Open Access Part I The Movement The Issues…

Open Access Part I: The Movement, The Issues, and The Benefits :

“The advent of Open Access (OA) has changed the landscape of accessing digital information globally. OA offers valuable free, full-text, online resources for all health-related professionals, regardless of the practice setting. Because much scholarly information may now be accessed without charge, nurses worldwide can reach a higher level of information competency—a prime requirement for evidence-based practice. This article provides a brief account of the OA movement, introduces new terminology, discusses various publishing models, and elucidates issues surrounding the choice to publish in OA journals. Many stakeholders derive benefits from Open Access. Nursing must take action to participate in and promote the OA movement in order to derive the maximum gain for our science.”

URL : http://gm6.nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/ANAMarketplace/ANAPeriodicals/OJIN/TableofContents/Vol-17-2012/No1-Jan-2012/Articles-Previous-Topics/Open-Access-Part-I.html
DOI: 10.3912/OJIN.Vol17No01PPT02

Driving on the Green Road of Open Access…

Driving on the Green Road of Open Access: The Green Factor for Successful Institutional Repository :

“In this electronic publishing age, institutions have increasingly recognized that an institutional repository (IR) is an essential infrastructure of scholarly dissemination. An institutional repository is broadly defined as a digital archive of the intellectual product created by the faculty, research staff, and students of an institution and accessible to end users both within and outside of the institution. To achieve the success, IR must require to plan, implement, evaluate maintain and sustain green factor on driving of the green road of institutional repository. This paper examines how to harness successful factors to make an institutional repository the central and authoritative source of the research materials output of institutions. There is much discussion and examination of the factors that help to build and sustain a successful repository for the long- term survival, value and usability that depends on numerous criteria have been discussed in the topic.”

URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/handle/10760/16340

Heading for the Open Road Costs and Benefits…

Heading for the Open Road: Costs and Benefits of Transitions in Scholarly Communications :

“This paper reports on a study — overseen by representatives of the publishing, library and research funder communities in the UK — investigating the drivers, costs and benefits of potential ways to increase access to scholarly journals. It identifies five different but realistic scenarios for moving towards that end over the next five years, including gold and green open access, moves towards national licensing, publisher-led delayed open access, and transactional models. It then compares and evaluates the benefits as well as the costs and risks for the UK. The scenarios, the comparisons between them, and the modelling on which they are based, amount to a benefit-cost analysis to help in appraising policy options over the next five years. Our conclusion is that policymakers who are seeking to promote increases in access should encourage the use of existing subject and institutional repositories, but avoid pushing for reductions in embargo periods, which might put at risk the sustainability of the underlying scholarly publishing system. They should also promote and facilitate a transition to gold open access, while seeking to ensure that the average level of charges for publication does not exceed circa £2,000; that the rate in the UK of open access publication is broadly in step with the rate in the rest of the world; and that total payments to journal publishers from UK universities and their funders do not rise as a consequence.”

URL : http://liber.library.uu.nl/publish/issues/2011-1/index.html?000529

Costs and Benefits of Data Provision Over…

Costs and Benefits of Data Provision :

“Over the last decade there has been increasing awareness of the potential benefits of more open access to Public Sector Information (PSI) and the findings of publicly funded research. That awareness is based on economic principles and evidence, and it finds expression in policy at institutional, national and international levels.

Public Sector Information (PSI) policies seek to optimise innovation by making data available for use and re-use with minimal barriers in the form of cost or inconvenience. They place three responsibilities on publicly funded agencies: (i) to arrange stewardship and curation of their data; (ii) to make their data readily discoverable and available for use and re-use with minimal restrictions; and (iii) to forgo fees wherever practical.

This report presents case studies exploring the costs and benefits that PSI producing agencies and their users experience in making information freely available, and preliminary estimates of the wider economic impacts of open access to PSI. In doing so, it outlines a possibly method for cost-benefit analysis at the agency level and explores the data requirements for such an analysis – recognising that few agencies will have all of the data required.”

URL : http://ands.org.au/resource/houghton-cost-benefit-study.pdf

Scientists’ attitudes toward a dialogue with the public…

Scientists’ attitudes toward a dialogue with the public: a study using “science cafes” :

“Currently, science is developing rapidly and its influence on society is more significant than ever. This is all the more reason for today’s scientists to interact with the general public. To design effective science communication activities, we must understand scientists’ motivations and barriers to publicly communicating science. In this study, we interviewed 19 early-career scientists who had participated in science cafes in Japan. From these interviews, we identified five factors leading to their reluctance to participate in science cafes: 1) troublesome or time-consuming; 2) pressure to be an appropriate science representative; 3) outside the scope of their work; 4) could not perceive any benefit; and 5) apprehension about dialogue with the public. Among these factors, apprehension about dialogue may be the clearest reflection of the scientists’ underlying feelings about this form of communication and an indicator of more intrinsic barriers to engaging in science cafes.”

URL : http://jcom.sissa.it/archive/10/04/Jcom1004%282011%29A02

Public Access and Use of Health Research: An Exploratory Study of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy Using Interviews and Surveys of Health Personnel

Background: In 2008, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy mandated open access for publications resulting from NIH funding (following a 12-month embargo). The large increase in access to research that will take place in the years to come has potential implications for evidence-based practice (EBP) and lifelong learning for health personnel.

Objective: This study assesses health personnel’s current use of research to establish whether grounds exist for expecting, preparing for, and further measuring the impact of the NIH Public Access Policy on health care quality and outcomes in light of time constraints and existing information resources.

Methods: In all, 14 interviews and 90 surveys of health personnel were conducted at a community-based clinic and an independent teaching hospital in 2010. Health personnel were asked about the research sources they consulted and the frequency with which they consulted these sources, as well as motivation and search strategies used to locate articles, perceived level of access to research, and knowledge of the NIH Public Access Policy.

Results: In terms of current access to health information, 65% (57/88) of the health personnel reported being satisfied, while 32% (28/88) reported feeling underserved. Among the sources health personnel reported that they relied upon and consulted weekly, 83% (73/88) reported turning to colleagues, 77% (67/87) reported using synthesized information resources (eg, UpToDate and Cochrane Systematic Reviews), while 32% (28/88) reported that they consulted primary research literature. The dominant resources health personnel consulted when actively searching for health information were Google and Wikipedia, while 27% (24/89) reported using PubMed weekly. The most prevalent reason given for accessing research on a weekly basis, reported by 35% (31/88) of survey respondents, was to help a specific patient, while 31% (26/84) were motivated by general interest in research.

Conclusions: The results provide grounds for expecting the NIH Public Access Policy to have a positive impact on EBP and health care more generally given that between a quarter and a third of participants in this study (1) frequently accessed research literature, (2) expressed an interest in having greater access, and (3) were aware of the policy and expect it to have an impact on their accessing research literature in the future. Results also indicate the value of promoting a greater awareness of the NIH policy, providing training and education in the location and use of the literature, and continuing improvements in the organization of biomedical research for health personnel use.”

URL : http://www.jmir.org/2011/4/e97/