Institutional Repositories supporting research

Open Access Institutional Repositories(OA Archives)

•What are OA IRs?•How do they work?•Who do they benefit: research/authors/institutes/

economies of low-income countries?•What progress has been made?•Are they making a difference?•What next?

What are Institutional Repositories?

They are interoperable digital archives providing free-of-cost access to already published research findings

They are located in research organisations (institutes, universities . . .)

They form a subsidiary access strategy, working in parallel with open access and toll access journals

Features of IRs– Free software, therefore appropriate for low-income

countries; low cost to establish and maintain– Easy and quick to establish, free technical help

available online– All IRs are interoperable, conforming to OAI-MPH

international standards (www.oaister.org/about.html)– Searchable by Google, Yahoo and specialised

search programs (eg OAIster, SHERPA searches)– Distributed network, shared costs– Usage (impact) statistics available

If your institute has an IR, how does it work?

• Author submits article to his chosen peer-reviewed journal

• Article is peer reviewed, corrected and accepted in the usual way

• Once accepted, the author’s final refereed accepted version of the article is deposited in author’s IR (not yet OA)

• Author checks if the publisher allows OA using the SHERPA/Romeo database on http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php (or do this first!)

• If so, the article may be set to be OA immediately or

• The article may be set to be OA when any embargo period ends

but the ‘magic button’operates during any embargo period

• All abstracts are available to all from the time of deposit, but

• if readers urgently require a copy of the full text, they may click on the ‘Request Copy’ key in the abstract, giving their name and email address

• the request is sent automatically to the author who may agree that the article be emailed to the reader

(similar to the past practice of requesting copies by mail)

“ Almost OA”

68% of publishers allow archiving in OA repositories

Others often agree if asked . . .

Benefits for authors• Research output instantly accessible to all (higher

impact)

• Research output of international research community accessible to author

• Partnerships/collaborative projects develop as a result

• Career prospects advanced – publications noted by authorities

• Opportunities for new research discoveries, data mining etc

(‘If I have an apple . . . .)

• IRs display and promote research strengths

• IRs provide a tool for administrative purposes (research assessments, management reports, evaluation . . . ) – scholarly output in one place

• IRs link organisations with the international OA developments and raise their status, attract high quality researchers

. . . .

Benefits for Institutes:

Benefits for funding organisations

• What has been discovered with our financial support?

• Was it a good investment? Is it leading to acceleration in research?

• Could our funding have been better spent?

Benefits to national economies?

Economic Development needs Science Science needs Access to Research

Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, said: "It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy …

A1982 UNESCO report states that "assimilation of scientific and technological information is an essential precondition for progress in developing countries".

The InterAcademy Council says: "In a world moving rapidly toward the knowledge-based economies of the 21st century, capacity building in science and technology is necessary everywhere. But the need is greatest for the developing

countries".

PROGRESS?

Number of IRs registered in ROAR database, August 2008

• Worldwide – 1131• Developing countries – 173 (~15.6%)• Latin America and Caribbean – 100 (~9%)

Statistics from Registry of OA Repositories http://roar.eprints.org/)

(increasing on average 1/day)

Geographic distribution of IRsSource: ROAR, Eprints, Southampton

Repositories in OpenDOARSHERPA file from Google Map

Are researchers depositing their publications in their IRs?

- Queensland University of Technology >10,000

- Indian Institute of Science > 20,000

- Universitis Teknologi Malaysia Institutional Repository – 4526 records

- Others – nil!

We have the roads, we have the IR silos? Are they full or empty?

The problem of author inertia

• Author willingness to comply with a self-archiving mandate from their employer or funder (from Swan and Brown, 2005)

0 20 40 60 80 100

% respondents

Would complywillingly

Would complyreluctantly

Would notcomply

Mandates/Requirements

August 28th 2008:

53 operating mandates11 others under development

Harvard Faculty of Arts and Science, NIH, 6 of 7 UK Research Councils, National Research Council Canada, Australian Research Council, European Research Council, Wellcome Trust, Stanford Faculty of Education, Southampton University, Howard Hughes . . . . .

See: ROARmap site for details of Material Archiving Policieshttp://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/

Growth of Repository Content

‘The proof of the pudding is in the eating’Are IRs being used?

Are they making a difference?

Institutional Repository University of Otago (NZ)

University of Strathclyde (UK)

Rhodes e-Research Repository (Sth Africa)

2004-5*

Indian Inst of Science

Full text downloads during 2007

No. of records in IR 666 5052 808 7865 (?)

Usage from Canada 2977 1032 27609 2931

Usage from India 5022 1032 27609 9354

Usage from UK 8926 12664 25392 3581

Usage from Sth Africa 1029 175 120598 331

Total Usage in 2007 103099 85329 516380 16197

Usage map of IR of Universidad do Los Andes, Venezuela

And in the meantime . .

Many IR infrastructural developments

– Networks - eg DRIVER in EU - ORCA in Australia - in LAC countries– Support facilities - Depot IR in UK– Software - eg statistical packages/SWORD

and new OA services, eg– OA Scholarly Information Sourcebook

www.openoasis.org

Usage of publications from developing country research distributed by Bioline International

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

0

500000

1000000

1500000

2000000

2500000

3000000

3500000

Abstracts

Full-text

International submissions

0

1020

30

40

50

6070

80

90

100

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

From India

Overseas

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

Effect of OA on subscriptions

The challenges and barriers ahead?

• Lack of awareness both among researchers and policy-makers about the benefits of OA

• Lack of awareness about ‘how to do it’

• Delays in agreeing institutional or national OA policies

▲Bottom up and top down approaches ▼

A reminder of the scale of the problem

ACCESS STUDY

WHO study in 2003 showed:

Of 75 countries with GNP/per capita/yr < $1000, 56% of medical institutions had NO subscriptions to journals over the last 5 years

Of countries with GNP/capita/yr of $1-3000, 34% had NO subscriptions and a further 34% had an average of 2 subscriptions/yr

So we are not just involved in an academic exercise – we have an urgent need to resolve the problem as soon

as possible.

IRs are a simple, cheap and easy means to accelerate global

researchand put your Institute on the map!

Thank you for listening