A new Open Access journal: Emerging Health Threats Journal will be of particular interest to medical research, healthcare professionals and librarians, especially in the developing regions of the world where the effects of conflict and emerging new infectious diseases are prevalent. To quote from the journal’s website, ‘Emerging health threats are the myriad of new and evolving health issues that society faces on a daily basis, including new infectious diseases, chemical and environmental hazards, radiation exposure, disasters, and cultural and population health issues. One issue of the Emerging Health Threats Monitor alone includes topics as diverse as the effects of climate change on developing countries, the effects of traffic pollution on children, the fatal impact of environmental arsenic, and the outbreak of Rift Valley fever in the Comoros Islands.’
To access the journal, click here.
Thursday, 7 May 2009
Monday, 27 April 2009
Reassuring Open Access-waverers
In the OA-sphere there are two worlds, the OA-rich and the OA-poor.
The OA-rich world may be economically poor, but understands the great benefits that OA can bring to its national research base, its education, its institutes and the progress of global research. The OA-poor world may be economically rich, but has not been informed about OA, or has been misinformed about OA, or is failing to understand how access to scholarly information is changing for the good in the age of the Internet.
But there’s a problem. The rich world has now moved on from describing the great benefits of OA to its authors, readers and administrators. As its constituencies have understood and adapted, it has begun to discuss the technicalities of tracking versions; it is wondering how data can be archived and shared; it has begun to worry about the slowness of authors to deposit their research into their institutional repositories; it is considering whether Face Book and Twitter have a place; it is assessing the value of downloads versus citations. It is gnawing away at the endless possibilities that OA has opened up . . . taking its future existence for granted.
But as the OA-rich communities discuss progress and new developments, they perforce repeat the difficulties. ‘There are still only 16% of the world’s research articles available through OA – how can we speed this up?’, yet they no longer mention that even 16% represents millions of free research articles. ‘There are only 1300 IRs so far’ – yet they don’t mention that these are increasing at the rate of 1-2/day (1319 yesterday, 1321 today!). ‘It has taken $xxxxx to set up our campus-wide digital resource’ – yet a simple repository to hold an institute’s research publications can be done on a shoe-string. ‘There has to be long-term commitment’ – very true, and in organisations that have understood the importance and value to them of OA, the commitment is there. As the debates and exchange of ideas surge ahead, organisations that are not immersed in the exciting OA opportunities for research communities only hear about the remaining challenges while the great benefits are no longer voiced. And hardly anyone bothers to mention the highly impressive usage being made of OA resources – which in the end is all that counts.
It is a bit like trying to sell a ‘green’ car. ‘Yes, madam, it is a bit small. No, it doesn’t have central locking. No, it doesn’t have retractable wing mirrors’. . . . no sale. But the successful salesman adds, ‘But you will save $x on fuel. You will save $x on tyre replacements. You will have very low insurance costs. You will have very low greenhouse gas emissions. We sold three models yesterday alone . . . they are the cars of the future. Would you like a test drive?’
For OA newcomers there are plenty of test drives to be found at ePrints and elsewhere, and there are very satisfied customers at Harvard, MIT, UK Research Councils, Wellcome Trust, Universities in Portugal, Australia, Venezuela, India, Scotland . . . . see ROAR or openDOAR. And the OA-usage statistics are incontestable proof that these organisations have made the right choice, see for example the University of Strathclyde , or the University de los Andes.
Organisations and individuals that still hesitate should get the full story and ask themselves if such prestigious organisations as Harvard would unanimously agree to an open access policy unless it was right for its organisation, right for the progress of research? But how to get the full story that is authoritative, up-to-date, impartial? Fortunately, the OSI-supported Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook (OASIS) is coming to a website near you very soon, to provide a comprehensive resource for all would-be OA-rich scholars.
Posted by Barbara Kirsop, Electronic Publishing Trust for Development.
The OA-rich world may be economically poor, but understands the great benefits that OA can bring to its national research base, its education, its institutes and the progress of global research. The OA-poor world may be economically rich, but has not been informed about OA, or has been misinformed about OA, or is failing to understand how access to scholarly information is changing for the good in the age of the Internet.
But there’s a problem. The rich world has now moved on from describing the great benefits of OA to its authors, readers and administrators. As its constituencies have understood and adapted, it has begun to discuss the technicalities of tracking versions; it is wondering how data can be archived and shared; it has begun to worry about the slowness of authors to deposit their research into their institutional repositories; it is considering whether Face Book and Twitter have a place; it is assessing the value of downloads versus citations. It is gnawing away at the endless possibilities that OA has opened up . . . taking its future existence for granted.
But as the OA-rich communities discuss progress and new developments, they perforce repeat the difficulties. ‘There are still only 16% of the world’s research articles available through OA – how can we speed this up?’, yet they no longer mention that even 16% represents millions of free research articles. ‘There are only 1300 IRs so far’ – yet they don’t mention that these are increasing at the rate of 1-2/day (1319 yesterday, 1321 today!). ‘It has taken $xxxxx to set up our campus-wide digital resource’ – yet a simple repository to hold an institute’s research publications can be done on a shoe-string. ‘There has to be long-term commitment’ – very true, and in organisations that have understood the importance and value to them of OA, the commitment is there. As the debates and exchange of ideas surge ahead, organisations that are not immersed in the exciting OA opportunities for research communities only hear about the remaining challenges while the great benefits are no longer voiced. And hardly anyone bothers to mention the highly impressive usage being made of OA resources – which in the end is all that counts.
It is a bit like trying to sell a ‘green’ car. ‘Yes, madam, it is a bit small. No, it doesn’t have central locking. No, it doesn’t have retractable wing mirrors’. . . . no sale. But the successful salesman adds, ‘But you will save $x on fuel. You will save $x on tyre replacements. You will have very low insurance costs. You will have very low greenhouse gas emissions. We sold three models yesterday alone . . . they are the cars of the future. Would you like a test drive?’
For OA newcomers there are plenty of test drives to be found at ePrints and elsewhere, and there are very satisfied customers at Harvard, MIT, UK Research Councils, Wellcome Trust, Universities in Portugal, Australia, Venezuela, India, Scotland . . . . see ROAR or openDOAR. And the OA-usage statistics are incontestable proof that these organisations have made the right choice, see for example the University of Strathclyde , or the University de los Andes.
Organisations and individuals that still hesitate should get the full story and ask themselves if such prestigious organisations as Harvard would unanimously agree to an open access policy unless it was right for its organisation, right for the progress of research? But how to get the full story that is authoritative, up-to-date, impartial? Fortunately, the OSI-supported Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook (OASIS) is coming to a website near you very soon, to provide a comprehensive resource for all would-be OA-rich scholars.
Posted by Barbara Kirsop, Electronic Publishing Trust for Development.
Friday, 24 April 2009
Bioline International attracting strong support
Six months after the launch of Bioline International's campaign for sponsorship and membership to support the global distribution of research published in developing country journals, the news is that 18 organisations have already become Members, and others are sponsoring the service. This is great news as the visibility of the unique research findings generated in the developing world is critical for the establishment of appropriate international research programmes - think avian 'flu, think climate change....
Full details are available from the BI News site. Let us hope more organisations are willing to make a similar commitment so that information from the developing world remains available to all.
Full details are available from the BI News site. Let us hope more organisations are willing to make a similar commitment so that information from the developing world remains available to all.
Thursday, 23 April 2009
Two new OA articles
Two important publications:
1. Leslie Chan, Associate Director of Bioline International, and EPT Trustee asks a number of questions in a presentation he made recently to the Canadian academic communities. He asks, for example:
- Why is your institution’s library paying millions of dollars each year for journal subscriptions and yet you are still unable to access some of the journals you need for your research?
- Why do we give away our work and contribute free labour to refereeing for journals that put restrictions and price barriers on access?
He answers many such questions and dispels many myths about open access, see here.
2. An excellent review of the state of Open Access and the prices of toll access journals (today showing a 9-7% average increase in subscriptions), plus a series of tables referring to prices of publications in different disciplines, different countries and different years. Van Orsdel and Born - see here.
1. Leslie Chan, Associate Director of Bioline International, and EPT Trustee asks a number of questions in a presentation he made recently to the Canadian academic communities. He asks, for example:
- Why is your institution’s library paying millions of dollars each year for journal subscriptions and yet you are still unable to access some of the journals you need for your research?
- Why do we give away our work and contribute free labour to refereeing for journals that put restrictions and price barriers on access?
He answers many such questions and dispels many myths about open access, see here.
2. An excellent review of the state of Open Access and the prices of toll access journals (today showing a 9-7% average increase in subscriptions), plus a series of tables referring to prices of publications in different disciplines, different countries and different years. Van Orsdel and Born - see here.
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
Subbiah Arunachalam on Open Access in India
Two EPT Trustees discuss open access in India during the Delhi workshop, reported earlier.
Subbiah Arunachalam on Open Access in India from Leslie Chan on Vimeo.
Subbiah Arunachalam on Open Access in India from Leslie Chan on Vimeo.
Saturday, 28 March 2009
Successful conference - now the challenge!
A report from Subbiah Arunachalam on CSIR OA Conference in Delhi, March 29th, with a question to challenge participants.
Friends:
I was there at the one-day conference on scholarly communication organised by CSIR at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, yesterday [24 March 2009]. We had a good gathering - more than 150 people at any given time. We had good speakers: Prof. Sunil Sarangi, Director, NIT, Rourkela, spoke about how at NIT they were able to come up with faculty support for India's first and so far only institutional mandate for open access. Dr D K Sahu, MedKnow Publications, Mumbai, spoke from personal experience how open access publishing is profitable in more than one sense and cleared the many myths about the publication of OA journals. Prof. Mangala Sunder Krishnan of IIT Madras gave an overview of the NPTEL project and gave a glimpse of the National Mission supported by the Ministry of Human Resource Development. Prof. John Willinsky of Stanford University told the audience that open access was all about the history of science and how even the usually secretive Isaac Newton came to acknowledge the importance of unfettered dissemination of scientific research results. Willinsky also told us how within months of joining the Stanford Faculty he persuaded his colleagues at the School of Education to adopt a Faculty-initiated mandate for open access to all their research publications. For Willinsky, open access is a basic human right. Prof. Leslie Chan of the University of Toronto stressed the importance, value and benefits of the commons - be it a spacious and well-maintained garden or the intellectual commons. He gave several practical suggestions. He gave a dramatic example of an African researcher whose papers, when placed in an open access server started attracting citations at an unusually high rate. In his inaugural address, Dr Gangan Prathap, Director of NISCAIR, CSIR's publishing arm, told us that CSIR journals recovered through subscription revenue only about 30% of the costs and the intangible benefits that would accrue by making all the journals open access would far exceed any loss in revenue. Dr Prathap mentioned it was only the mindset and our nature to hold on to 'the intellectual property' we generated that stood in the way of adopting open access. I pleaded for taking advantage of the web technologies in both accessing the information we need from around the world and making our own work more visible and stressed the need for walking the talk and converting intent into action.
The conference ended with a lively panel discussion moderated by Prof. Leslie Chan. Prof. Chopra mentioned two great benefits of journals going open access and online: the first is ecological - all the trees we cut to produce print journals could be saved; the second is control of plagiarism, as it is easy to detect in the online environment. Dr Hirwani, Head of URDIP, CSIR, Pune, told us that at CSIR they were interested in creating both intellectual property and intellectual commons.
Audience participation was very good. There were many questions and the discussion was lively.
I hope CSIR will soon circulate all the presentations and a report on the conference to all participants.
To me the conference was successful. Just before the conference came to a close, the CSIR's Chief of Finance asked a couple of questions: If this was a conference on open access why was it not being broadcast to a nationwide audience through videoconferencing? Would we be writing a report and forwarding it to the key policy makers in the government? The answer to the second question, says Dr Naresh Kumar of CSIR, is yes. The conference was restricted to participants at the conference venue only, but thanks to the foresight of Mr Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, the entire proceedings have been captured on video. The Centre for Internet and Society will place the video recording as well as all the presentations on its website.
The CSIR team led by Dr Naresh Kumar and Dr Chandra Gupt deserve to be congratulated for putting together this one-day conference
Now, what next? The participants came - some from as far away as Rourkela and Mysore, heard the speakers, some asked questions, and went away. What they do in the next few days is crucial. For starters, they could talk to their colleagues about what they came to know about the changing face of scholarly communication and open access at the conference; they could initiate action to set up open access repositories in their own institutions; they may place all their published work in an open access repository; they may resolve to make all their papers openly accessible either by publishing them in OA journals or by placing them in an OA repository. If they are already doing all these they may be proactive and persuade other scientists and institutions to adopt open access. They may write to leaders of science, policy makers and concerned government officials to mobilise support for the adoption of a nationwide mandate for open access to all publicly-funded research.
Best wishes.
Subbiah Arunachalam
Friends:
I was there at the one-day conference on scholarly communication organised by CSIR at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, yesterday [24 March 2009]. We had a good gathering - more than 150 people at any given time. We had good speakers: Prof. Sunil Sarangi, Director, NIT, Rourkela, spoke about how at NIT they were able to come up with faculty support for India's first and so far only institutional mandate for open access. Dr D K Sahu, MedKnow Publications, Mumbai, spoke from personal experience how open access publishing is profitable in more than one sense and cleared the many myths about the publication of OA journals. Prof. Mangala Sunder Krishnan of IIT Madras gave an overview of the NPTEL project and gave a glimpse of the National Mission supported by the Ministry of Human Resource Development. Prof. John Willinsky of Stanford University told the audience that open access was all about the history of science and how even the usually secretive Isaac Newton came to acknowledge the importance of unfettered dissemination of scientific research results. Willinsky also told us how within months of joining the Stanford Faculty he persuaded his colleagues at the School of Education to adopt a Faculty-initiated mandate for open access to all their research publications. For Willinsky, open access is a basic human right. Prof. Leslie Chan of the University of Toronto stressed the importance, value and benefits of the commons - be it a spacious and well-maintained garden or the intellectual commons. He gave several practical suggestions. He gave a dramatic example of an African researcher whose papers, when placed in an open access server started attracting citations at an unusually high rate. In his inaugural address, Dr Gangan Prathap, Director of NISCAIR, CSIR's publishing arm, told us that CSIR journals recovered through subscription revenue only about 30% of the costs and the intangible benefits that would accrue by making all the journals open access would far exceed any loss in revenue. Dr Prathap mentioned it was only the mindset and our nature to hold on to 'the intellectual property' we generated that stood in the way of adopting open access. I pleaded for taking advantage of the web technologies in both accessing the information we need from around the world and making our own work more visible and stressed the need for walking the talk and converting intent into action.
The conference ended with a lively panel discussion moderated by Prof. Leslie Chan. Prof. Chopra mentioned two great benefits of journals going open access and online: the first is ecological - all the trees we cut to produce print journals could be saved; the second is control of plagiarism, as it is easy to detect in the online environment. Dr Hirwani, Head of URDIP, CSIR, Pune, told us that at CSIR they were interested in creating both intellectual property and intellectual commons.
Audience participation was very good. There were many questions and the discussion was lively.
I hope CSIR will soon circulate all the presentations and a report on the conference to all participants.
To me the conference was successful. Just before the conference came to a close, the CSIR's Chief of Finance asked a couple of questions: If this was a conference on open access why was it not being broadcast to a nationwide audience through videoconferencing? Would we be writing a report and forwarding it to the key policy makers in the government? The answer to the second question, says Dr Naresh Kumar of CSIR, is yes. The conference was restricted to participants at the conference venue only, but thanks to the foresight of Mr Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, the entire proceedings have been captured on video. The Centre for Internet and Society will place the video recording as well as all the presentations on its website.
The CSIR team led by Dr Naresh Kumar and Dr Chandra Gupt deserve to be congratulated for putting together this one-day conference
Now, what next? The participants came - some from as far away as Rourkela and Mysore, heard the speakers, some asked questions, and went away. What they do in the next few days is crucial. For starters, they could talk to their colleagues about what they came to know about the changing face of scholarly communication and open access at the conference; they could initiate action to set up open access repositories in their own institutions; they may place all their published work in an open access repository; they may resolve to make all their papers openly accessible either by publishing them in OA journals or by placing them in an OA repository. If they are already doing all these they may be proactive and persuade other scientists and institutions to adopt open access. They may write to leaders of science, policy makers and concerned government officials to mobilise support for the adoption of a nationwide mandate for open access to all publicly-funded research.
Best wishes.
Subbiah Arunachalam
Wednesday, 11 February 2009
A big step for OA in India
CSIR’s head of R &D said, in a memorandum to the Directors of all CSIR laboratories,
“The CSIR is pleased to approve the implementation of the following recommendations of the Group for Open Access to Science Publications (GOASP) of CSIR":
1. All research papers published from all CSIR laboratories be made open access either by depositing the full-text and the metadata of each paper in an institutional repository or by publishing the papers in an open access journal in the first place.
2. All the CSIR published journals to be made open access.
3. Each laboratory sets up its own interoperable institutional open access repository.
4. CSIR / lab sets up one or more centre(s) which would harvest the full-text and metadata of
these papers.
5. Each laboratory sets up Electronic Thesis and Dissertations Repository.
6. To hold a conference for creating awareness on Open Access.
7. To hold in house Training programmes on Open Access.
8. Sensitize CSIR researchers.
It is requested that the above Open Access activities are implemented at the earliest.”
CSIR is taking a strong lead in ensuring that much of the research carried out in
access. This is an inspiration to research leaders in the developing world and – when fully implemented -.will enrich the knowledge base of researchers everywhere.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
