Abstract

The text considers the potential feasibility of a commercial vision of public libraries in which, while keeping the spirit of public service, they could offer spaces and innovative services without suffering deficiencies in facilities and equipment. Thus, funding sources such as advertising, catering or the sale of library-related products are proposed. Furthermore, the intent is to open the door to reflections on non-traditional uses of library spaces and the benefits that could result.

Abstract

The open access model for publishing monographs by the members of the Spanish Universities Publishers Association (UNE) is analyzed. The study focused on production data from 2015-2017, as well as the positioning and arguments of the editors in relation to the open access movement, publication, related policies, and financing modalities. Data was collected by a questionnaire (with a response rate of 58% of the publishers associated with UNE) and includes in-depth interviews with seven of them. The results show that 75% of UNE members publish titles in open access, most consider open access a good way to increase the dissemination of monographs, and that there are no differences in content quality with non-open access works. Publishers do not see that publishing in open access is compatible with the commercial exploitation of printed copies. Publishers consider the most effective financing channels to be institutional payment (i.e., the university), followed by publisher’s self-financing, and payment by the author.

Abstract

With the support of governments, research funding agencies or academic institutions, Open Access is taking hold in the field of scholarly communication. More and more cases are found where recommendations on Open Access publication are transformed into obligations that researchers must comply with. Plan S, the Spanish Law on Science, Technology and Innovation or several university mandates are some examples of this change in trend. Given this situation, it is necessary to check compliance with these mandates from at least two points of view, on the one hand, to ensure that publications are in Open Access and on the other hand, that they comply with the established deadlines. So far, several attempts have been made to monitor compliance with the mandates from different perspectives, however, few have considered the time frame in which a publication must be in Open Access. To improve this monitoring, we propose the use of existing information in the repositories, such as, information on the funders, date of publication of the work in the academic journal and date of deposit in the repository, as well as the presentation of this information through the OAI-PMH (Open Archive Initiative – Procotol for Metadata Harvesting). In this way, monitoring could be improved at the institutional level. In addition, this information could also be collected by harvesters such as Recolecta, so that they can become a tool for monitoring Open Access publication mandates at the national level.