Access and Availability of Research Results

CIAT KSW, Cali18 May 2009

Agenda14:00 Welcome - Ruben14:05 Introduction – Enrica14:20 Benchmarking CIAT – Edith14:40 AA Pathways

– Introduction - Peter– Licensing and IP - Peter– Repositories - Peter– Social media - Simone

15:10 Group Discussions– Constraints to making ‘your’ research AA– What pathways would work in CIAT?

15:45 Reports Back16:00 Break

Background

• Information and knowledge are not born public; they must be worked upon to ensure they become public, i.e. available, accessible and applicable

• Recent independent review of CGIAR encouraged Centers “to make their research available and useful for development” – as well as international science

International Public Goods

• CGIAR-produced data, information or knowledge assets

– Benefits can travel across boundaries– Described and stored for posterity– Can be easily found & accessed– Can be shared & re-used – Available, accessible & applicable without restrictions

AAA Framework

• Help understand and assess International Public Good (IPG) status of CGIAR research outputs

– ‘Benchmark’ how research outputs measure up according to their availability, accessibility and applicability – how likely they are to ‘travel’.

– Help scientists and Centers/Programs decide on level of availability and accessibility of outputs they produce – and the pathways to get there!

Three A’s

• Availability: assemble and store outputs so they will be permanently accessible, and describing them in systems so others know, and can find, what has been produced.

• Accessibility: make outputs as easy to find and share and as open as possible, in the sense that others are free to use, reuse, and redistribute them.

• Applicability: research and innovation processes that are open to different sources of knowledge, and outputs that are easy to adapt, transform, apply and re-use.

The Problem: Research outputs inaccessible

• They are not captured• They are locked up behind passwords• They are kept inside intranets• They are not on the Internet, or digital• Their addresses are not permanent• They are not easy to find• Licenses do not encourage re-use• They can’t ‘travel’ as far as they should• ..

A center’s peer-reviewed outputs• journal articles

– 100% available online on internet– 22% open accessible online– 52% open accessible through AGORA– 0% available or listed on center web site (except in annual report)– 88% fulltext available in internal repository

• books and chapters– 3% available on center web site – 32% available online [mainly google books, often partial content]– 65% fulltext available in internal repository

• conference papers– 13% listed in center publications database– 47% available on center web site– 60% open accessible online

• own reports– 100% listed in center publications database– 83% open accessible online

Reflections• Not all of a Center’s outputs are internally available in

full. What is available, often cannot be made public.• Many products are available online; most, especially

those not published by a Center, are not immediately open.

• Publisher permissions to make articles publicly available or paying for open access, can transform the accessibility of some outputs.

• Search tools by a center to find its own research outputs can be less complete than those of Google.

• Copyright policies often do not encourage outputs to travel.

We can improve!

‘Pathways to accessibility’

Capture the outputs

Make them Visible

Publish on other platforms

Opening access

Open licenses

Social Media

Conclusions• Traditional outputs are much less accessible, to development communities,

than we wish.

• Many outputs are not as permanently accessible as posterity may require.

• Research outputs can be made much more accessible, they can be helped to travel:

– We need ‘accessible’ as well as ‘quality’ research outputs.

– We need pathways that will make outputs truly accessible.

– We need communication partnerships with ‘adaptive and delivery’ agents that will take and apply knowledge from research, reinforcing their capacities as required.