Gaining Momentum for Open Access
Bas Savenije, Director General KB
Tartu, Open Access Week 2011, 28 October 2011
Added value of journal publishers
2 traditional elements:
• Quality assessment: still an essential element of research evaluation
• Distribution: nowadays scientists communicate with one another themselves
Open Access (Berlin Declaration)
• The author grants to all users:
a free, irrevocable, worldwide right of access
a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly
• A complete version of the work is deposited in an online
repository using suitable technical standards
Why Open Access?
Academic community:
• Communication and impact
• E-science
(Inter)national policy:
• Economic and social arguments
• Relation with infrastructure
Open Access: 2 complementary scenarios
Green Road: self-archiving, repositories
Golden Road: Open Access journals
Green
Road
Green Road
• Repository in every university
• Advantages:
• Limited investment
• Integral part institutional research policy
• Within the present system of scholarly communication
Green Road: complications
• Volume
• Mandate?
• Different versions, copyright
• Publishers’ embargos
• Usage
• Infrastructure
• Subject repositories
• Harvesting: quality of metadata
Green Road: Perspective
• When success:
Cancellation of subscriptions
Threat present publication system
• Consequence: Embargos
• The more the better, but …
Golden
Road
Open Access Journals
Directory of Open Access Journals: 4398 journals By:
• (small) university publishers
• learned societies
• commercial publishers
Business models:
• start-up money, stakeholders
• article processing costs
Preservation: National Library of the Netherlands
Golden Road
• OA Journals
• New
• Existing
• Hybrid
• Advantages
• Maintaining the present publication system
• No increase of costs
Golden Road: Complications
• Slow uptake:
• New Journals: impact factor
• Existing Journals: fear for new dynamics
• Hybrid Journals: Double dipping?
• Economics:
• Temporary additional investment
• Reallocation of funds within institutions
• Differences between universities/countries?
Golden Road: perspective
• New Model: Access for All
• Continuing the present scholarly communication system
(Peer review)
From the viewpoint of Open Access:
Priority: Golden Road
• New business model scholarly communication
• Continuing the present system of peer review
Actions academic community
Institution:
• Copyright (alternatives) Institution + national level:
• Funders’ Mandates (not hybrid!)
• Temporary additional funding National level:
• Embedding in license negotiations International level:
• Reputations of journals
Monographs?
Open Access for monographs
Scholarly monographs often are funded through grants
It is cheaper and more effective to use the grant for a digital Open
Access publicatiom
Last but not least: Cultural heritage
The Berlin Declaration
“Encouraging the holders of cultural heritage to
support open access by providing their resources on
the internet.”
Cultural heritage
Out-of-copyright material:
• Not: creating new copyright through digitisation
• No restrictions for re-use
• Including commercial re-use
The Changing Nature of Research in Science
“Instead of spending six months doing an experiment which you can then understand in an afternoon when you're done, you can do an experiment in an afternoon and it takes you six months to figure out what you've got.”*
*Chronicle: Learning to Swim in the Rising Tide of Scientific Data
“Well in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else - if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”
“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”
