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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.

Access to agriculture and food science is urgent: CGIAR can help

There is a clear and urgent need to ensure free access to all research findings relating to agriculture and food science. It is on these discoveries that the well-being of the poorest people ultimately depends. It was with interest, therefore, that I came across an item on the Web titled, ‘Cheap dipstick can detect foot and mouth’, as it seemed a valuable development with the potential for immediate impact in developing regions. I found the reference on the SciDevNews website (see here) and clicked on the link to the full text. But this was available only on payment of a subscription.

Now that open science and open access to research findings is becoming mainstream, how is it that such information still remains behind barriers that prohibit access by those most in need?

Then by email came a timely letter that was to be sent to the CGIAR organisation encouraging with some urgency that its constituent organisations make all their publications freely available to all through open access. My fellow EPT Trustee, Professor Subbiah Arunachalam, had drafted the message reproduced below and was inviting colleagues prominent in the development of open access to add their names to the letter.

This was an immediate antidote to the irritation I had felt on being blocked a moment before. The message has now been sent to the CGIAR administration for their consideration and it is the fervent hope of its authors that the organisation will consider the purpose for which the CGIAR was originally set up and take steps to implement the recommendations in the letter, namely to join the growing body of prestigious organisations that have mandated open access distribution for all the research publications arising from their funding.

Here is the letter, and EPT urges all CGIAR partners to follow the lead of ICRISAT (see here) and begin the process of making their funded research globally available free of cost. CGIAR’s stated vision is ‘to reduce poverty and hunger, improve human health and nutrition, and enhance ecosystem resilience through high-quality international agricultural research, partnership and leadership’. By requiring open access to this research, they will be taking an essential and immediately achievable step towards realizing their aim.

“Dear Dr Carlos Perez del Castillo/ Dr Kathy Sierra:

About a year ago, on 20 May 2009 to be precise, Dr William D Dar, Director General of ICRISAT sent a Memorandum on Launching of Open Access Model: Digital Access to ICRISAT Scientific Publications to all researchers and students in all locations of ICRISAT [http://openaccess.icrisat.org/MemoOnDAIS.pdf]. In the memorandum Dr Dar had said "Every ICRISAT scientist/author in all locations, laboratories and offices will send a PDF copy of the author's final version of a paper immediately upon receipt of communication from the publisher about its acceptance. This is not the final published version that certain journals provide post-print, but normally the version that is submitted following all reviews and just prior to the page proof."

ICRISAT is the only international agricultural research centre with an OA mandate, and is second among the research and education institutes operating from India, the first being the National Institute of Technology-Rourkela (http://dspace.nitrkl.ac.in/dspace/). ICRISAT publishes a research journal (http://www.icrisat.org/journal/) which is also an open access journal.

Since then is growing fast and the portal now has virtually all the research papers published in recent times, and all the books and learning material produced by ICRISAT researchers.

We believe that it would be great if other CGIAR laboratories could also mandate open access to their research publications. Indeed, it would be a good idea to have a system wide Open Access mandate for CGIAR and to have interoperable OA repositories in each CGIAR laboratory. Such a development would provide a high level of visibility for the work of CGIAR and greatly advance agricultural research. Besides, journals published by CGIAR labs could also be made OA. There are more than 1,500 OA repositories (listed in ROAR and OpenDOAR) and about 5,000 journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Currently over 2050 journals are searchable at article level. Over 390,000 articles are included in the DOAJ service.

The world will soon be celebrating the International Open Access Week [18-24 October 2010] and you may wish to announce the CGIAR OA mandate before then.

As you may be aware, all seven Research Councils of the UK and the National Institutes of Health, USA, have such a mandate in place for research they fund and support. To see the full list of ~220 mandates worldwide, see .

We look forward to seeing an early implementation of open access in all CGIAR labs.

Sincerely,
- Subbiah Arunachalam [Distinguished Fellow, Centre for Internet and Society,Bangalore, India]
- Remi Barre [Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers (CNAM), Paris, France]
- Leslie Chan [University of Toronto at Scarborough, Canada]
- Anriette Esterhuysen [Association for Progressive Communications, Johannesburg, South Africa]
- Jean-Claude Guédon [University of Montreal, Canada]
- Stevan Harnad [Universite du Quebec a Montreal and University of Southampton]
- Neil Jacobs [JISC, UK]
- Heather Joseph [Executive Director, SPARC, USA]
- Barbara Kirsop [Electronic Publishing Trust for Development, UK]
- Heather Morrison [University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada]
- Richard Poynder [Technology journalist, UK]
- T V Ramakrishnan, FRS [Banaras Hindu University and Indian Institute of Science; Former President of the Indian Academy of Sciences]
- Peter Suber [Berkman Fellow, Harvard University; Research Professor of Philosophy, Earlham College; Senior Researcher, SPARC; Open Access Project Director, Public Knowledge]
- Alma Swan [Director, Key Perspectives, UK]
- John Wilbanks [Vice President for Science, Creative commons]
- John Willinsky [Stanford University and University of British Columbia]”

Please send us your OA stories as your contribution to OA week!

Open Access Week will hit the research communities worldwide from October 18th – 24th, 2010! Here is the OA Week web site that will tell you what is going to happen and what you can do to help.

To spread information to developing and emerging regions on the value of OA to research and economic development we need to make a lot of noise this week. We need to tell others how free access to research, or distribution of their own research through OA, has changed their work or their career for the better.

Here is a request: can you send EPT any stories you can share that show how OA has advanced your work. Has it lead to new contacts? Has it lead to new research partnerships and publications? Has it made you think about the importance of getting your research findings into the global community to help resolve global problems? Has it helped your own career? Has it put your organisation on the global map?

Please tell EPT about any developments that have been brought about by your knowledge or participation in Open Access. Send your stories (no more than 300 words please) to EPT. You can also add short experiences as a Comment to this Blog. We will collate the best stories and make them widely known so that others will be encouraged.

Write to us with your OA-stories and help the progress of research!

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"

Good news for agriculture

The following announcement was made by the Indian Council for Agricultural Research:

"ICAR Journals in Open Access

ICAR has decided to allow open access to its research journals online for the benefit of students, researchers and farmers for free nationally and internationally. The journals namely, Indian Journal of Agricultural Sciences and Indian Journal of Animal Sciences are published monthly by ICAR. The journals will be accessible from the ICAR website from March 2010 onwards.
The Indian Journal of Agricultural Sciences

* Vol 80, No. 4 April 2010
* Vol 80, No. 3 March 2010

The Indian Journal of Animal Sciences

* Vol 80, No. 4 April 2010
* Vol 80, No. 3 March 2010

* News"

Invisible research: a Kenyan story

A video made by Leslie Chan (Bioline International) of the work of horticulture Professor Mary Abukutsa-Onyango, highlights the continuing problems faced by researchers in the developing world in making their findings available to the global research community. Open access has provided a solution to her publication problems.

There are many such examples of research where open access provides a solution to the current invisibility of valuable findings. See 'Eyes wide shut' below for more on this.