Re: Meeting: National Policies on Open Access Provision for University Research Output
Here is a very brief summary of the contributions 22 to the International
Meeting on National Policies on Open Access (OA) Provision for
University Research Output (February 19 2004, Southampton University,
Southampton UK) http://opcit.eprints.org/feb19prog.html
(Other attendees are also invited to post their summaries!)
(1) Restrictive access policies cut readership of electronic research
journal articles by a factor of two, Michael J. Kurtz,
Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA
http://opcit.eprints.org/feb19oa/kurtz.pdf
(Poster)
This study confirmed and extended the Lawrence Effect (Nature 2001)
which shows how much research impact is lost if articles are not
made OA: Readership is cut in half (and 17 reads generates 1 cite,
on average, in astrophysics).
(2) The Effect of Open Access on citation impact, Tim Brody, Intelligence
Agents Multimedia (IAM) Group, University of Southampton
Services for Open Access literature at the University of Southampton,
Tim Brody, IAM Group, University of Southampton
(Poster)
http://citebase.eprints.org/analysis/correlation.php
This study further confirmed and extended the Lawrence Effect (Nature
2001) for several areas of Physics, including strong correlations
between downloads("reads") and subsequent citations.
(3) Introduction and Open Access primer, Steve Hitchcock,
Southampton University
http://opcit.eprints.org/feb10oa/hitchcock-intro.ppt
Explained the focus of the meeting: Developing national and
institutional Open Access Provision policies
(4) Welcome, Adam Wheeler, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Southampton
University
History of scholarly/scientific communication and publication up to
the Open Access era.
(5) Open Archive Initiatives and research infrastructure in
Australia, John Shipp, University of Sydney, and Colin Steele,
Australian National University
http://opcit.eprints.org/feb10oa/steele-oz.ppt
Summary of the very active national promotion of OA in Australia,
including institutional self-archiving of articles as well as
monographs.
(6) Impact of OA on science in developing countries (including a report on
the recent World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) meeting),
Barbara Kirsop, Electronic Publishing Trust for Development
http://opcit.eprints.org/feb10oa/kirsop-dc.ppt
Summary of OA developments in Developing Countries, describing
how OA helps both in providing access to articles from Developed
countries and in providing access to (and hence visibility and
impact for) articles from Developing countries. Stressed the need
for institutional self-archiving policies worldwide.
(7) DAREnet: access to Dutch scientific results, Leo Waaijers, SURF/DARE
Summary of very active DARE programme in the Netherlands:
Institutional self-archiving and many other OA-related projects.
(8) Achieving open access to UK research: the work of the Joint Information
Systems Committee, Fred Friend, University College London
http://opcit.eprints.org/feb10oa/friend-jisc.ppt
Summary of JISC projects supporting OA.
(9) OA: A Canadian update, Tim Mark, Canadian Association of Research
Libraries
Canadian Library initiatives.
(10) Open Access: The French Approach, Francis Andre, CNRS/INIST [document,
author unable to present on the day]
http://opcit.eprints.org/feb10oa/OA_Frenchapproach.doc
French OA initiatives at CERN and INSERM national institutes in
raising researcher awareness to the importance and benefits of
OA.
(11) Status report on OA in Germany, Theresa Velden, ZIM in the Max Planck
Society
The Berlin Declaration and further OA initiatives at the Max-Planck
Institutes.
http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html
(12) The OA situation in Norway, Jostein Hauge, Bergen University Library
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/hauge.doc
Summary of active and ambitious national institutional self-archiving
programme in Norway as well as further OA developments in the other
Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Finland, Denmark).
(13) (brief presentation) Mark Thorley, NERC, on Research Councils
UK position from their submission to the House of Commons Science &
Technology (S&T) Committee enquiry into scientific publications
Research Council interest in OA (and caution that the UK Parliamentary
Committee is merely advisory, not legislative).
(14) (brief presentation) Bruce Royan, on evidence from the Chartered
Institute of Library and Information Professionals to the S&T Committee
http://opcit.eprints.org/feb10oa/royan-clip-evidence.doc
Strong statement supporting OA Provision by The Chartered Institute
of Library and Information Professionals
(15) (brief presentation) Prue Backway, DTI, for report on OECD
Declaration On Access To Research Data From Public Funding. Related link:
OECD Declaration
OECD Support for Data-Archiving (and perhaps also Article-Archiving?).
(16) F
Re: Meeting: National Policies on Open Access Provision for University Research Output
Please find attached my brief presentation of the Dutch DARE Programme to which Steve Harnad refers in his mail below. Leo Waaijers. -Original Message- From: Stevan Harnad To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: 22-2-2004 14:13 Subject: Re: Meeting: National Policies on Open Access Provision for University Research Output Here is a very brief summary of the contributions 22 to the International Meeting on National Policies on Open Access (OA) Provision for University Research Output (February 19 2004, Southampton University, Southampton UK) http://opcit.eprints.org/feb19prog.html (Other attendees are also invited to post their summaries!) DARE now.ppt Description: Binary data
Re: Meeting: National Policies on Open Access Provision for University Research Output
I am not sure there is really any substantive disagreement with Peter Murray-Rust, though there might possibly be on just one point -- a point on which Michael Eisen has expressed the same point as Peter Murray-Rust. I disagree, so perhaps it would be useful if a legally informed (but also *realistic*) expert opinion could be provided: Here are the matters at issue. Peter and Michael are both concerned that toll-free access to the full-text of journal articles is not enough, because one may wish to re-use -- not re-publish, but re-use -- the data published in those articles (not data published in separate databases, primary or secondary, author-provided or third-party-provided: data in those articles whose full-texts are accessible toll-free). As an example, Peter gives the datum: "melting point = 123 deg." contained in the article's text or tables. Now my question: In the Gutenberg age, when the article appeared on paper, and the user had to read it, and then do his next experiment, using that datum, and then publish results (say, computations) based on it, was there ever any doubt that he could use that number, perform whatever computations he liked on it, and then report both the original author's finding (citing the reference) and his own result based on it? Was it ever the case that *published* scientific results could be read, but not used and built upon (without requiring any further permission)? I have certainly never heard of such a thing. I and many others have used and built upon the findings reported by others, whether they were described verbally or numerically (and reported at a conference orally, or published on paper, or online). I would not even know how to make a distinction between a verbal and a numerical datum! If you report that the first group performed better than the second group, is that published ordinal datum something I may not refer to and build upon in my further work? Are ordinal, or even nominal and qualitative data less data than cardinal data? Is a mathematical proof, published in a journal, something I may read and admire, but not use and build upon? Is a fact -- be it geographic, historical, or sociological, stated in words, readable but not usable? How can we possibly even keep track of where and how we have used all the facts we have read and used? So my tentative conclusion is that the *content* of any published research article can be used; indeed, that's why it's published: so it can be used and built upon by other researchers. And I also tentatively conclude that there is no principled distinction between a "datum" and any other piece of content. Verbatim text, on the other hand, is form, not content, and that may not be re-used as one's own text (but that is really re-publication and not just re-use, and Peter explicitly says it is not re-publication he is concerned about but re-use). It may be quoted (within limits) -- and, these days, if it is OA, it may be linked, without limit. For content, as opposed to form, the only constraints are those of plagiarism and priority: You may not claim the content was your own, if you saw it somewhere else first. None of this has anything to do with OA. Nor does the content of databases provided by secondary-providers, if they own the data somehow, and want to sell and control not only access but use. The OA movement of course favors opening both access and use for such secondary proprietary data too, but that is not within the power of the OA movement, because the OA movement is based only on the primary research literature, the one that its own authors provide for free, and publish in refereed journals. The OA movement can of course lend moral support to secondary data-base re-use rights, but it seems to me it does far more good by actually seeing to it that open access is provided for the full-texts containing the author's own primary data. One is just moral support for use; the other is practical provision for use. What must not be allowed to happen, though, is for the clearcut, unencumbered path to primary OA and usage to be weighted down or held back by the need to renegotiate rights or to rewrite laws, with either primary publishers or secondary ones. The road to 100% OA for the full content of the primary full-texts is completely free and clear, but it is not yet fully understood, and hence it is highly underused. What is needed urgently, today, is for *that* underuse to be remedied, urgently, today -- *not* for that free and clear road to be encumbered with the need to renegotiate rights or rewrite laws, in any way. That would simply add, needlessly, to confusion and delay, when it is *action* that is already feasible and indeed long overdue. I cannot imagine that if researchers at last take the path of OA for the full contents of all of their articles (by publishing them in an OA journal whenever a suitable one is available and affordable, and otherwise publishing them in a conventional TA journal but als
Re: Meeting: National Policies on Open Access Provision for University Research Output
I've been away for a bit and had time to think about the meeting. Here are
some thoughts - please feel free to redistribute them further if it helps.
Stevan Harnad wrote:
It is true that open access to data and open access to articles is not
the same thing, though there are links. Right now, the convention is
for article authors to give their articles to publishers for free, and
for publishers to charge for access. It is also the convention *not*
to publish one's own data (just the analysis and results in the article).
I only had 2 minutes to talk so was unable to make some points clear.
** In this mail I am NOT talking about data collections however published.
I am restricting myself to data ("facts") which occur **in the body of
the final published manuscript** Though I have a wider agenda, in this
mail I am sticking precisely to the peer-reviewed primary literature.
In some disciplines data are published separately from the manuscript. In
others (chemistry, biosciences, ...) the data are often only ever published
in the primary publication (I call this micropublication of data). Typical
phrases are:
MeltingPoint 123 degC
Boiling Point (1 atm) 234 degC
Yield of reaction: 77%
etc.
These data are of great value to the community and are *re-used*. (Not
synonymous with republication). They may be aggregated, compared, input
into programs, used to create predictive models, etc. Facts have been
abstracted from the literature for 150 years and are IMO covered by the
Berne convention - they are copyright free. If I want to copy and publish
all melting points in the literature I can. However in many disciplines
there is a large and inefficient secondary publishing industry.
It's important to stress that there is a critical need for
machine-readability of articles. This gives vast improvements in indexing,
recovery, aggregation, etc.
However when the facts are in eForm including in the 95% green form
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/disresearch/romeo/Romeo%20Publisher%20Policies.
it is highly questionable whether they can be re-used on a significant
scale due to the European directive on copyright. Both data within
an article (e.g. a table) and aggregated in journals can be called a
database and hence copyright of publisher. There is a great need
to ensure that the data in articles have a level of access compatible
with the author's intentions. Otherwise the OA movement might even make
things worse (by implying that copyright was an unimportant issue).
Both need to change. Articles need to be self-archived and data need to
be self-archived. The difference is that articles are right now only
being made available by the publisher (through tolls), whereas the data
are not being made available at all -- *except* if they are not the
autor's data, but proprietary data of some sort, compiled by the vendor
(e.g., ISI).
I fully support self-archiving. I enjoyed the presentations and got a lot
from them. The adoption of green or gold will remove one fundamental
barrier to access to data, but not all
Now the solution for self-archiving of one's own articles is to
self-archive them, period. Absolutely no need to get or seek
re-publication rights or any other change in copyright. The same
is true of one's own data. Just self-archive it.
This won't solve our problem. Indeed it is almost more frustrating. We can
now see the data but we can't re-use it (safely).
But for the data of *others* (e.g., ISI's citation data), one may *not*
access it without paying a toll, and one certainly may not re-publish
it.
This isn't relevant. If ISI has created its own information it is allowed
to copyright it. I wouldn't dream of republishing it. However I might wish
to re-use parts of it. ISI might reasonably object. It would come down to
fair use. BUT I expect that almost all scientists (most outside the OA
movement) would not wish to legally forbid reuse of their data.
As to *my* articles, and *my* data: *I* may republish them (with another
publisher) only with permission from the original publisher (permission
usually is granted) -- but why would I bother republishing, when they
are already open-access to all because I have self-archived them?
Someone *else* may not republish them either, but why bother, when all
they need do is insert the OA URL wherever in their publication they
want the user to read the text of my article (i.e., where they would
ordinatrily insert the text)?
As to my data: If I self-archive it, anypne can read, download,
process, analyse it, and report the results.
Not if the copyright does not grant the right.
To republish my data in a compliation of theirs, they need my
persmission (which I give them, of course).
Why?
If I publish data no-one should need my permission to reuse it.
But if the user is not coming to me, for *my* data, but, say, to ISI,
for their proprietary data, they may not republish them without
permission (and they can access and analyze them only for a fee).
Re: Meeting: National Policies on Open Access Provision for University Research Output
The Web page for this meeting now contains links to all presentations.
Links in the summary report below have also been updated.
http://opcit.eprints.org/feb19prog.html
Steve Hitchcock
At 13:13 22/02/04 +, Stevan Harnad wrote:
Here is a very brief summary of the contributions 22 to the International
Meeting on National Policies on Open Access (OA) Provision for
University Research Output (February 19 2004, Southampton University,
Southampton UK) http://opcit.eprints.org/feb19prog.html
(Other attendees are also invited to post their summaries!)
(1) Restrictive access policies cut readership of electronic research
journal articles by a factor of two, Michael J. Kurtz,
Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA
http://opcit.eprints.org/feb19oa/kurtz.pdf
(Poster)
This study confirmed and extended the Lawrence Effect (Nature 2001)
which shows how much research impact is lost if articles are not
made OA: Readership is cut in half (and 17 reads generates 1 cite,
on average, in astrophysics).
(2) The Effect of Open Access on citation impact, Tim Brody, Intelligence
Agents Multimedia (IAM) Group, University of Southampton
Services for Open Access literature at the University of Southampton,
Tim Brody, IAM Group, University of Southampton
(Poster)
http://opcit.eprints.org/feb19oa/brody-impact.pdf
This study further confirmed and extended the Lawrence Effect (Nature
2001) for several areas of Physics, including strong correlations
between downloads("reads") and subsequent citations.
(3) Introduction and Open Access primer, Steve Hitchcock,
Southampton University
http://opcit.eprints.org/feb19oa/hitchcock-intro.ppt
Explained the focus of the meeting: Developing national and
institutional Open Access Provision policies
(4) Welcome, Adam Wheeler, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Southampton
University
History of scholarly/scientific communication and publication up to
the Open Access era.
(5) Open Archive Initiatives and research infrastructure in
Australia, John Shipp, University of Sydney, and Colin Steele,
Australian National University
http://opcit.eprints.org/feb19oa/steele-oz.ppt
Summary of the very active national promotion of OA in Australia,
including institutional self-archiving of articles as well as
monographs.
(6) Impact of OA on science in developing countries (including a report on
the recent World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) meeting),
Barbara Kirsop, Electronic Publishing Trust for Development
http://opcit.eprints.org/feb19oa/kirsop-dc.ppt
Summary of OA developments in Developing Countries, describing
how OA helps both in providing access to articles from Developed
countries and in providing access to (and hence visibility and
impact for) articles from Developing countries. Stressed the need
for institutional self-archiving policies worldwide.
(7) DAREnet: access to Dutch scientific results, Leo Waaijers, SURF/DARE
http://opcit.eprints.org/feb19oa/waaijers-dare.ppt
Summary of very active DARE programme in the Netherlands:
Institutional self-archiving and many other OA-related projects.
(8) Achieving open access to UK research: the work of the Joint Information
Systems Committee, Fred Friend, University College London
http://opcit.eprints.org/feb19oa/friend-jisc.ppt
Summary of JISC projects supporting OA.
(9) OA: A Canadian update, Tim Mark, Canadian Association of Research
Libraries
http://opcit.eprints.org/feb19oa/mark-carl-ir.doc
Canadian Library initiatives.
(10) Open Access: The French Approach, Francis Andre, CNRS/INIST [document,
author unable to present on the day]
http://opcit.eprints.org/feb19oa/OA_Frenchapproach.doc
French OA initiatives at CERN and INSERM national institutes in
raising researcher awareness to the importance and benefits of
OA.
(11) Status report on OA in Germany, Theresa Velden, ZIM in the Max Planck
Society
http://opcit.eprints.org/feb19oa/velden-germany.ppt
The Berlin Declaration and further OA initiatives at the Max-Planck
Institutes.
http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html
(12) The OA situation in Norway, Jostein Hauge, Bergen University Library
http://opcit.eprints.org/feb19oa/hauge-norway.doc
Summary of active and ambitious national institutional self-archiving
programme in Norway as well as further OA developments in the other
Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Finland, Denmark).
(13) (brief presentation) Mark Thorley, NERC, on Research Councils
UK position from their submission to the House of Commons Science &
Technology (S&T) Committee enquiry into scientific publications
Research Council interest in OA (and caution that the UK Parliamentary
Committee is merely advisory, not legislative).
(14) (brief presentation) Bruce Royan, on evidence from the Chartered
Institute of Library and Information Professionals to the S&T Committee
http://opc
