IST-2001-33127

Towards Open Access – which are the barriers to change

Bo-Christer Björk

Swedish School of Economics

and Business Administration

Helsinki, Finland

IST-2001-33127

Björk 2003

SciX project

• Open, self organising repository for scientific information exchange

• European Commission funding €1.000.000• IST-2001-33127, Key Action III• 200 person months• Project duration: 1.2.2002 - 31.5.2004• Seven partners from six countries

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SciX planned results

• E-prints archive with initial content

• Enhanced E-journal

• Open Source application• New knowledge about the

scientific publishing process and how it is affected by the Internet

For the construction IT Community

For other academicCommunities

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Subscription or Payper View Facility

SearchableMetadata

Meta Data of thePublication

AlertingMessages

BibliographicServices

General WebSearch Engines

Dedicated HarvestingTools

The LocalUniversityLibrary

10 mk

Manage Centrally Edited Bibliographic Index

20 mk

Manage Automated Search Engine

30 mk

Manage Local Front End to Meta Data Services

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Raphael: Scuola di Atene

The evolution of scientific communication: From the Greek philosophers to a global community connected by the Internet

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Two interconnected paradigm shifts

• From printed to electronic delivery• From subscription to a variety of business

models

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Vaihtoehtoiset liiketoimintamallit

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What is Open Access

• Making scientific content available for free on the WWW

• Either as primary or secondary outlet• Certain forms of delayed publishing can also be

regarded as Open Access

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Main OA channels .....

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Open Access Journals

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Subject based e-print servers

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Institutional repositories

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Self-publishing

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How important is OA today?

• Open Access Journals around 1 %• E-print servers important in some areas• Institutional repositories just starting• Self-publishing the most common method

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What are the main barriers?

Journals Subject repositories

Institutional repositories

Legal framework - * **

IT-infrastructure ** ** **

Business models *** ** *

Institutional behaviour

*** ** *

Standards ** * ***

Awareness, critical mass

*** ** ***

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Means to overcome the barriers

Legal framework New types of copyright agreements allowing parallel OA publishing

IT-infrastructure Open source applications such as D-space

Business models Author or institutional author charge financed journals

Institutional Behaviour More emphasis on availability and readership of publications in Academia

Standards Widespread use of the Open Archives Initiative standard

Awareness Services such as the DOAJ

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Improving the technical infrastructure

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Incentives for parallel publishing?!

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Raising awareness

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Marketing

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Integration with indexing services

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The predicament of journals from small language areas

• In Scandinavia alone a few hundred peer reviewed scholarly journals published in the native languages of English

• Shoe-string budgets• Largely Open Source like operations• Publicly subsidised to survive

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The End

End