Advancing access to information - together

1

Advancing access to information - together

Ina Smith

6 November 2015

Agenda

• The need

• The challenge

• The solution

Open Access Defined

“Open Access is the free, immediate, online availability of research articles, coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment.”

http://www.sparc.arl.org/issues/open-access

Why Open Access?

• Research is expensive – funded with tax payers’ money

• Publishing research on WWW comes at minimal cost

• Access to journal back-files

• New research based on existing research –avoid duplication

The need

Musk says that the new open source policy’s goal is to help stem climate change. He writes: “It is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2014/06/12/tesla-goes-open-source-elon-musk-releases-patents-to-good-faith-use/

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cdc-scientist-admits-destroyed-data-showed-vaccines-caused-autism-children/#cZz6lzEjivPoTZ80.99

Date Downloads

Nov 2013 984

May 2014 1 534

Oct 2015 2 289

The challenge

Rich vs Poor

In a statement released by Linda Jarvis, Chief Financial Officer at Wits, her office explains the increase:

“Some of the key reasons are:

The rand-dollar exchange rate has fallen by approximately 22%, which has resulted in a substantial increase in the amount of money that we pay for all library books, journals, electronic resources research equipment that are procured in dollars and euros.”

http://connect.citizen.co.za/25760/why-is-wits-raising-its-fees/

http://chronicle.com/article/What-a-Mass-Exodus-at-a/234066

The solution

• Open scholarly repositories

• Open scholarly journals

• Open scholarly monographs

• Open scholarly science

• Open scholarly conference proceedings

• Open data set repositories

• Open Educational Resources (OERs)

• Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

Approaches to Open Access

Open Scholarly Policies

Open Scholarly Repositories (Green)

Total of 31 nationally; 16 universities (2 275 internationally)

SA Scholarly Repository Landscape

Next …

• Part of workflow

• Consistent growth

• Accreditation

• Trusted Repository• Financial sustainability• Organisational viability• Technological & Procedural suitability• Administrative responsibility• Etc.

• Standardisation …

Open Scholarly Journals (Gold)

http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcblog/2014/11/06/the-impact-factor-of-journals-converting-from-subscription-to-open-access/

SA Scholarly Journal Landscape (1)

• 303 DHET accredited journal titles (incl. DHET, WoS, IBSS) (2 discont.)

• 146 Open Access (59 on Directory of Open Access Journals)

• 279 titles have a web page (154 have online ISSN)

• 65 titles indexed by WoS (20 on SciELO SA)

• 41 listed on IBSS

• 115 indexed by Scopus

• 163 titles peer-reviewed by ASSAf

• 47 titles published by Taylor & Francis

• Next: Status re DOIs, ORCIDs, APCs

SA Scholarly Journal Landscape (2)

Open Scholarly Monographs

Every part of the scientific method is nowadays becoming an open, collaborative, and participative process:

• Transparency in experimental methodology, observation, and collection of data

• Public availability and reusability of scientific data

• Public accessibility and transparency of scientific communication

• Using web-based tools to facilitate scientific collaboration

Open Science

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

Online self-paced courses for librarians

Open Educational Resources (OERs)

CC Licensed Material

• International• Funders, Publishers, SPARC USA, SPARC Europe,

UNESCO, etc

• National• Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf)

• National Research Foundation (NRF)

• etc

• Institutional• Library, Research Office, IP & Copyright Office,

etc

Levels of Collaboration

Library as a Stakeholder (1)

• Library Management• Strategic planning – increase impact, visibility, ROI

• Portfolio for driving OA

• Library budget

• Subject Librarians• Recommend OA journals for publication,

authoritative vs predatory

• Assist with publishing process

• Data Management Planning

• Knowledge of repositories

Library as a Stakeholder (2)

• Subject Librarians (cont.)• Copyright, Creative Commons Licensing,

Plagiarism, File formats (open), ORCIDs, etc.

• Cataloguers• What you put in is what you get out

• Metadata NB!

• Standardisation - names

• Inter-library Loans• Requests helps to prioritise in terms of

digitisation

Library as a Stakeholder (3)

• Support research

• Increase research throughput

• Disseminate research output

For librarians to survive

• High level of IT competency

• Self-learning & lifelong learning

• Analytical & critical thinking skills

• Collaborate

• Targeted intervention into National System of Innovation (NSI) – focus on:• Quality, quantity, worldwide visibility of

research publications

• Fostering of new generation highly competent & productive scientists, scholars

• Recommendations re publishing & funding of SA research

ASSAf Scholarly Publishing Unit (SPU)

Quality, Quantity, Visibility

Applying best practise

Fostering new generation scholars (1)

• Webinars (ORCID, Creative Commons, OJS)

• Training & consultancy (OJS)

• A-Z resource of scholarly publishinghttps://academyofsciencesa.wikispaces.com

• Workshop on Good Practise Publishing (CrossRef)

Fostering new generation scholars (2)

• National Code of Best Practice in Editorial Discretion and Peer Review for South African Scholarly Journals

• National Scholarly Editors Forum Meeting (NSEF)

• SciELO South Africa User’s Group Meeting

• Building capacity …

Recommendations re funding

• Measuring impact (Bibliometrics)

• Peer-review panels: evaluation of books & conference proceedings

• Peer-review of journal titles

• National Site Licensing project

Negotiations with Publishers

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/2014-2019/moedas/announcements/commissioner-moedas-and-secretary-state-dekker-call-scientific-publishers-adapt-their-business_en

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/2014-2019/moedas/announcements/commissioner-moedas-and-secretary-state-dekker-call-scientific-publishers-adapt-their-business_en

“Can publishers afford to stay out of that trend?”

Data Management Planning

DIRISA

National OA Policy

NRF Statement

SPARC Africa

In the words of Tim-Berners Lee …

“It seems unthinkable that the web is already 25 years old, and many of us can barely imagine life without it.

We all helped to build this, and the web's future still depends on us. All of us must use our creativity, skills and experience to make it better: more powerful, more safe, more fair and more open.

Let us choose the Web We Want, and thus, the World We Want.”

http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2014/03/web-at-25/tim-berners-lee

Thank you!

Ina Smith

SciELO Planning Manager, ASSAf

[email protected]