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Open Access to Knowledge A University Case study…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Open Access to Knowledge: A University Case study :

« Academics and librarians around the world have worked together for many years to broaden access to the scholarship they create and consume. Open access to results of scholarship support efforts of sustainable development within a healthy ecology of knowledge. The current system of knowledge distribution and access is proving to be an unsustainable one, and by its very nature excludes some communities of scholars. However, innovative ways to maximize and expand access to scholarship are being developed around the world, and such efforts are increasingly seen as a public good. This paper provides an analysis of the University of Kansas’ ten-year odyssey toward a faculty open access policy, focusing on lessons learned by campus constituents engaged in policy development and the academic library’s role during this decade of activity. This presentation is intended for academics and university librarians interested in learning from our experiences as we defined, debated, and ultimately approved an open access policy. »

URL : http://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/25836

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Open Access Institutional Archives A Quantitative Study 2006-2010…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Open Access Institutional Archives: A Quantitative Study (2006-2010) :

« Open access publishing is growing in importance, and, in parallel, the role of institutional archives has come to the forefront of discussion within the library community. The present study is an attempt to analyse the present trend of institutional archives worldwide. The factual data of each individual repository was collected from various Directories of Institutional Repositories by using survey method. Data was analysed in terms of quantity of institutional archives increased during last six years, country-wise contents of institutional archives, types of materials archived, subject coverage, software used, language of interface of institutional archives, host domains, and policy of institutional archives. The results of the study suggest healthy growth in terms of quantity of institutional archives’ increase worldwide, however, the development is more prevalent in developed countries than developing countries. The subject analysis of the institutional archives indicates that the contributors in the field of health and medicine are more interested to submit their materials in repositories. Currently the institutional archives mostly house traditional (print-oriented) scholarly publications and grey literature, using DSpace software and most of these materials were of English language. However, the policy of content inclusion, submission and preservation is yet to be well defined in institutional archives. »

URL : http://publications.drdo.gov.in/ojs/index.php/djlit/article/view/1112

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Open Data Study – New Technologies Political…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Open Data Study – New Technologies :

« Political power, information and rights issues have been energised in the US and UK by the pioneering introduction of open data. Making information about services, education and other data has been made publicly available on the web in both countries to help improve services and contribute to future economic growth. But can this approach be replicated to support progress in middle-income and developing countries?

This paper explores the feasibility of applying a similar approach to open data in middle income and developing countries and identifies the factors behind the success in the US and UK and the pivotal strategies adopted in these contexts which helped bring together civil servants and ‘civic hackers’ to release government data.

The report finds that 3 key groups or ‘layers’ were crucial to the successful introduction of open data. An influential and active civil society provided the ‘bottom up’ pressure for change through traditional advocacy and by setting up innovative websites demonstrating how open information could be used. Civil servants and state and federal administrators who saw open data as a way of improving efficiency provided the ‘middle layer’. Finally, high-level political leaders including Heads of States and Ministers provided the third layer.

By analysing the strategies adopted by these three groups in the US and UK, the report asks regional experts to examine whether similar initiatives could work in their respective political settings and cultures. The opinions of these specialists, working on a range of issues from freedom of information to budgetary monitoring, are also revealed.

The report proposes a set of criteria for those considering introducing open government data in middle-income or developing countries. The checklist encourages campaigners to consider certain issues before embarking on an open data campaign. These include: the status of Freedom of Information in the country; current levels of government data availability and issues around freedom of the press who are key potential end-users of open data. »

URL : http://www.transparency-initiative.org/reports/open-data-study-new-technologies

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The impact of free access to the scientific…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

The impact of free access to the scientific literature: a review of recent research :

« Objectives: The paper reviews recent studies that evaluate the impact of free access (open access) on the behavior of scientists as authors, readers, and citers in developed and developing nations. It also examines the extent to which the biomedical literature is used by the general public.

Method: The paper is a critical review of the literature, with systematic description of key studies.

Results: Researchers report that their access to the scientific literature is generally good and improving. For authors, the access status of a journal is not an important consideration when deciding where to publish. There is clear evidence that free access increases the number of article downloads, although its impact on article citations is not clear. Recent studies indicate that large citation advantages are simply artifacts of the failure to adequately control for confounding variables. The effect of free access on the general public’s use of the primary medical literature has not been thoroughly evaluated.

Conclusions: Recent studies provide little evidence to support the idea that there is a crisis in access to the scholarly literature. Further research is needed to investigate whether free access is making a difference in non-research contexts and to better understand the dissemination of scientific literature through peer-to-peer networks and other informal mechanisms. »

URL : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3133904/

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Who Shares Who Doesn’t Factors Associated with Openly…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Who Shares? Who Doesn’t? Factors Associated with Openly Archiving Raw Research Data :

« Many initiatives encourage investigators to share their raw datasets in hopes of increasing research efficiency and quality. Despite these investments of time and money, we do not have a firm grasp of who openly shares raw research data, who doesn’t, and which initiatives are correlated with high rates of data sharing. In this analysis I use bibliometric methods to identify patterns in the frequency with which investigators openly archive their raw gene expression microarray datasets after study publication.

Automated methods identified 11,603 articles published between 2000 and 2009 that describe the creation of gene expression microarray data. Associated datasets in best-practice repositories were found for 25% of these articles, increasing from less than 5% in 2001 to 30%–35% in 2007–2009. Accounting for sensitivity of the automated methods, approximately 45% of recent gene expression studies made their data publicly available.

First-order factor analysis on 124 diverse bibliometric attributes of the data creation articles revealed 15 factors describing authorship, funding, institution, publication, and domain environments. In multivariate regression, authors were most likely to share data if they had prior experience sharing or reusing data, if their study was published in an open access journal or a journal with a relatively strong data sharing policy, or if the study was funded by a large number of NIH grants. Authors of studies on cancer and human subjects were least likely to make their datasets available.

These results suggest research data sharing levels are still low and increasing only slowly, and data is least available in areas where it could make the biggest impact. Let’s learn from those with high rates of sharing to embrace the full potential of our research output. »

URL : http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0018657

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Widening access to serials in the developing world…

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Widening access to serials in the developing world: the role and philosophy of INASP :

« The International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) has been working for many years with partner countries in the developing world to support all aspects of the scholarly research and communication cycle – by facilitating access to international scholarly e-journals, supporting the creation of indigenous e-journals, equipping librarians with the skills to support research, and
helping libraries to create the infrastructure to enable them to deliver services in the digital library environment and provide integrated management of digital resources.

For a philanthropic organisation such as INASP sustainability is central as without a plan for self-sufficiency all philanthropic work will ultimately fail. This paper describes our Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information (PERii) approach to supporting sustainable availability, access and use of research that is owned by and embedded within researchers’ own institutions. PERii has been described by Chan and Costa (2005)1 as “the most comprehensive initiative of access to worldwide research” and as well as the learning and successes, this paper will also set out some of the challenges that have arisen in building capacity to enable libraries to take charge of their own futures.

These challenges are significant. There are the obvious obstacles of funding and limitations of ICT and related infrastructures, but in many ways the real sustainability challenges relate to people: how to build on existing strengths and assets and enhance local ability to solve problems; encouraging and stimulating individuals to act either alone or, more effectively, together; and understanding the country context. »

URL : http://conference.ifla.org/sites/default/files/files/papers/ifla77/164-belcher-en.pdf

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Bookshare: Making Accessible Materials Available Worldwide

Posted on by Hans Dillaerts

Bookshare is the largest online library of accessible copyrighted materials for readers with print disabilities. In the last three years Bookshare has built a collection of over 30,000 books available throughout the world, serving people in 28 countries that span the globe. Developed and operated by Benetech, a non-profit using technology to serve unmet social needs,

Bookshare International works with local partners to provide content in multiple languages to serve people with print disabilities. Bookshare is particularly focused on addressing the accessible “book famine” in developing countries and applies ongoing
innovation to do so in a sustainable, effective manner.

URL : http://www.ifla.org/past-wlic/2011/148-beaumon-en.pdf