1

Advancing access to

information through

collaboration

Ina Smith

20 October 2015

Central University of Technology Open Access

Week 19-25 October 2015

What is Open Access about?

In a statement released by Linda Jarvis, Chief Financial Officer at Wits, her office explains the increase:

“Some of the key reasons are:

The rand-dollar exchange rate has fallen by approximately 22%, which has resulted in a substantial increase in the amount of money that we pay for all library books, journals, electronic resources research equipment that are procured in dollars and euros.”

http://connect.citizen.co.za/25760/why-is-wits-raising-its-fees/

Rich vs Poor

Berlin Declaration

• We define open access as a comprehensive source of human knowledge and cultural heritage that has been approved by the scientific community.

• In order to realize the vision of a global and accessible representation of knowledge, the future Web has to be sustainable, interactive, and transparent. Content and software tools must be openly accessible and compatible.

http://openaccess.mpg.de/Berlin-Declaration

Why Open Access?

• Research is expensive – funded with tax payers’ money

• Publishing research on WWW comes at minimal cost

• Open access accelerates pace of scientific discovery, encourages innovation, enriches education, stimulate economy – to improve public good …

http://openaccess.mpg.de/Berlin-Declaration

Musk says that the new open source policy’s goal is to help stem climate change. He writes: “It is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2014/06/12/tesla-goes-open-source-elon-musk-releases-patents-to-good-faith-use/

Date Downloads

Nov 2013 984

May 2014 1 534

Oct 2015 2 289

• Open scholarly repositories

• Open scholarly journals

• Open scholarly monographs

• Open scholarly conference proceedings

• Open data set repositories

• Open Educational Resources (OERs)

• Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

Approaches to Open Access

Every part of the scientific method is nowadays becoming an open, collaborative, and participative process:

• Transparency in experimental methodology, observation, and collection of data

• Public availability and reusability of scientific data

• Public accessibility and transparency of scientific communication

• Using web-based tools to facilitate scientific collaboration

Open Science

• International• Funders, Publishers, SPARC USA, SPARC Europe,

UNESCO, etc

• National• Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf)

• National Research Foundation (NRF)

• etc

• Institutional• Library, Research Office, IP & Copyright Office,

etc

Levels of Collaboration

Institutional Repository

Institutional Stakeholders @ CUT

Institutional Stakeholders

Library as a Stakeholder (1)

• Library Management• Strategic planning – increase impact, visibility, ROI

• Portfolio for driving OA

• Library budget

• Subject Librarians• Recommend OA journals for publication,

authoritative vs predatory

• Assist with publishing process

• Data Management Planning

• Knowledge of repositories

Library as a Stakeholder (2)

• Subject Librarians (cont.)• Copyright, Creative Commons Licensing,

Plagiarism, File formats (open), ORCIDs, etc.

• Cataloguers• What you put in is what you get out

• Metadata NB!

• Standardisation - names

• Inter-library Loans• Requests helps to prioritise in terms of

digitisation

Library as a Stakeholder (3)

• Support research

• Increase research throughput

• Disseminate research output

For librarians to survive

• High level of IT competency

• Self-learning & lifelong learning

• Analytical & critical thinking skills

• Collaborate

• Targeted intervention into National System of Innovation (NSI) – focus on:• Quality, quantity, worldwide visibility of

research publications

• Fostering of new generation highly competent & productive scientists, scholars

• Recommendations re publishing & funding of SA research

ASSAf Scholarly Publishing Unit (SPU)

Quality, Quantity, Visibility (1)

Selected journals indexed by SciELO South Africa, Web of Science portal (58)

Quality, Quantity, Visibility (2)

Increase in dissemination & usage

Quality, Quantity, Visibility (3)

SciELO South Africa included in DHET list of accredited indices

Norwegian Registry for Scientific Journals,

Series and Publishers

Quality, Quantity, Visibility (4)

Applying best practise

Fostering new generation scholars (1)

• Webinars (ORCID, Creative Commons, OJS)

• Training & consultancy (OJS)

• A-Z resource of scholarly publishinghttps://academyofsciencesa.wikispaces.com

• Workshop on Good Practise Publishing (CrossRef)

Fostering new generation scholars (2)

• National Code of Best Practice in Editorial Discretion and Peer Review for South African Scholarly Journals

• National Scholarly Editors Forum Meeting (NSEF)

• SciELO South Africa User’s Group Meeting

• Building capacity …

Recommendations re funding

• Measuring impact (Bibliometrics)

• DHET Research Output Policy …• Peer-review panels: evaluation of books &

conference proceedings

• Peer-review of journal titles

• National Site Licensing project

SA Scholarly Journal Landscape (1)

• Feb – April 2015

• 303 DHET accredited journal titles (incl. DHET, WoS, IBSS) (2 discont.)

• 58 titles indexed by SciELO SA

• 146 Open Access (59 on Directory of Open Access Journals)

• 279 titles have a web page (154 have online ISSN)

• 65 titles indexed by WoS (20 on SciELO SA)

• 41 listed on IBSS

• 115 indexed by Scopus

• 163 titles peer-reviewed by ASSAf

• 47 titles published by Taylor & Francis

• Next: Status re DOIs, ORCIDs, APCs

SA Scholarly Journal Landscape (2)

Total of 31 nationally; 16 universities (2 275 internationally)

SA Scholarly Repository Landscape

Next …

• Part of workflow

• Consistent growth

• Accreditation

• Trusted Repository• Financial sustainability• Organisational viability• Technological & Procedural suitability• Administrative responsibility• Etc.

• Standardisation …

SPARC Africa Chapter

Data Management Planning

DIRISA

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/2014-2019/moedas/announcements/commissioner-moedas-and-secretary-state-dekker-call-scientific-publishers-adapt-their-business_en

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/2014-2019/moedas/announcements/commissioner-moedas-and-secretary-state-dekker-call-scientific-publishers-adapt-their-business_en

“Can publishers afford to stay out of that trend?”

NRF Statement

Negotiations with Publishers

National OA Policy

https://theconversation.com

Thank you!

Ina Smith

Planning Manager, ASSAf

ina@assaf.org.za