The document discusses the evolution and importance of open access and knowledge sharing in academic publishing, emphasizing historical figures like Isaac Newton and the transition from secretive knowledge hoarding to collaborative science. It outlines the challenges of toll-access publishing, including high costs impacting researchers, especially in developing countries, and presents open access as a solution to increase accessibility and dissemination of knowledge. The document also highlights the role of librarians and advocates in promoting open access initiatives and addresses misconceptions surrounding open access publishing.

1. OPEN ACCESS
&
KNOWLEDGE SHARING
Getaneh Agegn Alemu
University of Portsmouth
February 2011

2. OVERVIEW

3. KNOWLEDGE HOARDING
• Up until the 17th century
• Alchemy was a secretive art and was not supposed to be shared
• Isaac Newton, was both an alchemist and a technologist
• He broke from his alchemy tradition and he shared
“If I have seen further, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants”
Newton
Source: The Alchemists by Anders Sandberg,
http://hem.bredband.net/arenamontanus/Mage/alchemy.html

4. KNOWLEDGE SHARING
• “Knowledge wants to be free” (Arunachalam (2008, p.7)
• Knowledge as a near-perfect public good, using it nearly
costless
• This quest for sharing and openness in science led to the
flourishing of new disciplines, professional associations, and
communities of practice
Sources: (Willinsky, 2006; Swan, 2006; & Solomon, 2008)
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=10611&ttype=2

5. SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING
• 1660: The Royal Society of London
• 1665: Philosophical Transactions
Functions:
• establishing intellectual priority
• certifying quality and validity
• ensuring accessibility
• archiving for future use
• rewarding
Science Dissemination using Open Access http://sdu.ictp.it/openaccess/book.html

6. KNOWLEDGE SHARING
• Knowledge is created through science and scholarship
• Collaboration is key
• “No one can claim to be a self made man!” (Arunachalam ,
2008, p.7)
• Since the beginning of the scientific journal publishing,
researchers have never expected royalties from their
intellectual works
• It is the scientists who do the research, who publish,
who referee, who decide (Willinsky, 2006)

7. TOLL-ACCESS
• 21st century
• >25,000 journals, approximately 2.5 million
• Most of these journals are subscription-based (toll-access)
• Exorbitant journal prices
• Libraries cut journal subscriptions
• Even Harvard University was affected by toll-access
• Developing countries researchers are hard hit by such a model
Source: (Dewatripont et al., 2006; Canessa & Zennaro, 2008).

8. OPEN ACCESS CAME ALONG
• Free and Open Source Software ("think of free as in free speech, not as in free
beer“)
• The Creative Commons (www.creativecommons.org)
• The Wikipedia project
• Proliferation of social networking Web portals
• Libraries are about free access to information
• The Budapest Open Access Initiative in 2001
• The Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing in 2003
• The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and
Humanities in 2003

9. WHAT IS OPEN ACCESS?
• free and permanent access
• to peer-reviewed, academically purposeful online content
• over the Internet and
• the freedom to:
• use
• copy
• distribute and
• adapt that content with proper attribution.
• OA maximizes research usage and impact, productivity and
progress

10. OPEN ACCESS MYTHS
• OA violates copyright!
• OA is compromising on quality!
• OA is vanity publishing!
• OA is cost free!
• OA is about royalty works!

11. WAYS TO ACHIEVE OPEN ACCESS
1. Green OA means depositing articles in online repositories
• Self-archiving is the “low hanging fruit
2. Gold OA means the journal itself provides immediate full-text
online access
• Running a journal is a full time commitment for
institutions hence it requires a strategic plan of action
and allocation of resources.

12. REPOSITORIES
Subject repositories, Institutional repositories, and ETDs

13. OPEN ACCESS ADVOCATES
• Peter Suber
• The arXiv(http://arxiv.org) launched in 1991 by physicist Paul Ginsparg.
Currently, the arXiv has 528,147 open access e-prints
• CERN Document Server (CDS)
• The PubMed Central database of the National Institute of Health
• The Research Council UK (RCUK)
• SHERPA/ROMEO website (http://www.sherpa.ac.uk) most publishers allow
author-self archiving
(Suber, 2006) http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/hometoc.htm

14. ROLE OF LIBRARIANS
• Librarians are the major actors in the open access initiative
• Libraries to advocate and create awareness to their research
communities about institutional repositories and related issues
such as copyright, and how to check publisher policies
• The “build it and they will come” approach does not work
• Awareness creation is key
(Salo, 2008, p.1)

15. CHALLENGES OF OPEN ACCESS
• Technical (hardware, software, and bandwidth)
• Social challenges (Zeno‟s paralysis)
Harnad‟s „Zeno‟s Paralysis‟ is coined “after the philosopher who
worried, how can I possibly walk across the room? There isn‟t
enough time! Before I can get across the room I first have to get
half way across the room, and that takes time; but before I can get
half way across the room, I have to get half of half way across the
room; and so on. So there isn‟t the time even to get started; hence
I can‟t possibly walk across the room”
(Harnad, 2006, p.78)

16. CREATIVE COMMONS
http://creativecommons.org/about/

17. OA TECHNOLOGIES
• Free and Open Source Software
• OAI-MPH compatible
• Institutional Repository Software
• Dspace(MIT and HP) http://www.dspace.org/
• Eprints(Univ. of Southampton) http://www.eprints.org/software/download/
• CDS-Invenio(CERN) http://cdsweb.cern.ch/
• Fedora(Moore Foundation, Cornell Univ., Univ. of Virginia)
http://www.fedora-commons.org/
• Greenstone (http://greenstone.org)
• OA Journals
• Online Journal System(the Univ. British Columbia) http://pkp.sfu.ca/

18. DSPACE
• Dspace allows to:
• capture items in any format – in text, video, audio, and data. It distributes
it over the web. It indexes your work, so users can search and retrieve your
items. It preserves your digital work over the long term.
• DSpace facilitates:
• the capture and ingest of materials, including metadata about
the materials
• easy access to the materials, both by listing and searching
• the long term preservation of the materials
Source: Dspace Basic Tutorial (n.d.) (Stuart Lewis & Chris Yates )

19. DSPACE FEATURES
• DSpace comes with an easily configurable web based
interface
• All content types accepted
• Dublin Core metadata standard
• Customisable web interface
• OAI compliant
• Decentralised submission process
• Full text search

20. DSPACE EXAMPLE SITES

21. REFERENCES
1. Arunachalam, S. (2008). Open access to scientific knowledge. DESIDOC Journal of
Library and Information Technology, 28 (1), 7-14.
2. Bailey Jr., C.W. (2006). What is open access. In N. Jacobs (Ed.), Open access: key
strategic, technical, and economic aspects (p. 13-26).Oxford: Chandos Publishing.
3. Canessa, E. & Zennaro, M. (Eds.) (2008). Science dissemination using Open Access: A
compendium of selected literature on Open Access. Trieste: ICTP.
4. Salo, D. (2008). Innkeeper at the roach motel. Library Trends, 57(2). Retrieved from
http://minds.wisconsin.edu/handle/1793/22088
5. Stichweh, R. (2003). The multiple publics of science: inclusion and popularization.
Retrieved from http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/soz/iw/pdf/stw_science_popular.pdf
6. Willinsky, J. (2006). The access principle. Boston: MIT Press. Retrieved from
http://mitpress.mit.edu/0262232421

22. Thank You!
Questions?
getaneh.alemu@port.ac.uk