China EPT OA Award runner-up, Dr Xiaolin Zhang, praised for his work

One of the runners-up of the EPT OA Award, Dr Xiaolin Zhang received his Certificate from Bev Acreman. The citation from the EPT was read out in his honour, and was as follows:
 

"The Open Access movement stems from the simple but powerful belief that all human progress depends on the dissemination and sharing of scientific and cultural knowledge. That philosophy cuts across the vested interests of many powerful groups. The success of the Open Access movement then relies on the tireless efforts of selfless and usually anonymous individuals who promote and build the infrastructure to make such sharing of scientific research normal rather than an exceptional activity. The Electronic Publishing Trust for Development has therefore instituted an annual award to recognise those individuals in developing countries who have made unstinting efforts to enssure the widest possible access to research publications.

The EPT is therefore privileged to honour the work of Dr Xiaolin Zhang. Dr Zhang is a man of exceptional and international standing; he has promoted publication in Open Access journals such as BioMed Central; he has promoted awareness, developed OA policy for the Chinese Academy of Sciences and forged links worldwide to promote Chinese science. CAS institutes hold almost a quarter of a million journal articles and the CAS Portal provides access to some 160 journals.

The list of his efforts could be extended at length, but suffice to say that in the first inaugural year of its awards, teh EPT is privileged to recognise the contribution of Dr Zhang."

Presentation video of EPT OA Award to Francis Jayakanth

Please link to :  http://www.mssrfnva.in/Events/EPT-Award-function-at-MSSRF/21552958_nSdsMP#!i=1718491385&k=32CgbfH to view the presentation ceremony that took place in India to mark the award to the winner, Francis Jayakanth. The opportunity was taken to include a presentation on the benefits of OA to developing countries. The Swaminathan Research Foundation provided the camera skills and tools to record the event and Professor MS Swaminathan himself presented the Award.

Congratulations to all concerned!

An interview with Francis Jayakanth, winner of the 2011 EPT OA Award

It is very good to hear the views of the winner of the EPT OA Award, Francis Jayakanth, on the current status of access to research findings - he knows from first hand and from working in this area over many years the exact situation of researchers in the developing world with regard to access to research findings. See
http://cis-india.org/openness/interview-with-francis-jayakanth. He understands precisely the twin benefits afforded by open access, namely a) access to the world's literature that can impact on research in India, and b) the enhanced visibility of local research and the opportunities this provides for collaborative research programmes and future partnerships. That is, the need for S to N, N to S and S to S exchange of information that the EPT and like-minded organisations have been advocating. He knows from personal contacts the existing needs of researchers - but says, ' . . So still a long way to go in achieving 100 per cent OA to scholarly literature! If all the research institutions set up their IRs and ensure that copies of post-prints are placed in the IRs then 100 per cent OA to scholarly literature could be achieved, at least, from now onwards.' Jayakanth has been working tireleesly to achieve this optimal situation.

EPT OA Award - And the runners-up are!

After highlighting the winner of EPT’s OA Award (Francis Jayakanth, India) for individuals that have made the most significant contribution to the progress of OA, we are pleased now to give wider recognition to our runners-up, who have all received Certificates in honour of their achievements. We congratulate them all and are proud to include them in our 2011 ‘OA roll of honour’.

We are very pleased to provide extended information on the work of the runners-up to the EPT OA Award. They are (in alphabetical order):

- Ina Smith, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa – manager of E-Research Repository (SunScholar)  and UPSpace Institutional Repository. In 2011, Ina and her team launched SunJournals to host OA journals – a collaboration between the University Librarary and Information Service, departments and other university units. Professor Russel Botman signed the Berlin Declaration in 2010 committing the University to OA policies and practices. Ina has organised a number of IR training events in other countries and held seminars and webcasts in celebration of OA week.

- Tatyana Zayseva, Khazar University Library and Information Center (KULIC) - has promoted and educated OA options among the University faculty and has successfully established KULIC, the university IR, has explained the importance of OA to the University and to other national organisations, has developed online OA journals under a CC_BY license, has introduced e-learning technologies. Tatyana has participated in numerous international initiatives (in Russia, USA, Ukraine and Turkey). Her efforts have resulted in KUIR becoming the only IR in Azerbaijan and the Caucasus to be included in the top repositories in the world (World repository Ranking). KULIC has also been responsible for digitising back issues of university theses and dissertations. See here for local praise: http://www.khazar.org/n99/0/Head-Librarian-Receives-Honorary-Certificate.

- Xiaolin Zhang, National Science Library  (NSL), Chinese Academy of Science – the NSL has been responsible for the establishment of the CAS IR Grid which harvests and aggregates metadata from IRs across the CAS Institutes; it has organised numerous workshops and seminars on all aspects of OA, including  IR and OA journal management, IR policies, OA licensing and IR deposit best practices. CAS was the first Chinese institute to sign the Berlin Declaration in 2003, and the NSL provides integrated library services, including training and alert services. In 2009, NSL introduced an OA mandate requiring deposit in its IR within one month of publication; it also drafted copyright addendums and licenses, serving as a test bed for the Chinese OA Portal. OA is now firmly established in CAS Institutions.

 Collectively, these individuals have become responsible for the wide dissemination of research arising from their countries’ support. This in turn advances the success of global research, since all OA material is globally available for building new developments. Recognising the importance of this as the main purpose of all research, the contrast between these efforts in the developing world and those of some publishers in the North, who are introducing measures to undermine the OA movement (see Blog posting of January 10^th 2012) is noticeable.  

An attempt to block OA distribution of US published research findings - the RWA

The EPT has written to a number of publishers/organisations that are signed up members of the American Association of Publishers, which supports the recently presented Research Works Act (RWA) submitted to Congress as HR3699. This Act seeks to undermine the existing open access distribution of published research, via such outlets as the NIH, and is clearly a move by the publishing industry to undermine the great advances already made towards the free and fair distribution of publicly funded research findings. The EPT has written to publishers that have existing OA policies, pointing out that the RWA act is in conflict with these policies and requesting clarification and preferably dissociation from the stance taken by the AAP.

Fur further information on the RWA, follow Peter Suber’s blog on https://plus.google.com/u/0/109377556796183035206/posts/QYAH1jSJG6L

and read other comments here (http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/867-guid.html).

Below is an example of the letters we have sent:

"We write from the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development, a long-established UK-based registered charity which works to support access to current research by the vast majority of the world’s researchers who live in low-economy countries.

The US Research Works Act currently proposed totally undermines this effort. This Act has been introduced by Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), both of whom appear to have received substantial sums of money from the publishing industry over the past few years. The Act would prevent open dissemination of publicly-funded research, undoing all the good done by the NIH open access policy and preventing the world’s disadvantaged researchers from accessing the findings from US research.

The American Association of Publishers has openly welcomed and supported the Act. Your company/organisation is a member of the AAP.  As a publisher with a mission to disseminate research as widely as possible, we would expect you to dissociate yourselves, clearly and loudly, from this proposal. Support for the RWA is clearly in direct conflict with your stated policy in support of Open Access.

Open Access has been a life-line to the researchers in developing and emerging countries, their institutes and ultimately to their national economies, providing the potential for building on past research to the benefit of the global community (think infectious diseases, all public health issues, climate change, agricultural problems, energy provision, water conservation, engineering developments . . .).

The economic returns to countries from freedom of access to global research and the developments that follow from it are vastly greater than those from the small service provided by the publishing industry. The former is almost immeasurable in comparison. This Act has been driven by those that are putting commercial gain before the health and indeed survival of many of the world’s populations. This is not the purpose of public investment in research.

Yours sincerely,

The Electronic Publishing Trust for Development

Web site:http://www.epublishingtrust.org

Blog:http://www.epublishisngtrust.blogspot.com"

The Impact Factor as a measure of research quality is no longer appropriate - OA has the answer

Leslie Chan, Director of Bioline International and EPT Trustee, argues that the continuing use of the Impact Factor as a measurement of research quality is no longer appropriate and excludes much valuable research carried out in the developing world. Researchers from developing countries feel the need to publish in journals with high impact levels as measured by the Thomon Reuter's IF and their research agenda is consequently often dictated by this, rather than by  national and regional needs for research effort. Other metrics are more inclusive and should replace the IF in this open networked climate. Click on SciDevNet to read his opinion piece.

One man went to work* – a catalytic converter

News of a recently registered institutional repository (IR) has emerged. Called Catalysis Database, it uses the Eprints software and can be accessed at http://203.199.213.48/. It is hosted by the National Center for Catalysis Research (NCCR) at the Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IITM), and contains published research articles, unpublished concept articles, theses, reports, working papers, teaching resources and much more. There are currently over 1740 items archived, and the remarkable point to note is that this effort has been driven by a single man, Professor B Viswanathan, and follows from his attendance at an open access workshop organized by EPT Trustee Professor Subbiah Arunachalam.

The professor has acknowledged that it would not have been possible without the help of a young IITM undergraduate student(Venkatasubramanian Viswanathan) with computer skills, who was able to set up the repository ‘within days or hours’ and who still helps resolve any technical problems that arise, ‘though now working in the USA. But it is clear that the driving force was a single person who had the vision and open mind to understand the concept of open access as presented at a workshop, and to see the vast potential of such a repository.  Most of the deposit of material has been carried out by Viswanathan himself as he found there were many inaccuracies when carried out direct by the authors, leading to failed searches. He has received no direct input from his institution, apart from registration of the domain name, carrying out the work himself. He describes the repository as an education and knowledge resource for catalysis since it also includes book chapters and other material of general relevance to this discipline.

And the cost? The server was purchased by the Catalysis Society of India for hosting its online journal and other catalysis purposes. The Institute covers the costs of direct online access and maintenances. Viswathan says, ‘I would not say the cost was free, but hidden’ as he was able to take advantage of the spare capacity within the ICT facilities at his institute. Since the resource is also a major contribution to his own work in many ways – allowing download of data in response to student class queries, for example - the time he exerted was also in the interest of the NCCR and part of his regular teaching and research work in the catalysis field.

He reports that the IR is used extensively on a global basis, and describes how he himself was able to prepare a lecture at short notice by downloading much information from the IR while attending an American Chemical Society meeting in March 2011. He had been ill-informed about his role as a main speaker, discovering the error only on the conference notice board on arrival.

It is good to know that he has benefited himself from his own efforts, but the value of the resource to the science of catalysis must be very substantial.  One man and a student from the NCCR institute have achieved a catalytic impact on their discipline, though it is surely unlikely that the effort has left the ‘agent’ unchanged.

Our congratulations to Professor Viswanathan and the NCCR student – we hope all catalysis researchers appreciate their good fortune.

*Counting Nursery Song, ‘One man went to mow’ - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1TD95M8Fe4

OA by numbers - getting the sums right

Richard Poynder has once more carried out an authoritative interview, this time addressing the complex issue of calculating the progress of open access. The interview focuses mainly on the work of Yassine Gargouri, working recently with Stevan Harnad, but includes calculations made by others. The interview is here: http://poynder.blogspot.com/2011/06/open-access-by-numbers.html.

There are a number of charts showing the progress recorded, including the highly significant impact of institutional mandates on the speed of progress - the numbers of articles that are open access rising from 22% to 64% in repositories where a mandate operates.

There is a link from this interview to one carried out with Alma Swan previously, in which the future of scholarly communication is discussed.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. This permits you to copy and distribute it as you wish, so long as you credit Richard Poynder as the author, do not alter or transform the text, and do not use it for any commercial purpose. If you would like to republish the interview on a commercial basis, or have any comments on it, you may email Richard Poynder on richard.poynder@btinternet.com.

Liege leads the way in OA understanding

An interview by Richard Poynder with the Rector of Liege University, Bernard Rentier, provides a perfect understanding of the way to implement Open Access. His personal commitment and ability to make the critical arguments that will inform his colleagues at the University have resulted in its institutional repository, named ORBi, the Open Repository and Bibliography, being ranked the top and most active OA repository, with more than 62,000 records in its archive, of which 37,500 are full text publications.

When asked what were the key arguments that have persuaded his colleagues to embrace the OA philosophy, he answered:'Concern about the cost of scholarly journals; concern about having an inventory of the university’s production; and concern about having a showcase of the university’s research performance.'

To see the full interview, click here.

Fortunately, the creation of the Enabling Open Scholarship, of which Rentier is Chair, allows his clear vision and experience to be extended to academic organisations everywhere.

If you read nothing else this weekend, read this interview. Our thanks to the work of Richard Poynder.

UNESCO announces GOAP (Global Open Access Portal)

While we greatly welcome UNESCO’s acknowledgement of the value of Open Access, and are interested to hear about its plans for a global open access portal (see http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=31316&URL_DO=DO_PRINTPAGE&URL_SECTION=201.html), we have concerns about the aims of this initiative. The announcement says GOAP “is supposed to be the first destination for users seeking information on OA. OA experts will collect, analyse and filter information related to the subject from different countries.” It also states “GOAP aims to assist UNESCO Member States in understanding the current state of Open Access and in taking appropriate decisions.”

These aims are admirable, but our concern is that they are already underway through a number of well-established initiatives, such as the OSI-supported Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook (OASIS), see www.openoasis.org, or Peter Suber’s authoritative monthly report on the status of OA, see http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/archive.htm, to name but two. There are many other OA developments of which UNESCO must be aware and will not want to duplicate.

As a platform for OA, OASIS is led by foremost OA experts, Dr Alma Swan (Key Perspectives) and Professor Leslie Chan (University of Toronto), with input from many academic authorities around the world. Peter Suber’s SPARC-supported reports are unmatchable in authority. We would like to know what is different about the GOAP concept and how does it complement and support existing initiatives? Perhaps there are real differences planned. Perhaps UNESCO has identified gaps that could be filled?

Funding is limited in today’s environment and it would surely be wise to avoid duplication and complement existing efforts? ‘Standing on the shoulders of giants’ is the oft-quoted concept that underpins progress in research. We can think of very many open access initiatives (such as the EIFL network in developing and emerging countries, the global network of OA institutional repositories, the established consortia of OA journals  - SciELO, Bioline International, MedKnow Publications), the progress of which would be significantly accelerated with UNESCO providing support and global outreach.

All OA advocates and experts will welcome UNESCO’s wish to strengthen OA in its member countries and we hope it is not too late to consider further and take advice from the international network of open access communities before finalizing plans for GOAP. UNESCO is a ‘new boy on the OA block’ and if it can reach out to existing developments and experts, it can make a real difference to the free exchange of essential research knowledge.

Equitable access to research - walking in the right direction

PLoS Medicine has written an editorial following up on what has become known as 'the Bangladesh debacle' caused by the withdrawal of access to HINARI journals, see here.. The editors of PLoS Medicine invited trustees of the EPT to provide an essay related to the editorial and giving their view on the continuing needs of the developing world's research community. The essay, published simultaneously, and titled 'Towards open and equitable access to research and knowledge development' can be seen here.

Publishers withdraw Bangladeshi access to 2500 journals

The news (BMJ 2011; 342:d196) that a number of commercial publishers partnering in the HINARI programme have pulled out their services to Bangladesh by withdrawing 2500 journals comes as no surprise. Intermittent withdrawals have been recorded from time to time, and indeed other withdrawals may not have been reported.

Publishers have every right to protect their markets and profits, and this is why advocates of the Open Access developments have been working hard to promote instead the benefits of OA as a reliable, research-driven means to provide peer reviewed publications for the research communities, both through interoperable OA institutional repositories and OA journals. The UN programmes (HINARI, OARE, AGORA) have always discriminated between countries because they are based on the arbitrary criteria of national GDP. Even for qualified countries, access is barred to those where publishers have existing markets (India and South Africa, for example, are denied access). Moreover access is only through registered organisations so that individual researchers in other laboratories are similarly barred from access. EPT colleagues have repeatedly warned that these donor programmes cannot be depended upon as sustainable fixtures and have continued to work to persuade the UN agencies to put their weight behind OA and all its benefits. It remains a mystery that these powerful organisations, while purporting to approve the OA movement, do little to help raise awareness, support training and advocacy.

Meanwhile, organisations such as EIFL, Bioline International, MedKnow Publications, SciELO, EPT and many others have made great progress in providing research publications and practical services to promote not only access to the global science base but also to provide a platform for national journals to ‘become international’ through OA-provided increased visibility – a South to North and South to South flow of research information as well as the invaluable North to South flow (see ‘Pre-OA national journals become post-OA international journals’ on http://epublishingtrust.blogspot.com/2011/01/pre-open-access-local-journals-become.html). This link includes a very interesting video (see http://vimeo.com/10169351) of Professor Mary Abukutsa-Onyango discussing the importance of Open Access for research in Kenya and other African countries.

Globally, the recent review of OA progress in 2010 by Peter Suber (see http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/01-02-11.htm) stated "The growth of OA over the past year was deep, wide, and steady" and provided a summary of the many new developments – the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) added 4 new titles/day, Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR), recorded 10 new repositories/week, and so on. This movement is steadily becoming accepted as the future mechanism for the distribution of essential research findings - and now is the time to make renewed efforts in raising awareness of the vast and growing volume of articles that OA has already delivered.

Commercial publishers cannot be expected to donate free access to their journals indefinitely and it is up to the research communities to renew efforts to consolidate what has been achieved so far. There is no need to despair that all is lost, and EPT calls on academic communities to recognise the importance of OA in the support of research in poor regions of the world. This matters to us all, since the research generated in these regions completes the global picture of the situation in health, agriculture, climate change, energy provision and all other aspects of our existence. Rather than try to reinstate the HINARI donations, only to be disappointed further down the line, better by far to work with all OA advocates and initiatives to ensure that everyone is aware of what is available to them already - or of what they are missing by not accessing OA resources. See the OASIS resource for practical information on how to implement Open Access http://www.openoasis.org.

Let’s make 2011 the year all researchers in the information-deprived regions are made aware of OA resources. Why depend on the vagaries of the market when alternatives are there at the click of a mouse?

---

‘Pre-open access local journals’ become ‘post-open access international journals’

The following exchange took place on the HIFA2015 forum as part of a wider debate on issues affecting the promotion of local research. Swarna Bandara, Jamaica, made several points regarding this problem and touched on the importance of publishing research findings (see extract below). I responded, wishing to emphasise the importance of this for strengthening national and institutional research.

“Swarna Bandara has clearly outlined the difficulty that researchers in LDCs find in publishing their research findings. I want to emphasise the importance of this problem. Since all researchers loose heart and motivation if they see no hope of publishing their research and making a contribution to knowledge in their area of interest, the inability to publish is a critical issue adversely affecting the strength of local research. Frustrated authors become isolated and feel that their work is pointless. And this has been justified since, as has been pointed out, ‘international journals’ generally take but a minor interest in local issues and the only way LDC authors can get published is by partnering with laboratories in the advanced countries. Again, [co-authoring] sometimes does little to build capacity in publishing skills or ultimately in the progress of research itself. The alternative has been to publish in national journals which had less visibility and therefore provided limited impact.

But there has been a substantial shift in this dismal picture, as Bandara has pointed out. The open access (OA) developments not only have made possible global access to published research, free of cost through deposits in interactive institutional repositories (IRs) or through OA journals, but have also made possible the increase in visibility of local journals. Organisations such as SciELO (http://www.scielo.org), Bioline International (http://www.bioline.org.br), MedKnow Publications (http://www.medknow.com) and others are providing platforms for open access journals published in the developing world, thus greatly increasing impact and international recognition. HIFA members may like to listen to this video (see http://vimeo.com/10169351) of Professor Mary Abukutsa-Onyango discussing the importance of Open Access for research in Kenya and other African countries (she discusses her past publishing difficulties for her work in agriculture, but the point she makes is relevant to all research. The video was made by Leslie Chan, Trustee EPT and Director of Bioline International).

Usage of these sites is very good, demonstrating the wide need for local research findings once they become accessible. For example, there were approaching 5 million full text downloads from the Bioline site in 2009, and MedKnow has recorded not only similarly high downloads, but increased submissions (including from international authors), increased impact and increased income of printed journals due to increased visibility and status. The ‘pre-open access local journals’ are becoming ‘post-open access international journals’.

Full text downloads of articles from OA institutional repositories are similarly encouraging, demonstrating how the transition to open access to publicly funded research is steadily levelling the playing field both for access to the global research resource and for the distribution of ‘national’ research information, see for example the Venezuelan University de Los Andes  statistics for usage of its IR (in Spanish): http://www.saber.ula.ve/stats?level=general&type=access&page=downviews-series&start=01-01-2011&end=02-01-2011&pyear=2011&pmonth=01&anoinicio=2011&anofim=2011&mesinicio=01&mesfim=01

Inevitably, these developments will spill over into the research communities in LDCs, providing encouragement, new contacts, and new opportunities for local research endeavours. And as regional research becomes internationalised, administrators will see the value to local economies of increasing support for national research, as has been shown to take place in the developed world, see http://www.openoasis.org/images/stories/file/Briefing%20papers/Open%20Access%20impact.pdf. . . . . . .".

----- Original Message -----

From: Swarna Bandara

To: HIFA2015 - Healthcare Information For All by 2015

Sent: Saturday, December 25, 2010 2:40 PM

Subject: [HIFA2015] Promoting local research (19)

Dear HIFA2015 Community

In response to Nuwan and Saroj I want to comment on three issues.

1. Lack of Research Information from LDC
. . . . .

Use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) help to make these data available with anytime anywhere access. Concepts of Open Access (OA), Institutional Repositories (IR) are utilized by many large LDC to communicate research and make these available globally. The journal publishing model implemented by the Latin America and the Caribbean at www.scielo.org is a fine example of use ITC for research information. Tools such as Open Journal System promoted by Public Knowledge Project for e-journals publishing and DSpace for IR are freely available and there is community support. In order to implement an initiative for OA to research, need collaboration between information generators, managers, distributors, facilitators and administrators including governments. Most LDC, particularly Sri Lanka and number of African countries have not taken advantage of these free resources while developed countries are taking full advantage. See the membership of NDLTD (Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations) and see how many LDC are in it. NIH the largest funder for health research mandated that research papers resulting from the research they fund must be available on Open Access within 6 months of publication. The result is those of us who cannot find resources to pay subscription to expensive journals can now access these through PUBMED Central. Some EU member countries, funding agencies such as Welcome Trust, and academic institutions also have similar mandates.

Why such opportunities are not used to make any usable data already exist and/or starting new e-journals using these tools to make the voice heard?

 . . . . ..

 Swarna Bandara

(Former Head, Medical Library, University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Kingston, Jamaica)
(Former Coordinator of ETD/DSpace Project at Mona Campus)
(Former VHL National Coordinator, Jamaica)

HIFA2015 profile: Swarna Bandara is former Head of the Medical Library at the University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica. She is ETD/DSpace Coordinator (ED/DSpace is an international repository for electonic theses and dissertations), and Virtual Health Library National Coordinator. Her professional interests include Open Access, Electronic publishing, Health Science Information, and Information skills training. swarna.bandara AT uwimona.edu.jm

Posted by Barbara Kirsop

A 2010 review of all things OA

Peter Suber has published his annual review of developments in OA (journals, repositories, policies, data, books . . . ). As usual, this is a wonderfully authoritative and comprehensive report that has an encouraging message for 2011 for all those commited to the free sharing of publicly funded research findings. He heads his report with these words, "The growth of OA over the past year was deep, wide, and steady." and provides a summary of the many new developments - DOAJ added 4 new titles/day, ROAR recorded 10 new repositories/week, and so on. But on the downside the lack of awareness of all these benefits is still too high in both the developed and less developed countries, showing that much remains to be done by organisations such as the EPT to continue to inform and to correct misunderstandings.

May 2011 be another year of continuing OA progress and may all researchers in the poorer nations suffer from information overload in the future!

A new OA tool on the way – mapping OA around the world!

Just released at the Berlin8 Conference in Beijing is news of a valuable new OA tool, being developed by the OASIS team, and supported by the Open Society Foundation.

It is now very clear that there is such a rollercoast of OA activities happening around the world that we are all in danger of losing track of each other, re-inventing wheels, not being aware of specialised OA experts, missing out on possible partnerships - - -

Happily the OASIS people are ahead of us and have already set in motion the development of an OA Map. This not only logs, links and maps all OA activities (IRs, journals, software, policies . . . ), but will also provide a dynamic timeline of OA progress that will not only be an invaluable historical reference, but additionally an advocacy tool.

Bookmark the OA Map page, here and watch the short video that explains the project and invites all OA initiatives to make contact so that they can be put on the map. 

Make sure your initiative is on the OA Map!

Some of the brilliant highlights of Open Access Week

For the EPT and others working with researchers in developing countries, the highlight of OA Week has to be the astonisihing list of activities that took place throughout the EIFL partnership countries. There is such a lot happening in these regions - but so also in the rest of the world.

Especially exciting was the growth in the adoption of OA mandates during OA Week- see here. Eleven new mandates were put in place during OA week alone, requiring deposit of published research in their institute's repository - from Arizona to Wageningen OA marches on..

And the Eprints team made available a very enjoyable and interesting rotating global map of new Institutional Repositories. By clicking here, the site highlights new IRs around the world, providing a brief description (often in the language of the IR country) and a link to the IR. This is an eye-opening panorama of the research that is now available for free to all. Although said to be 'temporary', it is to be hoped that this resource can become permanent as it is a strong advocacy tool for OA. Make a cup of coffeee, click on the link and sit back and enjoy an IR-trail around the world!

And the work continues . . . The Berlin8 Conference in Beijing is underway this week, with many presentations, posters and videos, - and organisations are consolidating the work they put in place last week - and the EPT continues to collect 'OA stories' A new posting from the Italian Volcanology and Geophysics oganisation was added today, the recent Indonesian earthquake highlihting the need for free global exchange.of essential information.

An ethical issue for research authors

Here is a powerful comment on the recent announcement by a number of publishers to make their publications free for a limited period to readers in areas suffering from natural disasters. Dr Neil Pakenham Walsh (co-Director of the Global Health Information Network and the respected coordinator of the Health Information for All Network – HIFA2015) welcomes the move, but also queries the ethical reasons for restricting access to essential information. He refers to health information, but the argument can be extended to research publications and data necessary for overcoming all global problems – in climate change, agriculture, clean energy developments and so on.

This is not the problem of publishers who have a right to run their businesses on a fair commercial basis, but it is the problem of researchers themselves - those that without financial reward provide the information for the publishers. Authors should recognise that they have an ethical as well as a self-advancing reason for making their research knowledge available free to all. They should ask themselves whether their research findings are important to other researchers around the world for the advancement of science. If the answer is ‘Yes’, they can instantly remedy the situation (without cost, and while continuing to publish in their chosen journal, whether open access or not) by archiving a copy of their refereed and accepted article in an open access repository. See OASIS for all information related to open access and how it works for the research community.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Neil Pakenham-Walsh"
To: "HIFA2015 - Healthcare Information For All by 2015"

Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2010 1:00 PM
Subject: [HIFA2015] Forward: [DISASTR-OUTREACH-LIB ] Full-text material for
Pakistan


> Dear HIFA2015 colleagues,

The message below is forwarded from the email forum [DISASTR-OUTREACH-LIB ]. I think this move by restricted-access journals - to open access for a few weeks in response to major disasters - is welcome. *But* it also raises interesting moral and ethical questions about the status quo: the world's scholarly journals and other knowledge
resource continue to be mainly restricted-access, while the silent and ongoing disaster continues: tens of thousands of people dying unnecessarily each day in developing countries - while policymakers, healthcare providers, and citizens lack access to the information they need to support policymaking, health care, and the capacity to make vital decisions for themselves and their loved ones.

Best wishes,
Neil

> HIFA2015 profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is the coordinator of the HIFA2015
> campaign and co-director of the Global Healthcare Information Network. He
> started his career as a hospital doctor in the UK, and has clinical
> experience in rural Ecuador and Peru. For the last 20 years he has been
> committed to improving the availability of healthcare information for
> health workers in developing countries. He has worked with the World
> Health Organization, the Wellcome Trust, Medicine Digest and INASP
> (International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications).
> www.hifa2015.org neil.pakenham-walsh AT ghi-net.org

UNESCO supports Open Access

A recent announcement from UNESCO, and made available by EPT Trustee Daisy Ouya (currently working with UNESCO in Paris), said: "UNESCO promotes and supports Open Access — the online availability of scholarly information to everyone, free of most licensing and copyright barriers — for the benefit of global knowledge flow, innovation and socio-economic development." It further stated, "Scientific information is both a researcher’s greatest output and technological innovation’s most important resource."

Not only is UNESCO supporting OA, but promoting it too. This is a most valuable development as UNESCO has the outreach power to inform and support researchers in all regions of the world, and particularly those in economically constrained countries. It is much to be hoped that this announcement will encourage other inernational organisations to adopt a similar approach in their support of the free exchange of essential research information. In practice, it must be hoped that UNESCO's programmes will focus on the development of low cost Institutional Repositories in research centres as these can archive and make available articles arising from the institution's support, thus providing international visibility for its research and ensuring its incorporation in the global knowledge base.

For further information, see here.

Steady progress of IRs in developing countries

A valuable report on progress in establishing open access institutional repositories in developing and transition nations has been published in the recent eIFL Newsletter. For the full report, see here, or follow the links from the eIFL Newsletter shown on the right hand toolbar. A summary from the report is attached below, followed by a few general comments and conclusions provided by EPT.

Report on Open Repository Development in Developing and Transition countries

The aim of the study was to create an inventory of current digital repository activities in developing and transition countries at both the infrastructure and services level. The study was conducted with the cooperation of eIFL.net, the University of Kansas Libraries, the DRIVER project and Key Perspectives Ltd.
Over the course of six months, 49 repositories from 20 countries on three continents participated in this survey. The following countries are represented: Argentina, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Cameroon, China, Ghana, Hong Kong, India, Jamaica, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Namibia, Poland, Russia, Slovenia, South Africa, Taiwan, Ukraine, Venezuela, Zimbabwe.

As of May 20, 2010, The Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) lists 277 repositories from these 20 countries (> half are from Brazil, India and Taiwan). Note: the repositories responding to this survey are not all listed in the ROAR database.

The main findings were:

• 66% of responding institutions maintain a digital repository for research output, and 15% maintain more than one digital repository for research output.

• Visibility, access, and preservation were the most important motivations cited by participating institutions to establish a repository.

• The responses show an increasing rate of growth of repositories over the last several years, and indicate that these repositories are for the most part very new services.

• Libraries play a major role in advocating and maintaining repositories.

• Theses and dissertations are the most common type of material in the responding institutions' repositories. Other common material includes full-text of research articles as peer-reviewed postprints, journals published from the institution, and conference papers.

• The majority of participating institutions (56%) stated that less than 25% of the researchers or faculty members at their institutions have deposited material in the repository. One institute recorded 100% deposit rate – this institute has an OA deposit mandate.

• About two-thirds of the participating institutions use some form of mediated deposit in which staff members or librarians are directly involved in the deposit of materials into the repository.

• DSpace is the most common software package, used by 57% of participating institutions.

• More than one third of participating institutions (38%) do not have any official policy with regard to depositing material. In others there may be some partial requirement or encouragement.

• The following services were listed in order of priority for further development: general search engines, preservation services, open access advocacy, disciplinary services, citation index services, usage statistics services, cataloguing services, deposit, publishing and printing services, repository hosting services.

***
EPT Comments: This report shows an encouraging start to the process of making developing country research more widely available. Most of the IRs are new, but the rate of increase is strong. [A check in the ROAR database on July 10th 2010 shows the total number of IRs from these 20 countries is now 315, an increase of 38 in 6 weeks; the total increase is likely to be greater than this as not all IRs are registered in ROAR].

It is clear that where an OA deposit mandate is in place, the rate of deposit is very good, confirming reported trends globally. The greatest benefit is seen by the respondents to be an increase in the visibility of institutional research. The value of OA IRs to increase citations and as a tool for administrative and promotional purposes is currently seen as of lower importance compared with the overriding need to transform poorly-known local research into a global resource. This report indicates that OA IRs are seen as a means to level the playing field in research communication.

A broader check in the ROAR database on the same date, including all developing countries, shows that in total there are 441 OA IRs now established in developing countries. This is ~ 25% of the total of ~1800 to date. Considering the more restricted resources available in these regions, this shows a growing understanding of the benefits OA can provide in strengthening research in the developing world.

FRPAA - another small step for mankind?

A letter of support for the FRPAA bill from the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development, April 20th 2010

"To whom it may concern:

The reintroduction of the Federal Research Public Access bill, that would ensure free, timely, online access to the published results of research funded by eleven U.S. federal agencies, is a very hopeful development for the vast majority of researchers working in the economically disadvantaged regions of the world. Research institutes operating in developing countries are greatly restricted by their inability to access current research.

Yet we now understand that the major global problems waiting to be addressed and solved through research – climate change and environmental protection; infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, avian and human influenza; agriculture and food science for example - all require international knowledge and collaboration. The free exchange of research findings is critical to resolving the many problems facing mankind.

The increasing awareness and adoption of ‘openness’ in the United States and elsewhere is a hugely promising stance. In research publishing, the Open Access movement is advancing strongly and the introduction of the NIH Public Access Policy mandate, together with those adopted by all UK research councils, the Wellcome Trust and over 200 other major research organisations, including Harvard and MIT (see ROARMAP for a full list) is testament to the natural practice that scientists follow in sharing their findings. This ‘openness’ is mirrored in a number of developing country initiatives (for example in India, the CSIR government agency is successfully running an Open Source Drug Discovery programme), since it not only has benefits for the progress of research, but also demonstrates the research strengths of organisations and has been shown to lead to real economic benefits for countries (see 'The economic implications of alternative publishing models') .

The Electronic Publishing Trust for Development is an international Trust, registered in the UK, that has been working for over a decade to support the free exchange of research findings, not only between developed and developing country researchers, but also by raising the visibility of unique research emanating from the regions where the problems are most keenly experienced. We therefore greatly welcome the reintroduction of the FRPAA bill and know that its adoption would vastly enhance research progress throughout the world.

Barbara Kirsop, Trustee/Secretary
On behalf of the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development
http://www.epublishingtrust.org.uk
Registered Charity Number 1059867"