Open Access: What it is and why it is required for scholarly community?

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

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

Newton, “ If I have seen further it 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 6 th 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 , Editor Gavin 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

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Open Access: What it is and why it is required for scholarly community?

by Sukhdev Singh

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Open Access: What it is and why it is required for scholarly community? Presentation Transcript