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A biologist looks at OA
by Subbiah Arunachalam 20 Mar '05

20 Mar '05

Friends: Here is an eight-page white paper on OA by an American biologist. http://www.unc.edu/scholcomdig/whitepapers/peet.pdf Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] Friends: Here is an eight-page white paper on OA by an American biologist. http://www.unc.edu/scholcomdig/whitepapers/peet.pdf http://www.unc.edu/scholcomdig/whitepapers/peet.pdf Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam]

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Wikimania - Call for Papers
by Subbiah Arunachalam 20 Mar '05

20 Mar '05

Friends: Here is a conference some of you may be interested to take part. I received it from my friend Andy Carvin. Arun Wikimania Call for Papers http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_Call_for_Papers Wikimania 2005 - The First International Wikimedia Conference will be held in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, from 4 August 2005 to 8 August 2005. Wikimedia is the non-profit organization operating Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikispecies, and the Wikimedia Commons. We are now accepting papers and other submissions (from everyone within and outside the Wikimedia and Wikipedia communities) for presentations, workshops, and discussion groups. We are also accepting nominations for speaker panels and keynote speakers, and suggestions for other activities. Mail all submissions to cfp(a)wikimedia.org. For more conference information, see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania:Main_Page.

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three new studies
by Subbiah Arunachalam 20 Mar '05

20 Mar '05

Friends: Here is some news from Peter Suber's blog. Arun Three repository studies from Eprints UK The Eprints UK project has released three new supporting studies: 1.. Philip Hunter and Michael Day, Institutional repositories, aggregator services and collection development, January 2005. Abstract: 'Institutional repositories are managed collections of the intellectual output of university and other research-based institutions. This report introduces collection development issues from two distinct perspectives. Firstly, it highlights issues that may need to be addressed by institutional repositories as OAI data providers. For example, repositories may need to make decisions on the type, quality and format of content, on submission workflows, rights management, access, sustainability and evaluation. Secondly, the report will consider similar issues from the perspective of third party service providers like ePrints UK that harvest selective metadata from institutional repositories. The concluding section will provide some recommendations on best practice for repositories to support such harvesting.' 2.. Philip Hunter, Institutional e-Print Repositories: Business and IPR Issues, March 16, 2005. Abstract: 'A report summarising business models and IPR issues in the context of the e-Prints UK poject.' Excerpt: 'What is not clear so far is how business models might apply to public organisations such as universities, archives, libraries etc. Many if not most public organisations do nevertheless have extant business models, usually in the form of a mission statement or corporate strategy....Most public organisations, in common with large corporate bodies, tend to employ multiple concurrent business models. For example University Libraries will employ a merchant model in its dealings with publishers and a community model in it's dealings with students....The overriding modus operendi for UK public organisations, however, is a model that is essentially fixed by the community through the government. For Universities this model works something like this: The government collects taxes and gives part of that money to educators. The educators increase the potential value of the workforce by producing well educated students. The students join the workforce, earn money and pay tax to the Government. This type of model could be called a social subscription model....Public organisations should embrace the OA approach for the following reasons. Sharing knowledge is a primary function and as we have seen is already written into their business models. It provides one means of conforming to the freedom of information acts - enacted Europe wide in 2000 and 2001....Any organisation using a public subscription model is very likely to be both amenable to and gain benefit from integrating the OA approach. Many private organisations could benefit from the OA approach at some level.' 3.. Michael Day, Institutional repositories and research assessment, undated. Abstract: 'This study concerns the potential role of institutional repositories in supporting research assessment in universities with specific reference to the Research Assessment Exercises in the UK. After a brief look at research evaluation methods, it introduces the UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), focusing on its role in determining the distribution of research funding, the assessment process itself, and some concerns that have been raised by participants and observers. The study will then introduce institutional repositories and consider the ways in which they might be used to enhance the research assessment process in the UK. It will first consider the role of repositories in providing institutional support for the submission and review process. Secondly, the paper will consider the ways in which citation linking between papers in repositories might be used as the basis for generating quantitative data on research impact that could be used for assessment. Thirdly, this study will consider other ways in which repositories might be able to provide quantitative data, e.g. usage statistics or Webometric link data, which may be able to be used - together with other indicators - to support the evaluation of research.' These are the second, third, and fourth supporting studies from Eprints UK. The first came out in May 2003: Michael Day, Prospects for institutional e-print repositories in the United Kingdom. Friends: Here is some news from Peter Suber's blog. Arun Three repository studies from Eprints UK [A] The http://www.rdn.ac.uk/projects/eprints-uk/ Eprints UK project has released three new http://www.rdn.ac.uk/projects/eprints-uk/docs/ supporting studies : Philip Hunter and Michael Day, http://www.rdn.ac.uk/projects/eprints-uk/docs/studies/coll-development/coll… Institutional repositories, aggregator services and collection development , January 2005. Abstract: 'Institutional repositories are managed collections of the intellectual output of university and other research-based institutions. This report introduces collection development issues from two distinct perspectives. Firstly, it highlights issues that may need to be addressed by institutional repositories as OAI data providers. For example, repositories may need to make decisions on the type, quality and format of content, on submission workflows, rights management, access, sustainability and evaluation. Secondly, the report will consider similar issues from the perspective of third party service providers like ePrints UK that harvest selective metadata from institutional repositories. The concluding section will provide some recommendations on best practice for repositories to support such harvesting.' Philip Hunter, http://www.rdn.ac.uk/projects/eprints-uk/docs/studies/business-ipr/business… Institutional e-Print Repositories: Business and IPR Issues , March 16, 2005. Abstract: 'A report summarising business models and IPR issues in the context of the e-Prints UK poject.' Excerpt: 'What is not clear so far is how business models might apply to public organisations such as universities, archives, libraries etc. Many if not most public organisations do nevertheless have extant business models, usually in the form of a mission statement or corporate strategy....Most public organisations, in common with large corporate bodies, tend to employ multiple concurrent business models. For example University Libraries will employ a merchant model in its dealings with publishers and a community model in it's dealings with students....The overriding modus operendi for UK public organisations, however, is a model that is essentially fixed by the community through the government. For Universities this model works something like this: The government collects taxes and gives part of that money to educators. The educators increase the potential value of the workforce by producing well educated students. The students join the workforce, earn money and pay tax to the Government. This type of model could be called a social subscription model....Public organisations should embrace the OA approach for the following reasons. Sharing knowledge is a primary function and as we have seen is already written into their business models. It provides one means of conforming to the freedom of information acts - enacted Europe wide in 2000 and 2001....Any organisation using a public subscription model is very likely to be both amenable to and gain benefit from integrating the OA approach. Many private organisations could benefit from the OA approach at some level.' Michael Day, http://www.rdn.ac.uk/projects/eprints-uk/docs/studies/rae/rae-study.pdf Institutional repositories and research assessment , undated. Abstract: 'This study concerns the potential role of institutional repositories in supporting research assessment in universities with specific reference to the Research Assessment Exercises in the UK. After a brief look at research evaluation methods, it introduces the UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), focusing on its role in determining the distribution of research funding, the assessment process itself, and some concerns that have been raised by participants and observers. The study will then introduce institutional repositories and consider the ways in which they might be used to enhance the research assessment process in the UK. It will first consider the role of repositories in providing institutional support for the submission and review process. Secondly, the paper will consider the ways in which citation linking between papers in repositories might be used as the basis for generating quantitative data on research impact that could be used for assessment. Thirdly, this study will consider other ways in which repositories might be able to provide quantitative data, e.g. usage statistics or Webometric link data, which may be able to be used - together with other indicators - to support the evaluation of research.' These are the second, third, and fourth supporting studies from Eprints UK. The first came out in May 2003: Michael Day, http://www.rdn.ac.uk/projects/eprints-uk/docs/studies/impact/ Prospects for institutional e-print repositories in the United Kingdom .

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Wellcome Trust and OA
by Subbiah Arunachalam 20 Mar '05

20 Mar '05

Friends: Robert Terry of the Wellcome Trust has written an excellent article in the March issue of PLoS, the wel-known open access journal. I found it interesting. Hope you do too. Thanks and best wishes. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] ----- PLoS Biology Volume 3 | Issue 3 | MARCH 2005 Funding the Way to Open Access Robert Terry Robert Terry is Senior Policy Adviser at the Wellcome Trust, Cambridge, United Kingdom. E-mail: r.terry(a)wellcome.ac.uk Published: March 15, 2005 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0030097 Copyright: © 2005 Robert Terry. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abbreviations: UKPMC, United Kingdom PubMed Central Citation: Terry R (2005) Funding the Way to Open Access. PLoS Biol 3(3): e97. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Imagine this scenario. You're the director of one of the world's largest medical research charities, and you receive notification from one of your funded investigators in Africa reporting some exciting progress toward the development of a vaccine for malaria. The work has just been published, so you log onto the Web to do a quick keyword search, and a link to the article is brought up on your screen. Then imagine the frustration when you click on the link to read the message, "Access Denied-access to this journal is restricted to registered institutional and individual subscribers." And there's the rub: this actually happened to the Director of the Wellcome Trust. Prior to this, the committee that advises the Wellcome Trust Library were already asking whether the Trust should adopt a formal position on the continually increasing prices of journal subscriptions and the problems this trend was causing research libraries. These events encouraged the Trust to investigate the publication of scientific research, to see if there was anything research-funding organisations could be doing to stimulate change in what appears to be a failing market. As it turns out, there is quite a lot. I now believe it is the funders of research-charities, governments, and other publicly funded bodies such as national research agencies-who hold the purse strings that can untie scientific discoveries from a publishing market that is no longer serving the community as well as it could. That is why today the Trust is a leading advocate for enabling free access to research literature through support for new publishing models, such as that of the Public Library of Science, and the establishment of publicly accessible repositories, working in partnership with the United States National Institutes of Health-funded PubMed Central [1]. It is worth noting that the Trust is not a novice in seeking better ways to disseminate research findings. The fact that the sequence of the human genome is an openly accessible work is due in large measure to the Trust's determination that this information be in the public domain and not hidden behind commercial subscriptions. As a consequence of that insistence, we believe, these data are a more widely used and valuable resource. "Trust-funded researchers will have to deposit an electronic version of their manuscripts in PMC to be made available for free via the Internet within 6 months of publication." The Trust began its investigation of the scientific publishing sector by commissioning two pieces of research: one to inform itself of the economics of the publishing sector, and a second to explore whether there were alternative business models out there that could enable research to have the quality assurance it needs (peer review) whilst being available for free, using the Web as the medium of publication. The Economics of Publishing The first Trust-commissioned study described how scientific research publishing has traditionally worked and why it can be described, in economic terms, as a failing market [2]. Essentially, the producers (researchers as authors) and the consumers (researchers as readers) are isolated from any of the costs within the system. Researchers give away the copyright to their work, for free, to the publishers, who organise the peer review and copyedit the article. The publishers then sell it to libraries at prices that range from enough to cover their costs through to some pretty high profits-some over 30%. These profits escape from an otherwise self-contained financial cycle to satisfy shareholders or run learned societies; unlike typical publishing relationships, none are returned directly to the author (the researcher who wrote the piece) or even to the consulting experts (the researchers who provided the peer review). At the same time, researchers as readers access the material, if they are able to do so, through their employing institution, either using the library or-more typically now-via the Internet through the institution's subscription. To the researcher this access appears free, effectively creating a market system that has no pressures from the producers or consumers to change. One consequence of this is that publishers have been able to increase subscription prices well above inflation; the United Kingdom has seen subscription rates rise by more than 200% in the last ten years (Blackwell's periodical price indexes; [3]). The money used to fund UK libraries is all public money, and over 90% of the funds paying for research in the UK university system is either government or charitable [4]-so in a sense the people who are paying for the research cannot access its findings without paying an additional fee. Access denied at The Journal of Infectious Diseases This then begs the question of what alternatives there are to this traditional system, now that the Internet has become the researcher's tool of choice for searching and accessing the literature. The second piece of research commissioned by the Trust looked at different business models for research publishing, in order to address this question [5]. It compared open-access journals, which often levy a charge to publish but provide the journal for free, and the majority of the traditional models, which take the research for free but charge readers to read it. This study convinced the Trust that the best way forward to improve access to research findings would be through open access to scientific research articles. This essentially means two things: first, that the copyright holder or holders must grant to the public a free, irrevocable, perpetual license to use, copy, distribute, and make derivative works of their research article, in any medium for any purpose (excepting those that constitute plagiarism or other dishonest acts, of course); and second, that a digital copy must be deposited in an open public archival repository (for example, the US National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central). Whilst a debate continues as to the most appropriate route to achieve open access to all research literature, it is important to bear in mind that the publication and the archiving of research articles are intrinsically linked. Both aspects of open access need to be explored and experimented with, and the Trust is actively pursuing solutions for the problems of both. Alternative Business Models The findings of the second report seem to have caused quite a controversy-particularly in the suggestion that moving wholesale to an open-access publishing model might produce savings of up to 30% [6]. One common misinterpretation of this conclusion is that any such savings would be due solely to discontinuing the printed versions of publications that are freely available online. This is incorrect. In fact, if savings are to be made in an open-access model, they will largely be found in the variable costs of journal production-since an open-access journal will not have to cover the costs of subscription management, licence negotiations, or sales, and little is required for marketing and distribution. In a comparison included in the report, an article in a good- to high-quality journal produced in the subscription model is estimated to cost US$2,750. The equivalent cost under an author-side payment model is estimated as US$1,950-a comparable saving of 30% on the costs, and a saving of 90% when the variable costs are compared. It must be remembered that cost does not equate to price, so to these figures, regardless of the mode of publication, must be added overhead expenses and, of course, profit. However, if a truly competitive market is created-where payments are directed to publishers not by third parties but by those directly involved in the scientific enterprise, who could easily compare the varying article processing charges of different open-access publishers-then the actual savings might well be substantially higher. At its essence though, the open-access debate is not about economics, it is about access. That is why the Trust has been in discussion with the US National Library of Medicine about the possibility of creating a UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) as a publicly accessible repository for Trust-funded research. UK PubMed Central The proposal is that a UKPMC will be run as a proper electronic library: it will collect, collate, and archive whole journals and be developed to receive single articles as well. Submission will be as straightforward as attaching a document to an email. UKPMC will be able to accept manuscripts in any format, including Microsoft Word, and it will be the responsibility of UKPMC to convert the files it receives into extensible markup language (XML) to enable the appropriate document type definition (DTD) to be assigned. UKPMC will also correct the structural, content, and consistency errors that occur when converting text for digital preservation, and provide the conversion process to print a "clear" PDF version of included articles to those users who download them. This is a process well used by the National Library of Medicine, and the one most suited for the long-term, digital preservation of articles. And once articles are in a digital format they can be searched and used in different ways. For example, genome sequence data, chemical compounds, or protein structures embedded within an article can be searched for in other articles and linked directly to genome or structural databases uncovering new genetic markers, drug uses, or protein functions. The articles themselves become live research material greatly improving the efficacy of the research itself. For a funder, having all its research in one format, "under one roof", and searchable will improve the efficiency of strategy setting-for example, setting funding priorities-assessing the outputs of the funded research, and even gaining an insight into the impact of the work. As grants management becomes more electronic, there can be a direct link between original research proposals and the research outputs. For a medical charity like the Trust, I believe it is our duty to actively encourage the most efficient processes available to maximise the likelihood that the research we fund will have the greatest possible health benefit. That is why the Trust will be making it a requirement of its grant conditions that Trust-funded researchers deposit an electronic version of their manuscripts in UKPMC to be made available for free via the Internet within 6 months of publication. The delay means that this is not open access in the truest sense. However, the Trust considers that the development of a PubMed Central portal in the UK offers the best next step in the transition towards a situation where all high-quality peer-reviewed research is available for free via the Internet, whilst leaving all publishers room for manoeuvre in this changing market. References 1.. Wellcome Trust (2004 November 4) Wellcome Trust and National Library of Medicine in talks for worldwide open access archive. Available: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTX022826.html. Accessed 19 January 2005. 2.. Wellcome Trust (2003 October) An economic analysis of scientific research publishing: A report commissioned by the Wellcome Trust, revised ed. Available: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/assets/wtd003182.pdf. Accessed 19 January 2005. 3.. LISU (2002) LISU annual library statistics 2002. Leicestershire: LISU. 4.. Department of Trade and Industry HM Treasury Department for Education and Skills (2002 July) Investing in innovation: A strategy for science, engineering and technology. Available: http://www.ost.gov.uk/policy/science_strategy.pdf. Accessed 19 January 2005. 5.. Wellcome Trust (2004 April) Costs and business models in scientific research publishing: A report commissioned by the Wellcome Trust. Available: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/assets/wtd003184.pdf. Accessed 19 January 2005. 6.. Wellcome Trust (2004 April 1) New report reveals open access could reduce cost of scientific publishing by up to 30 per cent. Available: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD002874.html. Accessed 19 January 2005. Friends: Robert Terry of the Wellcome Trust has written an excellent article in the March issue of PLoS, the wel-known open access journal. I found it interesting. Hope you do too. Thanks and best wishes. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] ----- PLoS Biology http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-toc&issn=1545-7885&vo… Volume 3 | Issue 3 | MARCH 2005 Funding the Way to Open Access Robert Terry [A] Robert Terry is Senior Policy Adviser at the Wellcome Trust, Cambridge, United Kingdom. E-mail: mailto:r.terry@wellcome.ac.uk r.terry(a)wellcome.ac.uk Published: March 15, 2005 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0030097 Copyright: © 2005 Robert Terry. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. [A] Abbreviations: UKPMC, United Kingdom PubMed Central Citation: Terry R (2005) Funding the Way to Open Access. PLoS Biol 3(3): e97. Imagine this scenario. You're the director of one of the world's largest medical research charities, and you receive notification from one of your funded investigators in Africa reporting some exciting progress toward the development of a vaccine for malaria. The work has just been published, so you log onto the Web to do a quick keyword search, and a link to the article is brought up on your screen. Then imagine the frustration when you click on the link to read the message, Access Deniedaccess to this journal is restricted to registered institutional and individual subscribers. And there's the rub: this actually happened to the Director of the Wellcome Trust. Prior to this, the committee that advises the Wellcome Trust Library were already asking whether the Trust should adopt a formal position on the continually increasing prices of journal subscriptions and the problems this trend was causing research libraries. These events encouraged the Trust to investigate the publication of scientific research, to see if there was anything research-funding organisations could be doing to stimulate change in what appears to be a failing market. As it turns out, there is quite a lot. I now believe it is the funders of researchcharities, governments, and other publicly funded bodies such as national research agencieswho hold the purse strings that can untie scientific discoveries from a publishing market that is no longer serving the community as well as it could. That is why today the Trust is a leading advocate for enabling free access to research literature through support for new publishing models, such as that of the Public Library of Science, and the establishment of publicly accessible repositories, working in partnership with the United States National Institutes of Healthfunded PubMed Central [ http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/… 1 ]. [A] http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=slideshow&type=figure&doi… It is worth noting that the Trust is not a novice in seeking better ways to disseminate research findings. The fact that the sequence of the human genome is an openly accessible work is due in large measure to the Trust's determination that this information be in the public domain and not hidden behind commercial subscriptions. As a consequence of that insistence, we believe, these data are a more widely used and valuable resource. Trust-funded researchers will have to deposit an electronic version of their manuscripts in PMC to be made available for free via the Internet within 6 months of publication. The Trust began its investigation of the scientific publishing sector by commissioning two pieces of research: one to inform itself of the economics of the publishing sector, and a second to explore whether there were alternative business models out there that could enable research to have the quality assurance it needs (peer review) whilst being available for free, using the Web as the medium of publication. The Economics of Publishing The first Trust-commissioned study described how scientific research publishing has traditionally worked and why it can be described, in economic terms, as a failing market [ http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/… 2 ]. Essentially, the producers (researchers as authors) and the consumers (researchers as readers) are isolated from any of the costs within the system. Researchers give away the copyright to their work, for free, to the publishers, who organise the peer review and copyedit the article. The publishers then sell it to libraries at prices that range from enough to cover their costs through to some pretty high profitssome over 30%. These profits escape from an otherwise self-contained financial cycle to satisfy shareholders or run learned societies; unlike typical publishing relationships, none are returned directly to the author (the researcher who wrote the piece) or even to the consulting experts (the researchers who provided the peer review). At the same time, researchers as readers access the material, if they are able to do so, through their employing institution, either using the library ormore typically nowvia the Internet through the institution's subscription. To the researcher this access appears free, effectively creating a market system that has no pressures from the producers or consumers to change. One consequence of this is that publishers have been able to increase subscription prices well above inflation; the United Kingdom has seen subscription rates rise by more than 200% in the last ten years (Blackwell's periodical price indexes; [ http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/… 3 ]). The money used to fund UK libraries is all public money, and over 90% of the funds paying for research in the UK university system is either government or charitable [ http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/… 4 ]so in a sense the people who are paying for the research cannot access its findings without paying an additional fee. http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/… [A] http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=slideshow&type=figure&doi… http://biology.plosjournals.org/archive/1545-7885/3/3/figure/10.1371_journa… http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=slideshow&type=figure&doi… Access denied at The Journal of Infectious Diseases This then begs the question of what alternatives there are to this traditional system, now that the Internet has become the researcher's tool of choice for searching and accessing the literature. The second piece of research commissioned by the Trust looked at different business models for research publishing, in order to address this question [ http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/… 5 ]. It compared open-access journals, which often levy a charge to publish but provide the journal for free, and the majority of the traditional models, which take the research for free but charge readers to read it. This study convinced the Trust that the best way forward to improve access to research findings would be through open access to scientific research articles. This essentially means two things: first, that the copyright holder or holders must grant to the public a free, irrevocable, perpetual license to use, copy, distribute, and make derivative works of their research article, in any medium for any purpose (excepting those that constitute plagiarism or other dishonest acts, of course); and second, that a digital copy must be deposited in an open public archival repository (for example, the US National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central). Whilst a debate continues as to the most appropriate route to achieve open access to all research literature, it is important to bear in mind that the publication and the archiving of research articles are intrinsically linked. Both aspects of open access need to be explored and experimented with, and the Trust is actively pursuing solutions for the problems of both. Alternative Business Models The findings of the second report seem to have caused quite a controversyparticularly in the suggestion that moving wholesale to an open-access publishing model might produce savings of up to 30% [ http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/… 6 ]. One common misinterpretation of this conclusion is that any such savings would be due solely to discontinuing the printed versions of publications that are freely available online. This is incorrect. In fact, if savings are to be made in an open-access model, they will largely be found in the variable costs of journal productionsince an open-access journal will not have to cover the costs of subscription management, licence negotiations, or sales, and little is required for marketing and distribution. In a comparison included in the report, an article in a good- to high-quality journal produced in the subscription model is estimated to cost US$2,750. The equivalent cost under an author-side payment model is estimated as US$1,950a comparable saving of 30% on the costs, and a saving of 90% when the variable costs are compared. It must be remembered that cost does not equate to price, so to these figures, regardless of the mode of publication, must be added overhead expenses and, of course, profit. However, if a truly competitive market is createdwhere payments are directed to publishers not by third parties but by those directly involved in the scientific enterprise, who could easily compare the varying article processing charges of different open-access publishersthen the actual savings might well be substantially higher. At its essence though, the open-access debate is not about economics, it is about access. That is why the Trust has been in discussion with the US National Library of Medicine about the possibility of creating a UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) as a publicly accessible repository for Trust-funded research. UK PubMed Central The proposal is that a UKPMC will be run as a proper electronic library: it will collect, collate, and archive whole journals and be developed to receive single articles as well. Submission will be as straightforward as attaching a document to an email. UKPMC will be able to accept manuscripts in any format, including Microsoft Word, and it will be the responsibility of UKPMC to convert the files it receives into extensible markup language (XML) to enable the appropriate document type definition (DTD) to be assigned. UKPMC will also correct the structural, content, and consistency errors that occur when converting text for digital preservation, and provide the conversion process to print a clear PDF version of included articles to those users who download them. This is a process well used by the National Library of Medicine, and the one most suited for the long-term, digital preservation of articles. And once articles are in a digital format they can be searched and used in different ways. For example, genome sequence data, chemical compounds, or protein structures embedded within an article can be searched for in other articles and linked directly to genome or structural databases uncovering new genetic markers, drug uses, or protein functions. The articles themselves become live research material greatly improving the efficacy of the research itself. For a funder, having all its research in one format, under one roof, and searchable will improve the efficiency of strategy settingfor example, setting funding prioritiesassessing the outputs of the funded research, and even gaining an insight into the impact of the work. As grants management becomes more electronic, there can be a direct link between original research proposals and the research outputs. For a medical charity like the Trust, I believe it is our duty to actively encourage the most efficient processes available to maximise the likelihood that the research we fund will have the greatest possible health benefit. That is why the Trust will be making it a requirement of its grant conditions that Trust-funded researchers deposit an electronic version of their manuscripts in UKPMC to be made available for free via the Internet within 6 months of publication. The delay means that this is not open access in the truest sense. However, the Trust considers that the development of a PubMed Central portal in the UK offers the best next step in the transition towards a situation where all high-quality peer-reviewed research is available for free via the Internet, whilst leaving all publishers room for manoeuvre in this changing market. References [A] Wellcome Trust (2004 November 4) Wellcome Trust and National Library of Medicine in talks for worldwide open access archive. Available: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTX022826.html http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTX022826.html . Accessed 19 January 2005. [A] Wellcome Trust (2003 October) An economic analysis of scientific research publishing: A report commissioned by the Wellcome Trust, revised ed. Available: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/assets/wtd003182.pdf http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/assets/wtd003182.pdf . Accessed 19 January 2005. [A] LISU (2002) LISU annual library statistics 2002. Leicestershire: LISU. [A] Department of Trade and Industry HM Treasury Department for Education and Skills (2002 July) Investing in innovation: A strategy for science, engineering and technology. Available: http://www.ost.gov.uk/policy/science_strategy.pdf http://www.ost.gov.uk/policy/science_strategy.pdf . Accessed 19 January 2005. [A] Wellcome Trust (2004 April) Costs and business models in scientific research publishing: A report commissioned by the Wellcome Trust. Available: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/assets/wtd003184.pdf http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/assets/wtd003184.pdf . Accessed 19 January 2005. [A] Wellcome Trust (2004 April 1) New report reveals open access could reduce cost of scientific publishing by up to 30 per cent. Available: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD002874.html http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD002874.html . Accessed 19 January 2005.

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INASP and OA
by Subbiah Arunachalam 20 Mar '05

20 Mar '05

Friends: Here is an article that appeared recently in PLoS Biology, a well-known open access journal. The author Ms Pippa Smart works for INASP. Prof. N Mukunda of CTS, IISc, Bangalore, is the chairman of the Advisory Board of INASP. I wish INASP promotes interoperable open access archiving around the world with the same zeal it is trying to promote free or subsidised access to key journals for scientists in the developing world. Best wishes. Arun ---------- PLoS Biology Volume 2 | Issue 11 | NOVEMBER 2004 International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications: Facilitating Scientific Publishing in Developing Countries Pippa Smart Pippa Smart is head of publishing and publishing initiatives for the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications, Oxford, United Kingdom. E-mail: psmart(a)inasp.info Published: November 16, 2004 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0020326 Copyright: © 2004 Pippa Smart. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abbreviations: AJOL, African Journals OnLine; INASP, International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications Citation: Smart P (2004) International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications: Facilitating Scientific Publishing in Developing Countries. PLoS Biol 2(11): e326. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'The most important element that restricts our researchers is access to information.'-Subbiah Arunachalam, India, 2003 The International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) was established by the International Council for Science in 1992 to provide support for networking between information providers and users, particularly to bridge the information divide between the developed and developing world. Since 1992 INASP has worked, in response to requests, to develop its activities for capacity building in information production, access, and use, with an overarching vision that all people are able to access and contribute information, ideas, and knowledge necessary for sustainable and equitable development. To ensure that INASP activities are appropriate for the communities and cultures of the countries in which INASP works, local partners are used to build networks and to provide advice and support. Enhancing capacities is central to all activities, and local ownership and sensitivity to local conditions and opinions are of paramount importance. Here I highlight two aspects of our work: increasing access to information and supporting the visibility of regional journals within the global research community. Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information The growth and acceptability of the internet during the 1990s opened up tremendous possibilities for the dissemination of research information, providing many nations with access to information that had previously been out of their reach. Although internet connectivity remains problematic in many countries, it still offers great potential for bridging the information gap. Arising from discussions with librarians and researchers in 1999 and 2000, the Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information was formally launched in 2002 after a two-year pilot programme. The Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information works in a two-phase manner: (1) providing and supporting access to international research information and (2) supporting and promoting access to nationally published research. To support access to international information, INASP negotiates for heavily discounted or free access to online information from publishers and information providers in developed countries. Enabling access, however, does not guarantee that resources are used; both training and promotion are needed so that researchers and downstream information providers know how to make the best use of what is available. With this in mind, INASP has set up four series of training workshops, which have trained over 1,000 people from over 200 institutions in over 17 countries during the last two years. Although some of the training is undertaken by INASP staff, most is facilitated by in-country trainers. Planning for long-term sustainability, INASP aims to hand over the tasks of negotiation, purchasing, and training to local consortia, associations, or networks. African Journals OnLine Although much needed, access to international resources can discriminate against nationally published scholarly information. This may be due to one of the following: a perception that local publications are lower quality, distribution problems and irregular publishing, or lack of online visibility. However, national publications provide vital access to potential collaborators and information about research on topics of local relevance-since 1998, INASP has provided support to indigenous research publications to enable them to survive and coexist with international information. One specific project that exemplifies these aims is known as African Journals OnLine (AJOL). AJOL launched in 1998 in response to requests from African journals. Starting with only ten titles, it now includes 189 from 21 African countries. Access to the site, which includes tables of contents, article abstracts, and a homepage for each journal with information about editorial boards, guidelines for authors, and more, is entirely free. Participating journals report increased international submissions and increasing contact with international researchers. Researchers make wide use of this service, and over 8,000 people have registered to use AJOL since it launched. Registration is optional and until March this year did not provide the user any benefit-it simply provided an indication of the number of people visiting and from which countries. However, since March 2004 anyone who registers can sign up to receive a free E-mail table of contents alert. Over 500 people have chosen to receive E-mail alerts from an average of four journals each, and the effect of these alerts is felt through the increase in document delivery requests. AJOL does not currently host full text, but can provide full-text articles through a document delivery service (there are plans to load full-text articles on AJOL in the future). This service is provided to researchers from developing countries for free and to researchers elsewhere at a minimal charge (to cover costs, plus a small payment to the journal). In the first six months of 2004, over 700 articles were ordered and sent out. Most journals publishing out of Africa are not run by commercial publishers, and most of them operate at a loss, subsidised by universities, associations, funding agencies, or a mixture of all three. Paid subscriptions to print journals are frequently a vital part of their economics, and the financial viability of many journals is constantly under threat. Originally, it was hoped that AJOL would increase subscriptions, thereby providing greater financial security to the journals. This has not been achieved and is unlikely to occur in the future. However, with increasing visibility, the value of the journals increases along with, hopefully, their importance to the supporting agencies and long-term sustainability. Since AJOL is set up to provide support for the participating journals, the journals' opinions are constantly sought before any developments are undertaken, meaning AJOL is effectively "owned" by them. Although the service is not actively run by the journals themselves, all participating journals are considered to be part of a community, receiving regular E-mail contact and skills support. Many journal editors (who frequently undertake all the publishing activities) feel isolated and unskilled, and even though AJOL does not operate as an association for the journals, it encourages communication between the editors, and a sharing of experience. The AJOL website was relaunched in March 2004 using open-source software called Open Journal System, originally developed in Canada by the Public Knowledge Project at the University of British Columbia and further developed for AJOL at Bristol University, United Kingdom. This software was written to enable a single journal to manage the entire publishing process online from submission to publishing. Being open source, the software can also easily be adapted and modified. The Public Knowledge Project set up the system with the developing world in mind: it operates efficiently at low bandwidths and is easy to use, with many guides and help functions built in. For the users, this software offers sophisticated searching, E-mail alerts, and a space for each journal within AJOL for journal-specific information. It also now provides a range of management tools, which makes the service more efficient and enables it to grow. Another important consideration for choosing this system was that individual journals can take over the responsibility for maintaining their own journal areas within AJOL via the Internet. Over 50 journals have expressed an interest in taking this on, and one publisher is already successfully maintaining its material. To support this, training workshops are currently in preparation. This development will assist the long-term sustainability of AJOL and also give the participating journals experience in managing and publishing content online. In the near future, INASP will be including full text on AJOL and hopes to move the management of AJOL to an African organisation so that it will truly become an African gateway for published research. In addition, INASP continues to work with journals to strengthen their quality and sustainability, providing advice, training workshops, study tours, and a coordinating point for discussion and collaboration. Outside Africa, INASP is working on similar developments in Nepal and the Caribbean and has received expressions of interest from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam. The Future of Journal Access It is vital that researchers everywhere in the world have access to reliable, relevant information. At the same time, providing access to international literature needs to be balanced with supporting local publications to ensure that indigenous knowledge is not lost, but can take its place in the research community and contribute to the continuing development of science. Worldwide access to information is central to all INASP activities, and INASP supports policies and activities that work towards this. Where to Find Out More INASP: http://www.inasp.info AJOL: http://www.ajol.info Public Knowledge Project: http://pkp.ubc.ca Friends: Here is an article that appeared recently in PLoS Biology, a well-known open access journal. The author Ms Pippa Smart works for INASP. Prof. N Mukunda of CTS, IISc, Bangalore, is the chairman of the Advisory Board of INASP. I wish INASP promotes interoperable open access archiving around the world with the same zeal it is trying to promote free or subsidised access to key journals for scientists in the developing world. Best wishes. Arun ---------- PLoS Biology http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-toc&issn=1545-7885&vo… Volume 2 | Issue 11 | NOVEMBER 2004 International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications: Facilitating Scientific Publishing in Developing Countries Pippa Smart [A] Pippa Smart is head of publishing and publishing initiatives for the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications, Oxford, United Kingdom. E-mail: mailto:psmart@inasp.info psmart(a)inasp.info Published: November 16, 2004 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0020326 Copyright: © 2004 Pippa Smart. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. [A] Abbreviations: AJOL, African Journals OnLine; INASP, International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications Citation: Smart P (2004) International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications: Facilitating Scientific Publishing in Developing Countries. PLoS Biol 2(11): e326. The most important element that restricts our researchers is access to information.Subbiah Arunachalam, India, 2003 The International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) was established by the International Council for Science in 1992 to provide support for networking between information providers and users, particularly to bridge the information divide between the developed and developing world. Since 1992 INASP has worked, in response to requests, to develop its activities for capacity building in information production, access, and use, with an overarching vision that all people are able to access and contribute information, ideas, and knowledge necessary for sustainable and equitable development. http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371%… [A] http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=slideshow&type=figure&doi… To ensure that INASP activities are appropriate for the communities and cultures of the countries in which INASP works, local partners are used to build networks and to provide advice and support. Enhancing capacities is central to all activities, and local ownership and sensitivity to local conditions and opinions are of paramount importance. Here I highlight two aspects of our work: increasing access to information and supporting the visibility of regional journals within the global research community. Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information The growth and acceptability of the internet during the 1990s opened up tremendous possibilities for the dissemination of research information, providing many nations with access to information that had previously been out of their reach. Although internet connectivity remains problematic in many countries, it still offers great potential for bridging the information gap. Arising from discussions with librarians and researchers in 1999 and 2000, the Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information was formally launched in 2002 after a two-year pilot programme. The Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information works in a two-phase manner: (1) providing and supporting access to international research information and (2) supporting and promoting access to nationally published research. To support access to international information, INASP negotiates for heavily discounted or free access to online information from publishers and information providers in developed countries. Enabling access, however, does not guarantee that resources are used; both training and promotion are needed so that researchers and downstream information providers know how to make the best use of what is available. With this in mind, INASP has set up four series of training workshops, which have trained over 1,000 people from over 200 institutions in over 17 countries during the last two years. Although some of the training is undertaken by INASP staff, most is facilitated by in-country trainers. Planning for long-term sustainability, INASP aims to hand over the tasks of negotiation, purchasing, and training to local consortia, associations, or networks. African Journals OnLine Although much needed, access to international resources can discriminate against nationally published scholarly information. This may be due to one of the following: a perception that local publications are lower quality, distribution problems and irregular publishing, or lack of online visibility. However, national publications provide vital access to potential collaborators and information about research on topics of local relevancesince 1998, INASP has provided support to indigenous research publications to enable them to survive and coexist with international information. One specific project that exemplifies these aims is known as African Journals OnLine (AJOL). AJOL launched in 1998 in response to requests from African journals. Starting with only ten titles, it now includes 189 from 21 African countries. Access to the site, which includes tables of contents, article abstracts, and a homepage for each journal with information about editorial boards, guidelines for authors, and more, is entirely free. Participating journals report increased international submissions and increasing contact with international researchers. Researchers make wide use of this service, and over 8,000 people have registered to use AJOL since it launched. Registration is optional and until March this year did not provide the user any benefitit simply provided an indication of the number of people visiting and from which countries. However, since March 2004 anyone who registers can sign up to receive a free E-mail table of contents alert. Over 500 people have chosen to receive E-mail alerts from an average of four journals each, and the effect of these alerts is felt through the increase in document delivery requests. AJOL does not currently host full text, but can provide full-text articles through a document delivery service (there are plans to load full-text articles on AJOL in the future). This service is provided to researchers from developing countries for free and to researchers elsewhere at a minimal charge (to cover costs, plus a small payment to the journal). In the first six months of 2004, over 700 articles were ordered and sent out. Most journals publishing out of Africa are not run by commercial publishers, and most of them operate at a loss, subsidised by universities, associations, funding agencies, or a mixture of all three. Paid subscriptions to print journals are frequently a vital part of their economics, and the financial viability of many journals is constantly under threat. Originally, it was hoped that AJOL would increase subscriptions, thereby providing greater financial security to the journals. This has not been achieved and is unlikely to occur in the future. However, with increasing visibility, the value of the journals increases along with, hopefully, their importance to the supporting agencies and long-term sustainability. Since AJOL is set up to provide support for the participating journals, the journals' opinions are constantly sought before any developments are undertaken, meaning AJOL is effectively owned by them. Although the service is not actively run by the journals themselves, all participating journals are considered to be part of a community, receiving regular E-mail contact and skills support. Many journal editors (who frequently undertake all the publishing activities) feel isolated and unskilled, and even though AJOL does not operate as an association for the journals, it encourages communication between the editors, and a sharing of experience. The AJOL website was relaunched in March 2004 using open-source software called Open Journal System, originally developed in Canada by the Public Knowledge Project at the University of British Columbia and further developed for AJOL at Bristol University, United Kingdom. This software was written to enable a single journal to manage the entire publishing process online from submission to publishing. Being open source, the software can also easily be adapted and modified. The Public Knowledge Project set up the system with the developing world in mind: it operates efficiently at low bandwidths and is easy to use, with many guides and help functions built in. For the users, this software offers sophisticated searching, E-mail alerts, and a space for each journal within AJOL for journal-specific information. It also now provides a range of management tools, which makes the service more efficient and enables it to grow. Another important consideration for choosing this system was that individual journals can take over the responsibility for maintaining their own journal areas within AJOL via the Internet. Over 50 journals have expressed an interest in taking this on, and one publisher is already successfully maintaining its material. To support this, training workshops are currently in preparation. This development will assist the long-term sustainability of AJOL and also give the participating journals experience in managing and publishing content online. In the near future, INASP will be including full text on AJOL and hopes to move the management of AJOL to an African organisation so that it will truly become an African gateway for published research. In addition, INASP continues to work with journals to strengthen their quality and sustainability, providing advice, training workshops, study tours, and a coordinating point for discussion and collaboration. Outside Africa, INASP is working on similar developments in Nepal and the Caribbean and has received expressions of interest from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam. The Future of Journal Access It is vital that researchers everywhere in the world have access to reliable, relevant information. At the same time, providing access to international literature needs to be balanced with supporting local publications to ensure that indigenous knowledge is not lost, but can take its place in the research community and contribute to the continuing development of science. Worldwide access to information is central to all INASP activities, and INASP supports policies and activities that work towards this. Where to Find Out More INASP: http://www.inasp.info/ http://www.inasp.info AJOL: http://www.ajol.info/ http://www.ajol.info Public Knowledge Project: http://pkp.ubc.ca http://pkp.ubc.ca

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More on Berlin and Scottish Declarations
by Subbiah Arunachalam 19 Mar '05

19 Mar '05

Friends: Here is someting from Peter Suber's blog. Arun -------------- Academics take the initiative in open access debate, CORDIS News, March 16, 2005. An unsigned news story. Excerpt: 'The Southampton meeting concluded that: 'In order to implement the Berlin Declaration, institutions should: (1) implement a policy to require their researchers to deposit a copy of all their published articles in an open access repository; and (2) encourage their researchers to publish their research articles in open access journals where a suitable journal exists and provide the support to enable that to happen.' Stevan Harnad, a professor at Southampton University and leading proponent of open access, said after the meeting: 'Everybody will benefit from it - researchers will be able to access what they could not before and the impact of their research will go up. At last those who agree open access is a good thing know how to provide it.' He also argued that open access to research papers would not undermine sales of those scientific journals in which they were originally published, but would in fact increase their impact in terms of the number of times they are cited. The most recent example of just such an initiative came on 14 March, when 16 university heads in Scotland concluded a Scottish declaration on open access, committing their institutions to setting up online libraries of research papers that all academics can access. They will also examine the possibility of setting up a joint repository, and some will even make it mandatory for their researchers to publish their work on an open access basis. Derek Law, librarian at the University of Strathclyde, said: 'There is now clear evidence that open access articles are more frequently cited. If Scottish-based research is made available through open access it will be cited more, which means it will, by definition, be read more. The hope is that this will in turn lead both to a positive cycle of increased research funding and also to increased inward investment as business recognises the added value of a powerful research base.' ' Friends: Here is someting from Peter Suber's blog. Arun -------------- [A] http://dbs.cordis.lu/cgi-bin/srchidadb?CALLER=NHP_EN_NEWS&ACTION=D&SESSION=… Academics take the initiative in open access debate , CORDIS News , March 16, 2005. An unsigned news story. Excerpt: 'The http://www.eprints.org/berlin3/ Southampton meeting concluded that: 'In order to implement the http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html Berlin Declaration , institutions should: (1) implement a policy to require their researchers to deposit a copy of all their published articles in an open access repository; and (2) encourage their researchers to publish their research articles in open access journals where a suitable journal exists and provide the support to enable that to happen.' Stevan Harnad, a professor at Southampton University and leading proponent of open access, said after the meeting: 'Everybody will benefit from it - researchers will be able to access what they could not before and the impact of their research will go up. At last those who agree open access is a good thing know how to provide it.' He also argued that open access to research papers would not undermine sales of those scientific journals in which they were originally published, but would in fact increase their impact in terms of the number of times they are cited. The most recent example of just such an initiative came on 14 March, when 16 university heads in Scotland concluded a http://scurl.ac.uk/WG/OATS/declaration.htm Scottish declaration on open access , committing their institutions to setting up online libraries of research papers that all academics can access. They will also examine the possibility of setting up a joint repository, and some will even make it mandatory for their researchers to publish their work on an open access basis. Derek Law, librarian at the University of Strathclyde, said: 'There is now clear evidence that open access articles are more frequently cited. If Scottish-based research is made available through open access it will be cited more, which means it will, by definition, be read more. The hope is that this will in turn lead both to a positive cycle of increased research funding and also to increased inward investment as business recognises the added value of a powerful research base.' '

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Self-archiving does not take much time!
by Subbiah Arunachalam 19 Mar '05

19 Mar '05

How much work is self-archiving? Leslie Carr and Stevan Harnad, Keystroke Economy: A Study of the Time and Effort Involved in Self-Archiving, a preprint. Abstract: 'A common objection to self-archiving is that it is an extra task that puts an unnecessary burden on each researcher. In particular, the need to enter the extra bibliographic metadata demanded by repositories for accurate searching and identification is presumed to be a particularly onerous task. This paper describes a preliminary study on two months of submissions for a mature repository and concludes that the amount of time spent entering metadata would be as little as 40 minutes per year for a highly active researcher.' How much work is self-archiving? [A] Leslie Carr and Stevan Harnad, http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10688/ Keystroke Economy: A Study of the Time and Effort Involved in Self-Archiving , a preprint. Abstract: 'A common objection to self-archiving is that it is an extra task that puts an unnecessary burden on each researcher. In particular, the need to enter the extra bibliographic metadata demanded by repositories for accurate searching and identification is presumed to be a particularly onerous task. This paper describes a preliminary study on two months of submissions for a mature repository and concludes that the amount of time spent entering metadata would be as little as 40 minutes per year for a highly active researcher.'

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Why does the Wellcome Trust favour open access archiving?
by Subbiah Arunachalam 19 Mar '05

19 Mar '05

Friends: Here is a short news story on why the Wellcome Trust favours open access archiving. It is time for us in India (and other developing countries) to insist that all publicly-funded research be made available on open access archives - such as the Eprints archive at the Indian Institute of Science. As Robert Terry says, there are two roads to open access: Open Access Journals (OAJ) and Open Access Archiving. In India many important journals - those published by the Indian Academy of Sciences, INSA, MedKnow Publications, etc. - are available on open access, although the Academy journals can improve their web presence. The MedKnow journals are technically as good as the best OA journals in the world. But we are rather poor in OAA. The IISc archive and the library and information science repository put together by Dr A R D Prasad at ISI, Bangalore, come to mind readily. In a country with more than 250 universities and several hundred publicly-funded research labs, there are only half a dozen archives as of today. It is a mystery why the other institutions are not having archives of their own. A recent survey by Alma Swan reveals that many researchers are ignorant and there is a need for creating awareness. She also points out that most researchers are ready to deposit their papers in an open access archive if they are told to do so by the head of the institution or the funding agency! May be we should try that - Vice chancellors of universities and Directors of research labs and heads of funding agencies may demand that all researchers place their papers in a publicly accessible archive, preferably one set up at their own institution. Best wishes. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] ------------- The Wellcome Trust's commitment to OA Robert Terry, Funding the Way to Open Access, PLoS Biology, March 2005. Excerpt: 'Imagine this scenario. You're the director of one of the world's largest medical research charities, and you receive notification from one of your funded investigators in Africa reporting some exciting progress toward the development of a vaccine for malaria. The work has just been published, so you log onto the Web to do a quick keyword search, and a link to the article is brought up on your screen. Then imagine the frustration when you click on the link to read the message, "Access Denied --access to this journal is restricted to registered institutional and individual subscribers." And there's the rub: this actually happened to the Director of the Wellcome Trust....I now believe it is the funders of research --charities, governments, and other publicly funded bodies such as national research agencies-- who hold the purse strings that can untie scientific discoveries from a publishing market that is no longer serving the community as well as it could. That is why today the Trust is a leading advocate for enabling free access to research literature through support for new publishing models, such as that of the Public Library of Science, and the establishment of publicly accessible repositories, working in partnership with the United States National Institutes of Health-funded PubMed Central....The first Trust-commissioned study described how scientific research publishing has traditionally worked and why it can be described, in economic terms, as a failing market....This then begs the question of what alternatives there are to this traditional system, now that the Internet has become the researcher's tool of choice for searching and accessing the literature. The second piece of research commissioned by the Trust looked at different business models for research publishing, in order to address this question....This study convinced the Trust that the best way forward to improve access to research findings would be through open access to scientific research articles. This essentially means two things: first, that the copyright holder or holders must grant to the public a free, irrevocable, perpetual license to use, copy, distribute, and make derivative works of their research article, in any medium for any purpose (excepting those that constitute plagiarism or other dishonest acts, of course); and second, that a digital copy must be deposited in an open public archival repository (for example, the US National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central)....For a medical charity like the Trust, I believe it is our duty to actively encourage the most efficient processes available to maximise the likelihood that the research we fund will have the greatest possible health benefit.' Robert Terry is Senior Policy Adviser at the Wellcome Trust. Friends: Here is a short news story on why the Wellcome Trust favours open access archiving. It is time for us in India (and other developing countries) to insist that all publicly-funded research be made available on open access archives - such as the Eprints archive at the Indian Institute of Science. As Robert Terry says, there are two roads to open access: Open Access Journals (OAJ) and Open Access Archiving. In India many important journals - those published by the Indian Academy of Sciences, INSA, MedKnow Publications, etc. - are available on open access, although the Academy journals can improve their web presence. The MedKnow journals are technically as good as the best OA journals in the world. But we are rather poor in OAA. The IISc archive and the library and information science repository put together by Dr A R D Prasad at ISI, Bangalore, come to mind readily. In a country with more than 250 universities and several hundred publicly-funded research labs, there are only half a dozen archives as of today. It is a mystery why the other institutions are not having archives of their own. A recent survey by Alma Swan reveals that many researchers are ignorant and there is a need for creating awareness. She also points out that most researchers are ready to deposit their papers in an open access archive if they are told to do so by the head of the institution or the funding agency! May be we should try that - Vice chancellors of universities and Directors of research labs and heads of funding agencies may demand that all researchers place their papers in a publicly accessible archive, preferably one set up at their own institution. Best wishes. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] ------------- The Wellcome Trust's commitment to OA [A] Robert Terry, http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/… Funding the Way to Open Access , PLoS Biology , March 2005. Excerpt: 'Imagine this scenario. You're the director of one of the world's largest medical research charities, and you receive notification from one of your funded investigators in Africa reporting some exciting progress toward the development of a vaccine for malaria. The work has just been published, so you log onto the Web to do a quick keyword search, and a link to the article is brought up on your screen. Then imagine the frustration when you click on the link to read the message, "Access Denied --access to this journal is restricted to registered institutional and individual subscribers." And there's the rub: this actually happened to the Director of the Wellcome Trust....I now believe it is the funders of research --charities, governments, and other publicly funded bodies such as national research agencies-- who hold the purse strings that can untie scientific discoveries from a publishing market that is no longer serving the community as well as it could. That is why today the Trust is a leading advocate for enabling free access to research literature through support for new publishing models, such as that of the Public Library of Science, and the establishment of publicly accessible repositories, working in partnership with the United States National Institutes of Healthfunded PubMed Central....The first Trust-commissioned study described how scientific research publishing has traditionally worked and why it can be described, in economic terms, as a failing market....This then begs the question of what alternatives there are to this traditional system, now that the Internet has become the researcher's tool of choice for searching and accessing the literature. The second piece of research commissioned by the Trust looked at different business models for research publishing, in order to address this question....This study convinced the Trust that the best way forward to improve access to research findings would be through open access to scientific research articles. This essentially means two things: first, that the copyright holder or holders must grant to the public a free, irrevocable, perpetual license to use, copy, distribute, and make derivative works of their research article, in any medium for any purpose (excepting those that constitute plagiarism or other dishonest acts, of course); and second, that a digital copy must be deposited in an open public archival repository (for example, the US National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central)....For a medical charity like the Trust, I believe it is our duty to actively encourage the most efficient processes available to maximise the likelihood that the research we fund will have the greatest possible health benefit.' Robert Terry is Senior Policy Adviser at the Wellcome Trust.

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Open access archives and web citation index
by Subbiah Arunachalam 19 Mar '05

19 Mar '05

Friends: Here is a news story on Thomson ISI's interest in open access archives. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] ------- More on the ISI-Citeseer Web Citation Index James Pringle, Partnering helps institutional repositories thrive, Thomson Customer News, February 2005. Excerpt: 'Open access (OA) publishing is growing in importance, and, in parallel, the role of institutional repositories (IRs) has come to the forefront of discussion within the library community. The two are intertwined but not synonymous, and different motivations are driving the growth of each. The Thomson Scientific role in promoting institutional repositories' growth was highlighted recently in three workshops held in London, Boston, and Sydney....Our approach to IRs has been different [from our approach to journals]. Repositories represent new ways of organizing research and are taking shape in a variety of experimental forms. They vary in the types of content, the purposes of their creators, and their relationship to researchers. Increasingly, publishers are allowing researchers to archive their own content, and IRs can play a role in aiding researchers in this endeavor. We estimate that publishers now allow over half of all scholarly articles to be archived by their authors, based on average articles published in the journals of the 2003 Journal Citation Report and publishers listed as Project Romeo. But far less than half of all scholarly articles are actually posted to IRs today, often because of lack of awareness and incentive for researchers to do so. Overcoming this barrier is a critical need for IR developers. As one administrator remarked in a planning session: "The key issue is turning now on the willingness of faculty to automatically put stuff into their repository."...Seven institutions joined with us in a Web Citation Index pilot project to explore the proper relationship between ISI Web of Knowledge, Web of Science, and the world of IRs. A collaboration with NEC on the basis of its CiteSeer environment provided the technology partnership to support this new undertaking....The project has run for the past 10 months, and will continue as we move toward release of the full-scale environment for use by researchers over the next several months....At a Thomson Scientific workshop during ALA Midwinter in January 2005, Jean Poland of Cornell University and Katie Clark of the University of Rochester outlined the state of IR development at their institutions, and the potential role of the Web Citation Index in encouraging the growth of IRs. Ms. Clark emphasized the challenge of gaining faculty buy-in, noting that for researchers: "it is all about me and my research", and faculties need to be shown how the IR can help their everyday activities. Ms. Poland pointed out that citation-based tools such as the Web Citation Index can have a positive influence on user awareness and reputation of IRs.' Friends: Here is a news story on Thomson ISI's interest in open access archives. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] ------- More on the ISI-Citeseer Web Citation Index [A] James Pringle, http://scientific.thomson.com/news/newsletter/2005-02/8264025/ Partnering helps institutional repositories thrive , Thomson Customer News , February 2005. Excerpt: 'Open access (OA) publishing is growing in importance, and, in parallel, the role of institutional repositories (IRs) has come to the forefront of discussion within the library community. The two are intertwined but not synonymous, and different motivations are driving the growth of each. The Thomson Scientific role in promoting institutional repositories' growth was highlighted recently in three workshops held in London, Boston, and Sydney....Our approach to IRs has been different [from our approach to journals]. Repositories represent new ways of organizing research and are taking shape in a variety of experimental forms. They vary in the types of content, the purposes of their creators, and their relationship to researchers. Increasingly, publishers are allowing researchers to archive their own content, and IRs can play a role in aiding researchers in this endeavor. We estimate that publishers now allow over half of all scholarly articles to be archived by their authors, based on average articles published in the journals of the 2003 Journal Citation Report and publishers listed as http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php Project Romeo . But far less than half of all scholarly articles are actually posted to IRs today, often because of lack of awareness and incentive for researchers to do so. Overcoming this barrier is a critical need for IR developers. As one administrator remarked in a planning session: "The key issue is turning now on the willingness of faculty to automatically put stuff into their repository."...Seven institutions joined with us in a Web Citation Index pilot project to explore the proper relationship between ISI Web of Knowledge, Web of Science, and the world of IRs. A collaboration with NEC on the basis of its CiteSeer environment provided the technology partnership to support this new undertaking....The project has run for the past 10 months, and will continue as we move toward release of the full-scale environment for use by researchers over the next several months....At a Thomson Scientific workshop during ALA Midwinter in January 2005, Jean Poland of Cornell University and Katie Clark of the University of Rochester outlined the state of IR development at their institutions, and the potential role of the Web Citation Index in encouraging the growth of IRs. Ms. Clark emphasized the challenge of gaining faculty buy-in, noting that for researchers: "it is all about me and my research", and faculties need to be shown how the IR can help their everyday activities. Ms. Poland pointed out that citation-based tools such as the Web Citation Index can have a positive influence on user awareness and reputation of IRs.'

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"Ownership and Access in Scholarly Publishing" web cast April 6
by MALLIKARJUNA, C 19 Mar '05

19 Mar '05

Dear Professionals, The University of Maryland (UMB) Health Sciences and Human Services Library (HS/HSL) and the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Libraries are co-hosting a web cast on "Ownership and Access in Scholarly Publishing" Wednesday, April 6, 2005 UMB School of Nursing Auditorium 655 West Lombard Street Baltimore, MD 21201 ** From your own desktop <http://www.openaccess.umaryland.edu/webcast.html> (Web cast) The web cast will inform you on publishing trends and explain new models likely to affect their professional communication and research and feature information on Emerging Issues in Scientific Publishing. Keynote Speaker: David Lipman, M.D., Director, National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Institutes of Health. Panelists: Kenneth R. Fulton, Publisher, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. John Wilbanks, Executive Director, Science Commons. Valuing New Models of Scholarship in Promotion and Tenure Keynote Speaker: Chi V. Dang, M.D., Ph.D., Vice Dean of Research, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Professor of Medicine, Oncology, Pathology and Molecular Biology and Genetics, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Panelists Sharon, Krag, Ph.D., Professor Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; Associate Dean, Graduate Education and Research, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Marian Jackson, Ph.D., Acting Vice President for Academic Affairs, UMBI, University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute. Additional information, including instructions on how to access the web cast and a conference program, are available at <http://www.openaccess.umaryland.edu/> or email oasp(a)hshsl.umaryland.edu C.MALLIKARJUNA, BANGALORE hbmallikarjuna(a)yahoo.co.in Mobile:9343757228 Yahoo! India Matrimony: Find your life partneronline. Dear Professionals, The University of Maryland (UMB) Health Sciences and Human Services Library (HS/HSL) and the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Libraries are co-hosting a web cast on " Ownership and Access in Scholarly Publishing" Wednesday, April 6, 2005 UMB School of Nursing Auditorium 655 West Lombard Street Baltimore, MD 21201 ** From your own desktop < http://www.openaccess.umaryland.edu/webcast.html http://www.openaccess.umaryland.edu/webcast.html > (Web cast) The web cast will inform you on publishing trends and explain new models likely to affect their professional communication and research and feature information on Emerging Issues in Scientific Publishing. Keynote Speaker: David Lipman, M.D., Director, National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Institutes of Health. Panelists: Kenneth R. Fulton, Publisher, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. John Wilbanks, Executive Director, Science Commons. Valuing New Models of Scholarship in Promotion and Tenure Keynote Speaker: Chi V. Dang, M.D., Ph.D., Vice Dean of Research, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Professor of Medicine, Oncology, Pathology and Molecular Biology and Genetics, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Panelists Sharon, Krag, Ph.D., Professor Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; Associate Dean, Graduate Education and Research, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Marian Jackson, Ph.D., Acting Vice President for Academic Affairs, UMBI, University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute. Additional information, including instructions on how to access the web cast and a conference program, are available at < http://www.openaccess.umaryland.edu/ http://www.openaccess.umaryland.edu/ > or email http://in.f85.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=oasp@hshsl.umaryland.edu&YY=6963… oasp(a)hshsl.umaryland.edu C.MALLIKARJUNA, BANGALORE hbmallikarjuna(a)yahoo.co.in Mobile:9343757228 http://in.rd.yahoo.com/specials/mailtg/*http://yahoo.shaadi.com/india-matri… Yahoo! India Matrimony : Find your life partner http://in.rd.yahoo.com/specials/mailtg2/*http://yahoo.shaadi.com/india-matr… online .

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