Open access can strengthen research quality: OA journals employ different business models from other journals, but there's nothing stopping them from having the same editorial quality standards. Also, with enough feedback systems in place, research quality can increase with exposure.
Researchers shouldn't have to plan how their work will be applied: If researchers were required to plan how their research would be made into policy and practice, it could put them off asking truly innovative research questions. However, I do think that researchers should be engaged with the practical uses of what they are working on.
Resources:
Here's an example of how altmetrics can show research reach by demographic, from a BioMed Central public health article (click the donut to see the metric breakdown).
Here is a list of organisations who allow funds to be used to make their research OA.
Interesting points on the importance that is given to research prestige vs relevance were made by Michelle Willmers from the Scholarly communication in Africa programme at BioMed central's last Open Access Africa event.
Open access approaches don't work everywhere: OA approaches in developed countries are not always appropriate and transferable to developing country contexts. Ajol is planning a Sub-Saharan Africa research project in order to understand the current state of scholarly journal publishing in Africa much better. It will be the first stage of developing an approach to OA advocacy that is informed by country and region-specific needs.
Research assessment standards should universal: Because the ISI index is widely available, it is widely misused as a low quality index to measure research impact in academia. Growing support for the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment will hopefully call an end to that illogical idiosyncrasy of the academic world.
Open access must be affordable for developing country authors: OA offers great potential for developing country researchers as readers, but as authors it creates new problems. Author processing charges are significant and beyond the reach of many. Several OA publishers have offered fee waivers, which is helpful, but we also need to think seriously about the sustainability of this model into the future.
Invest in new research impact metrics: OA is driving some exciting experiments with new metrics. For example, you can now begin to track where an article goes across social media and other online citations or uses. This has been badged altmetrics - there's even a series of papers about in this Plos collection, but a great example is also one that Plos advocacy director Cameron Neylon discussed in Stellenbosch last year, showing that he could track how a piece of HIV/Aids work by the University of Cape Town was being re-tweeted and picked up by local community organisations.
Think tanks should bridge research and policy: By nature, think tanks can be effective translators between academics and policy makers, combining academic and practical points of view.
Researchers should help put their work into practice: While researchers should not have to become implementers, they should be given opportunities to get involved in designing policy plans. There is a space for this kind of consultation on each level of development policymaking process, from the strategic level down to the single project.
Open access limits what authors know about their readers: OA can deliver the basic metrics that measure usage. However, the true unimpaired access of the OA model does not permit the harvesting of more detailed impact metrics, for example, the location of reader, purpose of usage and type of reader. To obligate readers to provide this information would go against the spirit of OA.
Track your research reach: DfID Research uses a range of social media platforms to communicate their broad research portfolio, and they do a good job of tracking who they reach, where, and what is the nature of demand for what kind of research. This is valuable information as proxy demand for what people want to know. The dashboard of indicators is publicly available.
Research quality is paramount: OA needn't threaten research quality, provided everyone concerned constantly reminds themselves that quality matters. Research conclusions and policy prescriptions are utterly worthless - dangerous even - if the methodology on which they're based is flawed. This might seem obvious, but perhaps it's so obvious that we sometimes forget it. It's this collective amnesia which threatens research quality, not OA itself.
Resource:
Tom Cochrane at Queensland University of Australia has shown altmetrics can be used to demonstrate successful research communication to the benefit of all concerned, including the researchers themselves.
Plan communication at all stages of research: Too often decisions are made before research outcomes can signify what types of communication may be appropriate. It would make sense to have two stages of funding for communications in all major and large projects - one that funds start-up and project-wide communications, and another that funds specifically targeted communications when the research bases and messages are clearer.
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Head of Ofsted, Sir Michael Wilshaw, said local authorities need to adjust to the new educational landscape. Photograph: Andy Hall for the Guardian