Bioline International: A model of collaborative publishing and distribution of scientific research f

1
Bioline International A model of collaborative
publishing and distribution of scientific
research from developing countries
www.bioline.org.br

• Leslie Chan
• University of Toronto at Scarborough

Research Innovation and Scholarship the role of
open access publishing, Ottawa Nov. 21-22, 2002
2
Outline

• Acknowledgements
• Assumptions and Context
• What is Bioline International?
• Goals
• Contents, Features and Scope
• Lessons Learned
• Future Plans

3
Acknowledgements

• Barbara Kirsop, Electronic Publishing Trust for
  Development
• Sidnei de Sousa, Dora Canhos, Vanderlei Canhos
  (Centro de Referência em Informação Ambiental,
  Brazil)
• International Network for the Availability of
  Scientific Publications (INASP) - AJOL
• William Barek, Centre for Instructional
  Technology Development, University of Toronto at
  Scarborough
• Carole Moore, Jenny Medelshon, Marla Miller,
  University of Toronto Libraries
• Student volunteers

4
What we do

• CITDPress, University of Toronto at Scarborough
  to promote and participate in the creation of
  high quality scholarly electronic publications in
  support of learning and research
• http//citdpress.utoronto.ca/
• Bioline International, an international
  collaboration Commitment to collaborate with
  scholarly scientific communities in developing
  countries to develop sustainable systems for
  making scientific publication highly accessible
  and visible - MAKING THE LOST SCIENCE VISIBLE
• http//www.bioline.org.br

5
Assumptions

• Access to scientific information is essentialin
  education and research and has a direct impact on
  the social and economic development of societies
• As information is crucial to knowledge building,
  faster and cheaper access to digital information
  should lead to improvement in research
• Researchers in developing countries need access
  to literature from the North, but they also need
  access to literature from other developing
  countries
• Need to take advantage of new ways in which
  information technology could be exploited to
  promote equitable, affordable and perhaps more
  efficient scientific/scholarly communication
• Knowledge is public good and should not be owned
  by private interests

6
Context

• General problems of scientific publishing in
  developing countries
• Global digital divide or digital
  opportunities?Bandage or bandwidth
• A question of know-how and know-not?
• What is truly new in the on-line only world and
  how should scientists and publishers take
  advantage of it?
• Could publishers in DCs leapfrog over their
  counterpart in wealthy countries?

7
Scientific Publishing in Developing Countries

• All the developing countries taken together (with
  80 of the worlds population), produce 10 of
  the more than half a million registered ISSN
  titles
• The percentage of scientific titles are in the
  order of 3-4
• These journals have in general poor distribution
  and visibility
• Normally underrepresented in the international
  databases and indexing services
• Causes limited local scientific capacity, the
  weakness of the publishing sector, a poor
  telecommunication infrastructure and the
  dominance of foreign and transnational market
  forces

8
Scientific Publishing in Developing Countries
The absurd hurdles -- for example, those placed
by the Institute for Scientific Information --
that journals have to surmount can discourage
development of new and much needed local
periodicals. And journals that reject work from
developing countries without sufficient heed to
the circumstances in which that research was
conducted can make valuable data from places such
as Africa and Southeast Asia all but invisible.
(John McConnell and Richard Horton, editors of
the Lancet, July 3, 1999)
9
Goals of Bioline International

• Improved visibility, accessibility, and
  availability of science generated in developing
  countries
• Reducing the South to North knowledge gap -
  crucial to a global understanding of health
  (tropical medicine, infectious diseases,
  epidemiology, emerging new diseases),
  biodiversity, the environment, conservation and
  international development.
• Create alternative low-cost and collaborative
  model of scholarly publishing that is also
  portable
• Assist in technology transfer and human resource
  development

10
What is Bioline International

• Not Elsevier
• Not for profit
• can afford to take risk associated with
  experimentation and pricing structure
• Not interested in competition and market share
• only accountable to our partners, funding
  agencies, and the universities in which we work
• Not well funded
• Not well known
• Not state-of-the-art technology
• Not proprietary

11
Publishers / Partners

• AfricaAfrican Crop Science, Uganda African
  Journal of Neurological Sciences, KenyaCentral
  African Journal of Medicine, Zimbabwe East
  African Medical Journal, Kenya Ichthyology
  Bulletin, South Africa Ichthyology Special
  Publications, South AfricaInsect Science and its
  Application, Kenya Transactions of the Zimbabwe
  Scientific Association, Zimbabwe Zimbabwe
  Science News, Zimbabwe Latin AmericaBiotecnologi
  a Aplicada, Cuba Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo
  Cruz, Brazil AsiaIndian Journal of Biochemistry
  and Biophysics, India Indian Journal of
  Experimental Biology, India Indian Journal of
  Marine Sciences, India Tropical Biodiversity,
  Indonesia JOURNALS from China coming on board in
  2003

12
Nature and scope of journals

• Some are long established journals with
  international reputation, others are lesser known
• Some with international focus, while large number
  have regional focus
• Subjects coverage biomedicine, environment,
  biodiversity.
• Published by small non-profit societies

13
Organization and Workflow

• Document coding
• Database management
• XML tagging

Web
14
Bioline International Features

• In operation since 1993
• Abstracts and summaries of documents free of
  charge
• On-line-only journals and many other free access
• Added-value documents with links to related data
• Browsing and searching at all levels
• New material/system upgrades announced in 'News
  or the Bioline Bulletin Board
• Gateways to other bio-bibliographic sites on the
  Internet
• Flexible access options

15
Benefits to Society Publishers

• Zero start-up cost for electronic conversion and
  distribution
• Expanded awareness of local research and
  worldwide readership
• Increased revenues through electronic
  subscription
• Broadening of scholarly societies identity and
  mission
• Acquire know-how and infrastructure for
  e-publishing
• Long-term storage of electronic full text
• Linkage of local research with international
  knowledge base

16
Benefits to Readers

• Low cost or free access to research that are
  otherwise difficult to obtain
• Unifying disparate research results through
  citation linking
• hyperlinks to public domain international
  bioscience databases (Genbank, EMBL,Species 2000
  etc.), using only stable established and open
  access databases.

17
Lessons Learned

• It always cost more than you think
• Need to rethink business models - what and what
  not to give away
• Need creative ways to raise fund
• Hard not to reinvent the wheel
• Need to work with library community to create
  congruence
• Centralized system or solution will not work

18
Lessons learned

• Economic Issues
• A good knowledge of the market and operating
  environment is essential if a publication is to
  survive in a developing country quality,
  relevance and knowledge of the target audience
  are vital
• Readers are reluctant or cant afford to pay for
  access to publications from developing countries
  (epublishing through Bioline increased
  accessibility, not yet visibility and research
  impact)
• Need to consider other forms of cost recovery
• Encourage publishers to experiment with Open
  Access and seek alternative fund to support
  publication.

19
Lessons learned

• Technical Issues
• Storage and distribution become cheaper, but the
  cost of organization and management of the ever
  growing information load has been going up
  dramatically
• Different standards for metadata coding and
  retrieval, incompatible protocols, and operating
  platforms further complicate the process of
  communication, search and retrieval and long term
  accessibility - Need to adopt common standards
• Experiment with Eprint server (compliant with
  Open Achieve Initiative) using free software
• www.eprints.org

20
Lessons learned

• There are currently a large number of initiatives
  in the dissemination of scientific publications
  both in the developed world and in developing
  countries. Important to ensure cooperation among
  these activities and avoid duplication.
• Need to promote better understanding of
  epublishing and develop more efficient knowledge
  transfer
• Scholarly societies and science academies in
  developing countries are now in a position to
  acquire the means and tools to take control of
  their own publishing

21
Continuum and Process of Scientific Communication
Access Barriers
Databank and repositories
Peer Review
Preliminary Results and Drafts
Data collection
Journal Publication
Publishers/ Libraries
Generating hypotheses
Research protocols
Hypothesis testing
methodologies
Formal Publication
Informal Publication
Open Access
Eprint Repositories
22
Future plans

• Expand the number of journals in the system
• Promotion of BI to international library
  consortia
• Open access for all journals in the system
• XML for full text
• Multilingual capability

23
Future plans

• More sophisticated reference linking
• Detailed citation analysis
• Become OAI compliant
• Integration with Eprints server
• Improve user interface
• Better tracking of usage pattern and subsequent
  impact - Ptolomy Project

24
Conclusions

• As alternative models of scholarly publishing
  evolve and other experimentation continue, it is
  important that interoperability and cooperation
  take place so that the efforts do not become
  fragmented
• Scientists from developing countries must play an
  active part in the emerging global knowledge
  commons that is freely accessible and searchable,
  and open to any researcher to deposit in - the
  key is awareness and participation
• Funding agencies and foundations should support
  open access publishing because it will improve
  science and benefit society

25
THANK YOU!
URL http//www.bioline.org.br
Email Bioline.international_at_utoronto.ca Chan_at_scar
.utoronto.ca