Presentation on Open Access delivered at the National University of Lesotho, Roma, Lesotho on 22 October 2013 during workshop to mark the International Open Access Week and also celebrate LELICO's 10th anniversary

1. Open Access:
Research Output Gone Viral!
Amos Kujenga
EIFL-FOSS National Coordinator, Zimbabwe
akujenga@gmail.com
National University of Lesotho, 22 October 2013

2. Outline of Presentation
 Definition of Open Access
 Open Access Routes
 Benefits of Open Access
 Open Access Concerns
 Open Access and Social Media
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3. Issues of Concern
 Academics are continuously struggling to
achieve set Key Performance Indicators (KPI)
 “...the tenure process is tightly intertwined with
the promotion process and publishing.”
(MADRIGAL, 2012)
 There is little awareness of Open Access in
academia
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4. Open Access Defined
“Open Access (OA) is the provision of free access
to peer-reviewed, scholarly and research
information to all” (UNESCO, 2012).
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5. OA Declarations/Statements
Statement/Declaration
Date
Budapest Open Access Initiative
February 2002
Bethesda Statement on Open
Access Publishing
June 2003
Berlin Declaration on Open Access to October 2003
Knowledge in the Sciences and
Humanities
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6. Berlin Declaration Highlights
 To encourage researchers to make their
materials available in OA (through self-archiving
in OA repositories or publishing in OA journals)
 To develop means and ways to evaluate OA
contributions to maintain the standards of quality
assurance and good scientific practice
 To advocate that OA publications be recognised
in promotion and tenure evaluation
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7. Benefits of Open Access
 Improves the speed at which the results of
research are spread
 Increases the visibility, usage and impact of
research by enhancing seamless accessibility via
the Internet.
 As a researcher, publishing in an OA journal
allows anyone with an interest in your work to
read it - and that translates into increased usage
and impact (MACQUARIE, 2010).
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8. Benefits of Open Access
 “Closed access is probably an extenuating factor
to poor understanding of many important issues
in science.” (WICKS, 2012)
 OA offers authors discoverability. For this
reason, OA articles tend to attract higher levels of
downloads than subscription-only articles.
 The potential readership of OA articles is far
greater than that for articles where the full-text
is
restricted
to
subscribers
(MACQUARIE, 2010).
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9. Benefits of Open Access
 “The free online availability of research articles
may introduce new ideas or themes to undertake
research studies and could fuel more research”
(PATTANAYAK & SAGAR,2010)
 Allows the professional, practitioner and business
communities, and the interested public, to benefit
from research through increased access
(UNESCO, 2012).
 OA can reduce plagiarism.
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10. Benefits of Open Access
 “Science works on an open interchange of ideas.
If things aren‟t available, then ideas aren‟t being
interchanged...Scientists want their ideas to be
talked about” (MCNAMUS, 2007).
 When research output is made freely available
online it provides users with the latest peerreviewed
information
and
discoveries
(MACQUARIE, 2010).
 Theses and Dissertations reach wider audience
and supervisors and institutions gain reputation.
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11. Open Access Concerns
 OA does not promote plagiarism
 Copyright law should be respected
 The more visible a work is, the easier it is to
notice when it has been copied/plagiarised
 OA does not ignore the peer-review process
 OA does not affect peer-review; articles are
peer-reviewed and published in journals in the
normal way (MACQUARIE, 2010).
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12. Open Access Concerns
 OA repositories do not replace journals
 OA archives or repositories do not perform
peer review, but simply make their contents
freely available to the world. They may
contain unrefereed preprints, refereed post
prints, or both (SUBER, 2004).
 They are additional venues for published
articles (CONCORDIA, 2013).
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13. Open Access Concerns
 “Open Access journals can have similar impact to
other journals, and prospective authors should
not fear publishing in these journals merely
because of their access model.” James Pringle,
Thomson ISI
 In 2012, 163 of Springer‟s 397 OA journals were
listed by ISI and had an Impact Factor
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14. The Gold Route to Open Access
The “GOLD” route
 Use of OA journals - those journals whose
funding model that does not charge readers
or their institutions for access (DOAJ, 2013)
 OA journals perform peer review and then
make the approved contents freely available
to the world. Their expenses consist of peer
review, manuscript preparation, and server
space (SUBER, 2004).
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15. The Gold Route to Open Access
 Citing the high cost of journal subscriptions,
Harvard‟s Faculty Advisory Council in 2012
urged faculty to “consider submitting articles
to open-access journals” (HARVARD, 2012)
 Example: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
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16. The Gold Route to Open Access
Fee-Based OA Journals
 These are the “journals for which users are
granted an irrevocable, world-wide, perpetual
access without any financial or other barriers and
the authors (or the sponsoring Institute) bear the
cost involved in making it publicly accessible”
(PATTANAYAK & SAGAR, 2010)
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17. The Gold Route to Open Access
Fee-Based OA Journals
 Costs are met very much as in television and
radio stations: those with an interest in
disseminating the content pay the production
costs upfront so that access can be free of
charge for everyone with the right equipment
(SUBER, 2004).
 Require payment by or on behalf of the author
 Such payment may come from the author or from
his/her research grant (at times this is waived)
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18. The Gold Route to Open Access
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19. The Gold Route to Open Access
No-Fee OA Journals
 Can be supported by institutions, e.g., produced
from within a university
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20. The Green Route to Open Access
The “GREEN” route
 Achieved via repositories such as Institutional
Repositories, or personal websites
 Depending on policies in place, can capture
more material, faster (UNESCO, 2012).
 Work deposited in one or more IRs has an
increased likelihood of being found (or
discovered) by potential users (students or
other researchers) since IRs are easily
searchable through popular search engines.
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21. The Green Route to Open Access
The “GREEN” route
 The majority of publishers now allow some
form of archiving in their copyright
agreements
with
authors,
sometimes
requiring an embargo period (BJORK &
SOLOMON, 2012).
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22. The Green Route to Open Access
Some major publishers allow the published PDF
version to be deposited in an IR (CONCORDIA,
2013):
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23. The Green Route to Open Access
Some major publishers allow the post-print (final,
refereed manuscript) to be deposited in an IR
(sometimes with an embargo):
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24. The Green Route to Open Access
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25. The Green Route to Open Access
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26. The Green Route to Open Access
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27. The “Hybrid” Route to Open Access
The “HYBRID” route
 Where a fee can be paid to make a single
article OA in an otherwise subscription-based
journal.
 In some cases, the publisher will reduce the
subscription cost in line with the new revenue
coming in from OA charges, but in most cases
this is not offered.
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28. Open Access and Copyright
 The dissemination of research depends upon
the copyright holder‟s consent.
 Copyright is a bundle of rights: authors of journal
articles normally sign the whole bundle of rights
over to the publisher, though this is not normally
necessary.
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29. Open Access and Copyright
 Authors (or their employers or funders) can
retain the rights they need to make the work OA,
assigning to the journal publisher the right to
publish the work (and to have the exclusive right
to do this, if required). Such premeditated
retention of sufficient rights to enable OA is the
preferable course of action rather than seeking
permission post-publication. (UNESCO, 2012)
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30. Finding Open Access Content
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
 Aims to increase the visibility and ease of use of
OA scientific and scholarly journals, thereby
promoting their increased usage and impact.
 Aims to be comprehensive and cover all OA
scientific and scholarly journals that use a quality
control system to guarantee the content.
 Aims to be THE one stop shop for users of OA
journals.
 Accessible on http://www.doaj.org
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31. Finding Open Access Content
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32. Finding Open Access Content
Open Access Theses and Dissertations (OATD)
 A discovery service intended to improve the
ability to put researchers and scholars in touch
with the valuable and unique OA content.
 Available on http://oatd.org
PQDT Open
 Provides the full text of open access dissertations
and theses free of charge.
 Available on http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/
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33. Finding Open Access Content
Digital Repositories Infrastructure Vision for
European Research (DRIVER)
 Considered the largest initiative of its kind in
helping to enhance repository development
worldwide.
 Attempts to create a pan-European umbrella
organization for digital repositories.
 Search page available on
http://search.driver.research-infrastructures.eu/
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34. Evaluation of Scientific Literature
 A journal‟s influence is generally determined by
counting the number of times its articles are
cited (PICKARD, 2012)
 The Journal Impact Factor (JIF) has been a key
measure used to evaluate scholarly work and
identify researchers‟ prestige, promotion and
tenure world-over (BERNAL, 2013).
 The advent of the Internet, gave way to new
journals, new data and new approaches for
assessing research.
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35. Measuring Research Impact
The Journal Impact Factor
 Simply considers citations
 Does not consider real-time indicators of impact
 Does not capture impact on practitioners some of
whom may never publish
 Does not show evidence of public engagement in
ideas
 Scholars may discuss, recommend, refute, or
teach a new finding before it is ever cited
(PRIEM, GROTH, & TARABORELLI, 2012).
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36. Altmetrics
 Altmetrics is the study and use of non-traditional
scholarly impact measures that are based on
activity in web-based environments.
 As scholarship increasingly moves online, these
metrics track associated interactions and activity
to generate fine-grained data, allowing
researchers and policy makers to create a
higher resolution picture of the reach and impact
of academic research.
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37. OA and Social Media
 Although OA articles may be accessed more
frequently, traditional impact factors measure
citations rather than readership.
 When OA is combined with social media, the
influence of research articles shifts from
publications to individual researchers.
 By sharing research findings via social networks,
one can quickly get feedback from other experts.
There have been reports of papers being
corrected this way, soon after publication.
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38. OA and Social Media
 Sharing links to published OA articles can
enhance opportunities for collaboration with other
experts in the same or related fields.
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39. OA and Social Media
 “Getting relevant feedback from the scientific
community is crucial and with the growing
importance of the social web, we should be able
to leverage its power and communicate or
collaborate without borders and limitations.
Open access should and can accelerate this
process,” Dr Bertalan Mesko, Social Media
expert.
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40. OA Impact Data Sources
Description
Example
Social media
Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook
Online reference managers
CiteULike, Zotero, Mendeley
Collaborative encyclopaedias Wikipedia
Blogs, both scholarly and
general-audience
Scholarly social networks
Conference organization
sites
WordPress, Blogspot,
Blogger
ResearchGate, Academia.edu
Lanyrd.com
Source: (PRIEM, GROTH, & TARABORELLI, 2012)
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41. Funders’ Response to OA
 Major research funders such as the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Wellcome Trust
have started requiring OA publishing from their
grantees (BJORK & SOLOMON, 2012).
 The U.S. National Institutes of Health (the world‟s
largest research funder), now requires that all
their funded research be placed in an openly
accessible database, and so is it with Harvard
University (MACQUARIE, 2010).
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42. The “Open” Agenda
Open Access is now joined by other concepts in a
broader „open‟ agenda that encompasses issues
such as Open Educational Resources (MOOCs),
Open Science, Open Innovation and Open Data
(UNESCO, 2012).
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43. Promoting Open Access in Academia
 Submit your research articles to OA journals,
when there are appropriate OA journals in your
field.
 Deposit your work in an OA repository.
 Establish full-text Electronic Theses and
Dissertations (ETDs) for your institution, backed
by policies mandating students to submit their
work.
 Support OA journals by serving on their boards
or refereeing their papers whenever possible.
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44. Promoting Open Access in Academia
 If not already, advocate for your institution to be
a signatory to the Berlin Declaration. Afterwards,
push for policies that put it into action.
 Help to build strong editorial boards for OA
journals so as to increase their influence and
reputation.
 Volunteer to serve on your institution‟s
committee to evaluate faculty for promotion and
tenure, then push for policies that enforce the
Berlin Declaration principles.
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45. Conclusion
Thanks to support from top management, a
growing number of institutions in Africa are
signatories to Signatories to the Berlin Declaration
on Open Access. However, such moves should be
supported by institutional policies that are put in
place to enforce the stated positions. Furthermore,
librarians should take advantage of the power of
social media as a tool to boost the impact of
research output made available via Open Access.
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46. Thank You
Amos Kujenga
EIFL-FOSS National Coordinator, Zimbabwe
akujenga@gmail.com
National University of Lesotho, 22 October 2013