Access to Scientific Information – Are we ready for the Global South and SDGs?

1. Access to Scientific
Information – Are we
ready for the Global
South and SDGs?
Arianna Becerril García
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO)

2. A new cooperativestrategyto keepscholarly
journals incontrol of theresearchcommunityin
Latin America and the Global South

3. Latin America has
created and maintains a
non-commercial
structure where
scientific publishing
belongs to academic
institutions and not to
large publishers
University of Buenos Aires
Autonomous National University of Mexico

4. Every institution supports journals
that are driven by their own faculty
members, and then that content is
made available in OA.
Everyone gets benefit from
everyone’s investment.
A fee has not been included
neither for authors nor for
readers in the regional editorial
tradition.

5. Open Access Ecosystem in Latin America
Nonprofit platforms of
visibility, edition, quality
assurance, metrics
Nonprofit institutional
journal publishing
Mainly public
institutions
2,849 journal installations
Key factors:
Cooperation
Networking
Crowdsourcing
Open source software
In-house software
Free software
Nonprofit, mainly public – funded scientific communication system
Scholarly-led scientific communication system

6. An OA ecosystem that is being fragmented
Two different OA approaches

7. APPROACH 1: DEPENDENT ON MAINSTREAM-
METRICS AND COMMERCIAL OPEN ACCESS
• Research assessment based on
IF (JCR) or SJR (Scopus) as the
most important metrics.*
• Favours APC bussiness model
(inherited from the Global
North becoming attractive for
Latin American journals)
• Language criteria setting English
as a preponderant language.
*Scielo’s agreement with Clarivate Analytics to
generate Scielo Citation Index
“mainstream”,
North-centric
University
rankings
National and
institutional
research
assessment
Project
grants
Comercial
publishers
National
indexes of
journals
APC

8. APPROACH 2: SCHOLARLY-DRIVEN SCIENTIFIC
COMMUNICATION AND NON-COMMERCIAL OA
• Scholarly-driven publications and repositories
This approach seeks to strengthen publishers inside
universities by empowering editors with technology and
training in favor of the sustainability of OA
• Non-commercial OA
-More than 500 journal publisher institutions adopting
tools provided by Redalyc to keep the non-commercial
nature of their processes and to avoid APCs.
-Latindex-Redalyc-CLACSO-IBICT issued the Declaration
of Mexico in favor of the Latin American Non-
Commercial OA ecosystem. Joint declaration on the use
of CC BY-NC-SA license
• Research Assessment
- Efforts towards to find a better way to assess scientific
research (Redalyc metrics, UdeA metrics)
- More than 600 journals signed DORA (Redalyc’s
additional mandatory requirement)
• Intellectual Property
- Publishers allow authors to hold the copyright without
restrictions
Scholarly-led
non-subordinated
non-commercial
535 journals
using
redalyc's
technology
More than
400 journals
signed DORA
.
International
standards
Institutional
editorial
teams
Green &
Gold OA
cooperation

9. Open access to knowledge is not enough, we must think
about:
• Property
• Sustainability
• Research assessment
• Participation
Is it OA long-term guaranteed?
Is it non- profit OA sustainable?
Is it science fairly assessed?
Are there OA platforms included in assessment criteria?
There is no guarantee that what it is open know,
continues to be open.
Specially if authors do not hold copyright.
Are new forms of exclusion emerging?

10. PROCESSES
OPTIMIZATION
EFFICIENCY
IN THE USE OF HUMAN & ECONOMIC
RESOURCES
JOINING
FORCES
STRATEGIC
COOPERATION
To achieve a more equitable access and participation of the South in the
global scientific conversation, it is necessary ...

11. Redalyc’s technology and
innovation now is extended
to the Global South

12. Redalyc contributions at a glance
54.000
Redalyc daily users
10 million
article downloads per month
1,300
Peer-reviewed OA journals
629,000
full-text articles
622publisher institutions from 22countries
1.5 million authors from 10.000institutions

13. Elsevier’s article of
the future
vs. Redalyc article
reader technology
Many functionalities offered by commercial publishers in
other parts of the world are provided for free by Redalyc
and now by AmeliCA
However, the recognition of research
assessment -by governments and
institutions- is for what is present in
Scopus (Elsevier) or WoS. If this doesn’t
change there is no future for scholarly-
led scientific communication

14. 1
4
AmeliCA is a multi-institutional community-driven initiative supported by
UNESCO and led by Redalyc and CLACSO, that arises in response to the
international, regional, national and institutional contexts of Open Access, which
seeks a cooperative, sustainable, protected and non-comercial solution for Open
Knowledge in Latin America and the Global South.
Redalyc along with CLACSO and a dozen of institutions formed a regional alliance
to back and keep the ”organically open and scholarly” OA ecosystem

15. 1
Values and principles
2
The OA has no future or
meaning without the
evolution of the research
assessment
4The transition to digital
scientific communication
is an essential axis
1
Scientific knowledge
generated with public funds
is a common good and
access to it is a right
3 The economic
investment in the OA
must be consistent with
the benefit to society
5
The Impact Factor must
be overcome as an
indicator of quality and
performance

16. 16member institutions

17. Projects

18. We are commited to improve research assessment
Latindex-Redalyc-CLACSO-Conacyt

19. www.amelica.org
XML JATS markup tool

21. And this is just the beginning…
XML - > Open data -> Linked data -
> Knowledge Discovery -> Ubiquity
-> Semantic web
Technology and Artificial
Intelligence for a participatory
and inclusive science
ecosystem.

22. We must seek as humanity a more equitable participation of all nations in
the scientific discourse that comprehends local agendas, diversity and
that contributes in the reduction of gaps.
We are totally committed in contributing with our technology and
knowledge -but above all- with our willingness to build an alliance in favor
of achieving science as commons.
We imagine ...
A web of data for science, a cloud of scientific
knowledge, sustainable and open that
promotes a participatory and inclusive science
communication.

23. Dra. Arianna Becerril García
arianna.becerril@gmail.com
http://www.redalyc.org/autor.oa?id=25
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0278-8295
@ariannabec
Merci beaucoup