Open Access in a nutshell

When you need to persuade people about the value of open access, short briefing papers can often help. Busy people will have time to read them and they can answer their concerns quickly, where more in depth articles may stay at the bottom of the pile. Here are four useful papers from experienced practitioners who have traveled the road successfully. They are titled:

• Open Access: in support of research - Paul Ayris
• Open Access: beyond the numbers - Martin Hall
• Open Access: embedding repositories - Susan Ashworth
• Gold Open Access Publishing - Jill Russell

They come from the Centre for Research Communications, based at the University of Nottingham.

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.

OA-Advocacy support from EIFL

EIFL have issued a Call for Proposals from their member countries to advance open access. Click on the link for full application details. The application deadline is February 28th 2011. The preamble says:

"The EIFL-OA programme invites proposals for organising national or institutional open access advocacy campaigns to reach out to research communities. We particularly wish to involve scholarly and scientific researchers, universities and colleges, and university presses and society publishers."

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?

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‘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!