OPEN ARCHIVES AND FREE ACCESS TO INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE

Frederick J. FriendOSI Open Access Advocate

JISC ConsultantHonorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL

f.friend@ucl.ac.uk

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/Apoyo-open_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 web-

sites 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 playing-field” 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 f.friend@ucl.ac.uk

Advocacy document in Spanish at http://www.iata.csic.es/~bibrem/OPEN_ACCESS/Apoyo-open_access.html

The Berlin Declaration is at http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/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_technology_committee.cfm