofsubscription article freely available under Green

their research. I do believe that authors will get aOA.

The earlier version is called an “acceptedvery similar experiences with other publishers, butmanuscript” which has gone through peer review

just to be clear I am talking from an Elsevier’s per-and is not the final version with final edits andspective here.

This accepted manuscript can be ar-

But to be clear, when authors publish OA, they

chived by the author himself/herself and put in awill retain their copyright. They will also be given

repository to make available to all non-subscribers.

a choice of CC license to apply to their final article

We ask him/her to do this after a certain time delay,

freely and immediately.

which is called an embargo period.

portant that they have the choice.

changes.

This will allow

the subscription model to work, where subscribers
will have first access to the final article.

We also

We believe that it is im-We have always seen from surveys that authors
have specific preferences about how their content is

ask that a non-commercial, NoDerivatives CC li-reused and shared.

cense to be applied to the accepted manuscript toreuse and sharing for some purpose, while others

support the viability of the subscription model.

want noncommercial reuse and sharing. The CC

There are other types of OA.

You may haveheard of the Diamond OA and the Bronze OA, but I

Some authors want complete

license reflects those sorts of choices and that is
why we provide that choice.
In the subscription model, authors transfer

will not mention them here.

their copyright to the publisher.

If they want tomake a version of their subscription article freely

Rights Retained by Authors
Once again, I would like to talk about the pub-

available, they can use that Green OA route.

Butlishing process in more detail and clarify any mis-

to dispel some myths here, regardless of which pub-conceptions here as well (Figure 3).

lication model authors choose, they still have many

Specifically, I

want to explain what happens in relation to whenauthors publish open access or under the subscription model and what that means for their rights.
To be very clear here, when authors choose torights to share their article.
That includes the right to receive proper attribution and credit, and the right to reuse their own
material in new works without our permission or

publish OA or the subscription, they will havepayment to us.

many of the same rights to support their need tobook length, include it in compilations of their ownwork.

Some specifics in publishing• Regardless of whether authors choose to publish open access or subscription with Elsevier, they have many of thesame rights, which support their need to share, disseminate and maximize the impact of their research.
• Open access: author retains copyright. Authors have a choice of Creative Commons license• Subscription: author transfers copyright to the publisher. Green open access route can be used
• Authors retain rights to share their research data. They have flexibility on their choice of licenses to share researchdata• We have adopted a license-based approach that automatically enables researchers at subscribing institutions totext mine for non-commercial research purposes and to gain access to full-text content in XML for this purpose.
We will also provide permissions for non-subscribers.
• We provide information to authors about their rights and license choices:• On our policy pages on Elsevier.com• Authors are advised about their choices when they aretaken through the workflow to submit their article

Author rights to the article - open access or subscription:• Receive proper attribution and credit for their published work
• Re-use their own material in new works without permission orpayment by:• Extending an article to book length• Including an article in a subsequent compilation of theirown work
• Re-using portions, excerpts, and their own figures ortables in other works• Use and share their works for scholarly purposes, including forclassroom teaching, in conferences, distributing article for
personal use, and an invitation-only work group• Publicly share the preprint anywhere at any timeMore information: https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/copyright(Figure 3)

National Institute of Informatics

They can extend their work to

They can also reuse excerpts, figures, andtables from other works.

In addition, they can useand share their works for scholarly purposes suchas classroom teaching, personal use and as part ofresearch collaborations.

Preprints can of course beshared publicly as well.

I just want to clarify,

these are all things that researchers can do because
I have seen information being spread that authors

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Publisher Perspectives on Open Access and Licensing
cannot do all of these things.

I would recommendthat there are differences by country.

Along withyou to check out our website to get the full infor-

the trend toward immediacy, I would like to point

mation on these.

out the emergence of funder policies that requires

Regarding research data, authors retain theimmediate access to research.

They have absolute flexibility in

In North America, the Office of Science andtheir choice of licenses to share irrespective of theTechnology Policy (OSTP) recommends immediate

selected publishing model.

sharing of research findings.

rights to share.

There is also a real

Also, regarding text and data mining, we havefocus on one of the largest federal agencies there toadopted a license-based approach that automatical-ensure sharing of research data and managemently enables researchers at subscribing institutions toof that research data.

automatically text mine for non-commercial pur-funders require immediate access to the researchposes, but we also provide permission to non-and there are clear prescriptions on the CC license

subscribers as well.

to apply to the research articles.

this fact.

It is also important to note

Again, I recommend you to look at our

In Europe including UK,

South America

has a different focus on the diamond model which

I know this is a lot offocuses on the authors not paying to publish or pay-

information.

We provide all this information on

ing to read with lots of articles and being deposited

our website.

When an author submits their man-in repositories.

text and data mining policy.

uscript to us, they will be given lots of advice andinformation about their choices in our workflow.

In Asia, with apologies for lumping lots of different countries together, the policies and approaches to publishing are really mixed.

There isstill a focus on the subscription model, but Japan

Mixed Global Policy
Let us broaden our perspective here and think
about the broader global policy context.

We do seea quite mixed policy landscape when it comes to theannounced a new OA policy focusing on immediacy.
Globally, the focus is on efforts to increase access toresearch as well as research data.

elements that I am talking about here, such as OA
and licensing.

What I should say here is that

there is a real mix of different type of policies.

Elsevier’s Response to Shifts in the Publishing Ecosystem

There is no same policy in every region in the world.

Finally, I would like to touch on how Elsevier isFigure 4 is not a comprehensive lists but shows

responding to the shifts in the publishing ecosysHow we are responding to the shifts in the publishing ecosystem

A mixed policy landscape

Immediate access via the subscription model is being added as
an option to some policies

North America• Office of Science and Technology Policy recommends immediatesharing of research findings; no requirements on end user
licenses• Federal agency data sharing policies should be live by end 2025
• NIH updated their data sharing policy from January 2023

Europe• Various European countries (also UK) as part of Plan S havemandated immediate availability of research and CC licenses• European Union requires data sharing; encourages FAIR data

• Funders requiring immediate access to articles are offering
authors a choice of doing so via different publication models• Some ask their authors to add a statement to their article toapply a CC license to their arising Accepted Manuscript
Elsevier enables authors to post immediately via gold open
accessAsia• The region shows a mix of approaches
and policies towards open access• Subscription is often prevalent• Japan announcing new open accesspolicySouth America• Support for OA publication
platforms and Diamond OA, withless focus on licenses• We enable authors to make their research immediately
available and to retain copyright through gold open access• Authors have choices of open access license• Authors are free to share and reuse research data regardless ofpublication model

Elsevier offers solutions to support equity
Subscription model• Research4Life: free/ discounted reading and publishing in over
120 Low and Middle Income Countries• Free access for patients and caregivers• Dedicated emergency resource centers• Supporting authors to share their publications
Gold open access• Transformative agreements• Waivers/discounts on publishing, including automaticallygranted to authors from countries in Global South• Adopted Geographical Pricing for Open Access pilot

Transformative agreements are deals with institutions thatenable Gold OA
Global• G7 support immediate FAIR data sharing• G20 science advisers support efforts to expand
access to research(Figure 4)

National Institute of Informatics• Authors no longer have to find funds for APCs
• Elsevier supports almost 2,000 institutions to publish openaccess(Figure 5)

SPARC Japan Seminar 2023 Nov. 28, 20234

Publisher Perspectives on Open Access and Licensingtem (Figure 5).

As I mentioned earlier, the policy

south, the patients and caregivers as part of emer-

requiring immediate access to research is increas-

gency resource centers for everybody during times

ing regardless which publishing model the authorof emergencies such as the COVID-19 crisis.

has chosen. There also can be a focus on author

also absolutely support authors to share their sub-retention of rights, or authors applying certain

scription articles via various initiatives such as

Creative Commons and user licenses to manu-

Share Links.

scripts arising from the submissions.

WeOur clear

Under Gold OA, to ensure that authors have

response to this that we have is that Elsevier ena-

their means to choose the Gold Open Access model,

bles authors to make their research immediately

we do have these transformative agreements whichavailable through Gold OA. We think that it is a

do shift their cost burden away from authors.

sustainable and scalable mechanism that ensuresam pleased that Japan has a proposal via Japan

immediate access to the research.

Alliance of University Library Consortia for E-Authors retainI

their copyright under Gold OA, so there is no issue

Resources (JUSTICE).

with rights, they have choices regarding the end

tive of waivers and discounts that will automatical-user license. Also, regardless of publication model,

ly apply to many authors in the Global South.

they can share their research data as required.

are really proud to have adopted a new geo pricing

It is important to focus on the fact that we actually support OA.
OA journals.

We have over 750 fully GoldWe have also various transformativeagreements, which are commercial agreementswith institutions to realize their OA goals.

TheyWe also have a vast initiaWe

pilot to ensure fair pricing of article publishingcharges across a range of countries including in
those the Global South.
I hope that I have been able to give you a small
overview of what we are doing regarding OA andhave lots of the names such as read and publish

how we support authors to publish OA.

deals or combined deals but overall we are support-

has been helpful for you.

I hope iting almost 2,000 institutions to publish open access
via this arrangement.

That means we support

Gold OA model in a sustainable and scalable way,
and can meet the future policy requirements.
I would like to briefly to equity because this is apoint that does comes up a lot when we talk aboutboth publishing models, subscription and Gold OA.
For the subscription model, people want fairness interms of access to research.

Under Gold OA, theywant to see equity in terms of their pricing, andaccess to that Gold OA model.
Under the subscription model, we have a vast
range of initiatives to support free access to subscription articles across countries in the global

National Institute of Informatics

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