This document discusses advancing open access to scholarly information. It defines open access as research articles being freely available online with full rights to use in the digital environment. The benefits of open access are discussed, such as minimizing costs and avoiding duplication of research. Challenges to open access include the divide between rich and poor institutions in accessing information. Several solutions to advance open access are proposed, including open scholarly repositories, journals, monographs, and educational resources. Libraries and organizations like ASSAf and SPARC Africa are important stakeholders in collaborating to implement open access policies and build capacity.

1. 1
Advancing access to
information - together
Ina Smith
6 November 2015

2. Agenda
• The need
• The challenge
• The solution

3. Open Access Defined
“Open Access is the free, immediate, online
availability of research articles, coupled with
the rights to use these articles fully in the
digital environment.”
http://www.sparc.arl.org/issues/open-access

5. Why Open Access?
• Research is expensive – funded with tax
payers’ money
• Publishing research on WWW comes at
minimal cost
• Access to journal back-files
• New research based on existing research –
avoid duplication

6. The need

9. 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/2
014/06/12/tesla-goes-open-source-elon-musk-
releases-patents-to-good-faith-use/

10. http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cdc-
scientist-admits-destroyed-data-showed-
vaccines-caused-autism-
children/#cZz6lzEjivPoTZ80.99

11. Date Downloads
Nov 2013 984
May 2014 1 534
Oct 2015 2 289

14. The challenge

15. Rich vs Poor

17. 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/

19. http://chronicle.com/article/What-a-Mass-
Exodus-at-a/234066

20. The solution

22. • Open scholarly repositories
• Open scholarly journals
• Open scholarly monographs
• Open scholarly science
• Open scholarly conference proceedings
• Open data set repositories
• Open Educational Resources (OERs)
• Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)
Approaches to Open Access

23. Open Scholarly Policies

24. Open Scholarly Repositories (Green)

25. Total of 31 nationally; 16 universities (2 275
internationally)
SA Scholarly Repository Landscape

26. Next …
• Part of workflow
• Consistent growth
• Accreditation
• Trusted Repository
• Financial sustainability
• Organisational viability
• Technological & Procedural suitability
• Administrative responsibility
• Etc.
• Standardisation …

28. Open Scholarly Journals (Gold)
http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcblog/2014/11/06/the-impact-factor-of-
journals-converting-from-subscription-to-open-access/

30. SA Scholarly Journal Landscape (1)
• 303 DHET accredited journal titles (incl.
DHET, WoS, IBSS) (2 discont.)
• 146 Open Access (59 on Directory of
Open Access Journals)

31. • 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)

32. Open Scholarly Monographs

33. 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

36. Massive Open Online Courses
(MOOCs)

37. Online self-paced courses for
librarians

38. Open Educational Resources (OERs)

39. CC Licensed Material

40. • 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

41. 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

42. 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

43. Library as a Stakeholder (3)
• Support research
• Increase research
throughput
• Disseminate
research output

44. For librarians to survive
• High level of IT competency
• Self-learning & lifelong learning
• Analytical & critical thinking skills
• Collaborate

45. • 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)

46. Quality, Quantity, Visibility
Applying best practise

47. Fostering new generation scholars
(1)
• Webinars (ORCID, Creative Commons,
OJS)
• Training & consultancy (OJS)
• A-Z resource of scholarly publishing
https://academyofsciencesa.wikispaces.c
om
• Workshop on Good Practise Publishing
(CrossRef)

48. 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 …

50. Recommendations re funding
• Measuring impact (Bibliometrics)
• Peer-review panels: evaluation of books &
conference proceedings
• Peer-review of journal titles
• National Site Licensing project

51. Negotiations with Publishers

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

53. 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?”

54. Data Management Planning

55. DIRISA

56. National OA Policy

57. NRF Statement

58. SPARC Africa

59. In the words of Tim-Berners Lee …
“It seems unthinkable that the web is already
25 years old, and many of us can barely
imagine life without it.
We all helped to build this, and the web's
future still depends on us. All of us must use
our creativity, skills and experience to make it
better: more powerful, more safe, more fair
and more open.
Let us choose the Web We Want, and thus,
the World We Want.”
http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/20
14/03/web-at-25/tim-berners-lee

60. Thank you!
Ina Smith
SciELO Planning Manager, ASSAf
ina@assaf.org.za