Sponsored by eIFL and the Poznan Foundation of Scientific Libraries, newcomers learnt about the driving force behind open access; the work of academic authors cannot be seen by all their peers, researchers cannot access all the necessary literature and libraries cannot meet the information needs of their users. The global movement for change that has resulted from the dissatisfaction at all levels has garnered support from prestige funding institutions, legislators from the UK to the Ukraine and most recently, the introduction in the U.S. Senate of a draft bill requiring free online access for federally funded research results in peer-reviewed articles.
The scientific publication system has become a key issue for European research policy. One of the most startling findings of the European Commission funded study on the economic and technical evolution of the scientific publication markets in Europe, is that between 1975 and 1995 the price of print journals rose by 300% above the cost of inflation....
Two key projects related to open access and institutional repositories were featured during the one day event. Participants were treated to the first steps towards a pan-European digital repository infrastructure from the Warsaw University partner of the EU funded “Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for Europe” (DRIVER). The name of the new counterpart to the UK-based SHERPA/RoMEO service was revealed as none other than “Juliet”! Juliet is a database of funders’ open access mandate policies and it is hoped that it will expand to countries beyond the UK.
Finishing the day with a roundtable discussion on institutional repositories, and the role of librarians in their development, participants debated the critical issues for the successful implementation of a repository as well as the merits of institutional versus subject-based repositories....
Two concrete outcomes were reported. A handy tool provided by the Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) to help repository administrators formulate and/or present their repository's policies is being translated into Polish. Jan Andrzej Nikisch, Poznan Foundation of Scientific Libraries reported “I have been invited by the Conference of Polish University Rectors to speak at their forthcoming conference in Wroclaw about open access, new models of scholarly publishing and institutional repositories....”
This workshop is part of a series of eIFL-sponsored open access workshops which have taken place in Serbia, Ukraine, Lithuania, China and Southern Africa under the eIFL Open Access program. Participants from Botswana, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Lesotho, Namibia, Mozambique and Swaziland were represented at the South Africa event.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/31/2006 08:52:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
