Beyond PDF. XML is better.

Many of the discussions on scholarly communication focus on version, with the assumption being that the best or authoritative version is the publisher's PDF. But is this really the best version for the future? There are arguments that XML is both more usable and more suited to preservation. An author's final manuscript in PubMedCentral, for example, in XML, is more searchable, generally more accessible for the print disabled, and in better shape for preserving into the future, than any PDF version.

Three great quotes on PDF, from a presentation by Alma Swan (thanks to Peter Suber and Charles Bailey on the Open Access Tracking Project):

John Wilbanks (on screen scraping): "Scraping is the right word, because having to work with PDF is really scraping the bottom of the barrel"

Clifford Lynch: "PDF is evil".

Peter Murray-Rust: "Getting to XML from PDF is like starting with the burger and trying to get back to the cow".

Comment: do we need to start writing and publishing in XML in the first place? At the very least, it seems to me that we should be asking ourselves this kind of question - and definitely questioning claims that the current best version is a publisher's PDF. There are moves in the publishing / word processing industry to facilitate this move, for example by Charlesworth Group, Nature Publishing Group, the Public Knowledge Project (Open Journal Systems / Open Conference Systems) and Microsoft, that I know of. Something to watch for, applaud and support.

Dramatic Growth of Open Access: June 30, 2009

OpenDOAR's Peter Millington explains the numbers and how to insert charts that automatically update with OpenDOAR data, like the one below (it's easy - just copy & paste a URL!) to IJPE author Heather Morrison at the OAI6 conference. Photo courtesy of Elena Giglia.

Highlights

Growth in open access policies was highly significant this quarter; the number of departmental policies in particular, doubled in the last few months from 6 to 13. There are now well over a hundred open access policies, and many more in the works, such as the recently re-introduced U.S. Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA). PLoS One is now one of the world's largest journals, anticipating publication of 4,800 articles in 2009 - and more in 2010; PLoS One may well become THE largest journal sometime in 2010. DOAJ added 253 journals; OpenDOAR and OAIster each added 43 new repositories, for a total of over 1,400 repositories facilitating access to about 22-27 million items, a distributed collection growing by at least 17,000 items per day. Both free and open access are growing steadily at PubMedCentral; the percentage of publications based on NIH-funded research that are freely available within 2 years of publication is up to 35%. Watch for this percentage to grow over the coming year as more articles pass the maximum 12-month embargo allowed under the policy which came into effect April 2008. 98 more journals are making articles not just freely accessible, but open access, this quarter in PubMedCentral, for a total of 398 OA journals in PMC.

Details

This quarter has seen significant growth in open access policies; the number of departmental policies has more than doubled in the past quarter alone, from 6 to 13. There are now well over 100 open access policies; and many more in the works.

PLoS One is rapidly becoming the world's single largest journal; PLoS One anticipates publishing about 4,800 journals in 2009, and more in 2010. [Thanks to Peter Binfield, PloS One Editor]. There are only a handful of journals in the world publishing numbers of articles in this range.

Strong growth continues in both open access publishing and open access archives. DOAJ added 253 titles this quarter, for a total of 4,252 journals. Note that not all new additions to DOAJ are new journals; one of the recently added titles to DOAJ, Revista de Administração de Empresas, has a start year of 1961.

OpenDOAR is a vetted list of open access repositories, and the largest list with over 1,400 repositories listed. Both OAIster and OpenDOAR added 43 new repositories this quarter. An OAIster search grew by more than 1.6 million items this quarter, over 17,000 items per day.

OpenDOAR has a tool that makes it easy to insert any one of a number of automatically updated charts illustrating OpenDOAR data, like the one below. It's easy - all you have to do is to copy and paste a URL!




At PubMed, both free and open access are steadily growing. 35% of NIH externally funded publications are now freely available within 2 years of publication, a 5% increase in compliance over the last year. Expect to see this number rise over the coming year as more articles pass the 12-month embargo permitted under the mandate policy that came into effect April 2008. The percentage of NIH-funded research of any age that is freely available has grown to 40%, up from 34% a year ago, suggesting that researchers are making not only new, but also older publications stemming from NIH publications freely accessible. New data from NIH has made it possible to provide a more accurate figure for the number of journals voluntarily participating in PMC, 615 (omitting predecessor journals and journals no longer providing new content). The number of journals providing immediate free access through PMC has increased by 41, for a total of 488; the number of journals providing open access through PMC has increased by 92, for a total of 398.

Google docs version for viewing (showing growth): http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=rz-5IhC4cgjvMde2AQtsHXg

Open Data Edition for viewing: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=runrJbg1UlCuDK-2RipnAaA

This post is part of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access series.

Two OA chapters of Scholarly Communication for Librarians (in press)

Two chapters of my book, Scholarly Communication for Librarians, in press at Chandos / Woodhouse Publishing, are now available for open access in E-LIS.

The two chapters are:

Open Access

In-depth overview of open access, covering definitions (open access publishing, open access archives, gratis and libre, open access works versus open access processes), major statements and declarations, types of open access, major initiatives, trends, advocacy and lobbying.

Summary and Conclusions

Summary and Conclusions of Scholarly Communication for Librarians, a book designed to provide librarians at all levels with the basics of how scholarly communication works, an understanding of the academic library as an essential support for scholarly communication, the impact of the decisions librarians make, and emerging roles for libraries and librarians in scholarly communication. Includes major points from all chapters, on: scholarship, scholarly journals, the scholarly publishing industry, librarianship and scholarly communication, author's rights, open access, the economics of scholarly communication, and emerging trends.

Comment: why would an ardent open access advocate publish a book that is only partially open access? One reason is simply that monographs are of interest, but not the primary focus of the open access movement; the arguments for open access for books are a bit different than for the journal articles that articles traditionally given away. The other reason is that when I started the book, the market did not appear to be quite ready for open access books. Soon, this situation will change; the official launch of Open Monographs Press is expected at the July Public Knowledge Project in Vancouver this July, for example. The flexibility of Chandos, a publisher with a well-established reputation, in allowing for two open access chapters is appreciated.

Vancouver enters the age of the open city

Update: Vancouver City Council endorsed this motion on May 21, 2009.

Text of the central portion of Andrea Reimer's motion:

Be it resolved that the City of Vancouver endorses the principles of:

* Open and accessible data: The City of Vancouver will freely share with citizens, businesses and other jurisdictions the greatest amount of data possible while respecting privacy and security concerns.
* Open standards: The City of Vancouver will move as quickly as possible to adopt prevailing open standards for data, documents, maps and other formats of media.
* Open source software: The City of Vancouver, when replacing existing software or considering new applications, will place open source software on an equal footing with commercial systems during procurement cycles.

from: CBCnews.ca

A motion to go before Vancouver City Council to support open standards, open data, open source: http://eaves.ca/2009/05/14/vancouver-enters-the-age-of-the-open-city/

Thanks to Cory Horner and the civicaccess list.

This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement series.

[Disclosure: I am very proud to call Vancouver home!]

Enhancing the debate on open access: knowledge for all, not just all researchers

The International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) and the International Publishers Association (IPA) have just released a joint statement on Enhancing the debate on open access, calling for a more rational, less heated approach to open access.

Excerpt from the IFLA/IPA statement:

2. IFLA and IPA recognise that the concerns of academic authors must be at the heart of this debate - their scientific freedom, and their needs as researchers, teachers, authors, reviewers and users are paramount.
3. IFLA and IPA acknowledge that the broadest possible access to scholarly communications is an important shared objective and that potential access to all research by all researchers, irrespective of geographical location or institutional affiliation is a shared aspiration of libraries and publishers.

Comment:

This statement places the concerns of academic authors at the centre of the debate, and assumes that access for all researchers is at issue. What about the rest of us? Students, educators, the taxpayers who fund much of the academic research, medical and other professionals, the developing world where there are many fewer academic authors and researchers? My perspective: knowledge is for all, and the goal of open access is access for all.

The Open Access Imperative and Education

As originally posted to the liblicense list, May 12, 2009.

Recently, a question was raised on liblicense as to whether open
access is necessary outside of the field of medicine.

The answer is: YES!!

While the moral imperative of open access is perhaps most easily seen
in the field of medicine, the same arguments apply across the
disciplines.

One example is the field of Education. Even at the very
wealthiest universities where students and faculty have access to
all the literature in this field, access to the scholarly
literature for the practising educator, parents and other
professionals involved in education (such as school-based social
workers), is for all practical purposes limited to what is freely
available. Evidence-based practice is this area - teachers who
are able to keep up with the latest in their field and look up
answers to issues that come up in the classroom - requires open
access. School library budgets tend to be very limited; a school
library that has all the resources that it needs to meet the
needs of the students is indeed fortunate. A school library with
sufficient resources to meet the needs of teachers and
administrators is truly exceptional.

Fortunately, ERIC, the Educational Resources Information Centre,
has been making education indexing freely available for some
time, and is now providing as much full-text as possible.

The ERIC website can be found at: http://www.eric.ed.gov/

Education is a common human need, and is of necessity taught at
many post-secondary institutions that are not so wealthy. Here,
freely accessible resources can make a huge difference in the
quality of education for the future educator.

Outside of the wealthy, developed world, free access to scholarly
educational information could well be the key to making it
possible to training new educators. In our global world, we need
an educated populace around the world. If our neighbours
understand about environmental issues and how to identify and
deal with a potential new pandemic, we all benefit. This
understanding requires education, starting with the basics.

What goes around, comes around. Fortunately, lately a good deal
of what is going around is free access to the best of the
knowledge of humankind, our scholarly literature.

WolframAlpha: glimpse of the future

This 13-minute video is highly recommended as a glimpse of what can be done when data are open and our computational power is shared: http://www.wolframalpha.com/screencast/introducingwolframalpha.html.

Highlights: type in 5 miles per minute and almost instantly have a list of useful and interesting conversion information; type in france fish production and quickly find out the total fish production per year in France - and that it is 1/5 of the annual trash production of New York!

See also Peter Suber's post on this topic on Open Access News.

Michael Geist's creative open access initiative!

Michael Geist has recently launched a very innovative approach to open access education, with his Friday Forum - a weekly series of virtual conferences - open access. The first Friday Forum features a virtual conference, consisting of selecting videos from other conferences, including speeches by OA leaders Melissa Hagemann, John Willinsky, and Peter Suber, Carl Malamud, Subbiah Arunachalam, Leslie Chan, and the publisher's perspective by Dr. Frances Pinter.

This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement series.

Hat tip to Peter Suber on Open Access News.

Heather's April-May 2009 presentations

My latest three presentations are now available in E-LIS:

Open Access in Canada - Overview and Update. BC Library Conference, April 2009.
With Devon Greyson, Don Taylor, and Andrew Waller. Highlight: Andrew's early announcement of the University of Calgary Libraries and Cultural Resources open access mandate policy.

Open Access: What's in it my for my library?. Alberta Library Conference, April 2009.
With Andrew Waller. Focus on the practical aspects of connecting readers with all those open access resources.

Open Access: Dramatic Growth & Policy.
Blogfesores, University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez, May 8, 2009.
This presentation focuses on the dramatic growth of open access, with an emphasis on Puerto Rican / Latin leadership in the gold road, or open access publishing, and an overview of open access policy developments around the world.

University of Calgary Library Faculty Open Access Mandate

Kudos to the University of Calgary Library Faculty for their Open Access Mandate! Details are available at Open Access in Libraries & Cultural Resources, featuring a picture of Canadian librarian OA activist Andrew Waller seated at the desk.

This is a faculty-led mandate, in which Libraries & Cultural Resource staff commit to making their own work open access.

Text of the mandate:

As an active member of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, Libraries and Cultural Resources at the University of Calgary endorses the Budapest Open Access Initiative, the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing and the Berlin Declaration.

LCR academic staff members believe that the output of our scholarly activities should be as widely disseminated and openly available as possible. Our scholarly output includes but is not limited to journal articles, books and book chapters, presentations if substantial, conference papers and proceedings, and datasets.

Effective April 17, 2009, LCR academic staff commit to

* Deposit their scholarly output in the University of Calgary’s open access scholarly repository
* Promote Open Access on campus and assist scholars in making their research openly available
* Where possible, publish their research in an open-access journal"

Thanks to the University of Calgary Libraries and Cultural Resources for yet another example of Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement. Note that this is an inititiative that any library can take, without waiting for the university as a whole to adopt a mandate. This will provide a great training ground so that the library will be well prepared to provide support when the institution-wide mandate is adopted. This is assuming that every institution will eventually adopt an open access mandate; the benefits of OA to the institution are so compelling that my position is that ubiquitous institutional OA mandates are a matter of time (and hard work on advocacy, of course). For evidence of this coming ubiquitous OA mandate, see this post on the European University Association unanimous commitment to OA policy development.