IFLA establishes OA Task Force

The International Federation of Libraries Association (IFLA) has endorsed open access and established (Bordeaux, October 11^th 2011) an OA Task Force to take this forward. The Task Force will work on the following issues:

-          Advocate for the adoption and promotion of OA policies within the framework of the UN institutions;

-          Build capacity within the IFLA Memebership to advocate for OA at the national level, through the development of case studies and best practices for OA promotion;

-          Connect to various organisations working for OA – such as SPARC, COAR, OASPA, EIFL, Bioline International & DOAJ, among others.

The first step is to produce a road map for the work to be presented to IFLA Governing Board in December 2011, and to begin collecting case studies and best practice as to how the library associations can promote national policies and programmes to foster the progress of OA.

Dedicated web pages will be created in cooperation with IFLA Head Quarters.

The Task Force has the following members (two of which are Trustees of the EPT):

- Lars Bjornshauge,1st Vice President Swedish Library Association  (contact, see below)

- Christoph Bruch, Member Ellen Tise´ Presidential working group on OA

- Leslie Chan, Associate Director Bioline International, Trustee EPT, University of Toronto,    Scarborough, Canada;
 - Jan Hegerlid, Programme Coordinator of OA se, National Library of Sweden

- Iryna Kuchma, EIFL Net, OA Manager, Rome, Italy

      - Derek Law, Professor University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom, Chair EPT

- Rick Luce, Vice Provost and Director of Libraries, Emory University, USA

- Felipe Martinez, Director, University Center for Library Science Research, Autonomous University of Mexico

- Reggie Raju, Member Ellen Tise´ Presidential working group on OA

- Bas Savenijie, Diector, National Library of Netherlands

- Xuamao Wang, Associate Vice-Provost, Emory University Libraries, Emory University, USA

- Qiang Zhu, Director, Peking University Library, Beijing, China

From announcement sent by:

Lars Bjornshauge

Independent Libraries & Scholarly Communications Professional

1st Vicce President Swedish Library Association

mobile phone +45 53510603

Skype id: lbj-lub0603

e-mail elbjoern0603@gmail.com

EPT Award for indviduals in developing countries working for OA

THE 2011 EPT AWARD FOR INDIVIDUALS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES WORKING FOR OA

Open Access Week arrives again this October, and is a time to celebrate all that has been achieved in the previous twelve months. The Electronic Publishing Trust is a long standing advocate of OA and the difference it can make. As our contribution to this year’s OA Week, we are launching an annual international award to recognise the impact that individuals can make. It is to be hoped that such international recognition will acknowledge the very real efforts being made by many individuals throughout the world, and will accelerate the development of models for achieving the open and free transfer of essential information for the progress of research.

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ANNOUNCEMENT : The Electronic Publishing Trust* is pleased to announce that it is launching an annual award for individuals in developing and transition countries** who have made significant advances to the cause of open access and the free exchange of research findings. 

 Nominations are sought for the first such award. Individuals or organisations may nominate themselves or others, sending a statement using the attached form to the chair of the EPT Board, (d.law@strath.ac.uk) outlining the achievements of the individual. Please find the nominations form below.

 Nominations should be received by 30th November 2011. Selection of a winner will be made by a panel of three EPT Board Members which will be chaired by Dr Alma Swan (http://bit.ly/aQXNEy) a well-known figure in Open Access advocacy.

 The result will be announced in January 2012 and it is intended that a presentation will be made at a location convenient to the winner. The prizewinner will be publicly recognised through the presentation of a certificate and an engraved award. It is also hoped to have a “fringe” event at future OA meetings to celebrate the work of the winner.

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*The Electronic Publishing Trust for Development (EPT) was established in 1996 to facilitate open access to the world's scholarly literature and to support the electronic publication of reviewed bioscience journals from countries experiencing difficulties with traditional publication.

**As defined by the UN at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49regin.htm#transition

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EPT Award submission form for nominations

1. Nominations may be made by individuals or organisations.

2. The EPT Award is for individuals who have made an impact on the progress of open access to research findings.

3. Please supply the following information:

Name of nominee:

Affiliation of nominee:

Position or role of nominee:

Contact address and email of nominee:

Contact address and email of proposer:

Please provide a brief statement to describe the ACTIVITIES of the nominee in support of Open Access (no more than 250 words):

Please describe the RESULTS of these activities (no more than 200 words):

Please describe the SIGNIFICANCE of these activities and results for Open Access (no more than 200 words):

Please send your proposal by 30/11/2011 to: EPT Chair, Derek Law, at derek.law@strath.ac.uk

 October 1st 2011

An important OA meeting in Brussels

This is just to inform you of an important open access meeting in Brussels, on September 28th 2011. Here is the link to the programme:

One man went to work* – a catalytic converter

News of a recently registered institutional repository (IR) has emerged. Called Catalysis Database, it uses the Eprints software and can be accessed at http://203.199.213.48/. It is hosted by the National Center for Catalysis Research (NCCR) at the Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IITM), and contains published research articles, unpublished concept articles, theses, reports, working papers, teaching resources and much more. There are currently over 1740 items archived, and the remarkable point to note is that this effort has been driven by a single man, Professor B Viswanathan, and follows from his attendance at an open access workshop organized by EPT Trustee Professor Subbiah Arunachalam.

The professor has acknowledged that it would not have been possible without the help of a young IITM undergraduate student(Venkatasubramanian Viswanathan) with computer skills, who was able to set up the repository ‘within days or hours’ and who still helps resolve any technical problems that arise, ‘though now working in the USA. But it is clear that the driving force was a single person who had the vision and open mind to understand the concept of open access as presented at a workshop, and to see the vast potential of such a repository.  Most of the deposit of material has been carried out by Viswanathan himself as he found there were many inaccuracies when carried out direct by the authors, leading to failed searches. He has received no direct input from his institution, apart from registration of the domain name, carrying out the work himself. He describes the repository as an education and knowledge resource for catalysis since it also includes book chapters and other material of general relevance to this discipline.

And the cost? The server was purchased by the Catalysis Society of India for hosting its online journal and other catalysis purposes. The Institute covers the costs of direct online access and maintenances. Viswathan says, ‘I would not say the cost was free, but hidden’ as he was able to take advantage of the spare capacity within the ICT facilities at his institute. Since the resource is also a major contribution to his own work in many ways – allowing download of data in response to student class queries, for example - the time he exerted was also in the interest of the NCCR and part of his regular teaching and research work in the catalysis field.

He reports that the IR is used extensively on a global basis, and describes how he himself was able to prepare a lecture at short notice by downloading much information from the IR while attending an American Chemical Society meeting in March 2011. He had been ill-informed about his role as a main speaker, discovering the error only on the conference notice board on arrival.

It is good to know that he has benefited himself from his own efforts, but the value of the resource to the science of catalysis must be very substantial.  One man and a student from the NCCR institute have achieved a catalytic impact on their discipline, though it is surely unlikely that the effort has left the ‘agent’ unchanged.

Our congratulations to Professor Viswanathan and the NCCR student – we hope all catalysis researchers appreciate their good fortune.

*Counting Nursery Song, ‘One man went to mow’ - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1TD95M8Fe4

Many congratulations to EIFL for its outstanding work and for winning the SPARC 6th award!

EIFL Open Access programme wins sixth SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communications

The EIFL Open Access (OA) programme has been chosen as the winner of the 2011 SPARC Europe Award for Outstanding Achievements in Scholarly Communications for its awareness raising, advocacy and capacity building activities over the last three years, and for its success in developing a large number of repositories and open access journals in EIFL partner countries.

“With the sixth Award, SPARC Europe wishes to encourage the EIFL Open Access programme to continue its excellent work and to provide inspiration to other organizations with EIFL's approach and activities. SPARC Europe believes the EIFL Open Access programme sets a perfect example for others who aim to take up advocacy work and run activities to further the open access movement”, said Drs Astrid van Wesenbeeck, Executive Director, SPARC Europe.

“It is a great honour for EIFL to receive the sixth SPARC Europe Award. We embraced the open access movement from the beginning when we signed on to the Budapest Open Access Initiative a decade ago. It is gratifying that our efforts have been recognized by the international community. We are fortunate to have Iryna Kuchma, a passionate open access advocate, managing the EIFL-OA Programme,” said Rima Kupryte, EIFL Director. “We are also grateful to the Open Society Foundation Information Program who have supported our work on open access throughout this time.”

Over the last three years, EIFL-OA has organized over 40 awareness raising and training events with participants from over 50 countries, and has advocated nationally and internationally for OA policies and mandates by institutions and governments. EIFL partner countries in Europe now boast over 210 open access repositories and more than 2,340 OA journals, ten higher education institutions have newly adopted open access mandates, and hundreds of library professionals, scholars, educators and students have been empowered to become open access advocates.

 

“I would like to thank SPARC Europe for this award that recognizes the achievements of EIFL and our partner countries. I would also like to thank the network of EIFL-OA country coordinators and the many experts who have contributed greatly to the success of the programme,” said Iryna Kuchma, EIFL Open Access programme manager. “Without their hard work and commitment, we would not have been able to achieve these impressive results.”

  

Note: there is a link to the EIFL Newsletter on the right column of this blog.

OA by numbers - getting the sums right

Richard Poynder has once more carried out an authoritative interview, this time addressing the complex issue of calculating the progress of open access. The interview focuses mainly on the work of Yassine Gargouri, working recently with Stevan Harnad, but includes calculations made by others. The interview is here: http://poynder.blogspot.com/2011/06/open-access-by-numbers.html.

There are a number of charts showing the progress recorded, including the highly significant impact of institutional mandates on the speed of progress - the numbers of articles that are open access rising from 22% to 64% in repositories where a mandate operates.

There is a link from this interview to one carried out with Alma Swan previously, in which the future of scholarly communication is discussed.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License. This permits you to copy and distribute it as you wish, so long as you credit Richard Poynder as the author, do not alter or transform the text, and do not use it for any commercial purpose. If you would like to republish the interview on a commercial basis, or have any comments on it, you may email Richard Poynder on richard.poynder@btinternet.com.

Liege leads the way in OA understanding

An interview by Richard Poynder with the Rector of Liege University, Bernard Rentier, provides a perfect understanding of the way to implement Open Access. His personal commitment and ability to make the critical arguments that will inform his colleagues at the University have resulted in its institutional repository, named ORBi, the Open Repository and Bibliography, being ranked the top and most active OA repository, with more than 62,000 records in its archive, of which 37,500 are full text publications.

When asked what were the key arguments that have persuaded his colleagues to embrace the OA philosophy, he answered:'Concern about the cost of scholarly journals; concern about having an inventory of the university’s production; and concern about having a showcase of the university’s research performance.'

To see the full interview, click here.

Fortunately, the creation of the Enabling Open Scholarship, of which Rentier is Chair, allows his clear vision and experience to be extended to academic organisations everywhere.

If you read nothing else this weekend, read this interview. Our thanks to the work of Richard Poynder.