Opening remarks: Open access and the developing world

Open Access and the Developing World Matthew Cockerill Managing Director, BioMed Central Ltd

The old world of access to knowledge

The new world of access to knowledge

The internet has the potential to radically expand access to knowledge

Digital divide or digital bridge?

African internet connectivity is improving dramatically

Cellphones

Growth of mobile phones in Africa Source: African Mobile Factbook 2008 International Telecommunications Union report (2009) “ The increase in the number of mobile cellular subscriptions over the last five years has defied all predictions and Africa remains the region with the highest mobile growth rate” Although number of Internet users has also grown faster than in other regions: “ Africa’s ICT penetration levels in 2009 are still far behind the rest of the world and very few African countries reach ICT levels comparable to global averages”

Mobile phone networks are already aiding scientific data gathering

As connectivity improves, other access barriers become significant

Open access journals do away with access barriers

About BioMed Central
Largest publisher of peer-reviewed open access journals
Launched first open access journal in 2000
Became part of Springer in 2008
Now publishes 207 open access journals
>80,000 peer-reviewed OA articles published
All research articles published under Creative Commons license
Costs covered by article processing charge (APC)

BioMed Central and Africa

ComputerAid

BMC/Nature 10K fun run in support of ComputerAid

OA Waiver Fund

All African countries receive automatic fee waiver, except:
Libya
Namibia
Nigeria
South Africa
Algeria
Botswana
Equatorial Guinea
Gabon

Growth in manuscript submissions from Africa to BioMed Central

Manuscript submissions from Africa as fraction of total

Top 10 journals for publications from Africa in last 12 months

How can increased access to knowledge via Open Access help Africa?

UN Millenium Development Goals
Reduce child mortality,improve maternal health
Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
Ensure environmental sustainability
Develop a global partnership for development

Who needs access to the results of research? Public Professionals Researchers

Research on global health issues has expanded greatly
Developing world health issues are finally attracting substantial research spending
Private philanthropic initiatives have played an important role

Why do research if it is not accessible where it is most relevant?

Wellcome Trust
Medical Research Council
US National Institutes of Health
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
European Research Council
EC Seventh Framework Program
Many research funders are now requiring open access

Harvard University (and other members of Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity)
More than 100 mandatory institution-wide open access policies world-wide http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/
But still very few in Africa…
Many universities are now requiring open access

Open Access in practice

Open Access journals

What is open access publishing?
Traditional journals
take ownership of the research
provide access to subscribers only
Open access journals
have no subscription barriers
take advantage of the economics of the internet to allow universal access
research is openly licensed to allow reuse

Who pays?
Open access journals do have costs
Publication fee is a very small fraction of the cost of doing research
Most open access publishers, including BioMed Central, give waivers to developing countries
In other cases, open access journals have central support, so no charges for authors or readers

Open Access publishing, then and now…
2010
2000 And many more…

African Journals Online

A new industry association

Goals of OASPA
Represents Open Access publishers
Agree common definition of Open Access
Establish and enforce good standards of editorial and business practices amongst members
Identify guidelines and best practices for publishers and institutions in managing payment of publication fees

Malaria Journal - an open access journal case study

Malaria Journal homepage

Annual growth in submissions to Malaria Journal

Top 20 African countries publishing in Malaria Journal (no. or articles)

Impact Factor trend

A highly accessed Malaria Journal article 15,000+ downloads 31 citations

Parasite to Prevention - Malaria Journal ’s scientific conference
Inaugural conference October 2010, Edinburgh, Scotland
Full bursaries for participants from low-income countries, supported by Gates Foundation
Next conference 2012, probably in Africa

Other high profile open access journals relevant to tropical diseases

Gateways

The latest open access research on global health issues

The benefits of open access for the developing world

Zambia

Nigeria

The Gambia

Open Access repositories

Open Access repositories
Allow archiving of articles published both in traditional journals and open access journals
Traditional publishers typically only allow author version to be archived
Many require a 6 or 12 month embargo period
Open access articles can be deposited and made immediately available

Open Repository
Hosted digital repository service, operated by BioMed Central
Built on the DSpace open-source platform
Dramatically reduces time and costs involved in setting up, maintaining and developing a repository
Hosting in UK ensures maximum international exposure

Open Repository

How can OA publishers work with Institutional Repositories?
Many institutions now have OA repositories in place
Populating the repositories is often a challenge
Open Access journals provide a stream of immediately available OA content for the repository
BioMed Central is automating this via feeds using the SWORD protocol

Connecting open access journals and open access repositories

Manual deposit to IR Institutional Repository (DSpace/Eprints etc. ) Publisher Manuscript Author final version 1 2

Automated deposit to IR via SWORD Institutional Repository (DSpace/Eprints etc. ) Manuscript SWORD Import SWORD Export Published articles from institution’s authors Published article

University of Stellenbosch

Thanks, and enjoy the rest of the conference!

http://www.biomedcentral.com	151
http://usalbiomedica.wordpress.com	52
http://dev.biomedcentral.com	1
http://old.biomedcentral.com	1
http://biomedcentral.com.local	1

Opening remarks: Open access and the developing world

by BioMedCentral

Accessibility

Categories

Upload Details

Usage Rights

5 Embeds 206

Statistics

Opening remarks: Open access and the developing world Presentation Transcript