OPEN ACCESS: What is it? Why should we have it? Where is it now?

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OPEN ACCESS What is it? Why should we have it?
Where is it now?

• Alma Swan
• Key Perspectives Ltd
• Truro, UK

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Why researchers publish their work
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Old paradigms

• Use of proxy measures of an individual
  scientists merit is as good as it gets
• It is a journals responsibility to disseminate
  your work
• Printed article is the format of record
• Other scientists have time to search out what you
  want them to know

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New paradigms

• Rich, deep, broad metrics for measuring the
  contributions of individual scientists
• Effective dissemination of your work is now in
  your hands (at last)
• The digital format will be the format of record
  (is already in many areas)
• Unless you routinely publish in Nature or
  Science, getting it out there is up to you

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Open Access What is it?

• Online
• Immediate
• Free (non-restricted)
• Free (gratis)
• To the scholarly literature that authors give
  away
• Permanent

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Open Access Who benefits?

• Benefits to researchers themselves
• Benefits to institutions
• Benefits to national economies
• Benefits to science and society

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The digital era

• The potential role of electronic networks in
  scientific publication goes far beyond
  providing searchable archives for electronic
  journals. The whole process of scholarly
  communication is undergoing a revolution
  comparable to the one occasioned by the invention
  of printing.
• Stevan Harnad, 1990

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And

• Still only 15 of research is Open Access

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New niches

• Open Access journals (www.doaj.org)
• Open Access repositories (author self-archiving)

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Repositories interoperable

• Show their content in a specific form
• Harvested by search engines
• Form a database of global research
• Freely available
• Publicly available
• Permanently available

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Open Access repositories

• circa 800 worldwide and growing at an average of
  1 per day
• 0 in Jordan (only 1 in the whole Middle East)
• Open source software (e.g. EPrints from
  Southampton University)

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Using repositories

• UoCs eScholarship repository logged 2 million
  downloads
• 2 years - 0.5m
• 1 year 1m
• 9mths 2m
• 10K records at end 2005
• University of Otago Business School
• Launched mid-November 2005
• 220 articles by mid-February 2006
• 20K downloads

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And yet .

• Only 24 of authors have submitted an article to
  an Open Access journal
• Only 22 have self-archived in their
  institutional repository
• Natural selection or genetic drift?

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Why we should have Open Access

• Greater impact from scientific endeavour
• More rapid and more efficient progress of science
• Better assessment, better monitoring, better
  management of science
• Novel information-creation using new and
  advanced technologies

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Why researchers publish their work
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An authors own testimony on open access
visibility

• Self-archiving in the PhilSci Archive has
  given instant world-wide visibility to my work.
  As a result, I was invited to submit papers to
  refereed international conferences/journals and
  got them accepted.

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Open Access increases citations
Range 50-200 (Data Stevan Harnad and
co-workers)
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Open access increases citations (other studies)

• Lawrence 2001 (computer science)
• Kurtz 2004 (astronomy)
• Brody Harnad 2004 (all disciplines)
• Antelman 2005 (philosophy, politics, electrical
  electronic engineering, mathematics)
• Eysenbach 2006 (biomedicine)

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Lost citations, lost impact

• Only around 15 of research is Open Access.
• .. so 85 is not
• .. and we are therefore losing 85 of the 50
  increase in citations (conservative end of the
  range) that Open Access brings ( 42.5)

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National economies
National economies

• Jordanian scientists 1708 articles in 2004/5
• Number of citations 2235
• If all had been OA, there would have been (42.5
  more) 3185 citations
• Since the Jordanian Government invested 200
  million in ST in 2004/5 ..
• This means lost impact worth 85 million to the
  Jordanian economy

• Jordanian scientists 1708 articles in 2004/5
• Number of citations 2235
• If all had been OA, there would have been (42.5
  more) 3185 citations
• Since the Jordanian Government invested 200
  million in ST in 2004/5 ..
• This means lost impact worth 85 million to the
  Jordanian economy

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Science is faster, more efficient
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Measure, assess, and manage science more
effectively

• Assess individuals, groups, institutions, on the
  basis of citation analysis
• Track trends growth, latency, longevity
• Identify hubs and authorities
• Identify silent, unsung contributors
• Predict impact, directions
• Manage, assess scientific programmes to the
  benefit of our societies

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Find a researcher ..
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Track citation history
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Follow the citing trail
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Follow the citing trail
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New knowledge from old

• Text-mining and data-mining technologies
• UK National Text-Mining Centre
• The Grid / e-research / cyberresearch
• Example NeuroCommons (www.neurocommons.org)

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Where is Open Access now?
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Average number of articles in an institutional
repository

• 297!

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Publisher permissions (by journal)
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Publisher permissions

• 92 of journals permit self-archiving
• SHERPA/RoMEO list at
• www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php
• Or at http//romeo.eprints.org/stats.php

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Other reasons

• Time
• Average a few minutes
• Estimated 40 minutes per year
• Difficulty
• Very easy or easy

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Author readiness to comply with a mandate
5
14
81
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Institutions with a mandate already

• University of Southampton School of Electronics
  Computer Science (since 2003) (90 compliance
  already)
• CERN (2003) (90 compliance already)
• Queensland University of Technology (2004) (40
  compliance and growing)
• University of Minho, Portugal (2005)

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(Data courtesy of Arthur Sale)
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Developments on mandating

• Wellcome Trust
• NIH
• RCUK
• CURES Act (USA)
• FRPAA (USA)
• National Institute of Technology, India
• Universities in UK and Australia

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Why we should have Open Access

• Greater impact from scientific endeavour
• More rapid and more efficient progress of science
• Better assessment, better monitoring, better
  management of science
• Novel information-creation using new and
  advanced technologies

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???? Thank you for listening!
Shokran

• aswan_at_keyperspectives.co.uk
• www.keyperspectives.co.uk

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