Sensory evolution: Fish smelling well in the water and in the air

by Charles University

Photo of an eel. Credit: Zuzana Musilova

Some fish come onto the land to hunt or move around. Typically, this behavior happens at nighttime, as seen in eels, for instance. In the new study, researchers have found that such amphibious fishes might have an enhanced sense of smell. Their genomes revealed an unusually high number of the olfactory receptor genes that might facilitate smelling better in the air.

Additionally, these fish have also expanded the olfactory bulb within the brain. Analysis of two hundred fish species, including some that are able to move overland, suggests that the sense of smell in some amphibious fishes has adapted to their new way of life.

Zuzana Musilová, Demian Burguera and from the Fish Evolution research group and Pavel Němec, Francesco Dionigi, Kristina Kverková and Yicheng Zhang from the Sensory and Evolutionary Neurobiology group at the Faculty of Science of Charles University present a new study published in BMC Biology addressing this topic.

Zuzana Musilová and her team study the sensory systems of fishes. Mostly, they focus on vision, yet other essential sensory systems, such as smell, call their attention. The mechanism of olfaction is considerably less understood than of vision.

"For the sense of smell, we know the molecular basis of the olfactory receptors, which are basically proteins able to detect different substances. We can therefore focus on the genes coding these proteins and study their evolution," says Zuzana Musilová.

The further processing of odorants is also very interesting. Olfactory neurons transfer the signal from the receptors to precisely localized areas of the olfactory bulb, the area of the brain responsible for processing odorant information. This way, the sense of smell forms a kind of map in the brain.

Some mammals with a very good sense of smell, such as elephants for example, have thousands of olfactory receptor genes. Even humans, though not exactly olfactory specialists, present several hundreds of copies. However, previous studies involving a small number of fish species reported generally low numbers of receptor genes compared to many terrestrial animals.

"We were interested in fish, because they are a very varied group and in some types of genes, they show more diversity than other vertebrate groups," explains Zuzana Musilová. In the first step, Demian Burguera, the postdoctoral researcher in Zuzana's group, obtained genomic sequences from public databases and analyzed two hundred fish species.

And the genomic analysis revealed an exciting finding—the gene repertoire of smell receptors has been expanded in many amphibious fishes! This means fish that are capable of living out of water have more olfactory receptor genes.

"These so-called amphibious fishes come out of the water, mostly at night. On occasions, they are able to spend hours out of the water—either they hunt on land, or they explore and move to another location. European eels, for instance, are examples of such fish moving on land between water bodies," Demian Burguera describes. It turns out that the number of olfactory receptors reflects the biology of these fish, namely that they are able to use their sense of smell both under and above water.

The authors of the study found the same pattern in multiple fish lineages that have independently evolved their terrestrial exploration capacity. However, one group of fishes of extreme interest for this study was missing from their database: the airbreathing catfishes.

A previous study by other researchers recently demonstrated that a species from this lineage can orientate on land based on the detection of chemical signals. Therefore, the researchers further focused on a species from this group, the eel catfish, and analyzed it in detail for this study, finding an expansion in the number of olfactory genes compared to non-amphibious relatives.

Other studies have already shown that amphibians (frogs, salamanders, etc.) also have a large diversity of olfactory receptor genes, including subtypes that are common in fish and also subtypes that are common in terrestrial vertebrates. "Smell in the air and smell under wateusually means detecting different kinds of odorant molecules, so different receptors subtypes are usually used in those environments," says Zuzana Musilová.

"There are many types of odorant molecules that are only present in air or in water, due to their chemical and physical properties. However, a few particular odorants are known to be both soluble in water and volatile in air. We speculate that the function of many of those olfactory genes that increased their numbers in the genomes of terrestrial exploratory fishes could be to detect this last type of odorant molecules," says Demian Burguera, interpreting the results of the study.

Thus, the authors suggest that it was evolutionarily important for these lineages of fishes to develop a better sense of smell suitable for both environments.

The next part of the study involved a team of neurobiologists led by Pavel Němec, who examined the olfactory bulb of twenty-four fish species. This part of the brain is responsible for discerning olfactory information, and its relative number of cells (i.e., the cells of the olfactory bulb compared to the cells of the rest of the brain) reflects the processing capacity of the olfactory system.

The results show that the relative number of cells of the olfactory bulb differs in fishes according to this ecological feature—the sense of smell is more developed in nocturnal amphibious species than in other groups of fishes. Interestingly, the only species analyzed that still presents true lung structures for air-breathing and probably the oldest story of terrestrial exploration among fishes, the bichirs, present the most elaborate olfactory system of the whole dataset by far.

In summary, the olfactory system seems able to quickly respond to certain ecological challenges, such as the aerial environment in fishes, by multiplying and diversifying to meet new sensory needs. The authors of the paper further suggest that something similar might have occurred hundreds of millions of years ago during the water-to-land transition of our fish-like ancestors that later evolved in terrestrial vertebrates.

Thus, apart from more evident evolutionary processes such as the transformation of fins into limbs, a new type of sensory change might have been added to the list of those key evolutionary processes that allowed us—and many other animals—to live on land.

More information: Demian Burguera et al, Expanded olfactory system in ray-finned fishes capable of terrestrial exploration, BMC Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1186/s12915-023-01661-8

Journal information: BMC Biology 

Provided by Charles University Study of olfactory bulb ratio in modern birds suggests dinosaurs may have had strong sense of smell

 

Research reveals who's been hit hardest by global warming in their lifetime, and the answer may surprise you

by Andrew King, Ed Hawkins, Hunter Douglas and Luke Harrington, The Conversation

Annual-average temperatures at four major cities with signal-to-noise ratios shown for 20,

 50 and 80 years up to 2021. 

Credit: Andrew King, Ed Hawkins, Hunter Douglas and Luke Harrington

Earth is warming and the signs of climate change are everywhere. We've seen it in the past few weeks as temperatures hit record highs around the world—both in the Northern Hemisphere and the warm Australian winter.

Global warming is caused by humanity's greenhouse gas emissions, which continue at near-record pace. These emissions are predominantly generated by people in the world's wealthiest regions.

Our world-first analysis, published today, examines the experience of global warming over the lifetimes of people around the world: young and old, rich and poor. We sought to identify who has perceived warmer temperatures most keenly.

We found middle-aged people in equatorial regions have lived through the most perceptible warming in their lifetimes. But many young people in lower-income countries could experience unrecognizable changes in their local climate later in life, unless the world rapidly tackles climate change.

Measuring the climate change experience

We examined temperature data and population demographics information from around the world.

Key to our analysis was the fact that not all warming is due to human activity. Some of it is caused by natural, year-to-year variations in Earth's climate.

These natural ups and downs are due to a number of factors. They include variations in the energy Earth receives from the sun, the effects of volcanic eruptions, and transfers of heat between the atmosphere and the ocean.

This variability is stronger in mid-to-high-latitude parts of the world (those further from the equator) than in low-latitude areas (in equatorial regions). That's because the weather systems further away from the equator draw in hot or cold air from neighboring areas, but equatorial areas don't receive cold air at all.

That's why, for example, the annual average temperature in New York is naturally more variable than in the city of Kinshasa (in the Democratic Republic of Congo).

To account for this, we applied what's known as the "signal-to-noise ratio" at each location we studied. That allowed us to separate the strength of the climate change "signal" from the "noise" of natural variability.

Making this distinction is important. The less naturally variable the temperature, the clearer the effects of warming. So warming in Kinshasa over the past 50 years has been much more perceptible than in New York.

Our study examined two central questions. First, we wanted to know, for every location in the world, how clearly global warming could be perceived, relative to natural temperature variability.

Second, we wanted to know where this perceived change was most clear over human lifetimes.

Our results

So what did we find? As expected, the most perceptible warming is found in tropical regions—those near the equator. This includes developing parts of the world that constitute the Global South—such as Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia.

Household incomes in the Global South are typically lower than in industrialized nations (known as the Global North). We might, then, conclude people in the poorest parts of the world have experienced the most perceptible global warming over their lifetimes. But that's not always the case.

Why? Because most parts of the Global South have younger populations than wealthier regions. And some people under the age of 20, including in northern India and parts of sub-Saharan Africa, haven't experienced warming over their lifetimes.

In these places, the lack of recent warming is likely down to a few factors: natural climate variability, and the local cooling effect of particles released into the atmosphere from pollution and changes in land use.

There's another complication. Some populated regions of the world also experienced slight cooling in the mid-20th century, primarily driven by human-caused aerosol emissions.

So, many people born earlier than the 1950s have experienced less perceptible warming in their local area than those born in the 1960s and 1970s. This may seem counter-intuitive. But a cooling trend in the first few decades of one's life means the warming experienced over an entire lifespan (from birth until today) is smaller and less detectable.

So what does all this mean? People in equatorial areas born in the 1960s and 1970s—now aged between about 45 and 65—have experienced more perceptible warming than anyone else on Earth.

Rich countries must act

Our findings are important, for several reasons.

Identifying who has experienced significant global warming in their lives may help explain attitudes to tackling climate change.

Our findings also raise significant issues of fairness and equity.

Humanity will continue to warm the planet until we reach global net-zero emissions. This means many young people in lower-income countries may, later in life, experience a local climate that is unrecognizable to that of their youth.

Of course, warming temperatures are not the only way people experience climate change. Others include sea-level rise, more intense drought and rainfall extremes. We know many of these impacts are felt most acutely by the most vulnerable populations.

Cumulative greenhouse gas emissions are much higher in the Global North, due to economic development. To address this inequality, rich industrialized nations must take a leading role in reducing emissions to net-zero, and helping vulnerable countries adapt to climate change.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Climate change hits poorest hardest, new research shows

 

Dog attacks on adults are rising, but science shows blaming breeds won't help

by Carri Westgarth and John Tulloch, The Conversation

Playing can sometimes be stressful for dogs. Credit: Kashaeva Irina/Shutterstock

Another terrifying dog attack video has just gone viral on social media. It shows three large bull breed dogs jumping up and grabbing onto a screaming woman in a park.

It is understandable that when such videos and media reports circulate there are renewed calls to ban certain breeds. The latest is the American Bully XL, an evolution bred from the pit bull terrier, which can weigh up to 60kg. But are breeds such as this really to blame for a rising dog bite problem?

Research shows that one in four people have been bitten by a dog in their lifetime but less than 1% of bites result in hospital admission. Our research showed that English hospital admissions for being "bitten or struck by a dog" rose over a 20-year period from 1998 to 2018. This data concerns bites serious enough for hospital admission, not just emergency department attendance. Over a similar period, fatal dog bites in England and Wales averaged at about three per year.

In 2022 there were 10 fatalities. It's not clear whether this is a new trend, or whether 2022 was a tragically anomalous year.

The rise in incidence of dog bites appears to be restricted to adults, where the numbers have tripled over 20 years.

In general, men are more likely to be bitten and delivery workers are a common victim. Dog attacks on middle-aged women are increasing the fastest. We don't know why this is, but it could be that the profile of people who own and spend time with dogs is changing.

We find higher rates in more deprived communities. The reasons for this are unknown, but similar trends are seen in other types of injuries too.

Are some breeds more aggressive than others?

There is little consistent scientific evidence that some breeds are inherently more aggressive than others. Our evaluations suggest that the breeds reported to bite are simply the most popular breeds in that region.

However, when we examine breeds involved in fatalities, it is clear that most are large and powerful. That's not to say smaller breeds cannot kill—they have been known to. As American XL Bullies are a new sub-breed of the American bulldog, there has been no scientific study of their bite risk and bite rates were rising long before they existed.

They and the other American bulldogs and related pit bulls do feature highly in fatalities lists. Yet so do rottweilers, German shepherds and Malamutes. Kenneth Baker, the home secretary responsible for the Dangerous Dogs Act that banned pit bull terriers admitted in his autobiography that a ban on rottweilers, dobermans and Alsatians would have "infuriated" the middle classes. A confounding factor here is breed distribution, as powerful breeds have long been linked to deprived communities where violence and injuries already centralize. Some evidence links these breeds to status or criminal use, but most are family pets.

The majority of dog bites are from a dog known to the victim. Often this is the family pet and bites happen during stroking, restraining or just play. The dog is often responding to discomfort, whether pain or fear.

What can we do to prevent dog bites?

Genetic tendencies in breeding lines are an important factor so when choosing a dog, it's important to view and assess the parents of the puppy. Dogs of the same breed vary widely in their behavior. Behavior tendencies are inherited from parents.

Look for signs of nervousness or shyness around people, as well as outright aggression (barking, growling, snapping). Dogs from puppy farms in particular are prone to health and behavioral problems. Unfortunately, many puppies who come from these mass-producing unscrupulous breeders are fraudulently marketed as from a loving family home.

Banning more breeds won't work. New varieties will fill the gap, like what happened with the pit bull.

Dog bites are a complex societal problem and we cannot expect a quick legislative fix (such as banning a breed or reintroduction of dog licenses) to solve it. Dog licensing would be prohibitively expensive to manage and without strict enforcement, would be easy to circumvent.

Clever environmental design could go a long way towards preventing people and dogs from being exposed to risky situations, for example installing external letterboxes as standard.

People often tout education as the answer. But it's a small part of the solution. Public education needs enforcement measures and supportive policy to work. Improving people's expectations of what good dog welfare looks like is key to minimize fearful and frustrating situations for dogs. This includes not abusing dogs in the name of training and providing sufficient exercise and space. Training methods must be kind and reward-based, as punishment-based methods are associated with reduced success and greater stress, fear and aggression.

Educational efforts should be focused on addressing the perception that "it wouldn't happen to me" and introducing new social norms such as never leaving children alone with dogs. There are lots of resources about safe interactions with dogs on the Mersey Dog Safe website.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking "my dog wouldn't bite anyone." Every day, dogs who have never bitten someone before, do.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Much-loved dog breeds are just as likely to bite as banned ones. Here's how to stop them

 

New book examines the political misinformation that threatens the US system of government

by Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Credit: Stuart Darsch

Misinformation pervades U.S. politics.

The outcome of the 2020 presidential election is perhaps the most pressing case in point. Every serious-minded academic and legal inquiry into the subject—including two cases that came before the U.S. Supreme Court—has rejected former President Donald Trump's assertion that he did not lose the election. Major media organizations now routinely label these statements "lies." Yet Trump's unfounded claims have gained wide traction among his followers.

"The evidence against claims that the 2020 election was stolen is overwhelming and clear," writes MIT political scientist Adam Berinsky in a new book. "The persistence of false information like this is troubling for the prospects of our political system."

To be sure, misinformation has long flooded U.S. politics, from the early days of the republic to conspiracy theories about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; falsehoods about the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; and false claims that former President Barack Obama was not born in America.

But what Berinsky terms "weaponized mistruths" seem more prevalent than ever—or at least, are spread by some political elites more than ever. Finding a way to combat that is difficult.

"Coming to grips with misinformation is really, really hard," says Berinsky, who is the Mitsui Professor of Political Science at MIT and director of the MIT Political Experiments Research Lab (PERL). He would know: Starting around 2010, Berinsky became one of the first political scientists to start running systematic experiments about in the subject.

Now Berinsky delves into the subject in his book, "Political Rumors: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight It," published today by Princeton University Press. In it, he explores misinformation research and remedies—but notes that each tactic chips away the problem, rather than suddenly solving it.

"I can't claim there are a few easy things you can do to correct the problem," Berinsky says. "But we shouldn't throw up our hands and say, "Oh, this is hopeless." The key is to recognize the challenge and reframe our thinking about it."

'Don't just think about the message. Think about the messenger'

When Berinsky started running surveys and experiments about political rumors in 2010, he was studying matters like the false belief that Obama was not born in the U.S. (which Republicans were more likely to believe) and the falsehood that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were an inside job (which Democrats were more likely to believe). In the process, Berinsky also discovered that not many people believe a lot of false political rumors, but most people believe at least one false rumor.

Berinsky's own research suggests that people who accept political rumors genuinely believe them; at the same time, partisanship heavily influences what people are willing to believe. Still, the balance of all research has also convinced Berinsky that as a practical matter, reaching people who are undecided about falsehoods is essential.

"When I went into this, I was really interested in the believers, the people who accept these stories," Berinsky says. "But over time I've come to realize we really need to worry about the people who have said they aren't sure. … They also have the potential to undermine democratic functioning."

One of Berinsky's most influential findings focuses on how to set the record straight. Over many research projects, he and other researchers have found that simply providing accurate information to people from neutral fact-checking sources has little lasting effect. When the Obama administration was knocking down false claims about "death panels" in relation to the Affordable Care Act, or his birth certificate by appealing to neutral sources, it had only a limited and temporary effect.

On the other hand, when people receive information from a Republican correcting false statements that had been targeted at Democrats, that strategy has a stronger effect (on people from both parties). Thus it is much more effective when a political leader tells the truth to their followers, at the expense of their own self-interest.

"Don't just think about the message," Berinsky says. "Think about the messenger." Or, as he writes in the book, "Turning partisanship on its head in service of correction, then, can help combat the spread of misinformation across citizens from all partisan stripes."

Berinsky has also worked with several other researchers on numerous recent experiments about making news consumers aware of issues of false news and accuracy—especially when people are surfing through large amounts of online content. By issuing the right kinds of prompts at the right moments, some experiments have found, it is possible to alter the public's perception of false news stories. Still, Berinsky notes that the effects of each such intervention are relatively modest, and people should adjust their expectations accordingly.

"We can move people's views a couple of percentage points," Berinsky says. "That's good. If you take a bundle of interventions, maybe we can move it 5 or 6 points. That would be great."

Why responsible politicians matter

As Berinsky readily notes, it is not easy to find politicians who will willingly speak out against their own perceived self-interest, even in service of the truth. In the case of the 2020 election, Berinsky adds, "Surely there were Republican politicians who knew that these [false statements] were not true and publicly were not willing, and still are not willing, to say, "This is completely false.'"

It can be debated how costly—or not—it would be for certain politicians to make those statements. Overall, though, significant evidence points to the powerful role that politicians play in shaping public beliefs. Misinformation is so difficult to combat because of the way it aligns with partisan interest—as a growing body of research shows—and fighting it is easier with responsible leadership.

"It's not simply that people are being shallow," Berinsky says. "It's that politicians are not behaving in a responsible way. We shouldn't only blame the people. We should blame the politicians who are spreading misinformation."

Indeed, he adds, "If we're looking for a lasting fix to the problem, it's not that we can inoculate people against misinformation, or come up with a perfect way to correct for misinformation after the fact. What we need to do is reduce the misinformation coming from politicians. That's easier said than done."

"Political Rumors" has received praise from other scholars. Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, calls it "the most comprehensive treatment to date of the prevalence of beliefs in false and unsupported claims, the reasons that people are vulnerable to them, and the challenges we face in trying to counter them." The book is, he adds, "a crucially important examination of an issue of vital public concern."

Berinsky himself suggests that he hopes readers will become more attuned to the dynamics of political rumors, the possible ways to combat them, and a sense of what is realistic, at a time when truth in politics has become so highly contested.

"Part of the solution is to say we should be hopeful about interventions that have systematic and small effects," Berinsky says. "That would be good news." He adds, "I do think we're in a period where things are tough, but we're not completely without hope."

More information: Political Rumors: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight It. press.princeton.edu/books/hard … 389/political-rumors

Provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

This story is republished courtesy of MIT News (web.mit.edu/newsoffice/), a popular site that covers news about MIT research, innovation and teaching.

Study shows how information sources affect voters

 

This solar cycle, the sun's activity is more powerful and surprising than predicted

by Daniel Billett, The Conversation

A coronal mass ejection on the solar surface. Credit: NASA/GSFC/SDO

What do you feel when you see the aurora?

Otherwise known as the northern or southern lights, an aurora is light emitted by upper atmospheric particles as they interact with energized ones from the magnetosphere.

It's an awe-inspiring and otherworldly event that those living at high latitudes can experience often. In Cree and Ojibwe teachings, the northern lights are ancestral spirits who remain and communicate from the sky.

To scientists, the aurora is an infinitely complex amalgamation of ionospheric dynamics, a manifestation of Earth's intrinsic connection to the sun. To industry, it's a risk factor.

The Starlink destruction event

In February 2022, SpaceX launched 49 Starlink internet satellites into a low-Earth orbit (LEO). This was the 36th Starlink launch that SpaceX had carried out, and one that they anticipated to go off without a hitch, just like the 35 before.

On launch day, a coronal mass ejection—a large burst of plasma expelled from the sun—struck Earth. It caused a geomagnetic storm in the atmosphere between around 100 and 500 kilometers in altitude, the target range for Starlink.

The aurora borealis seen above the Saskatoon SuperDARN space weather radar. Credit: A. Reimer

This event injected an immense amount of electromagnetic energy straight into Earth's upper atmosphere. It produced beautiful auroral displays, but the energy also increased the density of the air. A higher air density typically isn't a big deal for LEO satellites, because it's already extremely low at usual operational altitudes (upwards of 400 kilometers).

Starlink, however, was initially launched into an altitude of 210 kilometers. That's much closer to Earth, with an exponentially higher air density. Thirty-eight out of those 49 initial launch satellites were subsequently lost due to atmospheric drag from the dense atmosphere, pulling them back to Earth.

Surprising solar cycle

The sun undergoes a cycle—an 11-year one, to be exact—from which its activity increases and decreases periodically. At the peak of a cycle, we see more sunspots on the solar surface, more radiation emitted, and more solar flares. Geomagnetic storms like the one that caused the Starlink destruction event are a relatively common occurrence, especially when the sun reaches the peak of its 11-year cycle of strengthening and weakening activity.

In the previous cycle, which ended in 2019 (the 24th tracked cycle since 1755), there were 927 storms classed as moderate or weak alone—an average of one every five or so days.

We're currently four years into solar cycle 25, but this one has already proven surprising. The maximum activity of the 25th cycle was predicted to occur in 2025, but solar activity has already exceeded that. This means we've been seeing more geomagnetic storms, more auroral displays (and at lower latitudes than usual) and, potentially, more hazardous conditions for LEO satellites.

Starlink satellites burning up in the atmosphere over Puerto Rico, Feb. 7, 2022.

Space weather: The unseen force of nature

If geomagnetic storms are so common, why don't they cause more issues? The reality is that they do, but the consequences are much less obvious than satellites burning up in the atmosphere.

When space weather energy enters Earth's upper atmosphere, for example, the ionospheric composition changes in addition to the air getting denser. High-frequency, or "shortwave," radio communication depends on a predictable ionosphere to broadcast long distances.

Geomagnetic storms that affect ionospheric composition can cause radio blackouts, such as a disruption in North America on Aug. 7. Even minor storms can cause the degradation of radio signals used in military and maritime systems, aviation communication or ham radio.

Extreme storms can cause radio blackouts lasting hours, and for an entire side of the globe. Storms that big can also cause more discernible problems, such as the nine-hour electricity outage experienced by Hydro-Québec in 1989.

Space weather warning systems

Solar activity as the number of sunspots visible on the solar surface. The number of sunspots seen is already considerably higher than what is expected from the solar maximum, two years ahead of schedule. Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

It's not all doom and disintegrating rockets, however. We can detect when a solar flare leaves the surface of the sun and predict roughly when it will affect the Earth, giving forewarning to certain types of storms and chances to see the aurora.

For many storms however, there is very little or no predictive capability because it depends on how the Earth's magnetic field interacts with the solar wind, which is harder to see.

Nowcasting—using real-time data to understand conditions as they occur—is one of our best tools. With instruments such as ground-based radar and magnetometers on satellites, we can estimate the electromagnetic space weather energy entering the atmosphere almost instantaneously.

As for why SpaceX lost satellites in February 2022 during a minor geomagnetic storm, that was just a matter of timing. The loss of the satellites, however, is a stunning reminder of the power of the universe we live in.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Now we know how a solar storm took out a fleet of Starlinks

 

Secondary publishing rights can improve public access to academic research

by Brianne Selman and Mark Swartz, The Conversation

Making publicly-funded research immediately available for free would mean we all have 

access to information that could help us understand the world around us. 

Credit: Shutterstock

Canada's federal research granting agencies recently announced a review of the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications, with the goal of requiring immediate open and free access to all academic publications generated through Tri-Agency supported research by 2025

To meet this requirement, the Canadian government should empower academic authors through the adoption of secondary publishing rights. These rights would ensure that authors can immediately "republish publicly funded research after its first publication in an open access repository or elsewhere," even in cases where this is forbidden by publishers.

Tweaking the Copyright Act to include such rights would give academic authors the ability to make taxpayer-funded journal articles available to the public through open access upon publication.

Enabling Canada's research to be openly accessible without barriers will contribute to the public good, helping to foster innovation and discovery.

Open access policy review

Research locked behind paywalls is an impediment to science, innovation and cultural progress. In the past, most research papers would only be accessible to individuals who pay to access research papers or who work or study at universities willing to pay for access. This model is changing, and many publications are now openly available to the public. However, authors are increasingly required to pay publishers in order to be published open access.

The current Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications does require that authors make copies of funded journal articles freely available online, but allows for a 12-month embargo period where publishers get exclusive rights to the content and can keep it locked behind a paywall. That can mean significant delays in free access to vital research.

The policy review is overdue in Canada. In the European Union and the United States, governments have committed to immediate open access for publicly funded research.

Canada can learn from the experiences of these other jurisdictions, and create a framework that ensures equitable open access to publicly funded Canadian research.

Article processing charges

In addition to allowing embargo periods, Canada's current open access policy has fallen short of delivering in key areas and needs to adapt to changes in academic publishing.

For example, the Tri-Agency suffers from low rates of compliance with their open access policy when compared to other jurisdictions. OpenReports data shows publications funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada as having only 52% compliance with the policy in 2023 so far.

It is unclear why authors do not comply with the policy. It might be that they misunderstand their obligations or that they simply cannot afford the high article processing charges (APCs) that they might need to pay to publish in their journal of choice. The result is that much publicly funded research remains unavailable to the public.

APCs are fees academic authors pay to be published in open access journals. Authors can be charged fees of $1,000 up to $13,000. Journals increasingly rely on APCs, making the cost of open access publishing prohibitively expensive for many authors.

Estimates indicate Canadian academic authors spent at least US$27.6 million on processing charges from 2015 to 2018, despite the preponderance of free-to-publish open access journals.

Authors don't always have funds to cover these fees, and offloading them to university libraries through open access funds or transformative agreements is not sustainable and leads to inequitable publishing opportunities between large and small institutions.

In addition, scholars from the Global South have drawn attention to the inequitable nature of APC-based-publishing, while other models of funding open access journals are being extinguished.

Secondary publishing rights

There are clear paths forward that enable more open access. While academic journal publishing is extremely profitable for publishing companies, the authors, editors and reviewers that form the backbone of the system are rarely compensated for their labour and face challenges negotiating fair publication agreements.

The Canadian Federation of Library Associations has recently proposed one partial solution: to provide secondary publishing rights to academic authors in Canada. The proposal is also endorsed by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries.

Secondary publishing rights have already been implemented in multiple European countries, with perhaps the most notable example being the Taverne Amendment in the Netherlands, which has seen the rate of open access top 80 percent.

European countries' implementations of these rights currently include embargo periods. However, the Association of European Research Libraries has released draft language for secondary rights without an embargo period that would allow for "lawful self-archiving on open, public, non-for-profit repositories."

If Canada were to adopt a similar law in conjunction with revising the Tri-Agency policy, we could become a worldwide leader in open access scholarly publications.

Ultimately, more immediate open access at lower costs would mean we all have better access to information that could help us better understand the world around us, whether it is medical information, engineering innovations or new explorations of culture and history.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Who's writing open access articles?