open access: what is it? why should we have it? where is it now? alma swan key perspectives ltd...
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OPEN ACCESS: What is it?
Why should we have it? Where is it now?
Alma Swan
Key Perspectives Ltd
Truro, UK
Why researchers publish their work
0 20 40 60 80 100
% respondents
Communicate results to peers
Advance career
Personal prestige
Gain funding
Financial reward
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‘Old’ paradigms
Use of proxy measures of an individual scientist’s merit is as good as it gets
It is a journal’s responsibility to disseminate your work
Printed article is the format of record Other scientists have time to search out
what you want them to know
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‘New’ paradigms Rich, deep, broad metrics for measuring
the contributions of individual scientists Effective dissemination of your work is
now in your hands (at last) The digital format will be the format of
record (is already in many areas) Unless you routinely publish in Nature or Science, ‘getting it out there’ is up to you
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Open Access: What is it?
Online Immediate Free (non-restricted) Free (gratis) To the scholarly literature that authors
give away Permanent
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Open Access: Who benefits?
Benefits to researchers themselves Benefits to institutions Benefits to national economies Benefits to science and society
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The digital era
“The potential role of electronic networks in scientific publication … goes far beyond providing searchable archives for electronic journals. The whole process of scholarly communication is undergoing a revolution comparable to the one occasioned by the invention of printing.”
Stevan Harnad, 1990
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And …
Still only 15% of research is Open Access
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New niches
Open Access journals (www.doaj.org)
Open Access repositories (author ‘self-archiving’)
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Repositories: interoperable
Show their content in a specific form Harvested by search engines Form a database of global research Freely available Publicly available Permanently available
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Open Access repositories
circa 800 worldwide and growing at an average of 1 per day
0 in Jordan (only 1 in the whole Middle East)
Open source software (e.g. EPrints from Southampton University)
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Using repositories
UoC’s eScholarship repository logged 2 million downloads: 2 years - 0.5m 1 year – 1m 9mths – 2m 10K records at end 2005
University of Otago Business School Launched mid-November 2005 220 articles by mid-February 2006 20K downloads
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And yet ….
Only 24% of authors have submitted an article to an Open Access journal
Only 22% have self-archived in their institutional repository
Natural selection or genetic drift?
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Why we should have Open Access
Greater impact from scientific endeavour More rapid and more efficient progress of
science Better assessment, better monitoring,
better management of science Novel information-creation using new and
advanced technologies
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Why researchers publish their work
0 20 40 60 80 100
% respondents
Communicate results to peers
Advance career
Personal prestige
Gain funding
Financial reward
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“Self-archiving in the PhilSci Archive has given instant world-wide visibility to my work. As a result, I was invited to submit papers to refereed international conferences/journals and got them accepted.”
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An author’s own testimony on open access visibility
Open Access increases citations
0 50 100 150 200 250
% increase in citations with Open Access
BiologyEconomics
Political SciHealth SciBusiness
EducationManagement
LawPsychology
SociologyPhysics
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Range = 50%-200%(Data: Stevan Harnad and co-workers)
Open access increases citations (other studies)
Lawrence 2001 (computer science) Kurtz 2004 (astronomy) Brody & Harnad 2004 (all disciplines) Antelman 2005 (philosophy, politics,
electrical & electronic engineering, mathematics)
Eysenbach 2006 (biomedicine)
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Lost citations, lost impact
Only around 15% of research is Open Access….
….. so 85% is not ….. and we are therefore losing 85% of
the 50% increase in citations (conservative end of the range) that Open Access brings (= 42.5%)
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National economies Jordanian scientists: 1708 articles in 2004/5 Number of citations: 2235 If all had been OA, there would have been
(42.5% more) 3185 citations Since the Jordanian Government invested
$200 million in S&T in 2004/5 ….. This means lost impact worth $85 million to
the Jordanian economy
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Jordanian scientists: 1708 articles in 2004/5 Number of citations: 2235 If all had been OA, there would have been
(42.5% more) 3185 citations Since the Jordanian Government invested
$200 million in S&T in 2004/5 ….. This means lost impact worth $85 million to
the Jordanian economy
National economies
Science is faster, more efficientTime taken to be cited for articles in the arXiv database
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
7000
8000
9000
10000
-6 3 12 21 30 39 48 57 66 75 84 93
Months from publication
Nu
mb
er
of
art
icle
s 1991199319951997199920012003
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Measure, assess, and manage science more effectively Assess individuals, groups, institutions, on
the basis of citation analysis Track trends: growth, latency, longevity Identify hubs and authorities Identify silent, ‘unsung’ contributors Predict impact, directions Manage, assess scientific programmes to
the benefit of our societies
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Find a researcher …..
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Track citation history
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Follow the citing trail …
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Follow the citing trail …
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New knowledge from old
Text-mining and data-mining technologies
UK: National Text-Mining Centre The Grid / e-research /
cyberresearch Example: NeuroCommons
(www.neurocommons.org)
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Where is Open Access now?
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Average number of articles in an institutional repository …
297!
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Publisher permissions (by journal)
79%
13%
8%
'Green' (postprints) 'Pale green' (preprints) 'Grey' (neither yet)
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Publisher permissions
92% of journals permit self-archiving
SHERPA/RoMEO list at:
www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php
Or at: http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php
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Other reasons
Time Average ‘a few minutes’ Estimated 40 minutes per
year Difficulty
‘Very easy or easy’
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Author readiness to comply with a mandate
0 20 40 60 80 100
% respondents
Would complywillingly
Would complyreluctantly
Would notcomply
81%
14%
5%
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Institutions with a mandate already
University of Southampton School of Electronics & Computer Science (since 2003) (90+% compliance already)
CERN (2003) (90% compliance already) Queensland University of Technology
(2004) (40%+ compliance and growing) University of Minho, Portugal (2005)
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% of DEST output
0%5%
10%15%20%25%30%35%40%45%50%
2004 2005
Key Perspectives Ltd(Data courtesy of Arthur Sale)
Developments on mandating
Wellcome Trust NIH RCUK CURES Act (USA) FRPAA (USA) National Institute of Technology, India Universities in UK and Australia
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Why we should have Open Access
Greater impact from scientific endeavour More rapid and more efficient progress of
science Better assessment, better monitoring,
better management of science Novel information-creation using new and
advanced technologies
Key Perspectives Ltd
شكرا Thank you for listening!
www.keyperspectives.co.uk
Key Perspectives Ltd
Shokran