Open Access: What it can do for
science and scholarship in India
“The Role Of The Scientific Journal:
First, to place before the general public the grand results of Scientific work and Scientific discovery; and to urge the claims of Science to a more general recognition in Education and daily
life.
Secondly, to aid scientific men themselves, by giving early information of all advances made in any branch of natural knowledge throughout the
world, and by affording them an opportunity of discussing the various scientific questions that
arise from time to time.” Nature, 4 November 1869
“At a time when the journal has become the primary vehicle for communicating research results …. libraries are finding it difficult to maintain, let alone expand, their journal
collections ….” “…. It is becoming increasingly clear that the current scientific communication process is not working in the best interests of the scientific community, nor in the best
interests of society as a whole.”
Stephen Pinfield, 2005
What has happened in the last
130 years?
The number of scientific research
journals has grown, and grown, and
grown…
Journal prices have risen - much faster
than inflation. Since 1986:
The UK retail price index has risen 70%
Journal prices have risen 291%
One result …
The ‘Men of Science’ do not have
access to all the scientific
literature they need to enable
“Just funding the research is a job
only part done. A fundamental
part of [our] mission is to ensure
the widest possible dissemination
and unrestricted access to that
research.”
Robert Terry
Senior Policy Advisor, Wellcome Trust
“Speak to people in the medical
profession and they will say the last
thing they want is people who have
illnesses reading this information,
marching into surgeries and asking
things.”
John Jarvis, Managing Director, Wiley Europe (one of the world’s largest science publishing houses)
What Open Access is about
Freely available
Publicly available
Permanently available
The World Wide Web has
enabled Open Access to science
Not constrained by the limitations of
print on paper
Available to any individual with
Internet access, worldwide
With proper arrangements in place,
What Open Access is not about
NOT vanity publishing or
self-publishing
NOT about non-peer-reviewed
literature
NOT about publications that scientists
expect to be paid for (e.g. books)
Why researchers publish their work
0 20 40 60 80 100
% respondents
‘Open Access’?
A much better term to use is
Open Dissemination
Who benefits from Open Access?
Scientists – as authors
Scientists – as readers
Scientists – as teachers
Universities
Research funders
Increased citation rates
Biology
36%
Psychology108% Sociology 172% Health sci 57% Political Sci 57% Physics
250%
Economics 49% Education 77%
Law 108%
Business
76%
Management
92%
Key Perspectives Ltd
Open Access increases citations
0 50 100 150 200 250
% increase in citations with Open Access
Open access increases citations
(further studies)
Lawrence 2001 (computer science)
Kurtz 2004 (astronomy)
Brody & Harnad 2004 (all disciplines)
Antelman 2005 (philosophy, politics, electrical & electronic engineering, mathematics)
“Self-archiving in the PhilSci Archive
has given instant world-wide visibility
to my work. As a result, I was invited
to submit papers to refereed
international conferences/journals
and got them accepted.”
Lost citations, lost impact
Only around 15% of research is Open
Access….
….. so 85% is not
….. and we are therefore losing 85% of the 50% increase in citations
(conservative end of the range) that Open Access brings (= 42.5%)
There is also a monetary measure
In the last 5 years there have been 219040
citations to 104617 articles by Indian scientists (indexed by ISI)
This figure could have been 42.5% higher (with OA)
= 312132 citations
44462 citations have been lost over 5 years
With an annual S&T budget of 164bn INR ….
…. and 42.% impact lost…
…. that means 70bn INR-worth of impact
And for individual scientists….
Diamond, A M (1986) What is a citation worth? J. Human Resources 21, 200 (
www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v11p354y1988.pdf)
Marginal value of one citation is 50-1300 USD
(depending on field and number of citations: an increase from 0 to 1 citation is worth more than from 30-31 citations)
Update for inflation (170%) = 86-2227 USD Convert to rupees = 3870-100215 INR
Now let’s look at one Indian scientist’s situation….
Professor Balakrishnan
39 citations
Could have been 42.5% higher
(or more) = 56 citations
Each citation is worth 3870 INR
Value of lost impact = 0.2m INR
Two ways to provide Open Access
Publish in an Open Access
journal
Deposit copies of published
articles in an Open Access
repository (‘self-archiving’)
Open Access journals
‘New’ Open Access publishers
BioMedCentral
Public Library of Science
c2000 Open Access journals in existence
‘Traditional’ publishers offering a
Open access journals in Asia
Approximately 130
About 90% are learned society
journals
India, Japan and South Korea
have most
Self-archiving
Subject-centred repositories (e.g. arXiv)
Institutional repositories
Subject coverage reflects institution
Interoperable
(Open Archives
Initiative-compliant)
Global interlinked network – a
Open Access repositories
500+ worldwide
Open source software
(e.g. EPrints from
Southampton University)
Repository types
Most are institution-wide
Some are departmental
Some are cross-institutional
Some are national
Some are subject-specific
Why an
institutional
repository?
Fulfils a university’s mission to engender,
encourage and disseminate scholarly work
Enables a university to compile a complete record
of its intellectual effort
Forms a permanent record of all digital output
from an institution
Enables standardised online CVs for all
researchers (e.g. RAE exercise)
‘Marketing’ tool for universities
An institution can mandate self-archiving across
all subject areas
How are the authors responding?
24% have submitted an article to an
Open Access journal (49% intend to)
22% have deposited an article in an
Open Access institutional repository
15% have deposited an article in a
Overall self-archiving activity level
Key Perspectives Ltd
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
% authors
An institutional repository provides
researchers with:
Secure storage (for completed work
An author said…
Key Perspectives Ltd
“This is a very handy way to
An institutional repository provides
researchers with:
Secure storage (for completed work
and for work-in-progress)
A location for supporting data that are
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 % r e sp o n d e n ts Postprint Conference paper Preprint Technical report Working paper Book chapter
Dissertation or thesis Courseware Discussion paper Software Monograph Manual Video file Audio file
An institutional repository
provides researchers with:
Secure storage (for completed work
and for work-in-progress)
A location for supporting data that
are unpublished
One-input-many outputs (CVs,
What discourages self-archiving?
“ I worry about copyright
infringement”
Publisher permissions
65% 6%
Publisher permissions (journals)
79% 13%
8%
'Green' (postprints) 'Pale green' (preprints) 'Grey' (neither yet)
Publisher permissions
92% of journals permit self-archiving
SHERPA/RoMEO list at:
www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php
What discourages self-archiving?
“I worry about copyright
infringement”
“It will be too difficult”
Easy 28%
Very difficult 1%
Somewhat difficult
8%
Very easy Neither easy nor
difficult 13%
Article archived by someone
What discourages self-archiving?
“I worry about copyright
infringement”
“It will be too difficult”
“It will take too long”
Under an hour 23%
More than a day
3% 3-4 hours
2%
A few minutes 52%
1-2 hours 8%
Article archived by someone else
What discourages self-archiving?
“I worry about copyright
infringement”
“It will be too difficult”
“It will take too long”
“My society may suffer”
Learned societies publishing physics
journals in areas covered by arXiv
American Physical Society:
• Physical Review D
• Physical Review C
• Nuclear Physics
Institute Of Physics Publishing (UK):
• Classical & Quantum Gravity
• Journal of High Energy Physics
“How many subscriptions have
you lost as a result of arXiv?”
APS:
“None”
IOPP: “None”
“Do you view arXiv as a threat?”
APS:
“We don't consider it [arXiv] a threat.
We expect to continue to have a
Obeying publisher embargoes?
Nature Physics Issue 1:
8 primary research papers
7 available on the web on the day of publication
(1 not available except in jrnl)
4 had postprints in arXiv 2 had preprints in arXiv
2 had Nature’s own PDF on author websites Citations: postprints -1,5,0,3 preprints 3,0
(physics research/pub cycle is moving very fast)
What can encourage self-archiving?
Highlighting the increased visibility and impact
What can encourage self-archiving?
Highlighting the increased visibility and impact
Requiring authors to self-archive
Author readiness to comply with a
mandate
0 20 40 60 80 100
Would comply willingly Would comply
reluctantly Would not
comply
81%
Institutions with a mandate already
University of Southampton School of
Electronics & Computer Science (since 2003) (90+% compliance already)
CERN (2003) (90% compliance already)
University of Southampton (2004)
Queensland University of Technology
(2004) (40%+ compliance and growing) University of Minho, Portugal (2005)
University of Tasmania 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 Ju n -0 4 Ju l-0 4 A u g -0 4 S e p -0 4 O ct -0 4 N o v-0 4 D e c-0 4 Ja n -0 5 F e b -0 5 M a r-0 5 A p r-0 5 M a y-0 5 Ju n -0 5 Actual documents DEST publications
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Queensland University of Technology 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 24 /0 5/ 20 04 24 /0 6/ 20 04 24 /0 7/ 20 04 24 /0 8/ 20 04 24 /0 9/ 20 04 24 /1 0/ 20 04 24 /1 1/ 20 04 24 /1 2/ 20 04 24 /0 1/ 20 05 24 /0 2/ 20 05 24 /0 3/ 20 05 24 /0 4/ 20 05 24 /0 5/ 20 05 24 /0 6/ 20 05 24 /0 7/ 20 05 24 /0 8/ 20 05 24 /0 9/ 20 05 D o cu m en ts
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% of DEST output
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45% 50%
Developments around the world
Australian Govt funds nationwide network of
repositories to make Australian science more visible
French funding bodies set up OP archives
All German universities now have a
repository
Netherlands has a nationwide ‘Cream of
Science’ initiative
The developing world…
Brazil is well ahead
India is moving fast
China now developing a policy
Pakistan has built its first
Other drivers for Open Access
Data sharing stipulations
E-science
Interdisciplinary research
Scientometrics
There are many more measures…
Bibliometric measures:
Co-citations
Hub/authority counts Incest analysis
Impact measures:
Citation growth, longevity, latency-to-peak Download growth, longevity, latency-to-peak Etc, etc, etc
Effective ways to achieve OA in
India
Encourage authors to use OA journals
where appropriate
Build an archive
Teach them how to deposit (do it for them if necessary)
Advocate: tell authors the advantages
Reassure: the consequences are not
Wellcome Trust:
World’s largest private
funder of biomedical (and
allied) research
Spends c£400million
($700million) per annum
“Just funding the research is a job
only part done. A fundamental
part of [our] mission is to ensure
the widest possible dissemination
and unrestricted access to that
research.”
Wellcome Trust
Issued a Position
Statement on Open and Unrestricted Access to Published Research
Amended its Grant
Conditions accordingly
Effective 1 October 2005
The Wellcome Trust policy on OA
Requires self-archiving of articles (within
6 months of publication in PubMed Central)
Will pay publication fees for publishing in
open access journals (1-2% of
Deals with publisher obstructions:
If publishers insist on copyright terms inconsistent with the prior funding agreement, then the Trust simply tells grantees to choose among three options:
Give the journal fewer rights than it wants and retain
the right to comply with the funding agreement
Insert a Wellcome-written paragraph into the
publisher's copyright transfer agreement allowing the grantee to comply with the funding agreement
Find another publisher
Readiness to comply with a
mandate
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% A u st ra lia /N ew Z ea la n d A si a (e xc ep t C h in a, J ap an ) C h in a Ja p an C an ad a U S A C en tr al /S o u th A m er ic a E u ro p ea n U n io n (e xc ep t U K ) E u ro p e (e xc ep t E U /U K ) U K M id d le E as t A fr ic aComply willingly Comply reluctantly Would not comply
