Open Access and Open Source

LIS-505 Introduction to Library & Information Studies

March 22, 2010

Types of Publishers Trade Professional Scholarly Educational University Vanity

Publishers Authority in science, technical and medical fields

Peer Review Bibliographic Control

Electronic journals Access to full-text articles.

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Copyright: Historical Origins French Revolution – Did not seek to ensure

individual rights over meanings and truths but instead to ensure their exchange, conflict and social negotiation.

Enhanced role of author used as a pragmatic strategy.

Developed from a Romantic period idea of authorship.

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Copyright: Historical Origins

Rise of publication technologies Rise of new industrial elite Forfeiting of rights by authors Berne Convention (Damich, 1990) Economic rights of copyright Property rights Moral rights

Wilkinson, M.A. and Gerolami, N. (2004) The information context of moral rights under the copyright regime. Julien, H. and Thompson, S. eds. Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Conference of the Canadian Association for Information Science. June 2-3, 2004, Winnipeg, MB: Canadian Association for Information Science.

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3 Groups in Balance

Creators Publishers Users (institutions e.g. libraries,

schools, etc.)

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Copyright: Digital Challenges

Licensing issues

Ownership.

Archival issues

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Is this the future??

Open Access: Definition (BOAI)

Budapest Open Access Initiative Freely available on the public Internet Can be read, downloaded, copied, distributed, printed,

searched, linked to, or used as data for software by users No technical, legal, or financial barriers other than

access to the Internet “Gold” and “Green” approach

Open Access

New form of scholarly communication Socially responsible, equitable Democratization of knowledge Sharing of research = sharing and building of

knowledge

Concentrated in social and biomedical sciences. Equal or increased citations in Life Sciences,

Engineering, Chemistry, etc. Impact factor of OA journals?

Scholarly Communication System

Creation – Scholars Quality control (i.e. peer review) – Scholars Production – Publishers Distribution – Publishers and libraries Consumption – scholars, students, non-scholars. Infrastructure – universities, governments, granting

institutions, and taxpayers

The Open Access Question

Open Access Policies (General) Copy of a final manuscript accepted for publication in a peer-

reviewed journal to be deposited into an online repository approved/sanctioned by the granting agency.

Repositories must be stable digital repositories Must provide free public access to the manuscript,

maximum interoperability, provisions for longterm preservation of and access

Free, public availability of manuscripts must be enabled as soon as possible after publication Current time period defining “as soon as possible”

ranging from 0 to 12 months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

Open Access: Advantages & DisadvantagesADVANTAGES DISADVANTAGES

Equalizes the access to scholarly journals

Initiatives for developing world?

Wider and larger audience Interested? Authors’ wishes?

Facilitated transfer of knowledge Quality control? Standards?

More author control over publication of work

“Author pays” system. Peer Review?

Faster dissemination of research results (e.g. through self-archiving)

Bibliographic control?

Institutional publishing – putting it in local hands

Proper vetting by reputable publishers?

Economic advantage – cheaper to produce

OA costs? Advertising? Long-term availability? Subscriptions? Fair price?

Open Source Software: What is it and Where Did it Come From?

Not Open Access Not shareware or freeware. The source code is always available Evolved out of the hacker culture Named at a meeting in c1998 Completely volunteer Quality control

Open Source Software

“Both a philosophy and a process” (Morgan)

Need for a strong primary developer Need for good communication and a sense of

community Socio-economic aspects of OSS – it is not just a

set of computer programs

Four Freedoms of Free Software (Stallman)

With free software, the individual has the following freedoms:

Freedom to run the program for any purpose

Freedom to modify the program

Freedom to redistribute copies for free or for a fee

Freedom to distribute modified versions of the program

The Concept of “Copyleft”

Program is copyrighted

Distribution terms are added

Code and freedoms become legally inseparable

Open Source: Potential Problems

Lack of computing, human, and managerial resources e.g. on-site computer programmers

Rapidly evolving technologies Maintenance issues Financial concerns Patents

Open Source: Advantages Can offer features not offered by commercial sector Can “take control” of library services and collections

that rely on computer software Solving local problems builds staff expertise OSS not subject to commercial hype so can be more

objectively evaluated Potential to create knowledge rather than just

gathering information

The Open Source Initiative

What can happen when you think you can guess the URL (i.e. Open Source Initiative)! http://www.osi.org/

Open Source Initiative URL: http://www.opensource.org/