Open Access

What it is and why it is required for scholarly community?

Sukhdev Singh – esukhdev AT gmail.com

I am not talking about

• Open Source

• Open Standards

• Right to Information

But on similar concept

• It relates to access to results of public funded research

• It relates to access to that knowledge which scientists and scholars give away for free after years of hard work

Let us see how

Knowledge is produced and consumed by scientists and scholars

12 – 18 Months

Research Impact

Fine, What is the Problem?

Research Impact

http://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/home/regain_control.html

Situation is even worse in developing countries

• Most reputed journals are published in developed countries (U.S / Europe) and are monopolized by few publishers

• Purchases are in foreign currency

• Even best indigenous research is published in foreign journals

Now the Question being asked is

Where is the catch?

• Scientists / scholars need to publish articles

• Publishers seek transfer of copyrights in their favour in lieu of publication of their articles

• They had no other alternative than to gave away their copyrights to get their articles published

But now Internet is threatening the conventional model for good.

Scholarly literature • Can be submitted online• Can be peer reviewed online• Edited online• Published online• Distributed online• Used online

At very low cost compared to the conventional publishing model

And Save the time as too

Open Access is the answer to the ills of conventional academic publishing

Open-access (OA) literature• is [scholarly,] digital, online, • free of charge, • and free of most copyright and licensing

restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet and the

consent of the author or copyright-holder.[Peter Suber -http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/brief.htm]

Open Access (OA) means free and online access to scholarly literature that can be freely disseminated further with proper author attribution.

It brings down barriers to scientific communication by using Internet

Open Access Publishing

• Open Access Journals perform peer review like their conventional counterparts and then make the approved contents freely available to the world.

http://www.doaj.org/

Has 3372 journals in the directory as on 21st May 2008

Open Access Repositories

• Open Access Repositories allow authors / right holders to deposit their articles

• May allow preprints (pre-published manuscripts)• Normally allow post-prints (peer-reviewed and

published articles)• Most reputed academic publishers allow authors

to deposit some version of their articles in such repositories [http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php]Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) had 1065 registered repositories

as on 21st May 2008. http://roar.eprints.org/

So, Why Open Access is required for the scientific and scholarly

community?

Newton,“If I have seen furtherit is by standing on the

shoulders of Giants”

Impact“Articles freely available online are more highly

cited. For greater impact and faster scientific progress, authors and publishers should aim to make research easy to access”. Online or Invisible? Steve Lawrence. Nature, Volume 411, Number 6837, p. 521, 2001. http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/online-nature01/

Community Both the Producer and Consumer

• Scholarly community is working for furtherance of science and knowledge

• Most work is given away for free. • Outsider publishers with commercial interests

benefits and creates barriers in communication among the community

• Internet has provided an alternative means of peer review, publication and distribution.

• Internet based scholarly communication advances the science without lose of time

Public Good

• Research funded out of public money should be publically accessible

• Number of universities, academic institutions and research funding agencies are making Open Access as mandatory requirement [http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/]

Government Laws

• In accordance with Division G, Title II, Section 218 of PL 110-161 (Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008 ), the NIH voluntary Public Access Policy (NOT-OD-05-022) is now mandatory.

http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-08-033.html

Awareness

• Faculties becoming more aggressive and aware for example on 6th May 2008, Harvard Law faculty votes for 'open access' to scholarly articles

http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/2008/05/07_openaccess.php

What can bloggers do?

Blog on Open Access Movement

Peter Suber, EditorGavin Baker, Assistant Editor

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html

Blog on Open Access Literature / Resources

Blog on Peer-Reviewed Research

“Research Blogging helps you locate and share academic blog posts about peer-reviewed research. Bloggers use our icon to identify their thoughtful posts about serious research, and those posts are collected here for easy reference”.

- http://researchblogging.org/index.php

Open Access and India

Open Access Repositories 30+

National Aerospace Laboratories

Indian Institute of Astrophysics Repository

Open Access Journals

http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=findJournals&hybrid=&query=india

Open Access Hosts / Publishers

http://www.ias.ac.in/

http://insa.ac.in/html/home.asp

http://medind.nic.in/

http://medknow.com/

Open Knowledge Society

http://www.oksociety.org

Image Credits• http://www.biomedcentral.com/openaccess/• http://www.opensource.org/• http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Knowledge-Posters_i2548954_.htm• http://a182thedeuce.org/who_is_who• http://www.plos.org/downloads/plos_cartoon001.jpg• http://edwardkhoo.com/things-to-do-when-you-have-nothing-to-do-a-complete-list/

• And many others

THANK YOU VERY MUCH