Open access for researchers, research managers and libraries

Iryna KuchmaOpen Access Programme Manager

Open Access and the Evolving Scholarly Communication Environment workshop, July 9 2012, Makerere University

www.eifl.netAttribution 3.0 Unported

Open access (OA) is free, immediate, online

access to the results of research, coupled with the right to use those

results in new and innovative ways

“Restrictive access policies drastically reduces readership of electronic research

journal articles. OA provides an environment within which literature and

scholarly research articles are made freely accessible online without license

restrictions and without charging users subscription or access fees. OA is a vital means of dissemination of information

which is crucial for national development and in achieving MDGs, given the crucial role that information plays in achieving social, economic, cultural and political

development.”

Professor Frank Youngman, DVC, University of Botswana

OA for researchers

increased visibility

usage

& impact for their work

OA for research institutions

publicises institutes’ research strengths providing maximum return on investment

complete record of the research output in easily accessible form

new tools to manage institution's impact

OA for publishers

increased readership & citations visibility & impact

the best possible dissemination service for research

OA for libraries

partnerships with scientists & research managers to set up OA repositories, to curate research data & to develop OA policies

partnerships with scholarly publishers to publish OA journals & books

partnerships with educators to produce OERs

OA journals

Use a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access.

Users can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the journal articles.

[Bertalan Mesko is a medical doctor studying for a PhD in clinical genomics at the University of Debrecen in Hungary. He published the paper (Peripheral blood gene expression patterns discriminate among chronic inflammatory diseases and healthy controls and identify novel targets) in BioMed Central’s open access journal Medical Genomics and shared it via his own English language blog, Scienceroll.com, his

Hungarian blog, MediQ.blog.Hu, Twitter, Friendfeed, and ResearchGATE.

The results were swift and impressive. The article became one of the most viewed on BioMed Central, earning the “highly accessed” badge, and produced responses from his peers across a range of platforms.

“I received plenty of emails from colleagues from around the world which means we could launch new collaborations with those working in our field of interest. I received comments through my blog, Twitter network where I have over 6000 followers, Facebook which I use for

professional reasons, and Friendfeed, where there is a scientific community,” adds Dr Mesko.

While Dr Mesko had anticipated some of the reaction to his open access and social media strategy, the opportunities it has opened up

for him exceeded all his expectations.]

OA journals in Africa

Over 420 OA journals from Egypt, South Africa, Nigeria, Tunisia, Kenya, Morocco, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Libya, Ghana, Mauritius, Madagascar, Algeria, Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire, Sierra Leone and Sudan

66068 full text articles in African Journals OnLine

MEDKNOW: Open Access Publishing for Learned Societies and Associations, D.K.

Sahu (MD and CEO, Medknow Publications and Media Pvt Ltd):

http://www.berlin8.org/userfiles/file/Berlin8.pdf

and

D. K. Sahu: Eight Facts and Myths About Open Access Journals: An Experience of Eight

Years and Eighty Journals:

http://openmed.nic.in/3240/01/OAP_Myths.pdf

MEDKNOW: Open Access Publishing for Learned Societies and Associations, D.K.

Sahu (MD and CEO, Medknow Publications and Media Pvt Ltd):

http://www.berlin8.org/userfiles/file/Berlin8.pdf

and

D. K. Sahu: Eight Facts and Myths About Open Access Journals: An Experience of Eight

Years and Eighty Journals:

http://openmed.nic.in/3240/01/OAP_Myths.pdf

OA repositories

Contain research outputs

Institutional or thematic

Interoperable (OAI-PMH)

Commons metadata protocol allows web applications (text and data mining)

Snapshot of publication outputs by discipline

OA repositories (2)

The need to evaluate researchers and departments

As a response to requests from faculty

(“Open Repository Development in Developing and Transition countries” conducted by EIFL and the University

of Kansas Libraries)

OA repositories (3)

Publicize an institute’s research strengths, providing maximum return on research investment.

Provide an administrative tool for institutions.

OA repositories (4)

Increase impact and usage of institute's research, providing new contacts and research partnerships for authors.

Provide usage statistics showing global interest and value of institutional research.

Open access repositories (5)

FOSS to set up, free technical support.

Low installation and maintenance costs, quick to set up and gain benefits.

Institutions can mandate OA, speeding development.

Swan, A. (2010) The Open Access citation advantage: Studies and results to date. Technical Report , School of Electronics & Computer Science, University of Southampton: http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18516/

Swan, A. (2010)

Swan, A.

“My personal belief is that we should be focussing on developing effective and

diverse measures of the re-use of research outputs. By measuring use rather than merely

prestige we can go much of the way of delivering on the so-called impact agenda,

optimising our use of public funds to generate outcomes but while retaining some say over the types of outcomes that are important and what

timeframes they are measured over.”

Cameron Neylon: Warning: Misusing the journal impact factor can damage your science!

http://bit.ly/cbK2DK

re-use in industry

re-use in public health

re-use in education

re-use in policy development & enactment

re-use in research

Cameron Neylon: (S)low impact research and the importance of open in maximising re-use:

http://bit.ly/ntbzQ6

10/10/11

From SPARC Europe workshop “How to make your work OA”

Adapted from: John Houghton, Colin Steele and Peter Sheehan, Report to the Department of Education, Science and Training “Research Communication Costs in Australia: Emerging Opportunities and Benefits” [Online] Available at: http://www. dest . gov .au/NR/ rdonlyres /0ACB271F-EA7D-4FAF-B3F7-0381F441B175/13935/DEST_Research_Communications_Cost_Report_Sept2006. pdf

“Access to relevant and timely information is critical to support the

University’s mission of teaching, learning, research and the managerial functions of the University. Access to

information is also an essential condition for the economic and social

development of the country. Open access will enhance access to local

content and this goal can only be achieved through collaborative

efforts.” Professor Kamau Ngamau, Dean Faculty of Agriculture, JKUAT

“One of the key pillars of the University of Botswana new strategic plan

“Strategy for excellence” is “Research Intensification”. OA will help the

University of Botswana, Government, and research institutions to achieve

this pillar by ensuring online accessibility to public funded research

output that can be freely shared by everyone, enhance research quality,

and improve visibility of the institution and the nation globally.”

Prof. Frank Youngman, DVC, University of Botswana

Is OA on the agenda at the AU?

Is the issue of Open Access to information through libraries part of business for the African Union (AU) when it comes to assessing countries’ performance under the African Peer Review Mechanisms (APRM)?

(Matseliso M. (Tseli) Moshoeshoe-Chadzingwa, National University of

Lesotho, EIFL country coordinator in Lesotho and EIFL Advisory

Board member)

UNESCO-ASSAf-EIFL OA workshop

Recommendations:

Capacity building: OA publishing and OA repositories, copyright management

Advocacy campaigns for regulatory policy frameworks – Require open access to publicly funded research – explore possibilities of OA mandates

CODIST II

“OA technologies could benefit Africa” (pre-event of the Second Session of the Committee on Development Information (CODIST II): the workshop “Promoting Innovation Development and Diffusion in Africa through OA Publishing”, in May 2011 at the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).

Delegates examined ways to improve knowledge sharing in Africa and to remove existing barriers.

CODIST II (2)

Participants recommended that Member States should adopt appropriate OA policies and that the ECA should take the leadership in these activities.“OA is a new way of publishing and of sharing information in the 21st century. Everyone has a role to play in knowledge development and content sharing and everyone can make an impact”, said Irene Onyancha, ECA’s Chief Librarian.

The SOAP survey

11 EIFL partner countries: Bulgaria, China, Egypt, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa, Thailand and Ukraine

About 86% of researchers are convinced that OA publishing is beneficial to their research field directly improving the way scientific community work and providing the benefits outside the scientific community – public good benefits.

The SOAP survey (2)

About 63% of researchers published OA articles.

Top five factors when making choices about publishing in a journal: prestige (prestige/perceived quality of the journal), journal impact factor, speed of publication of the journal, importance for career (importance of the journal for academic promotion, tenure or assessment), and relevance of the journal for the community.

The SOAP survey (3)

Publicly funded research should be made available to be read and used without access barriers (n=3875)

S t r o n g ly a g r e e

A g r e e

N e it h e r a g r e e n o r d is a g r e e

D is a g r e e

S t r o n g ly d is a g r e e

The SOAP survey (4)

OA articles are likely to be read and cited more often than those not OA (n=3882)

S t r o n g l y a g r e e

A g r e e

N e i t h e r a g r e e n o r d i s a g r e e

D i s a g r e e

S t r o n g l y d i s a g r e e

The SOAP survey (5)

OA publishing is more cost-effective than subscription-based publishing and so will benefit public investment in research (n=3871)

S t r o n g l y a g r e e

A g r e e

N e i t h e r a g r e e n o r d i s a g r e e

D i s a g r e e

S t r o n g l y d i s a g r e e

The SOAP survey (6)

Researchers should retain the rights to their published work and allow it to be used by others (n=3872)

S t r o n g l y a g r e e

A g r e e

N e i t h e r a g r e e n o r d i s a g r e e

D i s a g r e e

S t r o n g l y d i s a g r e e

How OA benefits your work and career

Distribution and usage

Immediate access to your research output for everyone upon official publication

More visibility & usage

Immediate impact of your work

Intensification of research through fast dissemination and use of research;

Possibly a citation advantage as well

How OA benefits your work and career (2)

Plus:

Monitoring of your research output

Preservation of your research output by your library

Keep your rights instead of signing them away

What researchers can do to promote OA?

Submit your research articles to OA journals, when there are appropriate OA journals in your field

Deposit your postprints in an OA repository

Deposit your data files in an OA repository along with the articles built on them

When asked to referee a paper or serve on the editorial board for an OA journal, accept the invitation

What researchers can do to promote OA? (2)

If you are an editor of a toll-access journal, then start a discussion about converting to OA

Volunteer to serve on your university’s committee to evaluate faculty for promotion and tenure. Adjust the criteria to give faculty an incentive to provide OA to their peer-reviewed research articles, either through OA journals or OA repositories

What researchers can do to promote OA? (3)

Work with your professional societies to make sure they understand OA

Write opinion pieces (articles, journal editorials, newspapers op-eds, letters to the editor, discussion forum postings) advancing the cause of OA

Educate the next generation of scientists and scholars about OA

(From What you can do to promote open access written by Peter Suber http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/do.htm)

“Michael Faraday’s advice to his junior colleague to: “Work. Finish. Publish.” needs to be revised. It shouldn’t be enough to publish a paper anymore. If we want open science to flourish, we should raise our expectations to: “Work. Finish. Publish. Release.” That is, your research shouldn’t be considered complete until the data and meta-data is put up on the web for other people to use, until the code is documented and released, and until the comments start coming in to your blog post announcing the paper. If our general expectations of what it means to complete a project are raised to this level, the scientific community will start doing these activities as a matter of course.”

(What, exactly, is Open Science? by Dan Gezelter: http://www.openscience.org/blog/?p=269)

What research managers can do to promote OA?

Introduce OA polices

Transform the TA journals into OA journals

Set-up OA repositories

Spread a word about OA

What libraries can do to promote OA?

Set-up OA repositories

Help researchers and students to self-archive

Help to publish OA journals and create open educational resources

Help in OA data curation and sharing

Spread a word about OA

Thank you! Questions?iryna.kuchma@eifl.net

www.eifl.net