A report on the Open Access Open Data Expert conference, including some library visits on 13 to 16 Dec 2010, held in Germany and Sweden.
Open Access
While the Open Access movement in academia can be traced back to the 1960s, it has gained new relevance today with the spread of web-based technologies. The Open Access movement advocates “the immediate, online, free availability of research outputs without the severe restrictions on use commonly imposed by publisher copyright agreements.” There are two paths under the Open Access movement:
- “Gold Open Access” – To publish articles in an open-access journal
- “Green Open Access” – To publish articles in a toll-access journal and also self-archive them in an open-access archive
Some countries who have taken steps toward open access are:
United States of America: On 26 Dec 2007, a law was signed in the United States. Scientists who receive the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funds are required “to submit their final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts” into NIH’s online archive, PubMed Central “upon acceptance for publication”. As reported in the article Public Access Mandate Made Law (2007), “to help advance science and improve human health, the Policy requires that these papers are accessible to the public on PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication.”
United Kingdom: In April 2009, the Chief Executives of the UK Research Councils agreed that the councils will over time increase support for open access “by building on their mandates on grant-holders to deposit research papers in suitable repositories within an agreed time period and extending their support for publishing in open access journals, including through the pay-to-publish model.”
Sweden: Starting from 1 Jan 2010, “researchers financed by the Swedish Research Council must publish with open access, making research findings free to read and download via the Internet. Researchers may either archive previously published articles in large open databases, or they can publish directly in journals on the Internet that practice open access … Researchers who receive funding from the Swedish Research Council must archive their articles in open databases within 6 months of publication, or publish directly in Web-based journals that use open access.”
International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA): In November 2010, IFLA signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. The Berlin Declaration (2003) is seen as a major milestone in the Open Access movement and signatories support the concern “to promote scientific discussion and make it accessible to the broader public through the consistent use of the ever-expanding possibilities offered by electronic communication”.
Conference Highlights
The Open Access, Open Data Expert Conference organised by Goportis, the Leibniz Library Network for Research Information was attended by about 100 participants mainly from European countries. The speakers shared their expertise and provided insights into the growing importance of open access in today’s digital age.
New Audiences & Greater Exposure: Alma Swa (Keyperspectives Ltd, Devon, UK) touched on the advantages of open access to researchers in boosting the visibility and impact of their research.
Pervasiveness of Open Access: Dieter Stein’s (Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf, Germany) shared about how Open Access is everywhere, Eg. how students are now using Wikipedia for knowledge. He posed an interesting question: “Who will have more influence? The author of a textbook or the publisher of Wikipedia?” The speaker also added that it will be financially draining on libraries in the long run as libraries might no longer be able to pay for books and subscriptions with their rising costs.
Google Generation & Societal Change: Malcolm Read (The Joint Information Systems Committee, Bristol, UK) spoke about the Google generation who have never experienced life without the Internet and have come to expect free content from the Internet. He said that this could lead to a societal change if hundreds and millions of students do not see downloads as illegal. Consequently, he argued for the need to teach students how to use scholarly resources.
Growing DOI® Trend: Jan Brase (German National Library of Science and Technology [TIB], Hannover, Germany) shared that TIB manages DataCite, a global consortium of 15 libraries and information institutions which focuses on improving the reference content infrastructure around datasets. He added that dataset citation using the Digital Object Identifier (DOI®) system offers an easy way to connect the article with the underlying data.
Visits to Swedish Libraries
National Library of Sweden: In 2006, the National Library of Sweden started a development programme, “OpenAccess.se – Scholarly Publishing” to support open access in Sweden. A key project was SwePub, developed and led by the university libraries of Uppsala, Lund & Gothenburg and financed by the National Library of Sweden. SwePub is a federated repository for Swedish scientific publications “by collecting information from university publication registries. Articles that are parallel published for open access in university registries automatically appear in SwePub.”[x] “SwePub currently contains references to research publications registered in at present approximately thirty of the Swedish university publication databases.”
Jan Hagerlid from the National Library of Sweden shared that the role of libraries in open access is to provide the e-publishing platform and infrastructure. In addition, librarians have the role to educate researchers on the limitations in the present scientific publishing system as libraries have deep knowledge of the whole scientific publishing system because they are in contact with the publishers. Researchers might know the journals available but they do not see the increasing costs, problems or understand the whole value chain, e.g. cost of acquiring these journals and the resources involved. Jan Hagerlid recommended that libraries should vocalise these concerns to the research community.
Uppsala University Library: UUL develops and hosts DiVA (Academic Archive On-line) – a common search tool for academic publications and student papers produced at 28 universities and colleges of higher education in Sweden. There are about 40 universities in Sweden, some of which have their own portals. All university users have one representative each and collectively they form the DiVA consortium, which decides the budget and is supported by a coordinator. DiVA contains more than 7,500 publications in full text, mostly doctoral theses and student papers, but also reports, articles and other types of publications. In addition the database holds around 110,000 references to publications produced by the University’s researchers and other employees. Bibliographic registration started in 1995 but older publications are included too. Aina Svensson from UUL sees increasing demands for DiVA. She added that all parties could prevent duplication of resources with collaboration. The Swedish Research Council’s decision on mandated Open Access from 1 Jan 2010 saw more Swedish institutions following suit too.
Stockholm University Library: SUL started its open access initiative in 2007 initiated by a group of both library and faculty personnel and spurred by the Berlin Declaration. SUL also registers their publications in DiVA. With mandates implemented by the Swedish Research Council, SUL sees the Swedish libraries’ role as assisting researchers on how to implement Open Access for their research work. Marjatte Sikstrom and Ingela Tang both agreed that the return of investment is a key factor for open access since most of the Swedish university researchers are publicly funded by taxpayers. In essence, the publisher gets free publications on research results with research paid by taxpayers. When these research publications are published in journals, the libraries have to pay once more for subscription. Significantly, there is wastage over too much spending of public funds especially with the availability and advancement of the Internet which should be used more effectively to the public’s advantage.
The Open Access movement is gradually sweeping across the world. The conference and library visits certainly gave me an educational experience into the world of open access policies and how these are slowly changing the global intellectual landscape. I left Europe’s freezing cold December weather with a new zest and conviction on the benefits of open access and sharing information for the common good. More importantly the questions before us are – What is the relevance of open access to Singapore? What is the library’s role in open access?
Contributed by Belinda Chan, Senior Associate (I) with Government & Business Information Services at the National Library Board Singapore. She thanks the wonderful folks whom she met at the Swedish libraries for their time and sharing.