Transcript UK MOVES TOWARDS OPEN ACCESS

OPEN ARCHIVES AND FREE ACCESS TO
INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE
Frederick J. Friend
OSI Open Access Advocate
JISC Consultant
Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
[email protected]
PRESENTATION OUTLINE
 What are open archives?
 Why free access for users? New benefits as important as solving old
problems
 What do we mean by “free”?
 Two routes to open access : institutional repositories and open
access journals
 Why are funding agencies supporting open access?
 Why are authors supporting open access?
 Why are librarians supporting open access?
 International support for open access
 UK support for open access
 The future for open access
WHAT ARE OPEN ARCHIVES?
 An open web-site where a variety of digital materials may be stored
 Content could be theses, dissertations, teaching materials, journal
articles (either pre-prints or post-prints), images of artistic or
museum objects, cultural materials etc.
 So that users can find the material they need metadata should be
provided
 The metadata should be in a format which can be harvested
according to the Open Archives Initiative Protocol
http://www.openarchives.org/
 Next Open Archives Initiative international meeting 20-22 October
2005 at CERN, Geneva
WHY FREE ACCESS FOR USERS? An opportunity to
bring huge benefits to humankind.
 “An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make
possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the
willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their
research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of
inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. The
public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic
distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely
free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars,
teachers, students, and other curious minds. Removing access
barriers to this literature will accelerate research, enrich education,
share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the
rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the
foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual
conversation and quest for knowledge.” Budapest Open Access
Initiative http://www.soros.org/openaccess/
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY FREE?
 “By "open access" to this literature [i.e. peer-reviewed journal
articles], we mean its free availability on the public internet,
permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print,
search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for
indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other
lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other
than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself.”
(Budapest Open Access Initiative, www.soros.org/openaccess/ .)
 Cost of making content available can be met as part of the research
process not recovered from users
 Very low cost to set up web-based repository within university –
approximately GB£4000
TWO ROUTES TO OPEN ACCESS
 First route : authors deposit copy of pre-print or post-print in an
“institutional repository” or other open web-site
 Over 600 open repositories already established world-wide
 Second route : authors publish in peer-reviewed journals funded by
publication charges rather than by library subscriptions
 Over 1400 peer-reviewed open access journals now listed in the
Lund Directory of Open Access Journals www.doaj.org
WHY ARE UNIVERSITIES AND FUNDING AGENCIES
SUPPORTING OPEN ACCESS?
 Open access enables more people to read research reports
 More readers lead to greater use and exploitation of research results
(including higher numbers of citations), facilitating the funding of
further research
 Greater use of research results leads to more public awareness of
the value of scientific research
 More public awareness leads to a higher political profile for
academic research
 Repositories help university administrators to keep a record of
university research reports
 Please read the document in Spanish at
http://www.iata.csic.es/~bibrem/OPEN_ACCESS/Apoyoopen_access.html
WHY ARE AUTHORS SUPPORTING OPEN ACCESS?
 UK survey shows that 92% of authors support the principle of free
access to research literature – they want their work to be read
 Motives of authors are a mix of principle and self-interest
 Benefit of increased readership as academic content on open websites is read more widely than content on closed web-sites
 Increased readership will lead to higher citation levels
 Commitment of authors to open access being held back by
uncertainty about attitude of employers and effect upon career
prospects but these barriers are disappearing
WHY ARE LIBRARIANS SUPPORTING OPEN ACCESS?
 A librarian’s wish is to make available to a library user all the
information the user needs as efficiently as possible
 Many factors outside the control of the librarian make the
achievement of that aim difficult – high prices, government
decisions, copyright restrictions etc.
 Having the information users need available on open access
through the internet removes many of the barriers
 Open access frees librarians from negotiations to concentrate on
ways – such as using searching tools – to help the user to find the
most relevant material
INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT FOR OPEN ACCESS
 Bethesda Statement : medical funding agencies support open
access April 2003 http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htm
 Berlin Declaration : leaders of more than 30 European agencies
support open access October 2003
http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html
 Many more organizations have added their signatures to the Berlin
Declaration since October 2003
 Support for open access based upon its benefits and low cost,
between 1% and 2% of research expenditure (less than cost of
current subscription model)
 Access to information as generator of world economy
UK SUPPORT FOR OPEN ACCESS : THE ROLE OF THE
WELLCOME TRUST
 Wellcome Trust staff unable to access all the publications resulting
from Wellcome Trust funding because subscriptions are required
 Wellcome Trust commissioned two reports into scientific publishing:
“Economic analysis of scientific research publishing” January 2003
and “Costs and business models in scientific research publishing”
April 2004, both available at www.wellcome.ac.uk
 First report analysed journals market, identified its weaknesses and
proposed action by funding agencies to support change
 Second report analysed cost of publication, concluding that
subscription publication costs the scientific community 30% more
than open access and that peer-reviewed open access publication is
possible within a range of US$800-US$1900 per article
 Wellcome Trust is encouraging the recipients of their grants to
deposit a copy of their work in an open access repository
UK SUPPORT FOR OPEN ACCESS : THE ROLE OF THE
JOINT INFORMATION SYSTEMS COMMITTEE (JISC)
 JISC is the Joint Information Systems Committee of the four Higher
Education Funding Councils in the UK and also has a responsibility
for networked services to the Further Education Colleges
 JISC Strategy includes “improving the effectiveness of scholarly
communication”
 This involves implementing cost-effective improvements in access to
academic content for learners and researchers in colleges and
universities
 One route to cost-effective improvements in access through
negotiation of “big deals” – e.g. through NESLI – but many problems
with the “big deal” negotiations
 Open access seen as a new approach
 Open access supported through Repositories Programme,
transition-funding for open access publishers and surveys and
studies
THE FUTURE FOR OPEN ACCESS
 Many achievements in the past three years
 UK Parliamentary Enquiry has provided more publicity for these
developments
 Key changes in attitude amongst the leaders in the scientific and
government establishments are a willingness to question the
existing publishing structure, to consider creating a “level playingfield” for open access, and to consider allocating funds for open
access
 Will this promise of a beautiful spring for open access become a
reality? That depends upon all of us in the academic community!
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING!
 I am happy to answer questions now or via e-mail to
[email protected]
 Advocacy document in Spanish at
http://www.iata.csic.es/~bibrem/OPEN_ACCESS/Apoyoopen_access.html
 The Berlin Declaration is at http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccessberlin/berlindeclaration.html
 Information about JISC’s OA activities is all on the JISC web-site
www.jisc.ac.uk but it is scattered across the site
 Information about the UK Parliamentary Enquiry is at
www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/science_and_technol
ogy_committee.cfm