MacColl, J.

English

UCL Discovery

The Open Archives Initiative: Liberating the Research LiteratureJohn MacColl (john.maccoll@ed.ac.uk)Edinburgh University LibraryUniversity of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02Presentation structure• The journals funding crisis, and history of self-archiving• The Open Archives Initiative: history and technology• The Budapest Open Access Initiative• Institutional archives: what are they?• Practical stepsUniversity of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02The journals funding crisis‘In the longer term, it is difficult to imagine how the current  model of funding publishing companies through research libraries … can possibly persist … it is premised on a paper medium that was difficult to produce, difficult to distribute, difficult to archive, and difficult to duplicate – a medium that hence required numerous local redistribution points in the form of research libraries.’Paul Ginsparg, Winners and losers in the global research village, UNESCO Conference, 1996University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02The ‘giveaway literature’• Academic authors do not write research articles for profit• Journal publishers take the profit• Most of that profit comes from the libraries of the institutions in which the researchers work• Thus, by giving away their intellectual property, researchers deprive themselves of access to the work of peer researchers• Something is wrong …University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02‘Eprint’ archives: the current situation• Disciplinary archives• Best-known and best-developed is arXiv.org (formerly known as xxx.lanl.gov)• Current preprint communities: physicists (particularly high-energy physicists); computer scientists; mathematiciansUniversity of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02Self-archivingChanging the behaviour of researchers through encouraging self-archiving– Will eventually ‘liberate the literature’– Leaves commercial publishers intact, though with a tougher commercial environment– Is legalUniversity of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02The convenience of the medium• From the desktop• Velocity of research publication dramatically enhanced• Print libraries redundant for this literature• A commerce-free system:– No authentication– No paymentUniversity of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02Copyright• Journal policies vary• Liberal journals allow posting of preprints to archives, and posting of postprints (these are ‘eprint archives’)• Aim is to shift model so that academic authors retain rights in secondary publication of research articlesUniversity of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02Where do journals fit in?• They don’t disappear!• Journals will become quality badges• ‘Overlay journals’• Publishers will try to ‘add value’University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02History of the OAI• October 1999 – Santa Fe Convention• Universal Preprint Service (UPS)• Eprints ￿ other domains• ‘a low-barrier interoperability framework’• Dienst Protocol ￿ Metadata Harvesting Protocol• Carrier protocol is HTTP• Responses are encoded in XML• Early 2000 – the Cambridge Meetings• August 2000 – support from CNI and DLF• Steering Committee formedUniversity of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02History of the OAI• Late 2000: Mission Statement• The Open Archives Metadata Set ￿ the DC Metadata Element Set (unqualified)• Aim was to ‘reveal a market of community-developed metadata practices’• Supporting ‘coarse granularity resource discovery’• OAI ‘Independent of content and economic mechanisms’• OAI is ‘an organization and an effort explicitly in transition’• Currently in an experimentation phaseUniversity of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02Two classes of participant• Data Providers adopt the OAI technical framework as a means of exposing metadata about their content (held in ‘repositories’)– OAI-conformant– OAI-registered– OAI-namespace-registered• Service Providers harvest metadata from data providers using the OAI protocol and use the metadata as the basis for value-added servicesUniversity of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02The BOAI• Launched February 14 2002• Meeting in Budapest of Soros Open Society Institute• $1m per year for 3 years for:– the development of business models and plans for sustainable self-archiving and open access publishing – use of library networks to mobilise support for open access globally – support for researchers in low and middle income countries to publish in open-access journals which charge up front fees – development of software tools and templates for open access publishing, self-archiving, indexing and navigation – promotion of the open access philosophy worldwide• OSI may also, at a later stage, provide direct seed funding to certain types of open access and self-archiving initiativesUniversity of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02The BOAITwo complementary strategies– OAI-based self-archiving– Alternative journals, committed to open access. ‘Because journal articles should be disseminated as widely as possible, these new journals will no longer invoke copyright to restrict access to and use of the material they publish. Instead they will use copyright and other tools to ensure permanent open access to all the articles they publish. Because price is a barrier to access, these new journals will not charge subscription or access fees, and will turn to other methods for covering their expenses.’University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02The Budapest signatories‘We invite governments, universities, libraries, journal editors, publishers, foundations, learned societies, professional associations, and individual scholars who share our vision to join us in the task of removing the barriers to open access and building a future in which research and education in every part of the world are that much more free to flourish. February 14, 2002Budapest, HungaryLeslie Chan: Bioline InternationalDarius Cuplinskas: Director, Information Program, Open Society InstituteMichael Eisen: Public Library of ScienceFred Friend: Director Scholarly Communication, University College LondonYana Genova: Next Page FoundationJean-Claude Guédon: University of MontrealMelissa Hagemann: Program Officer, Information Program, Open Society InstituteStevan Harnad: Professor of Cognitive Science, University of Southampton, Universite du Quebec a MontrealRick Johnson: Director, Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)Rima Kupryte: Open Society InstituteManfredi La Manna: Electronic Society for Social ScientistsIstván Rév: Open Society Institute, Open Society ArchivesMonika Segbert: eIFL Project consultantSidnei de Souza: Informatics Director at CRIA, Bioline InternationalPeter Suber: Professor of Philosophy, Earlham College & The Free Online Scholarship NewsletterJan Velterop: Publisher, BioMed Central’University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02Institutional archives?• New concept• Designed to spread the use of archives by scholars across all communities• Based on the concepts of distribution and interoperability• Take the search engine centralised database approach• Made possible by the Open Archives Initiative Metadata Harvesting Protocol (OAI MHP)University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02Benefits of an institutional open archive• RAE administration• Part of an international archive• Distributed network of archives increases the total pool of public domain research • Librarians can do the work …• Library ultimately will make savingsUniversity of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02Anxieties• What is interoperability?• ‘Ingelfinger Rule’• Lack of quality control• Preservation• ‘I don’t want the journals to disappear’• Others?University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02Copyright transfer agreements‘These take many forms. Whatever the wording is, if it does not explicitly permit online self-archiving, modify it so that it does. Some publishers (about 10%) already explicitly allow self-archiving of the refereed postprint (e.g., the American PhysicalSociety.) Most other publishers (perhaps 70%) will also accept this clause, but only if you explicitly propose it yourself (they will not formulate it on their own initiative). If this is successful, self-archive the refereed postprint.’Stevan Harnad For whom the gate tolls? How and why to free the refereed research literature online through author/institution self-archiving, now (author’s web site)University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02Recommended wording“I hereby transfer to [publisher or journal] all rights to sell or lease the text (on-paper and on-line) of my paper [paper-title]. I retain only the right to distribute it for free for scholarly/scientific purposes, in particular, the right to self-archive it publicly online on the Web.”Stevan Harnad For whom the gate tolls? How and why to free the refereed research literature online through author/institution self-archiving, now (author’s web site)University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02Last resort‘Hence, for about 80% of journals, once you have done the above, you can go ahead and self-archive your paper. Some journals (about 20%), however, will respond that they decline to publish your paper unless you sign their copyright transfer agreement verbatim. In such cases, sign their agreement and archive the “corrigenda”.’Stevan Harnad For whom the gate tolls? How and why to free the refereed research literature online through author/institution self-archiving, now (author’s web site)University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02Edinburgh’s Informatics wording‘The <research sponsor> and the University of Edinburgh are authorised to reproduce and distribute reprints and on-line copies for their purposes notwithstanding any copyright annotation hereon.’University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02Next steps …‘Researchers: Self-archive all present, future (& past) papersUniversities: Install Eprint Archives, mandate them; help in author start-upUniversities should create institutional Eprint Archives for all their researchers. They should also mandate that they be filled. It is already becoming normal practise for faculty to keep and update their institutional CVs online on the Web; it should be made standard practise that all CV entries for refereed journal articles are linked to their archived full-text version in the university's Eprint Archive. Libraries: Maintain the University Eprint archives; help in author start-upLibraries are the most natural allies of researchers in the self-archiving initiative to free the refereed journal literature. Not only are they groaning under the yoke of the growing serials budget crisis, but librarians are also eager to establish a new digital niche for themselves, once the journal corpus is on-line.’Stevan Harnad For whom the gate tolls? How and why to free the refereed research literature online through author/institution self-archiving, now (author’s web site)University of London Scholarly Communication Event Senate House            10 April 02Thank You

The Open Archives Initiative: liberating the research literature

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