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!

An OA declaration from Southern Europe - the Alhambra Declaration

Following a workshop that took place in May 2010 in Granada, Spain, the Alhambra Declaration on Open Access was announced. The aim of the declaration is to develop an action plan for Open Access in southern Europe. For the full text of the declaration, see here.

Open Access in Africa - a conference organised by BioMedCentral

A valuable conference was organised recently by BMC, titled Open Access Africa. There is now an excellent web site available from which all presentations may be viewed, see here . Presentations range from overviews of OA in Africa to OA-experiences of individual organisations, both publishers and university repositories. Note also, the presentations by EPT colleagues, Daisy Ouya and Eve Gray.

Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean countries make an OA Declaration at a NECOBELAC workshop

On November 11th 2010, the participants of the NECOBELAC project worksop, held in Bogota, commited themselves to the following objectives:

1. Promote the drawing up and enforcement of public policies in favour of the unlimited availability of scientific output.

2. Promote and support the quality of scientific writing.

3 Promote Open Access to scientific output in their Nations.

Participants on the NECOBELAC training course commited themselves to replicating the training experience in the institutions of their countries and to providing advice and tools to achieve the above mentioned objectives.

For the full Declaration and details of participating cuntries and organisations, see the Declaration (in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and English): 

http://www.necobelac.eu/documents/Bogota%20Declaration_4_Languages.pdf

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.

Open Access Week 2010 - EPT's collection of your OA stories

Open Access Week is here! As a contribution to the festivities, the EPT has been collecting and harvesting stories and short reports, and making links to blogs and videos that provide insight into the way the Open Access developments have affected research and researchers around the world.

This is an on-going activity and we will continue to add new stories to the 'OA Stories' page on the EPT web site. To link direct to the stories click here.

Please continue to send short stories to ept@biostrat.demon.co.uk. Sometimes individual experiences make a greater impact on people's understanding of Open Access than would a presentation or article.

Sincere thanks to all who have contributed so far - your stories will stay in people's minds!