BioMedCentral holds forum on access to medical research at BAAS 'Festival of Science'

The British Association for the Advancement of Science’s ‘Festival of Science’ will include a special forum (see http://blogs.openaccesscentral.com/blogs/bmcblog/entry/biomed_central_at_the_festival), organised by BioMedCentral, to discuss how research and open communication can help to advance medical understanding of diseases prevalent in developing countries. It will take place at the University of Liverpool, UK, on Wednesday September 10^th at 16.00 hrs and is free to all

BioMed Central’s Publisher, Matt Cockerill, will chair the forum. Speakers include Hattie Begg, Advocacy and Research Officer of African Medical and Research Foundation; Dr Colin Sutherland, Lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Editorial Board Member of Malaria Journal, Barbara Kirsop from the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development; and David Dickson, Editor of SciDev.net.

OA Workshop in Cuba

International Workshop for Open Access to Scientific Literature and other Digital Scientific Information Resources in Central America and the Caribbean: Focus on Education and Health for Sustainable Development

This workshop is part of the InterAcademy Panel on International issues (IAP) Program on Promoting Access to and Use of Digital Knowledge Resources, focusing on countries with developing and transitional economies, and follows a previous IAP initiative on Access to Scientific Information in Developing Countries.

So within the framework of this Program, the Academy of Sciences of Cuba is organizing the international workshop. It will take place on September 3 to 4, 2008, at the Palco Hotel, Havana, Cuba. It will be organized into nine sessions, each one led by a chair and a designated rapporteur. Sessions will cover international trends in open access and use of digital scientific information and opportunities for sustainable development. Infrastructure, management, technical and copyright issues will be addressed.

The initial announcement can be found on the Academy of Science of Cuba web site, in both English and Spanish, see:

http://www.academiaciencias.cu/English/pages/ntrabajo/Eventos/evento.asp?id=22

http://www.academiaciencias.cu/paginas/ntrabajo/Eventos/evento.asp?id=22

Details of the programme are now available by clicking on the PDF link at the bottom of the announcement.

Important July 2008 developments

[1] A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed between the Indian Association of Universities and the Association of Netherlands Universities which includes the statement (under the heading ‘Access to publications’) that ‘The Parties will promote among their members open access to scientific and scholarly publications.’

The full text may be viewed from: http://www.ez.nl/Actueel/Pers_en_nieuwsberichten/Nieuwsberichten_2008/maart_2008/
Van_der_Hoeven_Meer_samenwerken_met_India/MoU_science_technology_between_India_
Netherlands_English_version?rid=156471

[2] Full text downloads of papers presented at ELPUB Conference, June 2008 can be accessed from http://www.elpub.net/

[3] Full text downloads and video's of presentations at the recent ICTP workshop in Trieste, ' Open Access models for science dissemination' can be accessed from http://sdu.ictp.it/openaccess/.

Note: EPT Trustee Leslie Chan was the organizer of the ELPUB Conference in Toronto, and played a major role in the Trieste workshop.

[4] On July 17^th, Canada’s National research Council announced its Green OA Self-Archiving Mandate, National Research Council. There are now 49 mandates adopted by research organisations and 12 more proposed. See ROARMAP (Registry of Open Access Repository Material Archiving Policies).

Nature headlnes more harm than good

The journal Nature has published two letters in their correspondence section relating to developing countries and open access, see http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7194/full/453450c.html.

While the content of the letters was not well informed, the headlines were damaging and inexcusable.

Headline 1: ‘Open access more harm than good for developing countries’

Headline 2: ‘Future of open access could be online and peer reviewed’

[H1] The provision of unprecedented volumes of research information now freely available to all with access to the Internet (3489 OA Journals; 1101 OA institutional repositories) translates into a growing resource of scholarly information for supporting research webwide. This is hardly harmful, and is not what the author was referring to.

[H2] OA has always been online and peer-reviewed. OA journals are peer reviewed just as are toll access journals, and institutional repositories contain already published articles that have also been peer-reviewed.

Three letters sent to Nature correcting misinterpretations and misunderstandings were refused publication.

As statistics from OA Journals and OA IRs now show, usage of OA resources by the countries disenfranchised from use of toll access journals is extremely high. This is not surprising - without OA, the sick, the hungry and the poor continue to suffer from lack of information and their countries continue to struggle to develop strong and independent research structures. Therefore, the headlines created by the Nature editorial team are factually wrong and damaging to sustainable development. Such headlines certainly make it difficult to read future Nature correspondence with any degree of trust.

For further discussion on this issue, see http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/more-nature-coverage-of-oa-in.html in Open Access News .

Posted by Barbara Kirsop

Public health consequences of closed access

If you are looking for an authoritative and comprehensive article on the background and rationale for open access and its importance for developing countries, you could do no better than read, “Excluding the poor from accessing biomedical literature: A rights violation that impedes global health” by Gavin Yamey, published in the international journal, Health and Human Rights, Vol 10, No 1 (2008), and available (OA) online from http://www.hhrjournal.org/index.php/hhr/article/view/20/88.

This is an excellent article that introduces the issue of human rights into the open access debate. It provides many quotes from researchers in the developing world that bring real-life examples of how closed access damages public health and restricts the development of academic strength in low-income regions of the world. And it matches these examples with the considered views of many international organisations and authorities, reiterating the widely accepted view that economic growth is dependent on a strong and independent research base.

But the article is already out of date. Since its publication the number of organisations introducing open access mandates has grown from 11 to 46, with a further 8 under development. Moreover, the article focuses almost exclusively on OA publishing, whereas the increasing volume and usage of free material available from institutional repositories is only touched on. This is a pity as the development of interoperable OA repositories is the fastest, cheapest and easiest means to get authors’ versions of already refereed and published research findings into the hands of those that need them. Perhaps Yamey can be persuaded to write a second insightful article on the importance of OA IRs to research and sustainable development . . . and he could include the huge benefit OA provides in making the ‘invisible’ research carried out in the poorer countries globally ‘visible’.

OA progress in developing countries - an EPT selection from ELPUB

The ELPUB Open Scholarship Conference in Toronto will start tomorrow, June 25^th, and the full texts of presentations are now online at http://www.elpub.net/. While all presentations will be of interest, here is an EPT-selection that provides information of specific relevance to developing and emerging nations:

‘Open Access in India: hopes and frustrations’, Subbiah Arunachalam
http://elpub.scix.net/cgi-bin/works/Show?271_elpub2008

‘Issues and challenges to development of institutional repositories in academic and research institutions in Nigeria’, Gideon Emcee Christian
http://elpub.scix.net/cgi-bin/works/Show?422_elpub2008

‘Brazilian open access initiatives: key strategies and challenges’, Sely M S Costa, Fernando C L Leite
http://elpub.scix.net/cgi-bin/works/Show?288_elpub2008

Characteristics shared by the scientific electronic journals of Latin America and the Caribbean’, Saray Córdoba-González, Rolando Coto-Solano,
http://elpub.scix.net/cgi-bin/works/Show?187_elpub2008

‘An overview of the development of open access journals and repositories in Mexico’, Isabel Galina, Joaquín Giménez,
http://elpub.scix.net/cgi-bin/works/Show?280_elpub2008

‘Opening scholarship: strategies for integrating open access and open education’, Eve Gray, Melissa Hagemann, Heather Joseph, Mark Surman,
http://elpub.scix.net/cgi-bin/works/Show?435_elpub2008

‘African universities in the knowledge economy: a collaborative approach to researchinh and promoting open communications in higher education’, Eve Gray, Marke Burke,
http://elpub.scix.net/cgi-bin/works/Show?254_elpub2008

It is clear from these presentations that there is much work remaining to be done in terms of raising awareness about open access, addressing uncertainties and providing technical support. However, there are very encouraging signs of progress that will lead to increased adoption of OA as the benefits become recognised. It should be noted that these presentations relate to adopting in-country OA technologies and not to the very impressive usage of OA resources now taking place, and reported in this blog earlier (see March 26^th 2008).

Free but not OA for AFRICA journal

The International African Institute at the School of Oriental and African studies (SOAS:http://www.soas.ac.uk/) has announced that the journal Africa is to be made available free to institutions and libraries in qualifying African countries as a result of an arrangement between the International African Institute and the Edinburgh University Press.

For further information, see:

http://www.eupjournals.com/action/showStoryContent?doi=10.3366%2F%2Fnews.2008.05.27.17

Here is what is said about the journal:

“Journal of the International African Institute

The International African Institute and Edinburgh University Press are pleased to jointly announce that their flagship journal Africa. Journal of the International African Institute is henceforth to be available free of charge, in electronic format, to libraries and non-profit research and educational institutions in Africa. Africa was first published in 1928, and is in its 78th volume. It is the leading UK-based and international African studies journal that publishes on the whole of Africa, and in all disciplines of the humanities, social sciences and environmental sciences. With a core orientation towards ethnographically rich, historically informed knowledge garnered through field work, it was and remains the central platform and reference point for Africanist field studies worldwide, witnessing more recent shifts to a greater diversity of approaches and interdisciplinarity.”

It is good that this journal will be more widely available within Africa, but disappointing that the IAI is not making the journal open access and thus widening access to the global community working in the area of African studies.