Open access

From LISWiki

Jump to: navigation, search

Open access (OA) means immediate, free and unrestricted online access to digital scholarly material[1], primarily peer-reviewed research.

The first major international statement on open access[2] was the Budapest Open Access Initiative in February 2002[3]. This provided a definition of open access, and has a growing list of subsequent signatories[4]. Two further statements followed: the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing[5] in June 2003 and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities in October 2003.

OA has since become the subject of much discussion amongst researchers, academics, librarians, university administrators, funding agencies, government officials, commercial publishers, and society publishers. Although there is substantial (though not universal) agreement on the concept of OA itself, there is considerable debate and discussion about the practicality of the different methods proposed, and their effect upon scientific publication. There are two main currents in the open access movement:

  1. In OA self-archiving (sometimes known as the "green" road , authors publish in a subscription journal, but in addition make their articles freely accessible online, usually by depositing them in an institutional or central repository such as PubMed Central. OA self-archiving was first formally proposed in 1994[6] [7] by Stevan Harnad. However, self-archiving was already being done spontaneously by computer scientists in their own local FTP archives, later harvested into Citeseer. High-energy physicists had been self-archiving centrally in arXiv since 1991.
  2. In OA publishing (sometimes known as the "gold" road authors publish in open access journals that make their articles freely accessible online immediately upon publication. Examples of OA publishers[8] are BioMed Central and the Public Library of Science.

Contents

[edit] History

The beginnings of the scholarly journal were a way of expanding access to scholarly findings. More recently, many individuals anticipated the open access concept even before the technology made it possible. One early proponent was the physicist Leo Szilard. To help stem the flood of low-quality publications, he jokingly suggested in the 1940s that at the beginning of his career each scientist should be issued with 100 vouchers to pay for his papers. Closer to our own day, but still ahead of its time, was Common Knowledge. This was an attempt to share information for the good of all, the brainchild of Brower Murphy, formerly of The Library Corporation. Both Brower and Common Knowledge are recognised in the Library Microcomputer Hall of Fame.[9]

The modern open access movement springs from the potential unleashed by the electronic medium, and by the world wide web. It is now possible to publish a scholarly article and also make it instantly accessible anywhere in the world where there are computers and internet connections. The fixed cost of producing the article is separable from the minimal marginal cost of the online distribution.

These new possibilities emerged at a time when the traditional, print-based scholarly journals system was in a crisis. The number of journals and articles produced has been increasing at a steady rate; however the average cost per journal has been rising at a rate far above inflation for decades, and budgets at academic libraries have remained fairly static. The result was decreased access - ironically, just when technology has made almost unlimited access a very real possibility, for the first time. Libraries and librarians have played an important part in the open access movement, initially by alerting faculty and administrators to the serials crisis. The Association of Research Libraries developed the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), in 1997, an alliance of academic and research libraries and other organizations, to address the crisis and develop and promote alternatives, such as open access.

Many open access projects involve collaborations by people around the world, both expected and unexpected. For example the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SCIELO),[10] is a comprehensive approach to full open access journal publishing, involving a number of Latin American countries. Bioline International is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping publishers in developing countries. Bioline is a collaboration of people in the UK, Canada, and Brazil; the Bioline International Software is used around the world. Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) , is a collaborative effort of over 100 volunteers in 45 countries, ranging from the U.S. to the United Arab Emirates, from Slovenia to South Korea. The Public Knowledge Project in Canada developed the open source publishing software Open Journal Systems (OJS), which is now is use around the world, for example by the African Journals Online[11] group, and one of the most active development groups is Portuguese.

The first free scientific online archive is arXiv.org, started in 1991, initially a preprint service for physicists, initiated by Paul Ginsparg. Self-archiving has become the norm in physics, with some sub-areas of physics, such as high-energy physics, having a 100% self-archiving rate. The prior existence of a "preprint culture" in high-energy physics is one major reason why arXiv has been successful.[12] arXiv now includes papers from related disciplines, such as computer science and mathematics, but computer scientists mostly self-archive on their own websites and have been doing so for even longer than physicists. (Citeseer is a computer science archive that harvests, Google-style, from distributed computer science websites and institutional repositories and contains almost twice as many papers as arxiv.) arXiv now includes postprints as well as preprints.[13] The two major physics publishers (American Physical Society and Institute of Physics Publishing have reported that arXiv has had no effect on journal subscriptions in physics; even though the articles are freely available, usually before publication, physicists value their journals and continue to support them. [14]) [15]

The inventors of the Internet and the Web -- computer scientists -- had been self-archiving on their own FTP sites and then their websites since even earlier than the physicists, as was revealed when Citeseer began harvesting their papers in the late 1990s. The 1994 "Subversive Proposal"[16] was to extend self-archiving to all other disciplines; from it arose CogPrints (1997) and eventually the OAI-compliant generic GNU Eprints.org software in 2000.[17]

In 1997, the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) made Medline, the most comprehensive index to medical literature on the planet, freely available in the form of PubMed. Usage of this database increased a hundred fold whenit became free, strongly suggesting that prior limits on usage were impacted by lack of access. While indexes are not the main focus of the open access movement, free Medline is important in that it opened up a whole new form of use of scientific literature - by the public, not just professionals.

In 1998, one of the first Open Access journals in medicine, the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR)[18] was created, publishing its first issue in 1999. What is remarkable about this development is that it was created by researchers for researchers, without involvement of any commercial publishers, and with practically no budget. JMIR remains a highly successful Open Access journal and to date is perhaps one of the few OA journals which is not making a loss or is dependent on external grants (such as PLoS), although the Hindawi Publishing Corporation is also reporting a profit [19]. The American Scientist Open Access Forum [20] was founded in 1998 (originally called the "September98 Forum").

In 1999, Harold Varmus of the NIH proposed a journal called E-biomed, intended as an open access electronic publishing platform combining a preprint server with peer-reviewed articles. E-biomed later saw light in a revised form[21] as PubMed Central, a postprint archive.

In 2000, BioMed Central, a for-profit open access publisher, was launched by the then Current Science Group (the founder of the Current Opinion series, and now known as the Science Navigation Group) [22]. In some ways, BioMed Central resembles Harold Varmus' original E-biomed proposal more closely than does PubMed Central [23]. BioMed Central now publishes over 170 journals [24].

In 2001, 34,000 scholars around the world signed "An Open Letter to Scientific Publishers",[25] calling for "the establishment of an online public library that would provide the full contents of the published record of research and scholarly discourse in medicine and the life sciences in a freely accessible, fully searchable, interlinked form". Scientists signing the letter also pledged not to publish in or peer-review for non-open access journals. This led to the establishment of the Public Library of Science, an advocacy organization. However, most scientists continued to publish and review for non-open access journals. PLoS decided to become an open access publisher aiming to compete at the high quality end of the scientific spectrum with commercial publishers and other open access journals, which were beginning to flourish [26]. Critics have argued that, equipped with a $10 million grant, PLoS competes with smaller OA journals for the best submissions and runs danger to destroy what it originally wanted to foster [27].

In 2002, the Open Society Institute launched the Budapest Open Access Initiative. In 2003, the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities was drafted and the World Summit on the Information Society included open access in its Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action.

The idea of mandating self-archiving was mooted at least as early as 1998.[28] Since 2003[29] efforts have been focused on open access mandating by the funders of research: governments,[30] research funding agencies,[31] and universities.[32] These efforts have been fought by the publishing industry. However, many countries, funders, universities and other organizations have now either made commitments to open access, or are in the process of reviewing their policies and procedures, with a view to opening up access to results of the research they are responsible for.

In 2005 , the world's two largest funders of medical researchers, the United States National Institute of Health and the United Kingdom's Wellcome Trust, adopted policies with, respectively, a recommendation and a requirement to provide open access to the results of successful grantees. Articles are to placed in a central medicine-specific repository, either the U.S. PubMed Central or a UK central repository, when this is available.

Over 90% of peer-reviewed journals have endorsed some form of self-archiving [33]. About 10% of peer-reviewed journals are now OA journals[34].

[edit] Reasons for Open Access

An often cited reason authors make their articles openly accessible is to maximize their research impact factor. A study in 2001 first reported an Open Access citation impact advantage[35], and a growing number of studies have confirmed, with varying degrees methodological rigor, that an open access article is more likely to be used and cited than one behind subscription barriers.[36]

A 2006 study in PLoS Biology with a longitudinal design that adjusted for confounders using multivariate regression found that articles published as immediate open access in the PNAS were three times more likely to be cited than non-open access papers, and were also cited more than PNAS articles that were only self-archived[37]. However, this study has been sharply criticized for lack of controls. [Davis, P. M. and Fromerth M. J. Davis, P. M. and Fromerth M. J, Does the arXiv lead to higher citations and reduced publisher downloads for mathematics articles?


Authors who wish to make their work openly accessible have a number of options. One of the options is publishing in an open access journal.

An open access journal may, or may not, charge a processing fee; open access publishing does not necessarily mean that the author has to pay. When OA journals do charge processing fees, it is the author's employer or research funder who typically pays the fee, not the individual author, and many journals will waive the fee in cases of financial hardship, or for authors in less-developed countries.

The second option is author self-archiving. To find out if a publisher permits author self-archiving, authors can check the Publisher Copyright Policies and Self-Archiving list[38] on the SHERPA web site. To find out by journal, the author can check the Self-Archiving Policy By Journal.[39] A self-archiving wiki designed to help faculty understand and start doing it, has been set up by Ari Friedman.[40] Extensive details and links can also be found in the Open Access Archivangelism blog[41] and the Eprints Open Access site.[42] Some authors are now being requested or even required to make their works openly accessible by research funders, such as the US National Institutes of Health, and the Wellcome Trust, as well as by their universities.[43]

[edit] Users

For the most part, the direct users of research articles are other researcher s. Open access helps researchers as readers by opening up access to articles that their libraries do not subscribe to. One of the great beneficiaries of open access may be developing countries -- although schemes do exist for providing subscription-only scientific publications to those affiliated to institutions in developing countries at little or no cost.[44]. All researchers benefit from OA, as no library can afford to subscribe to every scientific journal and most can only afford a small fraction of them.[45] Lee Van Orsdel and Kathleen Born have summarized the current state of what libraries call "the serials crisis".[46]

Open access extends the reach of research to beyond its immediate academic circle. An OA article can be read by anyone - a professional in the field, a researcher in another field, a journalist, or an interested hobbyist.

Open access articles can often be found with a web search, using any general search engine or those specialized for the scholarly/scientific literature, such as OAIster,[47] citebase,[48] citeseer,[49] scirus,[50], ScientificCommons.org,[51] and Google Scholar.[52] Results may include preprints that have not yet been peer reviewed, or gray literature that will remain unreviewed.

The Directory of Open Access Journals, (DOAJ) lists peer-reviewed, fully open access scientific journals, and also indexes the articles in many of ithem.Open J-Gate [53] is another index of articles published in English language OA journals, which launched in 2006. Out of 3,500+ journals indexed by Open J-Gate, around 2,000 are peer-reviewed.


[edit] Research funders and universities

Research funding agencies and universities want to ensure that the research they fund and support in various ways has the greatest possible research impact (citation impact).

Research funders are beginning to expect open access to the research they support. For example, the world's two largest funders in medical research are asking researchers to provide an open access version of the research they have funded. The U.S. National Institutes of Health's Public Access Policy[54] took effect May 2005. The Wellcome Trusts' Position Statement in Support of Open and Unrestricted Access to Published Research[55] took effect October 2005. The U.S. NIH's policy is not mandatory[56] , because it requests rather than requires self-archiving , and allows for an embargo (delay) period of up to one year. It stipulates self-archiving in PubMed Central rather than in the author's own institutional repository , which some consider a strength and others a weakness. The Wellcome Trust's position is somewhat stronger, requiring self-archiving within 6 months. The CURES Act, if adopted, would require immediate deposit, but still allow a 6-month delay in access to the articles. Many OA advocates consider that these policies are worthwhile first steps, despite the embargoes.

Other research funders are in the process of reviewing their policies. One of the most notable developments in this area is the Research Council UK's (RCUK's) policy on Access to Research Outputs.[57] If RCUK requires immediate self-archiving, about half of the research produced at UK universities will become open access, through repositories. What is especially important about this initiative is that it covers all disciplines, not just biomedicine.


Individual universities are beginning to adapt policies requiring that their researcher employees provide open access, and are developing institutional repositories in which published articles can be deposited. Eprints maintains a Registry of OA Repository Material Archiving Policies (ROARMAP).[58]

In May 2005, 16 major Dutch universities cooperatively launched DAREnet, the Digital Academic Repositories, making over 47,000 research papers available to anyone with internet access. The repository now holds in excess of 69,000 articles [59].

In April 2006, the European Commission "Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets in Europe" recommended "Research funding agencies... should [e]stablish a European policy mandating published articles arising from EC-funded research to be available after a given time period in open access archives...". In May 2006, the proposed US Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) made a move toward improving the NIH Public Access Policy:

  1. FRPAA self-archiving is no longer requested but mandated.
  2. The absolute time limit on the FRPAA self-archiving is no longer at most 12 months from publication but at most six.
  3. Self-archiving is no longer just for biomedical sciences, but for the full spectrum of major US-funded research.

[edit] Public and advocacy

Open access to scholarly research is important to the public for a number of reasons. One of the arguments for public access to the scholarly literature is that most of it is paid for by taxpayers, who have a right to access the results of what they have funded. This is the reason for the creation of advocacy groups such as The Alliance for Taxpayer Access in the US.[60] For example, people might wish to read the scholarly literature when they or a family member have an illness. Many people also have serious hobbies; e.g. there are so many serious amateur astronomers in the world, that if the world were to be hit with a comet, it would probably be one of these amateurs who would alert us. Then, too, there are Wikipedia writers and editors working to hone their articles.

Even those who do not care to read scholarly articles, however, benefit indirectly from open access. Even those who do not intend to read medical journals, for example, would probably prefer that their doctor and other health care professionals had access to them. As argued by open access advocates, open access speeds research progress, productivity, and knowledge translation [61]; every researcher in the world can read an article, not just those whose library can afford to subscribe to the particular journal it appears in. Faster discoveries benefit everyone. High school and junior college students can gain the information literacy skills critical for the knowledge age.

In developing nations, open access archiving and publishing acquire a unique importance. Scientists, health care professionals, and institutions in developing nations often do not have the capital necessary to access scholarly literature, although schemes exist to give them access for little or no cost.

Due to these benefits of open access, many governments are considering whether to mandate open access to publicly funded research. However, some organizations representing publishers, such as the DC Principles group in the United States, feel that such mandates are an unwarranted governmental intrusion in the publishing marketplace. Much advocacy is taking place on both sides of this issue, pro-OA and contra-OA.

[edit] Libraries and librarians

Librarians are among the most vocal and active of open access advocates, because access to information is one of the central tenets of the profession. Open access if practical promises to remove both the price barriers and the permission barriers that undermine library efforts to provide access to the journal literature.[62]. Many library associations have either signed major open access declarations, or created their own. For example, the Canadian Library Association, in June 2004, endorsed a Resolution on Open Access.[63] The Association of Research Libraries has documented the need for increased access to scholarly information, and was a leading founder of the Scholarly Publishing and Research Coalition (SPARC).[64]

At many universities, the library is the home of the institutional repository, where authors self-archive their papers. For example, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries has an ambitious program[65] to develop institutional repositories at all Canadian university libraries. Some libraries are publishing journals, such as the Journal of Insect Science[66] at the University of Wisconsin Library, or hosting and/or providing technical support for journals.

Many libraries are working to promote open access materials, through links on library web pages, including open access journals in library catalogues, and/or setting up automated searching for open access items, along with library paid resources. Some librarians are not in favour of full open access, fearing that existing library funding for joournal subscriptions may be removed or transferred to fund the running of the institutional repository.

[edit] Criticism of open access

Template:Unreferenced

Open access has been the subject of much discussion amongst academics, librarians, university administrators, government officials, commercial publishers, and learned society publishers.

There are those who think that open access is unnecessary or even harmful. It can be argued that there is no need for those outside major academic institutions to have access to primary publications, at least in some fields.

If, for example, all high energy physicists necessarily are in organizations that can well afford to subscribe to the few journals specializing in the subject, and that nobody else can possibly benefit from the primary research literature in the subject. It might be worth noting that physicists were early adopters of open access through self-archiving; virtually 100% of the high energy physics literature is currently open access through self-archiving in the arXiv centralized repository.

There are those who think that increased access to biomedical research will lead to greater drains on the time of health care workers. and decrease even more the time for for patient care. In reply advocates generally point to those outside academic institution, who may not be capable of doing the primary research but are both interested and capable of learning about it. The typical rejoinder of the skeptics is that this need can be better met through the existing [interlibrary loan] system.

Many critics agree with open access advocates about the basic concept and philosophical desirability of open access. They doubt, however, that it will be possible to establish an economically sustainable open access publishing system, or that, even if possible, it is a sufficient priority. Some leaders of biomedical societies assert that the primary need in biomedicine is the increased availability of medical care, and the second, the increase of funding for research, and that any effort or money spent in widening access could be better spent on the primary goals. It is hard to disagree with the need for increased access to medical care, but open access advocates generally say that the amount of funding required is relatively trivial, and that the increase in public knowledge may lead to both better medical care, and the willingness to allocate more money for research.

There is some debate about whether a fully open access scholarly publishing system is economically viable. Many publishers think it obvious that all of the potential forms of open access will either harm their economic viability, or cause a less efficient operation. Those who are already open access publishers, obviously, tend to see open access publishing as economically viable; some are beginning to report profits, although others, such as Oxford University Press report financial losses from their open access journals.

Others focus on particular forms. There are those arguing that open access journals will have economic or organizational defects that will make it unworkable. Template:Main There are those arguing that self-archiving will result in irreversible harm to the journals and the consequent deterioration of the scholarly publishing system. Template:Main

There are those who think that no matter what approach is taken, the additional money required will be sizable, and doubt it will be forthcoming. Some librarians fear that universities will take it from their book budgets, leaving them in no better financial position. Some scientists fear it will be taken from their research grants, or, that if research grants are increased, their number will be lessened.

Opponents of the open access model assert that the pay-for-access model is necessary to ensure that the publisher is adequately compensated for their work. Scholarly journal publishers using a pay-for-access model claim that the "gatekeeper" role they play, maintaining a scholarly reputation, arranging for peer review, and editing and indexing articles, require economic resources that are not supplied under an open access model. Many journals are still produced in print (some, exclusively in print with no online counterpart), which complicates a transition to open access publishing, which only applies to online journals.

Opponents claim that open access is not necessary to ensure fair access to developing nations; differential pricing, or financial aid from developed countries or institutions can make access to proprietary journals affordable. There are a number of such programs presently in place, such as HINARI, PERI, and OARE. Counterarguments here are that these programs provide limited enhanced access; there are countries which qualify for these programs, such as India, which are excluded because a few people in these large countries can afford subscriptions. These programs also do not help researchers, students, and the public in smaller, poorer, and more remote institutions who often lack access to the peer-reviewed literature, even in the world's wealthiest countries.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Open access".

[edit] References

<references />

[edit] Further reading

[edit] See also

[edit] External Links

[edit] OA discussion lists & forums


Wikipedia
See also the Wikipedia article on:
Retrieved from "http://liswiki.org/wiki/Open_access"
Personal tools