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/pub?key=rz-5IhC4cgjvMde2AQtsHXg&output=html

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.


If you're interested in purchasing a copy of the book, ordering information is availablehere.

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.

ERIC adds 192,000 free fulltext from its microfiche collection

Kudos to ERIC, the Education Resources Information Centre, for digitizing and making freely available over 192,000 free full-text documents from its microfiche archive. This is over 55% of the archive. We can all help ERIC further this effort by helping to contact rightsholder to clear permission for the rest. This adds significant value to the free ERIC Index.

Hat tip to Peter Suber on Open Access News.

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

Canadian Health Services Research Foundation Open Access Policy

Another Canadian OA mandate! The Canadian Health Services Research Foundation now has an open access policy. For details and expert comment, see the blogpost of Canadian health librarian - OA advocate Devon Greyson at Social Justice Librarian.

Hat tip to Open Access News.

Open Sesame to the Digital World: an open access high school library

Congratulations to teacher-librarian Judith Comfort for a fabulous website and presentation at the BC Library Conference on her Open Access School Library.

Excerpt:

Open access, open mind

Teacher-librarians are needed more than ever.

Open Access has exploded online and captured the imagination of librarians, scholars, and students on a global scale. But how much of this has filtered down to school-age children?

Push open the door of the bricks-and-mortar school library. The place is abuzz with kids packing so many batteries, screens & wires that the security gate screams in protest. Gone are the study carrels as teachers expect collaboration amongst students.

Comment: Judith Comfort points out that teacher librarians are needed more than ever in the internet age, and I agree. While there is more information readily available on the web than anyone could ever read on virtually any topic, students need skills to know what to do with this information - basic literacy, information literacy, and media literacy skills. How to read, interpret, and evaluate the information. In the knowledge age, we will need knowledge workers, and this includes teachers, and librarians, of all types.

Thanks to Convenor Janet Mumford. This post is part of the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement series.

Free access to The Cochrane Library for Canada

Announcement from The University of Ottawa's Cochrane Center:

The University of Ottawa’s Cochrane Center now offers Canadians free access to the health information found in The Cochrane Library Ottawa, April 15, 2009— The Canadian Cochrane Network and Centre announces today that everyone in Canada with access to the Internet will be able to view the full content of The Cochrane Library, an on-line resource that provides evaluations on health treatments.

The Canadian Cochrane Network and Centre, in partnership with the Canadian Health Libraries Association, has successfully secured a national license to The Cochrane Library. In essence, the license provides a subscription for every Canadian with access to the Internet to benefit from the immense volume of health information found in The Cochrane Library. Everybody will be one click away from the best available evidence on the effectiveness of treatment procedures including which ones may be harmful. “There are so many opinions and competing interests on the Internet claiming they have the best answers about people’s health care. Having access to The Cochrane Library will allow individuals to learn what the research says about what they need for better health.

This is truly ground-breaking,” remarked Dr Jeremy Grimshaw, Director of the Canadian Cochrane Network Centre (CCNC), Senior Scientist at the Ottawa Health Research Institute (the research arm of The Ottawa Hospital) and Professor at the University of Ottawa. While this new access will help inform health consumers, healthcare providers will also benefit from this pilot project. Healthcare practitioners will save valuable time to research the best patient treatment options through easy access to this wealth of health information.

“Health librarians across the country have long recognized and promoted the importance of access to the Cochrane Library as a key resource for evidence-based practice and decision-making,” said Dianne Kharouba, Canadian Health Libraries Association. To access the best on-line resource on health treatments, please visit:
www.thecochranelibrary.com.

Comment

This is a geographically limited form of access, not true open access. However, it should be noted that the Canadian Cochrane Centre does not have the rights to make this resource openly accessible to everyone in the world. Rather, they have extended access as broadly as they possibly could. Let's hope that all the Cochrane centers worldwide are inspired by this example, and work together to provide open access to this excellent resource to everyone, everywhere. This would be very good news indeed; the Cochrane Library brings together the best possible evidence on medical matters from around the world, and so is considered an authoritative source that health care professionals and consumers alike are well advised to consult.

This part is part of the Canadian leadership in the open access movement series.

Thanks to Sandy Slade.

Update April 20: free access is only for those who do NOT currently subscribe; institutions with subscriptions must continue their subscriptions. Thanks to Denise Koufogiannakis. While I do not know the full details, from my perspective if revenue from subscriptions is expected to continue, it is essential to involve the subscribers in the evolution towards a full open access model.

Don't leave Canada behind / open letter to Canadian government from Canadian researchers

Before research can be made open access - it has to happen! As stated in this letter from the Canadian research community: A new economy is coming out of this crisis and research and development will be the lifeblood to that new economy.. Canadian researchers are calling on the Canadian government to not leave Canada behind.

Excerpt:

Dear Prime Minister, Dear Leader of the Opposition

U.S. President Barack Obama is taking advantage of the current financial crisis to push his country forward in new directions by greatly boosting funding to scientific research and education as a means to jump start innovation in a new economy. The scope of his vision is stunning, including an increase of more than $15 billion in scientific research, and a promise to double the funding for education in the next 10 years. For more details, see


http://www.sciencedebate2008.com/www/index.php?id=62

Our government has also tried to stimulate the research / university sector in Canada, wishing to take important initiatives. At the heart of the plan is a $2 billion dollars infrastructure fund for shovel-ready renovation projects in post-secondary institutions, a fund that was actively solicited by university presidents. There is also an additional $750 million for the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI), and $87.5 million over three years for doctoral scholarships. While these funding announcements are surely welcome, we would like to share our concerns as to the potential effect of some of these decisions, in particular in view of the bold and visionary course taken by the Obama administration south of the border.

Thanks to Danielle Dennie.

MIT open access policy: a model for Canada?

The latest CAUT Bulletin features the article MIT Faculty to Make Articles Freely Available to Public, which I am quoted as pointing to the MIT open access policy as a potential model for Canadian faculty. The full text of the article follows:


MIT Faculty to Make Articles Freely Available to Public

Faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have voted unanimously to make their scholarly articles available to the public for free on the internet.

“The vote is a signal to the world that we speak in a unified voice; that what we value is the free flow of ideas,” said MIT faculty chair Bish Sinyal.

Under the new policy, faculty grant MIT nonexclusive permission to post their articles on an open-source institutional repository. MIT, its faculty and the public at large will have the right to use and share the articles for any purpose other than to make a profit. Authors may opt out on a paper-by-paper basis.

The MIT initiative “is a very exciting development,” said Heather Morrison, an adjunct professor
at the University of British Columbia’s school of library, archival and information studies and chair of the Canadian Open Access Working Group. “It represents faculty taking control of their work and ensuring their research is read and used by as wide an audience as possible.”

Morrison traces the roots of the new policy to changes that have occurred in scholarly communication over the last decade.

Articles published in academic journals are one of the major ways faculty authors share their research results. Under the traditional private sector publishing model, authors transfer their copyright to publishers who in turn sell the work back to universities for a subscription fee. The amalgamation of private publishers into a few large corporations has facilitated rapid increases in these fees — increases that have far outpaced the rate of inflation.

Morrison says while this model is highly profitable for publishers, it conflicts with core academic values, including the commitment to the widest possible dissemination of knowledge.

“The high cost of journal subscriptions has meant that libraries have had to cut back on the number of subscriptions and limit purchases elsewhere in their collections,” said Morrison. “In response, librarians and faculty began to explore other means of scholarly publishing.”

Aided by new forms of digital information technology, an open access movement gained momentum with the creation of free online journals and institutional digital repositories making research openly available to anyone.

Morrison also notes the open access move by MIT faculty is not devoid of self-interest.

“Public tolerance for the traditional private sector model of publishing is waning,” she said. “The Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. and all the granting agencies in the UK are declaring top-down open access mandates. MIT’s policy is the first faculty-driven, university-wide initiative of its kind in the U.S. By seizing the initiative MIT faculty are making their own rules about the dissemination of their work, not having them imposed.”

The policy also means articles by MIT faculty are likely to have a higher citation factor than the works of faculty at other institutions that are locked down by private publishers.

For academic staff in Canada the decision by MIT faculty serves as a possible model for disseminating their own work. It will also have a positive economic impact. When a professor or librarian provides a student a direct link to an MIT article, the need for a course pack or photocopying fee disappears, reducing educational costs.

Link: intellectual property advisory on open access and ownership of scholarly work

Ontario contributes $4.7 million more for lab of Toronto-based open access researcher

According to an article by Megan Olivie in today's Toronto Star, Ontario is contributing about $4.7 million to the lab of open access researcher Aled Edwards, leader of one of the world's largest public-private partnerships in basic research, the International Structural Genomics Consortium, a not-for-profit organization run out of the Universities of Toronto and Oxford and Stockholm's Karolinska Institutet – is among the world's largest public-private partnerships in basic research. More than a hundred labs cooperate with the consortium, which also receives funding from the major pharmaceutical companies. By cooperating at the basic research stage, everyone benefits from advances in discovery - faster discovery of new cures and treatments benefits us all, while new drugs mean new business for the pharmaceuticals.

Excerpt:
That so-called "big pharma" has funnelled money into the consortium, even during a recession, shows how seriously it is considering the open access philosophy, says Roderick McInnes, scientific director of the Institute of Genetics at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, which has funded the Structural Genomics Consortium from the beginning...this is a Canadian success story.

This is another illustration that open access is Good for Business, and another example of Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement.

Thanks to Leslie Chan.

Open Access Learning: Canadian Learning Commons Conference

News from the Open Education Movement:

June 11-13, 2009, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: The Canadian Learning Commons Conference. This year's theme: Open Access Learning, "a timely and important topic for anyone whose focus is on library, learner support, faculty development, technology, or disability services".

Dramatic Growth of Open Access: March 31, 2009

Synopsis

This quarter, the growth of open access has been dramatic in open access journals, open access archives, and, perhaps most noteworthy, open access policies. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is on the verge of an important milestone - 4,000 fully open access, peer-reviewed journals, double the number of the largest commercial publisher. DOAJ is growing at the rate of 2 titles per day. OpenDOAR lists 1,373 repositories, an increase of about 70 this quarter. Scientific Commons now encompasses 26 million items, an increase of 2 million. 663 journals are now voluntarily participating in PubMedCentral, an increase of 119 (22%) this quarter. 447 journals provide immediate free access through PubMedCentral, an increase of 29 (7%) this quarter. There are 11 more open access policies, for a total of 72 policies worldwide, and 4 more proposed policies, for a total of 14 proposed policies. One decrease is noted - not in open access per se, but rather subscription journals providing free back issues: Highwire Press seems to have 212,000 fewer free articles, a decrease of 10%. This is a bit puzzling, as Highwire has added 1 more completely free site, and there is an increase of 11 sites providing free back access. Any background on what is happening here would be most appreciated.


Selected Numbers

Directory of Open Access Journals

• 3,999 titles
• 105 titles added in the last 30 days
• 1,423 journals searchable at the article level
• 266,451 articles

Open J-Gate (English-language open access journals)

• # journals: 4,830
• peer-reviewed: 2,652
  

# of Repositories

• OpenDOAR: 1,373
  
• OAIster: 1,096
• Registry of Open Access Repositories: 1,301
• Scientific Commons: 981

# of items in Repositories

• Scientific Commons: 26 million
• OAIster: 20 million
• PubMed: free items: 2.6 million
• arXiv: 530,000 items
• RePEC: 727,000 items, 615,000 online
• E-LIS: 8,976 items
  

PubMedCentral

• journals participating: 663
• journals providing immediate free access: 447
• journals with all items open access: 306

CARL Metadata Harvester

• 17 archives
• 92,000 items

Open Access Mandate Policies (from Registry of Open Access Material Archiving Policies (ROARMAP)

• Departmental: 6
• Funder: 35
• Institutional: 31
• Total: 72
• Proposed: 14
  

The largest collection of open access and free journals that I am aware of (so far) is at the University of Nottingham Library, with 23,971 "free e-journals". (But no spreadsheet for the rest of us to download, that I can see!)

In related news, Creative Commons just passed 100 million photos on flickr, as reported by Larry Lessig

Recently, I posted the DOAJ Growth Rate 2005-2008. This illustrates not only a healthy and growth DOAJ title growth rate, but an even more impressive rate of growth of journals providing article-level searching, and the articles obtainable through a DOAJ search.

Dramatic Growth Full Data

• Quarterly growth edition

• Open Data Edition

Either of these Google spreadsheets can be downloaded; use the Edit key at the bottom of the screen. The dataverse version will be updated at a later date due to technical issues.

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

Update April 2: DOAJ exceeded 4,000 titles on April 1, and has issued a major announcement on Long-Term Preservation of Open Access Journals. The PubMedCentral journal list has been updated with additional information - the April 2, 2009 PMC title list is available here. Thanks to Peter Suber on Open Access News.

Canadian channels on YouTube.edu

New YouTube Channel, just for higher ed videos!

Canadian channels so far:
Concordia University
Université de Montréal

Thanks, You Tube - Chronicle of Higher Education - and Open Access News.

Directory of Open Access Journals Growth 2005-2008

The following charts illustrate the Dramatic Growth of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) over the past few years. In brief, from December 31, 2005 to December 31, 2008, the number of titles in DOAJ jumped from just under 2,000 to over 3,800 (almost doubled in 3 years). The increase in searchable content is even more remarkable, though! The number of journals searchable at article level more than doubled, from under 500 to over 1,300. The number of articles retrievable through these journals tripled, from about 80,000 to about 240,000. Plus, as the following charts illustrate, not only did DOAJ grow dramatically from 2005 - 2008; the growth rate also grew dramatically, by every measure examined.













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

MIT adopts a university-wide OA mandate

On Wednesday, March 18, MIT adopted a university-wide OA mandate. For the full text, see Open Access News.

This is important, because it is the second university-wide mandate in the U.S., after Boston University, and the first U.S, university-wide mandate adopted unanimously by faculty themselves. It iis a strong mandate, and a great role model for anyone considering an open access policy.

Taylor & Francis: free, free, free?

3 of the 4 items prominent on the Taylor & Francis website as of today focus on free: Free online access, Free articles, Free alerting service.

None of this "free" stuff has anything to do with open access, of course - this is free samples or metadata designed to attract subscribers. But does it suggest a company struggling to position itself for a future where information is free?

If so, this may be a good sign for the future of T & F. What next? My advice: work on your iOpenAccess program to make it a real open access program, and work with libraries on combined iOpenAccess / subscription deals.

This post is part of the Transitioning to Open Access series.

Alberta: 100% of research universities publish open access journals

Was just browsing DOAJ Canada and noticed that all 4 research universities in Alberta (University of Alberta, University of Calgary, University of Lethbridge, and Athabasca University) are publishing open access journals! Athabasca University is the early leader as the world's first university all-open-access publisher. Is Alberta the first jurisdiction to have OA publishing services available at every research university?

Kudos, Alberta!

IJPE readers - a meta post-about-this blogging bit, possibly of interest: this snippet is an aside from research that I am doing for a distance presentation for Danielle Dennie's science librarianship class at McGill University later this month. The full presentation will be self-archived in E-LIS and other venues when done. This particular observation is not directly relevant to this particular presentation, so what I am doing here is openly sharing this observation on-the-fly. I might eventually include this in a formal publication or presentation - or then again, it might never fit. This is one of the reasons why blogs like IJPE should be considered scholarly blogs - and libraries should be preserving them.

Growing Canadian membership in DOAJ!

The list of Canadian members of the Directory of Open Access Journals is growing! As of today, there are 7 Canadian individual library members, 1 Canadian library consortium, and at least 1 individual member that I know of.

Here are the Canadian members as of today:

* Bibliothèque de l'Université Laval
* McGill University Library
* Privy Council Office
* Simon Fraser University Library
* University of British Columbia Library
* University of Saskatchewan Library
* University of Toronto Scarborough

Consortial member: OCUL - Ontario Council of University Libraries.

For in-depth reasons on why libraries should become DOAJ members, see my article in the January 2008 Charleston Advisor. Update: since this article was written in 2007, DOAJ has increased by more than one thousand journals; more many journals are searchable at article level, and new features such as journal lists by country have been added.

Another way to calculate the value of DOAJ membership for your library: analyze the costs of dealing with suggestions from faculty, students, and librarians to add these high-quality open access journals to your collection. If you have your own title list, you can figure out how much work it is to do this on your own. If you don't have a way of handling these suggestions, there is still a cost involved. These queries must be addressed; if you have no way of including these journals in your title lists, reference librarians will be looking them up, over and over, one at a time.

DOAJ membership is definitely an Essential Efficiency in these troubled economic times.

Usage-based pricing and open access as a catalyst for change

Bill Hooker on Open Reading Frame is fooling around with numbers, looking at the cost of scholarly journals on a usage basis at the University of California libraries. Usage-based pricing is a harmful model for scholarly communication, a concept I have written about in-depth in this book chapter. One reason is that usage-based pricing inevitably discourages use. Usage-based pricing is a good model for dealing with scarce resources (e.g., per-page charges for photocopying), but a bad model for scholarship in electronic form (think tax on reading after the first copy, there is virtually no cost to further dissemination). Happily, since I wrote this book chapter in 2005, we have witnessed the Dramatic Growth of Open Access. This presents some interesting opportunities for libraries dealing with the current economic crisis. If you have resources where pricing is based on usage, why not promote open access resources? Perhaps this will decrease usage of the paid subscription, so that your library can move to a lower pricing tier the following year.

While researchers need the latest research in their field regardless of where it is published, first and second year students are often just learning how to read scholarly literature. If faculty review these assignments to see whether there are open access resources that can substitute for subscription-based resources, perhaps this can drive a sufficient decrease in usage so that the library can move to a lower usage tier the following year.

Another possibility is to simply set up library resources to display open access resources before subscription-based resources.

In either case, there need not be any barrier to accessing subscription resources. In the first scenario, the student is only required to read the open access articles, but could still be encouraged to pursue as much further reading as they desire. Similarly, the second scenario makes it easy for the student who really only needs to read an article or two, to fulfill their needs using open access resources, without presenting any real barriers to the student whose research needs are more in-depth.

Bill Hooker also points out that there are a few journals at U Cal (e.g., some Elsevier journals), where the subscription cost is not that much different from what pay-per-use would cost. If methods like these were employed at U Cal, could the balance be tipped so that U Cal would clearly save money by switching to pay-per-use? Without open access, this would clearly be a harm to scholarly communication. However, with open access, this could be a catalyst to further change. If the monies saved were redirected to support for open access, this could further decrease the need to use expensive resources, resulting in further savings which can then be redirected to more open access support, creating a positive open access cycle, in counter to the negative cycle of the pricing crisis. The publisher could react by increasing their pay-per-use price. For U Cal, this could be a bit of a dilemma; but on the other hand, it would decrease the probability of success of the pay-per-use model, thus avoiding a harm to scholarship.

This post is part of the Essential Efficiencies series.

Open Access Journals: Around the World, and Top OA Publishing Countries

As of March 10, 2009, the journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals are published in 97 different countries!

The top 6 OA-journal-producing countries are:

• U.S. - 858 journals
• Brazil - 370 journals
• United Kingdom - 326 journals
• Spain - 233 journals
• Germany - 152 journals
• Canada - 113 journals

So far in 2009, 30 journals have been added to the top-producing country, the U.S. This is about one new U.S. OA journal every other day! This is just the U.S. - only a fraction of the ongoing Dramatic Growth of Open Access!

These data are from the DOAJ's Journals by Country feature.

Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute Policy

For details on the Canadian Cancer Society Research Institute Policy, see Jim Till's post on Be Openly Accessible or Be Obscure.

Canadian Research Knowledge Network looking for interest in support for major OA initiative

From the Canadian Association of Research Libraries' E-Lerts: the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CKRN) is proceeding with an "expression of interest" to gauge support for becoming the Canadian focal point for SCOAP3. SCOAP3 is a consortium in high-energy physics aiming to transform HEP publishing as a whole from subscriptions to open access. Canadian librarians, make sure your library expresses interest!!

Excerpt:

Global high-energy physics community tests waters with open access proposal
RE$EARCH MONEY, Volume 23, Number 3, February 27, 2009

Canada's organization in charge of licensing journals for university libraries will consider the global high-energy physics (HEP) community’s bold proposal to establish a new model of open access for journals, even though it is drawing mixed reactions within the library and broader academic communities. The Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) agreed at its board meeting in January to proceed with an "expression of interest" to gauge support for becoming the Canadian focal point for SCOAP3.*

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

(Thanks to Jim Till).

Elsevier plus LexisNexis earned more than $1.5 billion in PROFIT in 2008

The global market for science, technology and medicine scholarly publishing has been described as inelastic. There is perhaps no better proof than the financial reports of the scholarly publishing industry for 2008. At a time of global economic crisis, two of Reed Elsevier's divisions just reported INCREASED PROFITS.

Together, Elsevier and LexisNexis together earned over $1.5 billion US in profit in 2008, according to Elsevier's 2008 Preliminary Results, available for download from the Elsevier website. Let me emphasize - this is PROFIT, not revenue.

Libraries - negotiating tip. What does a 33% profit mean? One way of looking at this: if Elsevier decreased prices 33% for all customers around the world, they would still be doing just fine, breaking even. If Elsevier decreased prices for all customers around the world by 20%, they would still be making an extremely healthy profit of 13%. Why not demand a 20% cut, and redirect the funds to support for open access?

Details:

2008 Elsevier Revenue: 1,700 million pounds sterling (over $2.4 billion US)
Adjusted operating profit: 538 pounds sterling (over $814 billion US)
Adjusted operating margin: 33%
Elsevier revenue was up 4%, profits, 11%

2008 LexisNexis Revenue: 1,950 million pounds sterling (close to $2.8 billion US)
Adjusted operating profit: £513 (735 million US)
Adjusted operating margin: 26%
LexisNexis revenue up 13% from previous year, profits up 18%

This post is part of the Essential Efficiencies series.

Open access policy development: some thoughts on process

If your university or funding agency is one of the many working on developing on open access policy, here are some thoughts on process to complement Peter Suber's excellent synopsis of elements of good OA policy in the February 2009 SPARC Open Access Newsletter.

As tempting as it is to implement and announce that new OA policy quickly, it is more important, from my perspective, to have a strong policy, one with no loopholes, and a sound plan for implementation.

IF your organization is ready to take the leap on a strong policy, absolutely go for it! If however, there is a sentiment that OA policy needs to be approached slowly and stepwise, there are advantages to taking longer to develop a strong policy, than it is to jump in with a weak policy and revise it later.

A good interim step is to start with a declaration of support for open access, such as signing the Berlin or Budapest declarations, and an intention to develop a green OA policy. Set up an organizational task force to study OA policies and implementation procedures, oversee a consultation process, and make recommendations. Does your institution have an institutional repository, or does this need to be developed? Is the approach of relying on contents in the open access archive for tenure and promotion decisions or grant applications a good fit for your organization? If not, what other procedures will be used to ensures compliance?

This is a good way to get researchers actively involved in policy development, and provides an opportunity for education about open access and scholarly communication. It may be the best way to encourage researchers to develop OA policy themselves, as the faculty at Harvard did.

Towards the corporation of the commons

Kudos to drug giant GlaxoSmithKline, the world's second-largest pharmaceutical company, for a radical shift in strategy that is anticipated to stun the industry. The new head of GSK Andrew Witty, in an article in The Guardian:

Excerpt:

He said that GSK will:

• Cut its prices for all drugs in the 50 least developed countries to no more than 25% of the levels in the UK and US – and less if possible – and make drugs more affordable in middle-­income countries such as Brazil and India.

• Put any chemicals or processes over which it has intellectual property rights that are relevant to finding drugs for neglected diseases into a "patent pool", so they can be explored by other researchers.

• Reinvest 20% of any profits it makes in the least developed countries in hospitals, clinics and staff.

• Invite scientists from other companies, NGOs or governments to join the hunt for tropical disease treatments at its dedicated institute at Tres Cantos, Spain.

Comment:

It is the shift in view of intellectual property that is likely to be seen as most radical by other drug companies - and most transformative from the author's point of view, as an early example of what may become the corporation of the commons: leading in both innovation and responsibility. Is this approach the perfect solution? It is far too soon to tell. There is room for criticism - what impact will this have on current approaches to generic drugs in the developing world, for example. Nevertheless, it is a bold move, and a huge leap in the right direction.

Thanks to Gavin Baker on Open Access News.

This post is part of the Creative Globalization series.

U.S. Open Access / Copyright Urgent Call to Action

U.S. Open Access / Copyright Advocates: please take action to oppose the INAPPROPRIATELY NAMED H.R. 801 – The Fair Copyright in Research Works Act (Conyers bill).

In brief, this is an effort by the publishing industry to change U.S. copyright law to make it impossible for the U.S. to require open access to federally funded research. The immediate aim is to stop the U.S. National Institutes of Health from requiring public access to the research it funds. The implications of this bill are profound and far-reaching, as it basically changes copyright law and federal procurement procedures. In the rush to address the economic situation, a bill like this could easily be passed as part of an omnibus piece of legislation, without appropriate review.

REAL fair copyright advocates EVERYWHERE should take note of this attempt to change copyright law. The companies responsible for this are multinational in nature. Many are not even based in the U.S.

Open access, disciplinary and institutional archives

There are two major types of open access archives, institutional and disciplinary (or subject) archives. This post explains why disciplinary / subject archives are optimum for searching and have an advantage in the short term for growth, as well as why institutional archives are also necessary.

For the searcher, the optimum will almost always be the disciplinary / subject archives. In the short term, this gives a tremendous advantage to disciplinary archives like PubMedCentral, arXiv, rePEc,and E-LIS. Researchers generally tend to search for literature primarily within their own discipline, so this approach makes sense to the researcher. arXiv is heavily used by physicists, so of course physicists want to deposit their work here, so that it will be read. It is no wonder, then, that the disciplinary archives are relatively successful. PubMedCentral is the world's largest open access archive, with over a million items.

Medical research funding agency policies require deposit in PubMedCentral. This makes sense. Literature that is deposited in PMC is more useful for searchers. This locus of deposit fits with the preference for searching medical literature. This creates incentives towards open access beyond the literature mandated for open access. We are already seeing this with hundreds of journals voluntarily contributing all contents to PMC, many for immediate open access.

Institutional archives are also necessary, for a number of reasons, two of which are listed here. First, the majority of disciplines do not have disciplinary archives, so this is necessary. More will likely be developed, but given that many institutions now have archives, future disciplinary archives may well be developed within institutional archives. Second, institutional archives will provide functions and services to institutions beyond what disciplinary archives can do, such as showcasing the work of the university, its departments and faculty to potential donors, including the public and politicians for publicly funded institution, and potential students. The more substantial the research output of a university, the more the university stands to gain from the institutional repository.

Software for open access archives is being developed to facilitate cross-deposit, so it does not disadvantage one type of archive if an open access policy requires deposit in another archive.

Terminology note: the author uses the term "open access archive" where others use "repository". In my opinion, "open access archive" clearly states the purpose of the service, i.e. providing open access and preservation, in a way that "repository" does not. It is understood that not all items in such archives will be available for open access.

Canada, let's fix the open access policy loophole BEFORE we harmonize

The FRQS open access policy relies on four principles (thanks to Jim Till, who has some interesting comments on the policy).

One of the principles is that of harmonization. Canada's research funding agencies all want their open access policies to be in harmony with each other, to avoid duplication and to facilitate compliance for researchers.

There is much to be said for harmonization - except when it involves copying a bad model for policy. Before harmonizing, Canada, let's fix the loophole.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research' Policy on Access to Research Outputs is ALMOST a model policy - the maximum 6-month embargo, beautiful language on the value of open access, support for open access publishing and open data, and a call to review the embargo with a view to shortening it.

Alas, this policy falls very, very short of a being a model, as it is known around the world as the LOOPHOLE MODEL. As stated in the CIHR policy: Publications must be freely accessible within six months of publication, where allowable and in accordance with publisher policies. Or, as a researcher at UBC recently expressed it: CIHR says you gotta make your work open access. Unless you don't.

This sentence should be changed to:

Publications must be freely accessible within six months of publication. Period. Full stop. The contract between the researcher, CIHR, and ultimately, the Canadian taxpayer, comes prior to any agreement with a publisher. The vast majority of publishers already routinely allow self-archiving of articles for open access, as can be viewed from the Sherpa RoMEO Publisher Copyright Policies and Self-Archiving page. More will allow self-archiving when it is required by a research funder. Look for the "white" publishers in Sherpa RoMEO - for publishers that normally allow no self-archiving at all - and you will see that many are compliant with research funding agencies' open access policies.

If CIHR is looking for evidence of what is needed in open access policy, the U.S. National Institutes of Health provides a great model of why NOT to bother with a weak policy; with language merely encouraging open access, rather than requiring it, in 2004 the compliance rate was a dismal rate of about 4%. This was fixed in 2008, when the policy became a requirement.

added February 10 - from Peter Suber on Open Access News

Comment.  Hear, hear.  See my original criticism of the loophole in the CIHR policy (September 2007).  Also see my subsequent criticism of OA policy loopholes, most recently in point #10 of my article in the February SOAN published last week:

...There are two basic ways for you to secure the needed permissions for OA and steer clear of copyright infringement. 

First, you could get the permissions from publishers, after authors transfer their rights.  In practice, mandates of this type require OA to a certain version on a certain timetable except when the grantee's publisher won't allow it.  The funder policy defers to publisher policies.  For example, the UK Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) requires OA "where this is permitted by publishers' licensing or copyright arrangements".  The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) requires OA "where allowable and in accordance with publisher policies".

Second, you could close this loophole and get the permissions from authors before authors transfer any rights to publishers.  Mandates of this type take advantage of the fact that funders are upstream from publishers and their funding contracts bind researchers long before those researchers sign copyright transfer agreements with publishers.  Your funding contract can require grantees to retain the right to authorize OA on your terms.  When a given publisher will not allow OA on your terms, you can require the grantee to look for another publisher.  This approach was pioneered by the Wellcome Trust in 2004 and subsequently adopted by the Arthritis Research Campaign (ARC, UK), Cancer Research UK (CR-UK), Department of Health (UK), Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI, US), Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC, UK), Medical Research Council (MRC, UK), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH, US).

The first method removes all the teeth from the mandate and puts publisher interests ahead of funder interests.... The second method mandates OA to all the funder's research, not just a subset of it, and replaces contingent publisher permission with assured author permission....

Recommendation:  If you're serious about wanting OA for the research you fund, close the loophole and adopt the second strategy....

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

Towards PubMedCentral Canada: update

From the National Research Council (NRC) - CISTI Partnership Development Office.

PubMed Central Canada – NRC-CISTI and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) are working together on plans for PMC Canada — a national digital repository of peer-reviewed health science research resulting from CIHR funding. NRC-CISTI and CIHR have approached the US National Library Medicine to co-sponsor the service, as a mirror site to PubMed Central. CIHR will provide the funding and NRC-CISTI will contribute its technological expertise to build and host the infrastructure and manage and develop the e-repository.

Update: CISTI-CIHR partnership agreement signed (September 2008) – Over the summer, NRC-CISTI and CIHR completed the first step in the creation of PMC Canada – an agreement to partner on creating the e-repository. With CIHR funding now in place, the partners are currently working on the next step, obtaining agreement from the US National Library of Medicine for PMC Canada to 'officially' become part of the broader PubMed Central International (PMCI) network. Once this three-way agreement is in place, the development phase of PMC Canada can begin.

Comment: PubMedCentral International is a great example of win-win-win for everyone. U.S. citizens benefit from a mirror site of the original PMC that helps to ensure preservation and public access, as well as the metadata and documents from Canadian health research that will eventually be deposited first into PMC. For Canada, PMC-Canada means a local open access archive for depositing and archiving results of research funded here, added security for preservation and public access, and a portal to medical literature that can be customized to meet Canadian needs, such as bilingualism. So far, there is only one PMC site operational outside of the U.S, UK-PMC.

Thanks to Jim Till.

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

FRSQ Policy regarding open access to published research outputs

Québec's Fonds de la Recherche en Santé has released their Policy regarding open access to published research outputs.

From the Preamble:

The Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec (FRSQ) is mandated to promote and fund research, researcher training, and knowledge dissemination. As a manager of public funds, it is firmly committed to ensuring that the full potential of research outputs is used and that the return on research investments is optimized so that society as a whole can reap the benefits thereof. In adopting this Policy, the FRSQ, reaffirming the independence of researchers and repeating its acknowledgement of their crucial role in developing research, intends to establish measures that will structure and support researchers' initiatives to disseminate research outputs and thereby foster open access to them when possible.

Comment: this is a policy with a focus on education, and clear strength in indicating the preference for open access. The wording of this policy suggests further support for open access will follow.

Thanks to Stevan Harnad on the American Scientist Open Access Forum.

Government Transparency via Open Data and Open Source

Government Transparency via Open Data and Open Source by Jennifer Bell, Executive Director of visiblegovernment.ca,Open Source Business Resource, February 2009, fits in the Canadian Leadership in the Open Access Movement series.

Excerpt

Industry analyst Gartner describes web services based on open government data as having a "greater potential effect on the ability to transform government than anything else in the Web 2.0 world". In his technology platform, Barack Obama has made groundbreaking promises related to increasing government accountability by: i) publishing data in open formats; and ii) using online tools to involve citizens in government decision making. These transformative ideas have not yet spread to politics in Canada.

As citizens, we trust that money is being wisely spent on the systems that run our country. We trust that the people governing us have the skills, time, and information they need to make the best decisions. We trust that bureaucracies are well-designed and that the people in them are motivated to make those bureaucracies better. Unfortunately, it's hard to trust what you can't see. By publishing information in open, machine-readable formats, governments can take a powerful step towards building public trust. By sharing information, governments can start to channel the expertise of the citizenry outside of the civil service to build more effective and inclusive ways of running the country.

The non-profit VisibleGovernment.ca is working to make online tools for civic participation based on open government data a reality in Canada. This article describes why open government data is not only a requirement for greater government transparency, but also a valuable investment in our country's infrastructure.

Irving K. Barber Learning Centre supports Open Access Resources

Spotted at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre website, UBC Library:

Did you know that UBC Library supports Open Access resources?

Excerpt:

Open Access Resources @ Irving K. Barber Learning Centre

"THROUGH THIS FACILITY, WE HAVE OPENED THE DOOR OF OPPORTUNITY. THE POWER OF NEW IDEAS WILL BE AVAILABLE TO PEOPLE IN EVERY CORNER OF THE PROVINCE AND THROUGHOUT THE WORLD."
GORDON CAMPBELL

The goal of digital outreach at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre is to go beyond the walls of campus by providing a flexible and technologically advanced facility that keeps pace with the evolution in information resources and education in the 21st century and beyond. Through the latest technologies in Web 2.0 and social software, the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre offers innovative means and strategies in reaching the farthest corners of the local and global community.

The Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and UBC Library present open access resources as part of our mandate to serve not only as a focal point of education for students and teachers at UBC but also to support lifelong learning by people throughout B.C. and the world. These resources enable everyone in the public to work effectively together in continuing to build a better British Columbia through the sharing of knowledge and information services provided by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and UBC Library.

Followed by a selected list of OA resources. Thanks to Simon Neame and Allan Cho.

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

Calls for open access from Québec

Two recent calls for open access from Québec:

Jonathan Vianou, L'infrastructure technologique devra attendre, Le Devoir. (Merci a Olivier Charbonneau à culturelibre.ca. In brief, this article comments on Harper's budget, strong on physical infrastructure but missing key elements: access to high-speed internet and open access to scientific and government information.

Stephane Couture. Pour l’accès libre à la connaissance scientifique. Alternatives.

Thanks to Gavin Baker on Open Access News.

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

Who Knows Where the Next Great Idea will come from? Why open access to the world's collective knowledge is a great boon in tough times

These are indeed difficult times. Businesses built for the industrial age are failing; jobs and businesses are disappearing, tax revenue is down. What we need to do now is not to prop up the past, but rather to prepare for the future: the kinds of economics that will thrive in a greener and largely knowledge-based economy.

At a time like this, it is fortunate indeed that we already have open access to a considerable portion of the world's collective knowledge. We can readily share our scholarly knowledge with the developing world, at no cost. Many scholars in the developing world are freely sharing their knowledge through open access, and this is a very good thing, as the developing world has a bit of an advantage right now; they are used to having less money, and so have lots of ideas and incentive to develop the kinds of low-cost solutions that we in the developing world could use right about now. This topic is explored in more depth in my post Necessity is the Mother of Invention: Open Access, the Developing World, and the Cost-Effective Solution.

Through services like libraries, the Scientific Commons, Internet search engines, and the Directory of Open Access Journals, any bright person with no job but even as much as a modicum of curiosity can be learning, and many, I hear, are already doing so by returning to formal education. If even a small fraction of those in this situation focus on this learning, and a small fraction of this learning yields brilliant ideas for new ways of doing things, all it takes is a spark of an entrepreneurial spirit - and an open, neutral network - to get a start on the types of businesses that can sustain families and communities, or even thrive and grow into new economic engines.

Other thoughts to kickstart the new economy

In addition to an open internet, to kickstart this type of new business, it would be a good idea for governments examine how easy or difficult it is to start up a new business. While we all need protection from spam and fraud, it should be possible for an honest citizen to set up a new, simple web-based business to sell their own works or services and figure out how to pay their taxes, in just a few clicks. Maybe other countries have this figured out, but in Canada there are people with good ideas and business plans who are totally stymied but the apparently insoluble problem of how to start up a business and pay your taxes like a good citizen. Who knows, if this was made easy enough, I just might have IPJE Commercial (for t-shirt sales and stuff) up and running, already. Maybe I'd have enough sales to have to hire someone to help out.

Make microloans available. Sure, we'd all like to have big businesses employing lots of people in high-paying jobs, but let's not forget that may of these big businesses started out in someone's garage. And if all people want to do is to support or help support their families and communities, there is nothing wrong with that!

Support people who want to try out a micro-business idea. Look at this as a reasonable option for people on employment supports, especially in areas where there aren't a lot of immediate job prospects.

This post is a part of the Creative Globalization and Essential Efficiencies Series.

Wiley revenues increase 36% in 2008

From the Wiley Annual Report 2008 - To Our Shareholders:

Fiscal year 2008 was a transformative year, as reflected in Wiley’s record results. Revenue increased 36% over the previous year to $1.7 billion, up from $1 billion just two years ago.

According to the Wiley Vision, Wiley has achieved superior results and continues to grow by focusing on three overarching goals, the first of which is: Building long-term relationships with our customers.

This is good to hear! What library customers hard-hit by the financial crisis need right now is adjustment, such as lower subscription prices, as Norman Oder reports in Library Journal. With that kind of revenue, Wiley can certainly afford to help out!

An open net means open opportunity

Some economic speculation, from a poetic economist:

Now is the perfect time for an open internet, one that is characterized by net neutrality and ready access to a wealth of content that is freely shared. Why? An open internet means open opportunity, for the new types of businesses that will thrive in the coming economy, an economy that will be much more green and serve the needs of the emerging knowledge economy and society.

With broadband and an open internet, anyone whose job or business have been lost in the current economic crisis, with a bit of entrepreneurial spirit, has a ready means of starting up a new business with a potential global market. Some of these businesses will thrive, and create local jobs for those who are not so entrepreneurial by nature.

What do governments need to do to kickstart the new economy? Enact strong net neutrality legislation, so that the citizens and votes in your area have an equal opportunity to get started in a new business. Provide as much free content as possible; for example, make the information produced through government dollars available for free, so that everyone can explore the potential for new business ideas, or adding value and reselling the information.

Work to make sure that such new businesses can get the credit that they need. Governments and the financial industry should especially look to microloans, as there are likely very smart people who have suffered financial losses, but have great ideas to get new businesses started, with just a little help.

Speaking of help, there is a lot that could be done to make it easier to get a business set up, and figure out how to pay taxes. Why not have a simple webform to let people get set up with a new business in just a few clicks, and an ombudsman to help anyone who cannot get a business started because the government doesn't understand how the taxes would work?

If the current economic crisis gives a great many people reason to try out a new business idea, this is a good thing. At the very least, it gives everyone hope and at least a possibility to move forward from a difficult financial position. It seems reasonable, though, to speculate that if a great many new businesses get started, while some will no doubt fail, others will sustain families and communities, and a few will emerge as economic drivers in the years to come.

National Film Board makes films free online

From the CBC, excerpt:

The National Film Board of Canada has launched a new project to allow Canadians to see its films through online streaming.

Oscar winners such as 1952's Neighbours, 1977's I'll Find a Way and 2004's Ryan are among the more than 700 films now available for screening online at NFB.ca.

The online screening room was created as part of a $1.3-million project to digitize the NFB's collection of historic films.

"This is part of our ongoing response to the digital revolution," NFB chair Tom Perlmutter said in an online news conference on Wednesday.

The NFB, which restructured its film programs over the past 18 months to free up resources for the digital project, plans to put 10 new films a month online.

Classics such as Mon Oncle Antoine and Nobody Waved Goodbye are free for online screening, along with pioneering animation by Norman McLaren and animated films such as The Big Snit and The Cat Came Back.

Hat tip to Michael Geist

Will Canada seize the lead in the open access movement in the history books - or cede to the U.S.?

Canada has many reasons to claim early leadership in the open access movement. After all, of the 16 people at the Budapest Open Access Initiative, widely regarded as the world's first major defining moment of the open access movement, no less than 3 were Canadian - Jean Claude Guédon, Leslie Chan, and Stevan Harnad, world leaders of the open access movement all. The Canadian Association of Research Libraries was an early leader in conceptualizing and implementing a country-wide institutional repository program. The free, open source software used by thousands of open access journals around the world, Open Journal Systems, was developed at the University of British Columbia by John Willinsky. The Canadian Library Association has a leading-edge Position Statement on Open Access for Canadian Libraries.

Of Canada's three major national academic research granting agencies, ALL at the very least strongly support open access. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) has a Policy on Access to Research Outputs, expecting researchers to deposit results no later than 6 months from publication. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) adopted open access in principle in 2004, and has an Aid to Open Access Journals program. The National Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) is expected to announce an open access policy this March.

Canada could easily become the first country in the world to implement strong open access policies for all federally funded research, and rightfully claim our place in history as the leader in an emerging area that will become an important part of the world's history. But now that Obama has been inaugurated, we'd better act fast - or cede our leadership in this area to the U.S.

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

Michael Geist calls on Canadian government to implement open access policies

Michael Geist calls on the Canadian government to implement open access policies in a Tyee article, Fire up the Digital Jobs Machine

Excerpt:

Research infrastructure. Canada has steadily increased funding for primary research at universities and colleges across the country, yet it continues to lag in implementing policies to ensure that all Canadians have access to results of that publicly-funded research. Other countries, including the United States and the European Union, have moved toward mandated "open access" policies that link access to research funded by taxpayers.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research established an open access policy last year, but billions of research dollars are still spent in Canada without any guarantees of public access. Flaherty should use the budget to confirm the government's commitment to public funding for health, science and social science research, but require Canada's research agencies to implement open access policies that offer better hope for a return on the sizable investment.

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

OpenDOAR exceeds 1,300!

The repositories movement continues to grow, as illustrated by the vetted OpenDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories) achieving the milestone of more than 1,300 listings.

This is an increase of 283 repositories in 2008 for OpenDOAR, or a 28% increase.

My apologies for missing the OpenDOAR number in the Dec. 31, 2008 Dramatic Growth of Open Access. I'll add an estimate of 1,300, but if someone has a more accurate number, please let me know.

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

Scholarly Publishers recognize the usefulness of Institutional Repositories

The International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers (STM) has openly released a BRIEFING DOCUMENT (FOR PUBLISHING EXECUTIVES) ON INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES AND MANDATED DEPOSIT POLICIES. Thanks to STM and Michael Mabe for making this report openly accessible.

While there are certainly details in this document that I would take issue with, first I would like to reflect on the significance of one of the key points of the document: STM is recognizing the usefulness of the institutional repository, for public access! Following is the first paragraph, with footnotes inserted in square brackets and italics.

STM:
Scholarly publishers recognize that Institutional Repositories (“IRs”)[Defined broadly as repositories set up and maintained by universities and research institutions to post, for public access, information and data about research projects coordinated by their faculty and employees, which sometimes include versions of scholarly papers] serve a number of useful purposes for universities and research institutions. If properly conceived and executed, they can help disseminate knowledge and promote institutions to funding agencies and recruits. IRs can usefully highlight and capture the research output of the institution, identify and post theses, dissertations, research data, historical images and illustrations from institutional archives, and serve as vehicles for electronic course-packs. [It should be noted that most publishers already authorize institutions, directly or through copyright clearance/rights organizations like the CCC or the CLA, to post online course-packs].


Comment: this strikes me as significant, for two reasons. First, STM is agreeing that institutional repositories for public access are useful for disseminating knowledge and other purposes important to universities. This is an important philosophical point and milestone for open access, similar to publisher acceptance of OA per se as a philosophical ideal. Second, STM has indicated a willingness to participate in open discussion by posting this document. Language later in the document does not clearly support the arguments of this first paragraph; this suggests either some confusion, or a lack of consensus. Agreeing to post this openly may be an indication of a willingness to discuss the issues in a more open manner, a discussion that would be most welcome.

The point about coursepacks illustrates the value of further discussion. The emphasis on coursepacks here seems out of place, an answer to a question that has not been asked. That is, the focus of the open access movement is not coursepacks at all; if an item is publicly accessible through an IR, there isn't really a need to have another copy in a coursepack; all that is needed is a URL on a reading list. When publishers make items available for coursepacks through copyright clearance centres, this is paid, toll access, and so this is not relevant to a discussion of items publicly accessible in IRs. Also, many publishers do NOT allow online course-packs, even for subscribing libraries.

It seems likely that the reason coursepacks are brought up is financial in nature. Here, once again, it seems to me that open access is being mixed up (conflated) with the online environment per se. That reading list link can just as easily be to an article in an online subscription journal, as to an open access version in a repository.

It is a healthy thing to be talking about the economics of scholarly publishing, of course, but why talk about these economics as a whole? STM members who wish to raise concerns about the economics of scholarly publishing, should be honest and bring up their own bottom line - some of the members of STM enjoy profit margins of 30% or more, for example. If the goal is to ensure the health of scholarly publishing into the future, at a time of fiscal restraint, should we not be talking about dropping print and its associated costs? I discuss these kinds of issues in my series, Essential Efficiencies.

As for more detailed comments, I agree with what Peter Suber and Stevan Harnad have already said on this topic, and highly recommend reading their comments.

Molecular Biology of the Cell, or, Why Open Access by Article Processing Fee Sometimes Just Makes Sense

Re-analysis of data from the American Society for Cell Biology, publishers of the subscription-based Molecular Biology of the Cell, in MBC and the Economics of Scientific Publishing, illustrates how sometimes an article processing fee approach to open access, combined with dropping the print edition to focus on online, can be just a very natural fit. Given the current economic situation, now might be the perfect time to make the switch.

Currently at Molecular Biology of the Cell (MBC):

• article processing fees constitute 61% of the journal's revenue (colour charges 35%, page charges 26%).
• print costs (printing, binding, paper, mailing) are 32% of expenses

In other words, if MBC were to drop the print edition, then article processing fees are already covering all but 7% of the costs. That is, 100% of costs - 32% print costs - 35% colour charges - 26% page charges = 7%. Assuming that the 5% cost for reprints and some of the 6% costs for "other" are print-related, such as tracking subscriptions or managing authentication, then it is quite possible that article processing fees are already covering the full costs of an online-only open access version of MBC.

MBC readers and authors currently do enjoy some of the benefits of freee access through participation in PubMedCentral after a brief 2-month delay. A full shift to OA would mean the full benefits of immediate OA, preferably libre OA with a suitable open license, such as Creative Commons - Attribution (plus, optionally Noncommercial and/or Sharealike).

There is another benefit that would address a concern expressed by authors in the MBC survey. That is, authors are concerned about the cost of page and colour charges. Because of the print version, it is very likely that authors sometimes forego including valuable material for economic reasons. In an online-only environment, adding more pages, colour figures - even audiovisuals and research datasets - does not add costs as it does in the print environment. If MBC were to drop the print edition and switch to OA / online-only, it could immediately begin to do more for authors and for readers.

According to the Association's data, only a small percentage of readers really prefer and read the print. For these few readers, there are now print on demand services. As of 2007, it was still perceived as important to publish in a journal produced in print. This may still be the case, however the impact of the current economic crisis may help to explain to members and authors why it is essential at the present time to move to new, more efficient business models. One of the concerns members had about dropping print was archiving; it might be timely to raise awareness among members of the role of PubMedCentral in which MBC participates, as an archive of the world's medical literature, carrying on the tradition of the U.S. National Library of Medicine in the online environment.

Thanks to Heather Joseph via Peter Suber on Open Access News for the link to the article and background information.

This post is part of the Essential Efficiencies and Transitioning to Open Access series.