| Benefits of e-publishing |
Trustees and resgister of EPT represent- ations |
(last modified October 14th 2009)
This page provides a source of documents, statements, and workshop reports of interest to people working in the area of electronic publishing and development with special emphasis on Open Access developments. For an authoritative and up-to-date resource on all things open access, go to the OASIS web site.
Declarations, Publications and Open Access Web sites:
Statements/Declarations
Budapest Open Archives Initiative (Soros Foundation), two recommended strategies to achieve open access to scholarly journal literature, February 14th 2002
Salvador Declaration on Open Access for Developing Countries, September 2005, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil
Wellcome Trust Statement in support of Open Access: Published in October 2003, up-dated March 14th 2007
Berlin Declaration on the Open Access to knowledge in science and the humanities: October 2003, a Declaration signed by over 50 major institutions, universities, funding organisations and other interested bodies committed to open access to scholarly publications. Report on follow-up meeting (Berlin-3) February 2005.
Research Councils UK up-dated statement on OA. RCUK has delegated policy for OA to individual councils, all of which support the widest distribution of funded research. Six of the seven councils now mandate deposit in an OA archive, and one has still to decide on its final policy. NOTE: PPARC and CCLRC have merged into a single Science and Technology Facilities Council, which mandates OA archiving in Institutional Repositories.
Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation) Statement advocating open access and providing $3 over 3 years for projects supporting 'alternative' journals and open archiving initiatives. Established eIFL Network for the advancement of electronic access to information (including OA repositories and OA publishing) in developing and transitional economies.
Public Library of Science, Statement signed by just under 30,000 individuals from 175 countries who support the concept of open access
U K Government Science & Technology Committee recommendations on science publishing now available. For Summary of Recommendations, click here. Richard Poynder's comments on the Government's response which was based on a misunderstanding of the Committee's recommendations, click here.
University of Namibia sets up Institutional Archive and defines Open Access policy
Links/Resources
Registry of Open Access Repositories Material Archiving Policies (ROARMAP), listing policies of organisations and mandates in place or under development
Registry of Open Access Repositories, listing over >900 institutional repositories (IRs) and the number of documents archived in each, together with other information
Directory of Open Access Journals, a directory of over 2800 free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals, together with other OA information
Open Archives Initiative (OAI) Development of standard protocol (Open Archives Metadata Harvesting Protocol, OAMHP)
Bioline International open access publications for developing country - >90 OA bioscience journals published in developing countries, also archived in the eprints server
SciELO - > 200 OA journals from Latin America and other lusaphone countries
E-prints
Handbook:
guidance for researchers and managers setting up eprints servers for archiving
institutional research output.
Frequently asked questions (FAQ) files on Open Access: a) Budapest Open Access Initiative FAQ on OA institutional archiving; b) EPT FAQ for scientists and publishers in developing countries
Articles/Publications
'Open access: a giant leap towards bridging health inequities',Leslie Chan, Subbiah Arunachalam, Barbara Kirsop, WHO Bulletin, Volume 87, Number 8, August 2009, 565-644: http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/87/8/09-064659/en/index.html
'The chain of communication in health science: from researcher to health worker thtrough open access', Leslie Chan, Subbian Arunachalam, Barbara kirsop, Open Medicine, Volume 3, Number 3, 2009: http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/298/245
ARIADNE publication, Issue 52, July 2007, 'Access to Scientific Knowledge for Sustainable Development: options for developing countries', B Kirsop, S Arunachalam, L Chan.
Open Access Archiving: the fast track to building research capacity in developing countries, Subbiah Arunachalam, Leslie Chan and Barbara Kirsop- published by SciDev.Net, November 2005. A paper describing the benefits of open access archiving for developing country scientists and publishers.
SciDev.Net article on importance of OA for global research information exchange from Donat Agosti, and response from Subbiah Arunachalam, Leslie Chan and Barbara Kirsop.
An article, 'Open Access to Science in the Developing World', by Peter Suber and Subbiah Arunachalam has been prepared for inclusion in the InfoPaper for the November 2005 meeting of the World Summit on the Information Society
The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper, July 2002 - prepared by Raym Crow
Setting up an institutional eprint archive, April 2002, Stephen Pinfield, Mike Gardner and John MacColl, ARIADNE issue 31.
Keystroke Economy: A Study of the Time and Effort involved in Self-Archiving, April 2005, Leslie Carr, Stevan Harnad, University of Southampton, UK
The evolution of an institutional e-prints archive at the University of Glasgow, July 2002, William Nixon
Open Archiving Opportunities for Developing Countries, November, 2001, ARIADNE issue 30, Leslie Chan and Barbara Kirsop (contains many links to open access initiatives).
Briefing on electronic publishing:"Wake up to the Web", Nature, January 21st, 1999, page 195. (See also, Nature, January 7th, 'Internet may help bridge the gap')
Workshop Reports and Ppt presentations
2008
- Brisbane, Australia Conference, September 24-26th 2008, Open Access and Research has lead to the development of the OA Brisbane Declaration. For details, see EPT Blog.
- Cuba, September 2-5, 2008: International Workshop for Open Access to Scientific Literature and other Digital Scientific Information Resources in Central America and the Caribbean: Focus on Education and Health for Sustainable Development, organised and supported by the IAP and the Cuban Academy of Science.
- The Berlin 6 OA conference (Dusseldorf, Germany, November 11-13, 2008) has just posted its preliminary program. There is a
plenary session on Open Access for Development, to be organised by EPT Trustee, Subbiah Arunachalam.-
- Full text downloads of papers presented at ELPUB Conference, June 2008 can be accessed from http://www.elpub.net/
- Full text downloads and video's of presentations at the recent ICTP workshop in Trieste, ' Open Access models for sciencedissemination' can be accessed from http://sdu.ictp.it/openaccess/.
2007
- BERLIN 5 Conference, Padua September 2007, 'From Practice to Impact: Consequences of Knowledge Dissemination', programme and ppt presentations.
- CODATA Workshop, Atibia, Brazil, May 2007 on 'Strategies for Open and Permanent Access to Scientific Information in Latin America', with valuable ppt presentations, providing a picture of the current situation in Latin America.
- Presentations made at International Conference on Electronic Publishing, ELPUB 2007, 13-15th June, Vienna.
2006 and previously
- November 2006: Two OA workshops in India! Workshops in Bangalore and Hyderabad accelerated the progress towards OA. The Bangalore workshop agreed a model National OA Policy for Developing Countries.
- A powerpoint presentation by Alma Swan (Key Perspectives Ltd.) has been presented at the Southampton University OA meeting, February 2005. It provides information resulting from a survey carried out on OA Archiving and the attitude of authors to this development.
- UK OA Institutional Archiving
organisations meeting at the University of Southampton February
2005, to provide technical and policy support. The presentations
are available online.
- Bangalore (Indian Academy of Science) e-publishing Workshops, March 8-10 and 12-14th 2002: Aims, Faculty and Programme. For full details, link to the workshops site. See also the extensive Report from the Indian Academy of Science, prepared by N A Prakash.
- Kyiv
Open Access and Scholarly Communication Workshop, February 17-19 2005, Kyiv,
Ukraine
For full details of the workshop, link to the
workshop site.
Pre- 2000 E-publishing initiatives in developing countries
- Statistics for usage (January 1997 -November 2000) of bioscience journals published in developing countries with the support of EPT, distributed by Bioline International
- Electronic Publishing in Zimbabwe, 1999, Dr Janet Hussein, University of Zimbabwe
- Report on Electronic Publishing in Kenya, 1999, Daisy Ouya, International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology(ICIPE), Kenya
- Letter to Nature 'Closing the S-N knowledge gap' from EPT, published January 21st, 1999, 397, 201
=====================================================================================
Workshop proceedings are posted on the Access to Knowledge
web-site:
http://www.a2k.org.ua/?lng=en .
Report on Workshops on Electronic Publishing
of Scientific Information,
organised by the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore
March 8-10 and March 12-14 2002
The following account provides the objectives, faculty and programme for the workshops. Complete details with links to PowerPoint presentations etc are available from the Workshops WebSite established during the workshops.
The workshops were initiated by Professor Subbiah Arunachalam (Trustee EPT) and organised by the Indian Academy of Science. The two facilitators were Professor Leslie Chan (EPT Trustee) and Barbara Kirsop (Secretary EPT).
Objectives
- To raise awareness about international developments in e-publishing and their implication for publishers in the developing world.
- To outline the management issues involved in undertaking an electronic publishing project, including target definition, infrastructure requirement, human resources and technical needs.
- To give hands-on practice in the basics of web document authoring, layout, design, incorporating graphics, links, etc.
- To devise a means of communication and support for the participating institutions, through, for example, setting up a user group and developing a model site.
- Representatives from publishers and/or institutions that are interested in and ready to undertake electronic publishing projects involving scientific information. The workshop is designed for those who will do the hands-on production, design and layout for e-journals. Ideally, there should be a mix of editors, authors and technicians, to discuss the broader management issues.
Handouts provided for participants:
- Article - Open archiving opportunities for developing countries, by Chan and Kirsop.
- Document - Budapest Open Access Initiative.
- List of international developments (BMC, SciELO, OAI, etc.) with brief statement about each.
- Document - Draft CEIC Best Practices (PDF file, 41 kbytes) (from Kapil Paranjape).
- Article - Online or invisible?, by Steve Lawrence (PDF file, 65 kbytes) (from Subbiah Arunachalam)
- Article - Getting started in electronic journal publishing, by Sally Morris, ALPSP (from INASP)
- Flowchart - Process and decisions in publishing online journals (JPEG image, 114 kbytes).
- Information sheets - The Journal Server Trust mission statement (PDF file, 39 kbytes) and journal list (PDF file; 41 kbytes) (distribution requested by The Journal Server Trust, not part of planned workshop material).
Facilities
- Computer workstation per person
Internet access
Scanner with software able to output JPEG or GIF
Scanner with OCR
Web server so files can be stored centrally and links built between them
Software: Image editing (PaintShopPro or similar), graphic design, html editor, site management (Macromedia DreamWeaver, Macromedia Fireworks, Adobe Acrobat)
Facilitators
- Prof. Leslie
Chan, University of Toronto
at Scarborough and Bioline
International
Barbara Kirsop, Electronic Publishing Trust for Development
Other faculty
- Prof. Gadadhar
Misra, Indian Statistical
Institute Bangalore
Prof. V. Pati, ISI Bangalore
Prof. D. P. Patil, Indian Institute of Science
Dr T. B. Rajasekhar, IISc
Prof.Subbiah Arunachalam, M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation
Programme
First day: Seminars and discussions
Morning:
9:00—9:30 Opening remarks
Prof. N. Balakrishnan, Chairman, Information Sciences Division, Indian Institute of Science
Professor S Arunachalam, MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai
9:30 — 11:00
- Overview of electronic publishing:
trends and directions (Chan)
PowerPoint file, 28 kbytes | HTML) - Electronic publishing from the stakeholders’ view (Kirsop)
- What’s in it for developing countries?
(PowerPoint file, 588 Kbytes | HTML) - What’s is in it for the scientist?
(PowerPoint file, 16 Kbytes | HTML) - What’s is in it for the scholarly
society publisher?
(PowerPoint file, 31 Kbytes | HTML) - What’s is in it for the library?
11:00 — 11:30 Tea Break
11:30 — 13:00
- Electronic publishing in developing
countries:
Case studies — SciELO (Chan and Kirsop)
(PowerPoint file sent by Abel Packer, 140 Kbytes | HTML) - Electronic publishing in India: open discussion
- The Open Archiving Movement and its implications (Chan)
13:00 — 14:00 Lunch Break
Afternoon:
14:00 — 15:00: Demonstration
- Bioline International (Kirsop
and Chan)
(PowerPoint file, 86 Kbytes | HTML) - Harmonization of diverse file formats
Integration into host system (source files)
Numbering/file sizes
Preparation of abstracts (XML)
Transfer to host (ftp)
Subscriptions management
Income management and transfer
Monitoring usage
Promotion
15:00 — 15:30 Tea Break
15:30 — 17:30
- Misra, Pati and Patil
- TeX
and publishing in mathematics
and physics
Putting documents on open archive (www.arXiv.org) - Chan
- Open Archive Initiative and server interoperability
- Setting up an open archive
Uploading documents
Demonstration of an OAI-compliant eprints server
Second Day: Hands-on workshop
Morning:
9:30 — 11:00
- Policy and management issues in electronic publishing (Chan and Kirsop)
- Technology requirements
Quality assurance
Document management
Copyright issues - Economic models
(PowerPoint file, 15 Kbytes | HTML) - Workflow in the electronic environment (Chan)
- Comparison of print and electronic
procedures
File formats and document conversion
Electronic first and multiple outputs
Document encoding and transmission
Display and outputs
11:00 — 11:30 Coffee Break
11:30 — 13:00
- Distinction of HTML, SGML, XML
(Chan)
(PowerPoint file, 34 Kbytes | HTML) - Essentials of HTML
13:00— 14:00 Lunch Break
Afternoon:
14:00—15:30
- Creating a simple web document (Participants to bring a research paper for using as model)
- Adding links (relative and absolute
links)
Adding graphics (formats)
Simple interactivity (forms and scripts)
15:30 — 16:00 Tea Break
16:00 — 17:30
- Metadata and bibliographic control (Chan)
- Citation linking, Cross-Ref, DOI, OpenURL
- A presentation on metadata
(Rajasekhar)
(PowerPoint file, 937 Kbytes | HTML) - When to use PDF
- Pros and cons of PDF (Chan)
(PowerPoint file, 34 Kbytes | HTML)
Third Day: Hands-on workshop
Morning:
9:30 — 11:00
- Planning and co-ordination of complex e-journal projects
- Organization
Tools
Platform
Archiving
Rights management
11:00 — 11:30 Tea Break
11:30 — 13:00
- Continuation of morning session
13:00 — 14:00 Lunch Break
Afternoon:
14:00 — 15:30
- Building a 'scout' site for epublishing in India
Group effort in creating a portal of epublishing resources and links to scientific publications from India
15:30 — 16:00 Coffee Break
16:00 — 17:30
- Concluding comments (Chan and
Kirsop)
(PowerPoint file, 16 kybtes | HTML) - Future plans
- A proposal for an Indian Journal
Server Initiative (by Dr D. K. Sahu (Journal of Postgraduate Medicine),
a participant)
(PowerPoint file, 42 Kbytes | HTML) - Workshop evaluation
Budapest Open Access Initiative
An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. The public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds. Removing access barriers to this literature will accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge.
For various reasons, this kind of free and unrestricted online availability, which we will call open access, has so far been limited to small portions of the journal literature. But even in these limited collections, many different initiatives have shown that open access is economically feasible, that it gives readers extraordinary power to find and make use of relevant literature, and that it gives authors and their works vast and measurable new visibility, readership, and impact. To secure these benefits for all, we call on all interested institutions and individuals to help open up access to the rest of this literature and remove the barriers, especially the price barriers, that stand in the way. The more who join the effort to advance this cause, the sooner we will all enjoy the benefits of open access.
The literature that should be freely accessible online is that which scholars give to the world without expectation of payment. Primarily, this category encompasses their peer-reviewed journal articles, but it also includes any unreviewed preprints that they might wish to put online for comment or to alert colleagues to important research findings. There are many degrees and kinds of wider and easier access to this literature. By "open access" to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.
While the peer-reviewed journal literature should be accessible online without cost to readers, it is not costless to produce. However, experiments show that the overall costs of providing open access to this literature are far lower than the costs of traditional forms of dissemination. With such an opportunity to save money and expand the scope of dissemination at the same time, there is today a strong incentive for professional associations, universities, libraries, foundations, and others to embrace open access as a means of advancing their missions. Achieving open access will require new cost recovery models and financing mechanisms, but the significantly lower overall cost of dissemination is a reason to be confident that the goal is attainable and not merely preferable or utopian.
To achieve open access to scholarly journal literature, we recommend two complementary strategies.
I. Self-Archiving: First, scholars need the tools and assistance to deposit their refereed journal articles in open electronic archives, a practice commonly called, self-archiving. When these archives conform to standards created by the Open Archives Initiative, then search engines and other tools can treat the separate archives as one. Users then need not know which archives exist or where they are located in order to find and make use of their contents.
II. Alternative Journals: Second, scholars need the means to launch a new generation of alternative journals committed to open access, and to help existing journals that elect to make the transition to open access. Because journal articles should be disseminated as widely as possible, these new journals will no longer invoke copyright to restrict access to and use of the material they publish. Instead they will use copyright and other tools to ensure permanent open access to all the articles they publish. Because price is a barrier to access, these new journals will not charge subscription or access fees, and will turn to other methods for covering their expenses. There are many alternative sources of funds for this purpose, including the foundations and governments that fund research, the universities and laboratories that employ researchers, endowments set up by discipline or institution, friends of the cause of open access, profits from the sale of add-ons to the basic texts, funds freed up by the demise or cancellation of journals charging traditional subscription or access fees, or even contributions from the researchers themselves. There is no need to favor one of these solutions over the others for all disciplines or nations, and no need to stop looking for other, creative alternatives.
Open access to peer-reviewed journal literature is the goal. Self-archiving
(I.) and a new generation of open-access alternative journals (II.)
are the ways to attain this goal. They are not only direct and effective
means to this end, they are within the reach of scholars themselves, immediately,
and need not wait on changes brought about by markets or legislation. While
we endorse the two strategies just outlined, we also encourage experimentation
with further ways to make the transition from the present methods of dissemination
to open access. Flexibility, experimentation, and adaptation to local circumstances
are the best ways to assure that progress in diverse settings will be rapid,
secure, and long-lived.
The Open Society Institute, the foundation network founded by philanthropist George Soros, is committed to providing initial help and funding to realize this goal. It will use its resources and influence to extend and promote institutional self-archiving, to launch new open-access journals, and to help an open-access journal system become economically self-sustaining. While the Open Society Institute's commitment and resources are substantial, this initiative is very much in need of other organizations to lend their effort and resources.
We invite governments, universities, libraries, journal editors, publishers, foundations, learned societies, professional associations, and individual scholars who share our vision to join us in the task of removing the barriers to open access and building a future in which research and education in every part of the world are that much more free to flourish.
February 14, 2002
Budapest, Hungary
Leslie Chan: Bioline International
Darius Cuplinskas: Director, Information Program, Open
Society Institute
Michael Eisen: Public Library of Science
Fred Friend: Director Scholarly Communication, University
College London
Yana Genova: Next Page Foundation
Jean-Claude Guédon: University of Montreal
Melissa Hagemann: Program Officer, Information Program, Open
Society Institute
Stevan Harnad: Professor of Cognitive Science, University
of Southampton, Universite du Quebec a Montreal
Rick Johnson: Director, Scholarly Publishing and
Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)
Rima Kupryte: Open Society Institute
Manfredi La Manna: Electronic Society for Social Scientists
István Rév: Open Society Institute, Open
Society Archives
Monika Segbert: eIFL Project consultant
Sidnei de Souza: Informatics Director at CRIA, Bioline
International
Peter Suber: Professor of Philosophy, Earlham College
& The Free Online Scholarship Newsletter
Jan Velterop: Publisher, BioMed Central
Open Archiving Opportunities for Developing Countries:
towards equitable distribution of global
knowledge
Leslie
Chan, Barbara Kirsop
November 2001
Although the World Wide Web is less than a
decade old, it already has had a profound impact on scientific publishing and
scholarly communication. In particular, open standards and low-cost networking
tools are opening many possibilities for reducing and even eliminating entirely
the cost barriers to scientific publications. 1
One development that has great potential
value for poorly-resourced countries is "open archiving", or the
deposition of scholarly research papers into networked servers accessible over
the Internet. 2 This process allows scientists in the south to
retrieve research results from the north through an online interoperable
mechanism. Equally, it allows scientists in the south to contribute to the
global knowledge base through participation. The purpose of this article is to
inform scientists and publishers in the developing world about this and related
initiatives and so allow informed decisions to be made about participation. Our
intention is not to provide technical details about electronic publishing and
the set up of "eprint" servers for open archiving, but rather to
focus on the strategic significance of open archiving for scientists from
developing countries.
Background
Since 1991, researchers in high-energy
physics around the world have been connected through an eprint archive set up
by Paul Ginsparg at the Los Alamos National Research Laboratory in New Mexico.
Since its inception, the scope of the archive (now known as arXiv) has expanded
to include many areas of physics, mathematics and computer science and archived
papers can now be accessed free of charge from over a dozen world wide mirror
sites.3 The eprint archive receives two-thirds of its two million
weekly hits from institutions outside the United States, including many
research facilities in developing regions. The archive has become indispensable
to researchers world wide, but in particular to research institutions that
would otherwise be excluded from the front line of science for economic and
sociological reasons.4
The success and wide adoption of arXiv has
prompted new thinking about the reform of scientific publishing in other
disciplines. Scientists have become aware of the many benefits conferred by
open archiving, such as the removal of the cost barrier to high-priced
journals, the reduction of time in announcing research findings, and the
provision of access to all with Internet capability. As a result, other
e-servers have been set up5 and the movement to free scientific
publishing from financial restrictions has been growing steadily.6
Among the best known proponents of these
developments is Stevan Harnad's advocacy for authors to self-archive their
published papers (postprints) which, if adopted widely, would lead to the
ultimate removal of cost barriers for the exchange of publicly funded research
information.7 These developments have generated much debate and a
number of international initiatives have evolved to refine and standardise the
archiving procedure.
One important international movement is the
Open Archives Initiative (OAI), which aims to develop and promote the use of a
standard protocol, known as the Open Archives Metadata Harvesting Protocol
(OAMHP), designed for better sharing and retrieval of eprints residing in
distributed archives.8 With the OAI harvesting protocol, articles in
OAI compliant servers will form a global library that facilitates searching,
data retrieval, cross-linking, as well as stable long-term archiving.9
Types of Archiving
There are various forms of open archiving.
The term 'self archiving' is often used to refer to the process whereby
individual authors submit their own papers to a server or archive of their
choice. There are 'institutional archives', where authors submit eprints to a
server administered by an organisation or scholarly society, commonly their
university or research institute; there are also discipline-based archives and
other speciality archives.10
An important example of a speciality archive
is the Electronic Research Archive in International Health (ERA), set up by the
long-established international medical journal, The Lancet.11 This
archive allows medical researchers to deposit papers of special relevance to
health issues met in many developing countries. Papers submitted are reviewed
before acceptance and are thereafter archived and available online free to all.
Benefits for developing countries
Archiving initiatives described above are of
great importance to all scientists, but particularly for those in the
developing world. Free access to research information from the north would have
incalculable benefits for local research.12 Of equal importance is the
opportunity for researchers in these countries to contribute to the global
knowledge base by archiving their own research literature, thereby reducing the
south to north knowledge gap and professional isolation.13 Equally,
there now exists an increasingly available means to distribute local research
in a way that is highly visible and without the difficulties that are sometimes
met in publishing in journals (e.g. biased discrimination between submissions
generated in the north and south).
A key benefit for developing country
scientists is that global participation could take place without further delay.
The academic communities in poorer countries can take advantage of servers
anywhere in the world offering OAI services, without the need to set up their own
independent servers or maintain them. Establishing partners, either S/N or S/S,
can minimise infrastructure costs, share expertise and readily become part of
the international interoperable effort.
Common misconceptions
Some of the recently established archives
have not been as well supported as was hoped because of a number of
misconceptions about the nature of the archives and the professional
consequences of collaboration. Since any individual could 'publish' material
online, there is a concern that self-archiving could lead to 'vanity press'
that has not undergone quality control procedures. However, scholarly archives,
while possibly containing both refereed (postprints) and non-refereed material
(preprints), nevertheless provide clear options for readers to selectively
retrieve material.14 The experience of physicist/mathematicians who
have used open archiving for a number of years shows that quality of research
is not jeopardised by the process, since researchers that submit material are
concerned with their reputation and professional credibility and their work is
open for review by their peers around the world. Therefore, 'vanity publishing'
by individuals must be distinguished from the institutional or author-archiving
of preprints of papers submitted for peer review.
Another concern is that the volume of
material available online makes it more difficult to find and retrieve required
material. However, efforts such as the OAMHP, with its emphasis on common
metadata standards, are designed specifically to address the issues of accurate
and efficient retrieval and interoperability with other OAI-compliant servers.15
It should be mentioned that there are a number of large-scale initiatives, such
as PubMedCentral, 16 offering free access to papers that are not
using the OAI protocols and are therefore not necessarily interoperable with
the OAI-compliant archive. But increasingly, these open access archives are
moving towards becoming OAI-compliant as the power of interoperability is now
widely recognised.17
Indeed, due to the growing popularity of the
OAI movement, commercial publishers are adopting the OAI protocols in some
cases so that their publications are interoperable with free-to-all archived
documents. Unlike true open archives, access to such servers are restricted to
those who can afford the high cost of subscription, which creates access
barriers even for some of the research institutions in the north. It is
therefore important to remember that "open" archive does not
necessarily mean that the content is available free of charge, as
"open" refers to the open technical framework and the open
architecture of the archive that promotes easy exchange of information between
compatible servers.18
Copyright is also seen by many as a major
concern. In the paper era, researchers routinely sign away their copyright to
publishers in exchange for the opportunity to make their research known and to
gain career advancements. However, in the electronic era authors are becoming
increasingly aware of their rights and professional need to distribute their
own research as widely as they can for maximum impact, while retaining academic
credibility through peer review. Authors in developing countries who wish to publish
in printed journals should ensure they retain the rights to submit to archives,
either at once or subsequently. Some authors who are unable to obtain such
rights from their preferred journal have elected to publish elsewhere,19
and increasing numbers of major journals are relaxing their restrictions on
author self-archiving or institutional-archiving.20 Increasingly,
authors archive the pre-print before submission to their chosen journal and, if
archiving rights are not obtained, the linked corrigenda.
Limitations
For scientists in poor countries, a major
obstacle to participating in these developments is the lack of awareness of the
availability of the different mechanisms for distributing and accessing
research documents. Since most of the developments and services are on the
Internet, the lack of awareness is caused mainly by the lack of
telecommunications infrastructure in the developing world. However, there are
major international and local efforts to invest in the infrastructure and there
is growing optimism that with time this problem of 'digital divide' will be
resolved.21 Additionally, the development of telecentres, way
stations or staging posts, radio communication and similar efforts will help
regional development and encourage participation.22
Another cause of the lack of awareness is a
lack of concerted effort from the archive institutions and the development
agencies to inform and promote the new practices regarding the use of the
technology. It is therefore important that the information in this short
briefing is distributed as widely as possible.
Where are we now?
The OAI is widely consulting with
institutions and library communities in refining standards and protocols that
serve the researchers needs. New open archives are becoming established in many
universities and libraries that will ultimately become part of the network of
archives accessible to all [see directory of archives at www.openarchives.org].
Open source and free software have been developed and are currently being
improved for use by institutions wishing to set up their own archives in an
interoperable way.23
While this international movement is
spreading rapidly and its potential is increasingly recognised, the process is
at an early stage. Active testings of many of these developments are ongoing
and it is important that the needs of developing countries are considered
during the refinements.
Conclusion
This is an encouraging time for scientists
everywhere as means of communication improve. Opportunities are great, but to
ensure that the needs of academic communities in the developing world are not
left out, further awareness, consultation and partnership building are
required. We recommend that scientists keep aware of these initiatives, keep
all publishing options open and inform colleagues of opportunities now underway
through regional discussions. The EPT will continue to monitor progress and
post new developments on its web site.24 An experimental server has
been set up by one of the EPT Trustees and is ready for evaluation.25
The issues involved in open archiving and the movement to free scholarly
literature are hotly debated on several online discussion fora hosted, for
example, by American Scientist and Nature, the past contributions of which are
archived and all available online.26 Readers who wish to familiarise
themselves with these issues may wish to consult these archives and the
references provided below.
Footnotes
1Declan Butler, 'The writing is on
the web for science journals in print'. Nature 397, 195 - 200 (1999).
2Networked servers are often referred to as "repositories"
or as "archives", hence the term open archiving. However, the servers
are not archives in the technical sense or the library community's
understanding of repositories or archives.
3Los Alamos Preprint Archive (arXive):http://www.arxive.org. Note that this archive moved to
Cornell University in July 2001.
4Subbiah Arunachalam has written extensively on the obstacles
scientists face in developing countries. See "Accessing information
published in the Third World: Should spreading the word from the Third World
always be like swimming against the current?" Journal of Scientific and
Industrial Research, 53, 408-417. 1994.
5RePEc (Research Papers in Economics, http://www.repec.org/), CogPrints (for cognitive science,
http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/), Economics and the PhilSci Archive
(for philosophers of science, http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/).
6The Free Online Scholarship (FOS) newsletter published by Peter
Suber is a highly useful source for keeping up to date with developments in all
areas related to the electronic scholarly publishing: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/
7The many informed writings by Steven
Harnad on the movement to free the refereed literature is
available on his personal website: http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/intpub.html. Read in particular his more recent
paper, "For Whom the Gate Tolls? How and Why to Free the Refereed Research
Literature Online Through Author/Institution Self-Archiving, Now." http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm
8See key documents on the OAI web site: SIZE=2http://www.openarchives.org
9See Lynch, Clifford (2001) Metadata Harvesting and the Open
Archives Initiative.
ARL Bimonthly Report 217 August 2001. http://www.arl.org/newsltr/217/mhp.html
10Op cit
11The Lancet's NetPrints for Clinical Medicine and Health Research: http://clinmed.netprints.org
12Godlee et al. Global information flow: Publishers should provide
information free to resource poor countries. BMJ 2000;321:776-777
( 30 September ). Online: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/321/7264/776
13Canhos et al. "Close the
South-North knowledge gap", Nature, Vol 397, pg. 201, Jan. 1999
14See for example the Open Citation (OpCit) project at the
University of Southampton: http://opcit.eprints.org/. See also Hitchcock and Hall,
"How Dynamic E-journals can Interconnect Open Access Archives."
Online: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~sh94r/elpub01-online.html
15see 9
16PubMedCentral: http://www.pubmedcentral.org
17Two notable services that recently announced their compliance to
the OAI protocols are BioMedCentral http://www.biomedcentral.com, and the Chemistry Preprint Server http://preprint.chemweb.com/
18See the FAQ on the OAI web site: http://www.openarchives.org
19 The Public Library of Science, http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org/ and the Scholarly Publishing and
Academic Resources Coalition supported by the Association of Research
Libraries, are significant movements that are hastening significant reforms in
scholarly publishing and lowering and removing barriers to access to publicly
funded research results. See http://www.arl.org/sparc/home for details.
20The prestigious journals Nature and Science, and the American
Psychological Association have all recently relaxed their policies regarding
author self-archiving.
21The United Nation has been greatly concerned about the imbalance
in access to communication facilities. An ICT Task Force of the United Nations
has recently been set up by Secretary-General Kofi Annan "to find new,
creative and quick-acting means to spread the benefits of the digital
revolution and avert the prospect of a two-tiered world information
society." See http://www.unicttaskforce.org
22Telecentres, Waystations/Staging
Posts: http://www.iwsp.org
23The free 'eprints software' released by The University of
Southampton, http://www.eprints.org, is designed to run centralised,
discipline-based as well as distributed, institution-based archives of
scholarly publications and 'Kepler' is a simple OAI repository tool that claims
to allow individual researchers to participate in the OAI with a minimum of
effort. Details about Kepler and how it is implemented can be found at http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april01/maly/04maly.html
24The EPT web site: http://www.epublishingtrust.org. See also 'The Electronic
Publishing Trust for Development (EPT): putting developing country journals
online'. Proceedings of Scientific Communication & Publishing in the
Information Age. 1999. Online: http://www.inasp.info/psi/scpw/papers/kirsop.html
25The eprint server is located at: http://eprints.utsc.utoronto.ca
26American Scientists forum on freeing the refereed scientific
literature: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/september98-forum.html. Nature's Forum on future e-access
to the primary literature: http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/
Leslie Chan, Centre for Instructional Development Technology, is a Trustee of the EPT and the Associate Director of Bioline International that distributes journals from developing countries.
Barbara Kirsop is the Secretary of the EPT and an advisory board member for Bioline International.
November 2001
JOURNAL PUBLISHING AS A BUSINESS:
IMPROVING
THE BALANCE SHEET THROUGH ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING
Janet
Hussein, 1999
Senior Editor, Zimbabwe Science News and
President of the Zimbabwe Scientific Association, P O Box CY 124, Causeway,
Harare, Zimbabwe.
Introduction
Thanks to Serah Mwanycky of the African
Academy of Sciences for inviting me to write this short article. It is based on
my presentation at the workshop of the African Journals Support and Development
Centre (AJSDC), during the Zimbabwe Book Fair, in August 1998 . I discuss some
of the problems facing us as journal publishers in Africa and highlight some
benefits that electronic publishing may offer to reduce costs and increase
income to publishers.
I have been involved in Scientific Journal
Publishing for the last five years both as an editor and as the coordinator of
our publications committee. I expect the problems that we face in Zimbabwe are
familiar to many of you. These include dwindling financial backing from
Government and corporate sponsors, spiralling publication costs and increasing
competition with greater numbers of journals being produced. This means that
our journals cost more, come out irregularly and may not look as attractive as
they once were. This in turn leads to frustration from subscribers and authors
who may then not continue to support the journals, leading to a downward spiral
in support and income. However, we remain positive that it is worth the effort
and frequent frustration to keep the long tradition of our journals going. We
remain committed to producing good quality African Journals that can stand up
and be counted with other quality journals around the world and that can give
exposure to local research, education, development and technology.
Background
The Zimbabwe Scientific Association (ZSA)
was founded in 1899 and celebrates its centenary next year. The ZSA publishes
two journals:
The Transactions of the Zimbabwe Scientific
Association. This is a multi-disciplinary, refereed publication, produced once
a year. It is now in its 71st volume with about 550 subscribers. The Zimbabwe
Science News (ZSN). This is a semi-popular, multi-disciplinary publication,
produced four times a year. It is currently in its 32nd volume with about 1 000
subscribers.
Income and Expenditure
In order for a journal to operate as a
viable business, income has to exceed expenditure. Given the current financial
problems experienced by many developing countries, maintenance of this
viability is an uphill battle.
Table 1 itemises the main income and
expenditure of our two journals and includes some strategies that we have used
to increase our income and decrease our expenditure.
Table 1. Current income and expenditure
items for ZSA journals
|
INCOME |
Relative contribution |
EXPENDITURE |
Relative cost |
|
Subscriptions |
XXXX |
Printing |
XXXX |
|
Advertisements |
X |
Packing & postage |
X |
|
Sponsored theme issues |
XX |
Administration (subscription manager) |
XX |
|
Corporate sponsors |
none |
Typesetting |
X |
|
Government funding |
XX |
Stationery & sundries |
X |
|
Page costs (paid by author) |
none as yet |
Editorial costs |
None as yet |
Subscriptions
Subscriptions should keep reasonably
affordable, as many subscribers are facing economic problems, including
University and college libraries. However, the subscriptions must keep abreast
of inflation. Subscriber numbers may fall if the journals are not produced
regularly or if they are not produced to a good visual quality leading to an
ever decreasing revenue base. Aggressive marketing can sometimes help to
increase numbers but then the publishers have to deliver on time and up to
standard! The readership base is also sometimes limited by the content of the
journal.
Advertisements
Procuring advertisements is difficult due to
the low circulation numbers and the sometimes erratic production dates.
However, the advertisers can be charged comparatively low rates and can get
good exposure to a targeted audience. We have found that advertisers are more
keen if there are thematic issues which help to promote their products e.g.
pharmaceutical companies may wish to advertise in health/medical issues.
Sponsored theme issues
This approach can frequently be successful.
The journal may be used to publish proceedings from conferences or to publish
results from donor-funded projects.
Corporate sponsors
This used to be a major source of income for
our journals but sponsorship has decreased with increasing economic problems in
the country. However, if appropriate corporate sponsors are found, this can
provide regular income to the journals. The sponsoring company can then be
afforded advertising space or receive acknowledgement in the journal.
Government funding
This has dwindled, but still provides basic
support for which the publishers are grateful.
Page costs
Although we do not charge page costs, a
number of international journals do so and this remains an option for the
future. Page costs certainly provide a regular income but may sometimes
penalise good scientists, who do not have the sufficient funds at their
disposal to pay for printing costs. Scientists should therefore be encouraged
to build in publishing/page costs when applying for project funds.
Printing
This remains the main cost of producing our
journals with expenditure increasing by 100 % within the last few years. We
have managed to cut costs by producing black/white instead of colour issues
where possible, by using cheaper printing agencies such as the University and
by using lower cost paper and cardboard. This means inevitably that we lose
quality and attractiveness. However, we feel it is more important to try and
get the journals out regularly rather than aiming for a "coffee
table" appeal. If sponsorship is found, colour issues are produced.
Electronic publishing offers an opportunity
to do away with printing costs. This is discussed in more detail in a later
section of the article.
Packing and postage
These costs are kept to a minimum by using
plastic sleeves instead of envelopes for postage and by using low cost flyers
and address labels. Journals are sent by surface mail to overseas subscribers
and we try not to exceed a final weight of 100 g for each journal as this keep
our postage lower. Again, electronic publishing offers the opportunity to
reduce these costs.
Administration (subscription/business
manager)
It is necessary to have an active
administrator or business manager to maintain subscriptions and monitor income
and expenditure.
Typesetting, stationery & sundries
The time taken to typeset is minimised by
ensuring that papers are submitted, then edited and stored on floppy discs.
Stationery and sundries will inevitably increase with time but can be minimised
with careful planning
Editorial costs
These are currently not costed, as they are
provided through voluntary service of editors. However, this involves many
hours of hard work which may not be forthcoming in the future.
Electronic publishing
Electronic publishing allows for greatly
reduced production and distribution costs and fast output of journals. The ZSA
first venture into electronic publishing about 3 years ago following advice
from Profesor Ekwamu, editor of the African Crop Science Journal. We approached
the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development (EPT) in conjunction with
Bioline Publications. They kindly assisted us in putting our two journals
online through the Bioline system. We also received a grant from the Southern
Africa Book Development Education Trust (SABDET) in 1997 to assist us in
improving our electronic publishing infrastructure and skills.
Some new journals are fully electronically
distributed with no hard copies being produced whilst others, like the ZSA journals,
use the dual mediums of print and electronic distribution.
There are many advantages to being online,
some of which are discussed below:
Lower production costs compared to printing
and distributing hard copies of the journal. Printing costs are borne by
subscribers who locate papers online and then download and print out the papers
at their home or office. Distribution costs may be reduced provided the costs
of maintaining the web site and online subscriptions are less that
packing/postage. Printing/postage time saved. Some journals may take 1 to 3
months to be printed and then a further 1 to 8 weeks to be posted and reach
their destination. This time lag can be greatly reduced with electronic
publishing, which allow the journals to be sent out timelessly. Greater
exposure for the journals - which is wonderful for African publishers trying to
expand their readership base. For example, Bioline is accessed (receives hits)
from about 60,000 sites per year, leading to far greater exposure of our two journals.
However, greater exposure means that the journals are exposed to much greater
scrutiny and they must therefore be of good enough quality to sustain
this exposure. Bioline can also provide monthly records of accessions to
subscribing journals, so that editors can assess who/where is interested in
their publication. Possible income generation by sale of papers. Internet users
can buy "reprints" of journal papers through Bioline. This offers a
possible source of income (foreign exchange!) after Bioline costs have been
met. Hypertext links add value to the journal papers. For example an article on
enzymes may have hypertext links to the world enzyme data bank. The value to
the reader is thus greatly enhanced. More interest from potential authors. We
have found the people are more willing to write papers and publish in our
journals as they feel they are getting greater exposure.
Future developments
Many of our subscribers cannot afford access
to the internet or live in rural areas which do not have internet facilities.
So, for the foreseeable future, our journals will continue to be distributed
both as hard copy and electronically. Further ahead, we would like to see a
situation where sales of electronic material could help to subsidise more hard
copies, which we could then send to readers/institutions that are unable to
afford subscriptions. Alternatively, we could make electronic access free to
certain deserving but poor institutions.
Our editorial team needs to improve their
electronic publishing skills through proper training in the production of html
files, graphic files, web pages and electronic marketing of our journals. We
also need to think about future electronic storage and archiving of our
journals. i.e. how long is the shelf life of floppy and hard discs, CD ROMS? Is
any new software we use going to be fully compatible with old software? How do
we best store our contents' lists and databases?
Acknowledgements
We extend our grateful thanks to ETP,
Bioline Publications and SABDET for assisting us to get online and for
improving our electronic publishing skills and getting us linked to the World
Wide Web.
ICIPE'S ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING EXPERIENCE MARCH
1998-MARCH 1999
from
the International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology
Nairobi,
Kenya
In August 1997, the editors of Insect
Science and Its Application (ISA), the International Journal of Tropical Insect
Science, were shown a flyer from the Zimbabwe Book Fair, detailing the vision
and collaborative activities of the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development
(EPT) and Bioline Publications. The same month, the journal contacted EPT to
explore the possibility of obtaining assistance for the on-line publication of
ISA. Electronic Publishing Trust responded positively, and undertook to source
the necessary funding to support a collaborative effort for the electronic
publication of ISA, once a mutual agreement was reached. In January 1998, ISA
learned that EPT had secured a SABDET grant to put the journal on-line on a
1-year pilot project starting in March 1998.
ICIPE had a number of distinct
advantages at the start of the project:
* During
a major restructuring exercise two years earlier, ICIPE had acquired new, faster
computers loaded with the latest typesetting, graphics and word processing
software, which permit the direct conversion of documents to html.
* ICIPE
had recently established its own internet server, and had leased a permanent
telephone connection to the local internet service provider, allowing for
reliable and efficient e-mail communication with Bioline. Furthermore, the
recently installed Web navigation programs facilitated better comprehension of
the e-publishing training offered by Bioline.
* Since
1987, ICIPE had been publishing ISA in-house using PageMaker desktop publishing
software, and all the journal's staff were computer-literate.
* Two
years earlier, ISA had started to scan and edit electronically, all of the
journal's graphics. In addition, the journal's compositor had recently taken a
local course in electronic image management (Adobe Photoshop).
Against this backdrop, Bioline
Publications provided easy-to-follow instructions via e-mail, and provided an
environment in which ISA could ask questions and receive prompt, authoritative
responses. Any problems that arose were in this way ironed out, and ISA was
able to proceed speedily towards preparing the journal for the Web.
Overall, the technology transfer went
smoothly, and solutions to the few bottlenecks below were quickly found by
Bioline.
* ISA
initially attempted to send to Bioline diskettes containing the journal's text
in ascii format. This did not work. ISA then exported PM documents to html and
ran a Word macro written specifically for this purpose by Bioline.
* The
journal's PageMaker Tables would get distorted during conversion to html.
Bioline offered directions that enabled ISA to easily and elegantly go around
this problem.
There remain only a few problems in
Web formatting of the journal, which should be solved with the next issue.
ICIPE is very pleased about the prospect of eventually becoming fully competent
in Web publishing, and in the near future being able to build this capacity
within the region in a collaborative, not-for-profit manner. We feel it is
important that publishers retain their independence and do not enter into
commercial partnerships that might affect their freedom of action in the
future.
We were gratified to hear that our
progress was well received by SABDET. We hope that this will lead to further
support for the on-line publishing of ISA and similar journals in Africa. We
would like to express our willingness to assist, in any way possible within the
means available, other publishers in this region that would be interested in
learning from our experience.
Daisy Ouya
Science Editor
Insect Science and Its Application
For ICIPE, Kenya
8 April 1999
Usage of Journal from Developing Countries January
1997-November 2000 (Bioline Web Statistics)
Key
to journals
BA - Biotecnologia Applicada
CA - Central African Journal of Medicine
CS - African Crop Science Journal
EA - East African Medical Journal
FB - Ichthyological Bulletin
FS - Ichthyological Special Publications
IB - Indian Journal of Biochemistry and Biophysics
IE - Indian Journal of Experimental Biology
IM - Indian Journal of Marine Sciences
NS - African Journal of Neurological Sciences
OC - Memorias do Oswaldo Cruz
TB - Tropical Biodiversity
TI - Insect Science and its Application
ZN - Zimbabwe Science News
ZS - Transactions of the Zimbabwe Scientific Association
ONLINE GUIDELINES ON USING THE WORLD-WIDE WEB FOR
SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING
Announcement
of a planned resource
A
tool for publishers in developing countries
Traditionally, scientists distribute the
results of their research in refereed journals. Until recently, these have been
bound, printed and published by commercial companies or scientific societies.
The advent of the World Wide Web (WWW) provides scientists and scientific
publishers with a new mechanism for the distribution of research that has the
potential to contribute significantly to its accessibility and value. This is
particularly important for research published in developing countries since it
provides the opportunity to vastly increase visibility of hitherto poorly
distributed research while at the same time using the power of the Internet to
enhance the value of their publications.
The ability to format material in
Web-compatible format and increase awareness of science generated in the poorer
countries not only closes the scientific knowledge gap from South to North
(particularly important in such areas as conservation, environmental sciences,
taxonomy and the medical sciences where a global picture is essential), but
provides international recognition for local scientists. This in turn
stimulates the development of the national science base, the establishment of
international partnerships, joint grant applications and, with time, income
from increased subscriptions or sale of single documents.
Perhaps, most importantly, Web visibility
removes the sense of professional isolation so often felt by developing country
scientists. As the recent Development Report from the World Bank says,
"Knowledge of how to treat common illnesses or improve crop yields is
critical, but the power of knowledge goes beyond the impact of specific
techniques. As people grasp the ways in which knowledge can improve their lives,
they are encouraged to seek out new knowledge and become agents of change
themselves".
The Manual will provide the technical and
management skills needed to move from the printed to the electronic
environment. It will be written by a distributed group of authors working in
different organisations and countries with different expertise and experiences.
It will be published both as a traditional printed booklet and as an
information resource available to all on the WWW. The latter will benefit from
a substantial number of links to other resources and can be downloaded in
sections to suit readers' needs. It will not be a static document but will be
developed as new technologies appear and new applications become apparent. The
printed version will serve as an essential tool for electronic publishing
workshops.
TABLE
OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction
1.1 Purpose of the Manual
1.2 Closing the knowledge gap: the importance of the Web for developing
countries
1.3 Changing nature of scholarly and scientific publishing and communication
1.4 What publishers and scientific societies in developing countries can do to
ensure equity of access to scientific knowledge
2. Introduction to the WWW
2.1 A brief history and current development
2.2 HTML and Web protocols
2.3 Tools for the Web: hardware and software requirements
2.4 Evolving standards and the next generation HTML
3. What is Electronic Publishing?
3.1 Differences between print and the
digital environment
3.2 A typology of e-publishing activities: from simple to complex projects
3.3 E-publishing as value-added publishing: linking to databases, inter-journal
linking, multi-media adjuncts, feedback and collaboration
4. Languages and tools of e-publishing
4.1 SGML and document structuring, HTML and
XML
4.2 Determining the needs and choice of tools and languages
4.3 When to use PDF
5. Workflow in the Digital Environment
5.1 Publishing manuscripts and journals on
the Web
5.2 Practical design principles
5.3 Preparing and submitting documents for e-publishing (file formats)
5.4 Graphic formats, sound and animation
6. Management options
6.1 Planning: parallel publishing, hybrid
and electronic only
6.2 Team work and partnerships
6.3 Economic considerations (funding support, grants, institutional
partnerships)
6.4 Access, subscription and pricing
7. Archiving and permanence
7.1 Storage and cataloguing
7.2 Partnerships with libraries. Central/regional repositories.
8. Open issues
9. Glossary
10. Bibliography and Links
Letter from EPT to Nature, 21st January
1999, page 201
Sir -The rising
cost of journals and difficulties associated with hybrid journals severely
limit access to knowledge by scientists in poor countries 1. The
economic and technical difficulties that contribute to the North to South knowledge
gap will not be resolved until alternative mechanisms for the distribution of
information are developed and scientific societies take steps to revise the
present tradition. Until this happens, scientists in developing nations will
continue to be disenfranchised.
Although the
North to South gap is widely acknowledged, the gap that exists from the South
to the North is less appreciated. Yet this deprives the global scientific
community of much essential information from developing countries. It is caused
by problems faced by publishers in these countries in meeting the rising costs
of printing and distributing their peer-reviewed journals. This is particularly
serious in the biosciences. Scientists in such regions have difficulties in
publishing in high profile journals. As Richard Horton, Editor of the The
Lancet has said, "The invisibility to which mainstream science publishing
condemns much third world research thwarts the efforts of poor countries to
strengthen their indigenous science journals - and with them the quality of
research - in regions that most need them".
Fortunately,
electronic publishing can resolve many of these problems (see Briefing, page
195). The feasibility of this has been shown by organizations such as the
Electronic Publishing Trust for Development (EPT)2 and through
workshops organised by the British Council 3. The EPT has
facilitated the online publication 16 peer-reviewed bioscience journals
published in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, and is working to extend
this activity. With a small investment, publishers can readily learn to prepare
their academic publications in Web-compatible format and benefit from the
increased visibility. The independence so gained allows developing countries to
establish their own distribution sites, so strengthening their national science
base and providing freedom of action for determining their own pricing and
distribution policies.
Thanks to online
journals much previously unknown research now forms part of the international
knowledge base. The heightened awareness that electronic distribution provides
leads to renewed enthusiasm for publishing in local journals and the sense of
isolation often felt by the scientific community begins to diminish.
The gap from
North to South will take time to close as new mechanisms are developed and
attitudes change. The gap from South to North can be closed more swiftly since
the technology is easy and low cost and, importantly, access to the Internet is
not immediately essential if partnerships can be made with non-profit
facilitating organisations and scientific societies. The opportunity for
science in developing countries to leapfrog into the public domain has been
shown to be possible.
Vanderlei Canhosa,
Leslie Chanb, Frances Giaquintoc, Barbara Kirsopd,
Anthony O'Donnelle, Judy Ugonnaf
a University of
Campinas/Base de Dados Tropical, R. Latino Coelho, 1301 Parq Taquaral,
13087-1010 Campinas, SP, Brazil
b Centre for Instructional Technology Development, Bladen Library, University
of Toronto, Ontario, M1C 1A4, Canada
c BioDiversity, Brunel Science Park, Kingston Lane, Uxbridge, UB8 3PQ, UK
d EPT Secretariat, Stainfield House, Stainfield, Bourne, Lincs, PE10 0RS, UK
e University of Newcastle, Dept. of Agriculture and Environmental Science,
Faculty of Agriculture, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK
f British Council, Medlock Street, Manchester, M15 4AA, UK
[1] Annapoorani,
B. et al, Nature 395, 739-740
[2] http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/bioline/, (now http://www.epublishingtrust.org)
[3] http://www.britcoun.org
Report on Workshops
on Electronic Publishing
(March 2002, Bangalore)
organized by
Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore
Background
A suggestion that the Academy host a workshop on electronic publishing, for the benefit of publishers of Indian science, technology and medicine research journals, was made in April 2001 at a meeting convened at the Academy. The editors of the Academy's own journals, and some special invitees, were present. Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam of the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai, and Prof. N. Mukunda, Editor of Publications of the Academy, conveyed some of the highlights of the Second ICSU-UNESCO International Conference on Electronic Publishing in Science (http://associnst.ox.ac.uk/~icsuinfo/confer01.html), held in Paris during February 2001, and which both had attended.
At the Academy meeting both Prof. Mukunda and Prof. Arunachalam drew attention to two regional electronic journal server initiatives. These are SciELO, Scientific Electronic Library Online, a service delivering full text of journals from several Latin American countries (http://www.scielo.org), and AJOL, African Journals OnLine (http://www.inasp.info/ajol/index.html). The Academy's own efforts in providing its journals (http://www.ias.ac.in/journals.html) free on the Internet was reviewed. And, while there was no proposal for Academy to create an electronic journal service for Indian journals, the suggestion was made that Academy could act as a catalyst and promote the practice of electronic publishing to other publishing organizations in India through a workshop.
Preparations for the workshop were begun in December 2001. Prof. Arunachalam, in cooperation with Academy, played a key role in identifying suitable resource persons and approaching funding agencies for support.
Two workshops were proposed, one in Bangalore and one in another city, preferably elsewhere. Efforts were made to find suitable institutions with the required facilities. After considering the responses received it was finally decided that both workshops would be held in Bangalore, at the Digital Information Services Centre (DISC) of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), which has the required facilities.
Resource persons, financial support, and scheduling of workshops
Several experts were identified and invited to conduct the workshops. Academy wrote to several funding agencies for financial support. Support was obtained from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada, for the travel of Prof. Leslie Chan of the University of Toronto, Canada, and Bioline International (http://www.bioline.org.br). The British Council offered financial support for the travel of Barbara Kirsop of the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development in the UK (http://www.epublishingtrust.org). Dr Abel Packer of BIREME, Brazil, and SciELO (http://www.scielo.org), who was to be another resource person, eventually could not come owing to other engagements, but sent a PowerPoint file on SciELO, which was presented by Chan and Kirsop. Prof. Gadadhar Misra and Prof. V. Pati of the Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore, and Prof. D. P. Patil of the Indian Institute of Science offered to present topics relevant to physics and mathematics publishing. Dr T. B. Rajasekhar of the National Centre for Science Information of IISc gave a presentation on metadata in the second workshop.
Academy also received financial support from INASP (International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications, http://www.inasp.info), plus some literature for distribution to participants, and from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (http://www.csir.res.in) and the Department of Biotechnology (http://dbtindia.nic.in) of the Government of India. Details of financial support received are given in Annexure A.
The two workshops were held during 8 to 10 March and 13 to 15 March 2002.
Participants
The workshops were intended primarily for editors / editorial support staff / computer support staff of Indian nonprofit science, technology and medicine journals and publishing organizations. The workshop announcement and invitation were sent to about 70 journals and organizations in February 2002. Each journal/organization was invited to nominate up to four persons or ask their staff to apply directly. The announcement and application form are given in Annexure B. More than 50% of the journals were in the medical field. The response was less than expected, and there was no need for selection from among the applicants. However, in two cases it became necessary to restrict the number of participants from the same journal/organization to two. Eventually there were a few cancellations, which allowed participation of more than the planned two Academy staff in each workshop.
The lists of participants in the two workshops are given in Annexure C. All the medical journals that participated came for the first workshop. This was useful because they could discuss issues specific to medical publishing. Although we did not initially plan to have medical journals together, the high proportion of medical journals among journals that applied prompted us to request the medical journals to attend the first workshop and other journals to attend the second, and some of the journals were willing to make a change in response to our request. However, the statistics journal Sankhya was unable to change their travel programme, and if a few other medical journals had not cancelled their participation the first workshop might have been almost exclusively attended by medical journals. The reason we mention this is because it was apparent that the participants desired such an arrangement, and such grouping might also enable the organizers to tailor workshop content to address subject-specific issues. For instance, it was clear that medical journals have to deal with issues such as referencing entries in the Medline database. Biomedical journals in general routinely print illustrations with much fine detail, while physical science journals have line art for the most part. Mathematical and physical science journals have other issues, the chief one being dealing with mathematical content. For any journal that goes electronic, efficient workflow in the publishing office, to address the different needs of print and electronic publishing in parallel, is important, and area-specific issues become significant. Evolving workflow to mesh with the requirements of other hosting services that the journals may be using is another issue. On the other hand, a mix of disciplines in such a workshop may have advantages of its own.
Objectives and workshop content
The aim of the workshops was to address issues that relate to establishing electronic editions of journals in parallel with existing print editions, and to make participants aware of the rationale, economics, procedures and technologies of electronic publishing. Open archives was also part of the content. Considerable time was to be devoted to hands-on sessions at PCs for creating electronic versions of journal papers, metadata templates, and some site management. Participants were asked to bring along an electronic word processor file of a submitted manuscript for use in the hands-on sessions. At the end of the workshops it was expected that participants would have the ability to produce a searchable electronic version of their journal. The overarching concern behind the idea of the workshops was the urgent need to increase visibility of Indian journals by making them available on the Internet in formats that take advantage of search and retrieval procedures. The full curriculum of the workshops is given in Annexure D.
Report from resource persons
The report prepared jointly by Leslie Chan and Barbara Kirsop is given in Annexure E.
Workshop summary
The workshops provided an excellent opportunity for the participating journal staff to meet and discuss issues pertaining to electronic and traditional print publishing. Apparently such meetings are infrequent, if not rare, in India.
The first workshop began with some opening remarks by Prof. N. Balakrishnan, Chairman, Information Sciences Division, Indian Institute of Science, and Prof. Arunachalam. Prof. Balakrishnan gave an overview of the impact of the Internet and World Wide Web on publishing in science. He also spoke of the need for Indian journals to take immediate steps to move towards electronic publishing. Prof. Arunachalam echoed these ideas and also explained the objectives of the workshops. The opening remarks in the second workshop were given by Prof. Mukunda, who explained that the Academy's aim in organizing the workshops was to act as a catalyst for the growth of electronic publishing in science in India. The opening remarks were followed by the customary introductions. At the start of the workshops the participants were given a small set of documents. We had earlier planned to make a much bigger package of relevant material but decided that it was better to encourage participants to find material from the Internet on their own.
After the first few presentations by Chan and Kirsop, each participant gave a brief description of the journal he or she represented and, if a website was already available, described the experience of setting up and maintaining the website. This happened on the second day of the first workshop. In later discussion over the scheduling of this session, the consensus was that it would be more useful to have this session on the first day. The journal introduction and description session in the second workshop was therefore held on the first day. As stated above, the first workshop had all the medical journals that participated in the workshops. Several Indian medical journals, and a fewer number of journals in other fields, have websites with different levels of coverage of journal content. Most of the medical journals have their websites hosted by commercial web hosting services. It was clear that some of the medical journals that participated, and some that did not, had feature-rich websites and had built up considerable experience in providing electronic content. One question asked during this session in the first workshop was if there was an association of medical editors, or indeed of science editors, in India. Science editors in Brazil played an important role in the setting up of SciELO. There was agreement that an active association of science editors was needed in India.
In each workshop participants were asked collectively to come up with a list of up to 10 topics pertaining to electronic publishing that they perceived as most important. The following is a combined list from both workshops, listed simply in the sequence in which they were mentioned. Each was discussed, with helpful inputs from Chan and Kirsop.
· Web journals and visibility
· Partnerships with institutions in developed countries
· Pre-printing workflow and document management
· Tools for electronic publishing
· Search engines
· Advertisements
· Copyright issues
· XML
· Cost of website maintenance
· Access and control
· Archiving and long-term access
· Role of libraries
· Lack of electronic access in many regions
· File formats and conversions
· Pricing and economics
· Persistence of print editions
· Impact on subscriptions to print journals
As one might expect, some of the topics mentioned in the first workshop were mentioned again in the second. The intention was to generate a collective topic list that would serve as a starting point for preparing an electronic publishing resources list web page. The resources web page itself (a 'scout' site for epublishing in India), to be made available on the workshop website (http://www.ias.ac.in/epubworkshop/), was planned as a group effort that would be continually updated with inputs from the participants. This would help keep alive the contacts made at the workshops and, it was hoped, generate discussion on an email discussion forum that would be created (the forum is at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/epub-sci-india).
On the first day of the first workshop, there was a general discussion on electronic publishing in India, and Peush Sahni of the National Medical Journal of India was invited to initiate and moderate the discussion. Sahni proposed that three major differences between science publishing in India and in the developed countries stand out: (i) most journals in India are from noncommercial publishers, (ii) most editors of Indian journals are editors 'by chance', and (iii) the readership is not the same as the subscriber base. Sahni said these factors would influence growth of electronic publishing in India and therefore choosing a model from the developed countries was perhaps not the best way to go. Arunachalam made the first mention in the workshops of community ownership of electronic journal server, bandwidth and the required skills and personnel, and said provision of many electronic journals on a single web server resulted in value addition that benefitted each journal (examples are Bioline, SciELO and Highwire Press (http://intl.highwire.org)). Other topics discussed were availability of professional help and funds for journals, assessing quality of journals, and impact of electronic access on subscriptions.
Several issues of relevance to the participating journals and to Indian journals in general were discussed in the final summing-up sessions in both workshops. Mukunda said it was not clear that a national policy on electronic publishing for India was appropriate. Kirsop responded by saying that what was needed was perhaps not a national policy but for national bodies to encourage and facilitate electronic publishing. She wondered if institutions like Indian Academy of Sciences and Indian Institute of Science could bring together other (higher?) bodies to discuss and evolve recommendations. Chan drew attention to the ICSU-UNESCO workshop recommendation set (http://associnst.ox.ac.uk/~icsuinfo/recom01.htm), the National Library of Canada's best practices document for electronic publishing (http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/9/13/index-e.html), and similar documents from other institutions.
A highlight of the summing-up discussion in the first workshop was a presentation titled Indian Journal Server Initiative by Sahu of Journal of Postgraduate Medicine. The presentation is available on the workshop website. It addresses the vicious circle of poor resources and poor visibility of Indian journals, and proposes a common platform to serve electronic versions of the journals. A common platform can offer shared and better technology, shared and more resources, and shared promotion. Sahu discussed the logistics involved and highlighted use of nonproprietory software, integration of print and electronic procedures, integration with available technology and initiatives, and transfer of technology to individual journals, which could be free to simultaneously maintain their own servers. The presentation evoked much interest, and cautionary comments that expressed concern over failure of similar earlier efforts. The revised version of Sahu's presentation on the workshop website incorporates these concerns. The presentation was shown in the summing-up discussion of the second workshop, where it again evoked interest. There was agreement that these ideas, and the need for electronic publishing in general, should be discussed by decision makers of major institutions and publishing and funding agencies. Only then could implementation be made easier. There was also a desire for more such workshops, and formation of an active association of science editors.
All the presentations are available on the workshop website, and only brief mentions are made here. Chan gave an overview of electronic publishing and a glimpse of trends and directions. The point was made that true digital publishing takes advantage of networking tools. New trends-'publish when ready'; new forms of peer review; reference linking; international standards for document identification; powerful search capability-and new concerns-version, citation and bibliographic control; rights management; long-term archiving; economic models for electronic publishing; transfer of workflow practices from print to electronic-were discussed. The areas of overlap, and frequently conflict, between the various parties involved, namely authors and scholarly societies, researchers, publishers, libraries, and commercial content aggregators and consortia, were explained. Finally, the key decisions to make and the access models to consider while going electronic were listed. Kirsop then talked about electronic publishing from the various stakeholders' (authors, publishers, users and libraries, and developing countries) points of view. Developing countries face the problem of low visibility of their print journals, and their researchers often have difficulty publishing in established journals from the developed countries. This results in a knowledge gap. Electronic publishing offers a cost-effective way of increasing visibility, disseminating important research, closing the knowledge gap, and stimulating local research and publishing activity.
Case studies of SciELO and Bioline International were presented next. The presentation on SciELO (http://www.scielo.org) was sent by Abel Packer of BIREME, Brazil, who played a key role in the setting up of SciELO. Started as a pilot project in 1997 for 'cooperative electronic publishing and measurement of usage and impact' of published material for biomedical journals from the Latin American countries, SciELO now has a network of sites. The originators of SciELO envisaged the 'emergence/predominance of the Internet as the universal publishing medium' and saw the 'need of a comprehensive electronic publishing approach to overcome developing countries' scientific communication vicious circle'. Visibility, accessibility, quality and credibility of local journals were the concerns. A recent study by Alonso and Fernández-Juricic (Nature 2002, 415, 471-472) showed that five Brazilian journals doubled their impact factor after inclusion in SciELO. The authors concluded that such regional networks 'not only foster the availability of scientific information on a regional scale, but also generate international impact which may entice researchers into publishing in the journals concerned. Those who fund and promote regionally coordinated networks for scientific electronic publishing can help developing countries to revitalize their local journals and enhance the international representation of locally generated knowledge.' Bioline (http://www.bioline.org.br) is another 'not-for-profit electronic publishing service committed to providing access to quality research journals published in developing countries'. It was founded in 1993 and provides access to peer-reviewed journals from Asia, Africa and Latin America. Bioline hosts three journals from India's NISCOM (CSIR). Two of the participants in the first workshop were from NISCOM and are associated with two of the Bioline-hosted journals. They had the opportunity of discussing their journals' participation in Bioline at length with Chan and Kirsop, both of whom are associated with Bioline.
The Open Access Initiative and the open archiving movement were introduced. The Budapest Open Access Initiative document (http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml) was one of the handouts given to all participants at the start of the workshops. A planned demonstration of depositing a document in an e-prints server could not be done. However, a demonstration of depositing a document into the physics and mathematics archive www.arXiv.org was shown by Misra, Pati and Patil, who also described the use of TeX (http://www.tug.org.in) for handling mathematical content in journal submissions. As we have stated earlier, a separate session or indeed workshop on the handling of mathematical content is desirable for mathematics and physics journal editors and support persons.
There were also presentations about workflow in electronic publishing, file formats, markup languages and metadata. The presentation on workflow dealt with ways of integrating in-house procedures for print and electronic publishing. The PDF file format, and the pros and cons of using it for journal content, were discussed. The pros and cons of HTML and the advantages of XML as well as issues to consider when moving to XML-based storage were discussed. The concepts of data storage and data exchange, document type definition (DTD), data interoperability and metadata were introduced. Perhaps the most important lesson from the workshops is the importance of metadata in electronic archives. In the second workshop Rajasekhar gave a detailed presentation on metadata and electronic publications: definition of metadata, types, examples, creation, standards, handling, uses, schemes, the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. One of the hands-on sessions in both workshops was devoted to generating a set of standard metadata from the Dublin Core metadata template (http://www.dublincore.org). Citation linking was discussed and an introduction given to the OpenURL protocol (http://www.sfxit.com/OpenURL/), Digital Object Identifiers (DOI; http://www.doi.org) and CrossRef (http://www.crossref.org). The dependence of these on metadata and interoperability was.highlighted.
The second and third afternoons of each workshop were almost entirely devoted to hands-on sessions. Each participant had been asked to bring an electronic (word processor file) copy of a journal submission for use in the hands-on exercise to create a journal website. The required software (free trial versions of commercial programs as well as free programs: Macromedia Dreamweaver, Macromedia Fireworks, Adobe Acrobat)had been preloaded on the participants' PCs by the helpful staff of DISC. The work involved taking the word processor file and producing a full-text HTML file, and creating absolute (to the journal's real website where one existed) and relative links. Participants also created a journal masthead, added background and illustrations, and edited the HTML by adding Dublin Core metadata. A PDF file was also generated. Because of the difference in levels of exposure of the participants to electronic publishing, the time allotted to web document creation was used up in doing the more basic tasks and it was not possible to cover other topics.
On the third day, Chan demonstrated an e-journal project by linking up all the participants' web pages into a single multijournal site. There was more discussion on the structure of such a site, the tools and platforms available, archiving, and rights management. Chan also gave the concluding comments. He characterized the move to electronic publishing as being not only about technology but about change in social practices, involving having a vision, making a business case, implementing changes in programme, including education and training, and review. He listed understanding the new information ecology, management of old and new business streams, preserving existing readership while building the new, controlling costs, recognizing real value of one's journal assets (unique or niche content and so on), and partnership building as critical factors for creating and running a successful electronic publishing system. In conclusion, Chan spoke of 'best practices', and listed reliance on open standards document formats, open source software, simple site design with easy navigability and access to content, taking advantage of networking tools, clear statement of copyright policy to authors and readers, allowing authors to self-archive in institutional archives, open access, archiving in suitable formats for long-term access, and lobbying government and other funding agencies for support of electronic publishing of local journals.
Dinner meeting with Academy editors
Participants and resource persons were joined by several editors of Academy's journals on the second day of each workshop. The informal atmosphere allowed for more personal interactions and lively conversation. As Chan and Kirsop have commented in their report (Annexure E), such meetings serve a useful purpose and complement the more formal workshop.
On the last day of the second workshop, Ms Eunice Crook, Director of the Chennai office of The British Council, and Mr Jahagirdar, Manager of The British Library in Bangalore, visited the workshop venue. Ms Crook addressed the participants.
Talk by Richard Stallman
By a coincidence, Richard M. Stallman, founder of the GNU Project (http://www.fsf.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html) and president of the Free Software Foundation (http://www.fsf.org), was visiting Bangalore on 9 March, the second day of the first workshop. By prior arrangement, a public talk by Stallman was arranged at a different venue for the benefit of participants of the workshop. Stallman of course spent the first half of his time on the philosophy of free software and the GNU Project. But he also spoke of the principles of freedom as applied to access to scientific publications, the new role of journal publishers in the age of electronic publishing, the resistance of commercial publishers to provision of open access, the costs of electronic archives and ways of meeting them, preprint servers, the Public Library of Science (http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org) call for alternative journals, the role of universities and funding agencies, and the work of the Soros Foundation (the Open Access Initiative).
Feedback from participants
At the end of each workshop, feedback from each participant was obtained on a questionnaire. Participants were told their feedback could remain anonymous; most were. Perhaps it is a good idea to encourage participants to identify themselves. The questionnaire is given in Annexure F. A summary of the responses is given below.
Question Responses. Total feedback forms, 35
Q1. Were all topics covered? Yes, 28; No, 4; Unclear, 1; No answer, 2
Q2. Were the computer and other technical facilities OK? Yes, 30; No, 4; No
answer, 1
Q3. Was organization of workshop OK? Yes, 34; No, 1
Q4. Were the presentations/demonstrations clear? Yes, 34; No, 1
Q5a. Time allotted - Discussions Time OK, 10; Prefer longer, 10; Prefer shorter,
3; Unclear, 2; No answer, 10
Q5b. Time allotted - Lectures Time OK, 10; Prefer longer, 4; Prefer shorter,
11; Unclear, 1; No answer, 9
Q5c. Time allotted - Hands-on work Time OK, 10; Prefer longer, 20; Prefer shorter,
0; Unclear, 1; No answer, 4
Q6. Was purpose of participating achieved? Yes, 29; No, 1; Unclear, 3; No answer,
2
Q9. Importance of shared server with database and search features for Indian
journals High priority, 24; Medium priority, 4; Low priority, 1; No answer,
6
Workshop website and mailing list
A website with details of the workshops, including background, curriculum, participant lists and a resources page, has been created, and is available at http://www.ias.ac.in/epubworkshop/. A mailing list and group discussion forum has also been created on Yahoo!Groups (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/epub-sci-india). Several workshop participants, Chan and Kirsop, and a few others have joined the list, and the membership may grow. We hope that this discussion forum will generate constructive exchange of ideas among publishers, editors, electronic publishing experts and scientists and become a source of information for publishers and journals that embark on creating electronic editions.
Future action
As part of the overall workshop objective, Academy will contact all participants six months and a year after the workshops to ascertain progress made by the participants' institutions/journals in electronic publishing. Information will be obtained in the form of responses to a prepared set of questions. Academy will also review its own electronic publishing effort in light of the knowledge gained at the workshops by its staff.
Concluding remarks
The responses from the participants clearly indicate that they benefitted by gaining an introduction to electronic publishing or gaining new knowledge about various aspects of it. Several participants said the discussions at the workshop cleared up confusion regarding cost, impact on print subscription, and other issues. By all accounts it was an opportunity for participants to find out what other journals in India were doing with regard to electronic publishing. Most participants saw the need for early establishment of a common server for Indian journals. While several participants, whose journals were yet to publish electronically, said they would discuss the workshop with decision makers in their organizations, all agreed that it was important to organize such meetings also for decision makers from publishing organizations and funding agencies.
We had considerable difficulty in preparing a list of journals and publishing organizations to invite for participation in the workshops. Apparently a current list (nor even a dated one?) of Indian science journals with full and current contact information does not exist and is not easy to put together at short notice. There does exist a list of Indian biomedical journals maintained by the Indian MEDLARS Centre (http://indmed.nic.in), and this was useful. It is perhaps worthwhile for the various science and technology agencies in the country to prepare and maintain such a list on a website as well as to make available a printed list on request.
One of the ideas discussed at the workshops was the creation of a journal hosting service for Indian science, technology and medicine journals. This envisages a powerful and large-capacity server computer connected with a high-bandwidth connection to the Internet, a team of skilled personnel for hardware and software support, personnel for help in electronic publishing, and hosting of such a facility by an appropriate institution. The Academy hopes it has played a useful catalytic role in the effort to make the best Indian journals 'go electronic' and thus increase their visibility worldwide. It was heartening to note the progress already achieved by some Indian journals, while others have to learn and adopt the new technologies. The Academy hopes that as a result of these workshops suitable well-managed servers will soon become available to Indian journals within the country, with appropriate mechanisms for overseeing their operation, assessing quality of the journals hosted, and so on. This effort needs the enthusiastic support of all the major science agencies, such as Department of Science and Technology, Department of Biotechnology, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, Department of Atomic Energy, Indian Space Research Organization, Indian Council of Medical Research, Indian Council of Agricultural Research, and others. During informal discussions it was suggested that the Digital Information Services Centre (DISC) of the Indian Institute of Science may be an ideal location for this facility. It is understood that a draft proposal has been prepared by DISC and the Supercomputer Education and Research Centre of IISc, and this will be pursued by DISC. We expect that the email discussion forum mentioned above will also discuss this. Academy's view, as stated above, is that the science funding agencies should support this proposal. If the facility comes up in the near future, Academy can also benefit from it, while continuing to host electronic versions of all its journals on its own server.
Acknowledgements
Indian Academy of Sciences thanks International Development Research Centre (IDRC), The British Council, INASP (International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications), Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, and Department of Biotechnology; Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam, Prof. Leslie Chan, Barbara Kirsop, Prof. G. Misra, Prof. V. Pati, Prof. D. P. Patil and Dr T. B. Rajasekhar; the organizations and journals and their representatives who participated; Prof. G. Rangarajan, Convener, and the very helpful staff, especially Mr Biswajit Dasgupta, of Digital Information Services Centre, Indian Institute of Science; Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore, which provided accommodation for the participants.
This report was prepared using OpenOffice.org (OOo_1.0) Open Source software.
Annexure A: Financial support
1. International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada Travel
and per diem costs for Prof. Leslie Chan, University of Toronto, Canada (paid
directly by IDRC to Chan)
2. The British Council Travel costs for Barbara Kirsop, Electronic Publishing
Trust for Development, England (paid directly by British Council to Kirsop)
3. Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Government of India
Rs 100,000
4. Department of Biotechnology, Government of India Rs 150,000
5. International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP),
Oxford, UK US$ 2000
Annexure B: Workshop announcement and application form
Announcement (letter of invitation to participate)
The Indian Academy of Sciences, with support from the British Council, International Development Research Centre (IDRC, Ottawa, Canada), CSIR and DBT, is organizing two workshops on electronic publishing during March this year. The workshops were conceived and planned by Prof. N. Mukunda, Editor of Publications of the Academy, and information scientist Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam of the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai. Both workshops will take place in the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore; the first one will be from 8 March to 10 March and the second from 13 March to 15 March.
The workshops aim to help editors of Indian science, technology and medicine (STM) journals make their journals (full text) available on the Internet. It is well known that Indian STM journals suffer from poor exposure outside India, and even within India. Several committees within the Academy have discussed this problem at length, and the consensus that emerged is that making journal content available freely on the Internet is a good way of increasing visibility. An important additional benefit is the incentive this visibility offers to researchers who might otherwise not consider publishing in the journals. Worldwide, STM publishing is seeing rapid advance in electronic access supported by database-searchable archiving.
It is also becoming increasingly important for public-funded and nonprofit STM publishers to establish their own electronic journal repositories to counter control of online scholarly content by commercial interests, so that scholarship becomes available freely on the Internet.
It is therefore imperative that editors and editorial staff of Indian public-funded and nonprofit STM publishing houses are aware of the rationale, economics, procedures and technologies of electronic publishing and of the Open Archives Initiative, and are trained to produce electronic editions of their journals. The Indian Academy of Sciences has made some headway, and now has full content of most of its journals online (www.ias.ac.in/journals), hosted on its own Web server maintained by its staff. The motivation for the workshops is to promote the benefits of electronic publishing to other nonprofit STM publishing organizations and to provide background knowledge and training.
Each workshop will be conducted by two or three resource persons, from within and outside India, who have considerable knowledge of and experience in electronic publishing. In addition to giving all the essential background information, the workshops will have hands-on sessions, with each participant getting access to a PC connected to the Internet. Participants will also be given a collection of printed background information.
There will be room for a maximum of 20 participants in each workshop. Participants will be selected from among applicants or nominees from Indian nonprofit STM publishing organizations. Our attempt will be to have as wide a representation as possible of the publishing community.
The Indian Academy of Sciences is pleased to invite you to nominate up to four persons from among editors, editorial staff and computer support staff from your organization, or encourage them to apply directly to the Academy. Please send the nominations/applications in the format provided in the attached sheet, to reach us well before 25 February. The persons nominated or applying should be in a position, after the workshop, to enable your organization to produce electronic versions of one or more of your journals. It is desirable that they are familiar with PC use, and have some knowledge of the Internet, World Wide Web, and science content on the Web. I urge you to send the applications early, so that there is sufficient time to review all the applications and make a selection. We shall then communicate to you the names of the persons selected and which of the two workshops they have been allotted.
The Academy will provide modest accommodation close to the venue of the workshops and all meals. There are no registration charges. We expect that the participants (or their organizations) will bear the travel expenses.
I realize that we are giving you rather short notice, but this was caused by delays in getting assurance of financial support for the workshops. To save time, please communicate by email or fax. Please address applications and other communications to Mr N. A. Prakash of the Academy office (Fax: 080-3346094, Email: prakash@ias.ernet.in). It has taken considerable effort, time and expense to get the resource persons to come for ten days. I urge that we therefore make maximum use of this excellent opportunity to gain the knowledge and skills required to produce electronic versions of our journals.
APPLICATION FOR PARTICIPATION IN WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING, INDIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, BANGALORE
1. Name:
2. Organization (include full contact information, with fax and email):
3. Designation:
4. Role: Editor / Editorial support / Computer support
5. Journal/s associated with:
6. Journal information (for each named above):
6a. Periodicity:
6b. Subscriber base:
6c. Electronic version: Yes / No
If yes, is it produced in-house, by who, and how?
Give brief description.
Give Web address.
If no, are there plans to produce an electronic version?
What is the current status?
6d. Does the journal accept submissions in electronic form
(on diskette / by email or ftp)?
If yes, what formats do you accept for (a) text (b) illustrations?
Does the journal publish a statement regarding electronic submission?
6e. Are computers used in publishing procedure
(e.g. database of submissions, authors, referees, manuscript tracking)?
Give a brief description.
7. Personal information:
7a. Experience in PC use: Yes / No
If yes, give a brief description
7b. Are you aware of electronic publishing?
7c. Do you access electronic versions of other journals?
How often and why?
7d. Are you aware of the procedures to produce electronic journals?
7e. Are you aware of / have you used the tools (software) required
to produce electronic journals?
Name the tools you know or have used.
8 Workshop
8a. What expectation do you have of the workshop?
8b. How do you / your organization propose to use the knowledge
and skills learned at the workshop?
Please give a time frame.
8c. Choice of workshop
(give your preference; Academy will make final allotment
after looking at all requests):
Workshop One 8, 9, 10 March
Workshop Two 13, 14, 15 March
9. Any other information you wish to give:
Annexure C: Lists of participants
Participants in Workshop One, 8 to 10 March 2002
1. Indian Council of Medical Research - DR N. C. JAIN, Editorial support, Indian Journal of Medical Research. jainnc@vsnl.net
2. Indian Council of Medical Research - MR R. MUNIASAMY, Programmer, Indian Journal of Medical Research. muniasamy@icmr.nic.in, rmuniasamy@hotmail.com
3. National Medical Journal of India - DR PEUSH SAHNI, Associate Editor. peush_sahni@hotmail.com, nmji@aiims.aiims.ac.in
4. Journal of Postgraduate Medicine - DR D. K. SAHU, Managing Editor. dksahu@vsnl.com, jpgm@jpgmonline.com
5. Indian Journal of Pharmacology - PROF. R. RAVEENDRAN, Chief Editor. ravee@jipmer.edu, ijp@jipmer.edu
6. Indian Journal of Pharmacology - PROF. C. ADITHAN, Website Editor. adithan@vsnl.com, ijp@jipmer.edu
7. Journal of Anatomical Society of India - DR P. V. V. GOPICHAND, Editor. editorjasi@jasi.net, editorjasi@rediffmail.com
8. Journal of Anatomical Society of India - DR GAURAV AGNIHOTRI, Editorial support. editorjasi@jasi.net, editorjasi@rediffmail.com
9. National Tuberculosis Institute - MRS SUDHA S. MURTHY, Librarian, NTI Bulletin and digitization of published literature. ntiindia@blr.vsnl.net.in
10. National Tuberculosis Institute - MR NANDISH PRASAD, Computer support, NTI Bulletin and digitization of published literature. ntiindia@blr.vsnl.net.in
11. Indian Council of Agricultural Research - DR VIDYA SEKHAR, Technical Officer. vidyasekhar_sm@rediffmail.com
12. The Madras Agricultural Journal - PROF. P. SINGARAM, Editor. kcrk@vsnl.com
13. Sankhya (The Indian Journal of Statistics) - PROF. ARUP BOSE, Editor. abose@isical.ac.in
14. Sankhya (The Indian Journal of Statistics) - MS URMICHHANDA BHATTACHARYYA, Computer support. urmi@isical.ac.in
15. National Institute of Science Communication - DR V. V. AGADI, Editor. Indian Journal of Marine Sciences. vva@niscom.res.in, ijms@niscom.res.in
16. National Institute of Science Communication - MR RAJIV MATHUR. Indian Journal of Experimental Biology. ijeb@niscom.res.in
17. Indian Academy of Sciences - MR M. S. VENUGOPAL, Editorial support, Current Science. currsci@ias.ernet.in
18. Indian Academy of Sciences - MS CHANDRIKA RAMESH, Editorial support, Current Science. currsci@ias.ernet.in
19. Indian Academy of Sciences - MR MILIND KOLATKAR (Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc), Website developer, Resonance: journal of science education. resonanc@ias.ernet.in
20. Indian Academy of Sciences - MR N. A. PRAKASH, Editorial support, Journal of Genetics. jgenet@ias.ernet.in
Participants in Workshop Two, 13 to 15 March 2002
21. Indian Journal of Physics - DR K. K. DATTA, Associate Editor. ijpkkd@mahendra.iacs.res.in
22. Indian Journal of Physics - MR S. DEOGHURIA, Computer support. ccsd@mahendra.iacs.res.in
23. Bulletin of the Astronomical Society of India - MS SANDRA RAJIVA, Editorial support. sandra@iiap.ernet.in
24. Journal of Bombay Natural History Society - MS GAYATRI UGRA, Editor. bnhs@bom4.vsnl.net.in
25. Journal of Bombay Natural History Society - MR JAYAPRAKASH K. MENON, Computer support. bnhs@bom4.vsnl.net.in
26. Journal of the Geological Society of India - DR M. S. RAO, Editor. gsocind@bgl.vsnl.net.in
27. Journal of the Geological Society of India - DR K. S. GODHAVARI, Editorial support. gsocind@bgl.vsnl.net.in
28. Indian Council of Agricultural Research - MRS ARUNA T. KUMAR, Assistant Editor, Indian Journal of Animal Sciences. cee@kab.delhi.nic.in
29. Indian National Science Academy - MR M. RANGANATHAN, Editorial support, Proceedings of INSA 'A'. insa@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in
30. Indian National Science Academy - MR K. JAYAN, Computer support. insa@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in
31. Indian National Science Academy - MR AMIT JAIN, Computer support. insa@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in
32. Indian Mathematical Society - DR ASHA RANI SINGAL, Computer support, Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society. arsims@del2.vsnl.net.in
33. Samasya - DR B. J. VENKATACHALA, Editor. jana@math.iisc.ernet.in
34. Tata Energy Research Institute - MR K. P. EASHWAR, Convener, Publications Unit. eshukp@teri.res.in
35. DR S. KRISHNAN, Head, Scientific and Management Information Systems, National Chemical Laboratory. krish@ems.ncl.res.in
36. Indian Academy of Sciences - MS M. SRIMATHI, Editorial support, Pramana-journal of physics. pramana@ias.ernet.in
37. Indian Academy of Sciences - MS CICILIA EDWIN, Editorial support, Proceedings Mathematical Sciences. mathsci@ias.ernet.in
38. Indian Academy of Sciences - MS K. SHASHIKALA, Editorial support, Sadhana (Academy Proceedings in Engineering Sciences). sadhana@ias.ernet.in
39. Indian Academy of Sciences - MR G. CHANDRAMOHAN, Editorial support, Pramana-journal of physics. pramana@ias.ernet.in
40. Indian Academy of Sciences - MRS VIJAYA SHUKRE, Computer support. vijaya@ias.ernet.in
Annexure D: Workshop curriculum
Objectives: · To raise awareness about international developments in
e-publishing and their implication for publishers in the developing world.·
To outline the management issues involved in undertaking an electronic publishing
project, including target definition, infrastructure requirement, human resources
and technical needs.· To give hands-on practice in the basics of web
document authoring, layout, design, incorporating graphics, links, etc.·
To devise a means of communication and support for the participating institutions,
through, for example, setting up a user group and developing a model site.
Participants: · Representatives from publishers and/or institutions that
are interested in and ready to undertake electronic publishing projects involving
scientific information. The workshop is designed for those who will do the hands-on
production, design and layout for e-journals. Ideally, there should be a mix
of editors, authors and technicians, to discuss the broader management issues.
Facilitators:Other resource persons: · Prof. Leslie Chan, University
of Toronto at Scarborough and Bioline International· Barbara Kirsop,
Electronic Publishing Trust for Development· Prof. G. Misra and Prof.
V. Pati (Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore)· Prof. D. P. Patil
and Dr T. B. Rajasekhar (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore)
Format: · Presentations and hands-on practice. There will be one computer
for each participant.
Date: · March 8-10, 09:30 to 17:30· March 13-15, 09:30 to 17:30
Venue · Digital Information Services Centre, Indian Institute of Science,
Bangalore
Handouts: · Guidelines for electronic journals and scholarly publishing·
List of web resources for further training· List of international developments
(BMC, SciELO, OAI, etc.) with brief statement about each· Key documents
(eg our OAI paper, the PLS and OSI statements)
Resources required: · Computer workstation per person· Internet
access· Scanner with software able to output JPEG or GIF· Scanner
with OCR· Web server so files can be stored centrally and links built
between them· Software: Image editing (PaintShopPro or similar), graphic
design, html editor, site management (Macromedia DreamWeaver, Fireworks, Adobe
Acrobat)
First day: Seminars and Discussions
Morning:
09:00 - 09:30 Opening Remarks
Prof. N. Balakrishnan, Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam
09:30 - 11:00
· Overview of electronic publishing : trends and directions (Chan)
· Electronic publishing from the stakeholders' view (Kirsop)
· What's in it for developing countries?
· What's is in it for the scientist?
· What's is in it for the scholarly society publisher?
· What's is in it for the library?
11:00 - 11:30 Tea Break
11:30 - 13:00
· Electronic publishing in developing countries : Case studies - SciELO (Chan)
· Electronic Publishing in India: Open Discussion
· The Open Archiving Movement and its implications (Chan)
13:00 - 14:00 Lunch Break
Afternoon:
14:00 - 15.00
· Bioline International (Kirsop and Chan)
· Harmonisation of diverse file formats
· Integration into host system (source files)
· Numbering/file sizes
· Preparation of abstracts (XML)
· Transfer to Host (ftp)
· Subscriptions management
· Income management and transfer
· Monitoring usage
· Promotion
15:00 - 15:30 Tea Break
15:30 - 17:30
· G. Misra, V. Pati and D. P. Patil
TeX and publishing in mathematics and physics
Putting documents on open archive (www.arXiv.org)
Open Archive Initiative and server interoperability
Chan
Open Archive Initiative and server interoperability
Setting up an open archive
Uploading documents
Demonstration of an OAI-compliant eprints server
Second Day: Hands-on workshop
Morning:
9.30 - 11.00
· Policy and Management issues in electronic publishing
· Technology requirements
· Quality assurance
· Document management
· Copyright rights
· Economic Models
· Workflow in the electronic environment
· Comparison of print and electronic procedures
· File formats and document conversion
· Electronic first and multiple outputs
· Document encoding and transmission
· Display and outputs
11:00 - 11:30 Tea Break
11:30 - 13:00
· Distinction of HTML, SGML, XML
· Essentials of HTML
13:00- 14:00 Lunch Break
Afternoon:
14.00 - 15.30
· Creating a simple web document (Participants to bring a research paper
for using as model )
· Adding links (relative and absolute links)
· Adding graphics (formats)
· Simple interactivity (forms and scripts)
15:30 - 16:00 Tea Break
16:00 - 17:30
· Metadata and bibliographic control
· Citation linking, Cross-Ref, DOI, OpenURL
· When to use PDF
· Pros and Cons of PDF
Third Day: Hands-on workshop
Morning:
09.30 - 11.00
· Planning and co-ordination of complex e-journal projects
· Organization
· Tools
· Platform
· Archiving
· Rights management
11:00 - 11:30 Tea Break
11:30 - 13:00
Continuation of morning session
13:00 - 14:00 Lunch Break
Afternoon:
14:00 - 15:30
· Building a "scout" site for epublishing in India
· Group effort in creating a portal of epublishing resources and links
to scientific publications from India.
15:30 - 16:00 Tea Break
16:00 - 17:30
· Concluding comments (Chan and Kirsop)
· Future Plans
· Workshop evaluation
Annexure E: Report from resource persons
Report from Leslie Chan and Barbara Kirsop, March 20th 2002
Pre-Workshop arrangements: We were very grateful to Prakash for all the help he provided before the workshop in preparing handouts and informing us about changes in participation. His tireless support throughout contributed greatly to the success of the workshops. We would have been glad to have more information on the levels of experience of the participants ahead of the workshop so that we could have adjusted content accordingly. Perhaps if further workshops are organised, they could be grouped either for beginners or for experienced people.
Venue: The workshop was held at the Digital Information Services Centre, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. The venue had the appropriate number of terminals, all linked to the Internet, providing participants with excellent connectivity. There were the occasional inevitable breakdowns in the network, which were ably fixed by the Centre's young assistant (Biswajit Dasgupta).
Accomodation, meals and general support from the Academy: The accommodation for faculty and participants was very good. The arrangements for refreshments and meals were excellent in every way and the support from the Academy throughout the two workshops was quite exceptional. An evening dinner for each of the two groups was arranged and enabled further discussions between participants and additional interested people who had not attended the workshops. We have found that at workshops where faculty and participants are accommodated at the same location, further opportunities can arise for one-to-one discussions about individual concerns and, where this is possible to arrange, it could be beneficial to future workshops.
Participants: The participants at both workshops were very interested in e-publishing and anxious to learn more. They were a diverse group with different levels of knowledge and practical experience and this created a challenge in meeting everyone's expectations. The objectives of the workshop outlined the need for a mix of participants, but this could be reconsidered for any future workshops. It is clear from the Assessment sheets that a number of participants would have preferred more hands-on practical opportunities, whereas others found the awareness-raising discussions very valuable. The non-mathematics journal representatives found the TeX presentation confusing (particularly in the first group where there were also some technical problems). Since the requirements of mathematicians are quite different from those of other disciplines, it might be better to group the disciplines into distinct workshops.
Future workshops: Most participants requested further training and, if this becomes possible, the following could be considered:
1 Hands-on practical workshops for individuals that will be personally responsible
for the technical work (not necessarily the editors); this may need one week
of structured step-by-step training.
2 Awareness-raising seminars for policy-makers, publishers and authors. It is
clear that the Bangalore workshop only scratched the surface of India's needs
and much more needs to be done, perhaps regionally. Sometimes a single day open
seminar preceding a practical workshop has been successful (eg in Indonesia).
3 Seminars in association with scientific conferences for authors, focussing
specifically on open archives and institutional e-print servers.
Future faculty: It is very clear to us that there are a number of highly motivated people working in India who could help with the above workshops. At the technical level, these could include, but are not limited to, Prakash, Dr Sahu and Dr Krishnan (Pune). Many others surely exist in India that could be used in different capacities. If it becomes possible for Prakash to visit Bioline International in Toronto, together with Sidnei de Souza from Brazil (who develops the software for BI) he could surely become a most valuable resource person for e-publishing initiatives in India.
Workshop outcome: We feel that the workshop proved to be an invaluable introduction to 'newcomers' and also introduced new concepts to the more experienced participants. To some it was an 'eye-opener'; to others it was a confirmation of their current initiatives. In this sense it achieved its aims. However, in our opinion, the establishment by participants of an immediate web site hosted by the Academy will prove to be of continuing value. Not only will it provide a mechanism to cement contacts, it will also allow participants to continue to learn from the rich source of material linked to the site. In three days and with a mixed group, full training was not possible, nor intended, but the web site can be an on-going resource not only for the participants but also for any interested individuals.
It is very important that 'something happens' straight away after the workshops and we are very pleased that the web site will certainly provide the first step. We much hope that further workshops/seminars can be arranged and that the Bangalore workshops provide the springboard for raising the visibility of Indian research.
Thanks: We wish to acknowledge the work of the Academy and of Subbiah Arunachalam in taking the initiative in getting things started. Our visit was indeed greatly enjoyable and rewarding and we sincerely thank all the staff of the Academy for their constant concern for our well-being. We hope that we can continue to help with the developments that the workshops surely began.
Leslie Chan, Bioline International, University of Toronto, Canada
Barbara Kirsop, Electronic Publishing Trust for Development, UK
Annexure F: Feedback questionnaire
INDIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, BANGALORE
Workshops on Electronic Publishing
WORKSHOP FEEDBACK
1. Were all topics covered? Y / N
2. Were the computer and other technical facilities OK? Y / N
3. Was organization of workshop OK? Y / N
4. Were the presentations/demonstrations clear? Y / N
5. Was the time allotted for different topics appropriate? Y / N
Prefer LONGER / SHORTER time for discussions
Prefer LONGER / SHORTER time for lectures
Prefer MORE / LESS hands-on work
6. If you came for a specific purpose, was it achieved? Y / N What was that
specific purpose?
7. How will you put the knowledge and experience gained at the workshop to use
in your institution/journal?
When should we expect to see some results?
8. What follow-up would you like to see?
9. We discussed Bioline and SciELO, and whether Indian journals should have
a shared server with database and search features for archival. Tell us how
important this is:
HIGH PRIORITY / MEDIUM PRIORITY / LOW PRIORITY.
Will your institution/journal support and participate in such a facility?
Will you recommend this to your institution/journal?
10. Any other comments you wish to make:
A position statement by the Wellcome Trust in support of open access publishing
The mission of the Wellcome Trust is to "foster and promote research with the aim of improving human and animal health." The main output of this research is new ideas and knowledge, which the Trust expects its researchers to publish in quality, peer-reviewed journals.
The Trust has a fundamental interest in ensuring that neither the terms struck with researchers, nor the marketing and distribution strategies used by publishers (whether commercial, not-for-profit or academic) adversely affect the availability and accessibility of this material.
With recent advances in Internet publishing, the Trust is aware that there are a number of new models for the publication of research results and will encourage initiatives that broaden the range of opportunities for quality research to be widely disseminated and freely accessed.
The Wellcome Trust therefore supports open and unrestricted access to the published output of research, including the open access model (defined below), as a fundamental part of its charitable mission and a public benefit to be encouraged wherever possible.
Specifically, the Trust:
· welcomes the establishment of free-access, high-quality scientific
journals available via the Internet;
· will encourage and support the formation of such journals and/or free-access
repositories for research papers;
· will meet the cost of publication charges including those for online-only
journals for Trust-funded research by permitting Trust researchers to use contingency
funds for this purpose;
· encourages researchers to maximize the opportunities to make their
results available for free and, where possible, retain their copyright, as recommended
by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), the Public
Library of Science, and similar frameworks;
· affirms the principle that it is the intrinsic merit of the work, and
not the title of the journal in which a researcher's work is published, that
should be considered in funding decisions and awarding grants.
As part of its corporate planning process, the Trust will continue to keep this
policy under review.
Definition of open access publication 1
An open access publication is one that meets the following two conditions:
1. The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable,
worldwide, perpetual (for the lifetime of the applicable copyright) right of
access to, and a licence to copy, use, distribute, perform and display the work
publicly and to make and distribute derivative works in any digital medium for
any reasonable purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship2, as well
as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.
2. A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving (for the biomedical sciences, PubMed Central is such a repository).
Notes:
1. An open access publication is a property of individual works, not necessarily of journals or of publishers.
2. Community standards, rather than copyright law, will continue to provide the mechanism for enforcement of proper attribution and responsible use of the published work, as they do now.
The definition of open access publication used in this position statement is
based on the definition arrived at by delegates who attended a meeting on open
access publishing convened by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in July 2003.
Last updated OCtober 13th 2009