Economic Development needs ScienceScience needs Access to Research

A1982 UNESCO report states that "assimilation of scientific and technological information is an essential precondition for progress in developing countries".

Information traditionally shared via publication in peer reviewed journals . . .

BUT THERE ARE PROBLEMS

The scale of the problem

ACCESS STUDY

WHO study in 2003 showed:

Of 75 countries with GNP/per capita/yr < $1000, 56% of medical institutions had NO subscriptions to journals over the previous 5 years

Of countries with GNP/capita/yr of $1-3000, 34% had NO subscriptions and a further 34% had an average of 2 subscriptions/yr

Subscription levels still rising

And another problem . . .

The development of appropriate health or environmental programmes for low

economy countries needs knowledge of research generated in the regions,

BUT

publishing problems . . .

Information Gaps

N►S

S►N

S►S

Budapest Open Access InitiativeFebruary 2002

Recommends two routes to overcoming the problems. Researchers can:

• Deposit already refereed and published articles in OA institutional (or central) repositories

(OA IRs) or

• Publish in OA journals (OAJs)

What are Institutional Repositories?

They are interoperable digital archives providing free-of-cost access to already published research findings

They are located in research organisations (institutes, universities . . .)

They form a subsidiary access strategy, working in parallel with open access and toll access journals

OA IR features

• Cheap? (How much? Not a lot . . Software free)

• Quick? (Yes, just a few days . . .)

• Easy? (Yes, lots of online support . . .)

• Interoperable? (Yes, thanks to international standards – Open Archives International-MPH)

• Indexed and searchable by Google, Yahoo, specialised search tools? (Yes)

• Statistics showing they are used? (Yes, see later . . .)

OA IRs

Total number of OA IRs 1134

(increasing approximately 1/day)

• Worldwide – 1134• Developing countries – 173 (15.5%)

Statistics from Registry of OA Repositories http://roar.eprints.org/

Where are they?

World map of IRs EPrints site, University Southampton

Number of IRs, number of records held (2007)

Are IRs being used? Are they making a difference?

Institutional Repository University of Otago (NZ)

University of Strathclyde (UK)

Rhodes e-Research Repository (Sth Africa)

2004-5*

Indian Inst of Science

Full text downloads during 2007

No. of records in IR 666 5052 808 7635

Usage from Canada 2977 2070 10413 2931

Usage from India 5022 1032 27609 9354

Usage from UK 8926 12664 25392 3581

Usage from Sth Africa 1029 175 120598 331

Total Usage in 2007 17954 15941 183012 16197

Usage map of IR of Universidad do Los Andes, Venezuela

Mandates/Requirements

August 28th 2008:

53 operating mandates11 others under development

Harvard Faculty of Arts and Science, NIH, 6 of 7 UK Research Councils, National Research Council Canada, Australian Research Council, European Research Council, Wellcome Trust, Stanford Faculty of Education, Southampton University, Howard Hughes . . . . .

See: ROARmap site for details of Material Archiving Policieshttp://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/

Total number of OA Journals

3617 Journals listed in Directory of Open Access Journals www.doaj.org

208785 articles

1249 journals searchable at article level

OA Journals published in developing countries

Bioline International – distributes 60 journals from 17 developing countries (Brazil/Canada initiative)

SciELO – >550 journals from Brazil and other LAC countries and non-LAC lusaphone countries; 180,000 articles

MedKnow (India) biomedical and scholarly journals (62 journals)

Others - Society journals, China (4), Africa (10), Sth Korea (13) …….

~19% published in developing countries

Usage of publications from developing country research distributed by Bioline International

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

0

500000

1000000

1500000

2000000

2500000

3000000

3500000

Abstracts

Full-text

SciELO Chile downloads

0

200000

400000

600000

800000

1000000

1200000

1400000

1600000

2002

2003

2004

2005

Downloads and visitorsJune-Nov 2005

to Journal of Postgraduate Medicine, published by MedKnow, Mumbai, India

0

20000

40000

60000

80000

100000

120000

Jun-05 Jul-05 Aug-05 Sep-05 Oct-05 Nov-05

Monthly visitors

Article downloads

Geographic distribution of visitors Geographic distribution of visitors (n = 500)(n = 500)

Increase in submissions since becoming OA, Journal of Post Graduate Medicine, MedKnow, India

140186

312

436

620

780

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

Projected Impact Factor

0.02

0.11

0.24

0.41

0.82

0.95

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

Increase in subscriptions to Journal of Postgraduate Medicine, MedKnow, India since becoming OA

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

WHO IS BENEFITTING FROM OA?

• Authors: visibility, impact, international partnerships, career development

• Institutes/Universities: IRs display, promote research strengths; administrative tool. Visible publication record for quality assessment. Library savings

• Funding organisations: was the funding a good investment? Could our funds be better spent?

• Economies: OA helps to build a strong and independent research base essential for sustainable development

The light at the end of the tunnel

Thank you for listening

• And thanks to Sir Tim for the WWW• And thanks to the open source software

developers (Eprints, Dspace, OJS . . . .)• And thanks to the standards developers

(OAI-MPH)• And thanks to the many experts, informing,

instructing and advocating OA, working around the clock to close the gaps