Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Friday, June 15, 2007

OA archiving at six Quebec universities

Karen Herland, Librarian poster forum opportunity to share research, Concordia Journal, June 14, 2007.  Excerpt:

...Kumiko Vézina presented her research on professors’ attitudes about open access publishing and archiving [at Concordia University's 5th Annual Poster Forum, June 1, 2007]. She sent a survey to researchers in the six major Quebec universities asking how interested they were in making their research papers completely accessible in online repositories and journals.

She revealed that more than a quarter of the researchers had already published in open access journals, but very few were consistently self-archiving their work in repositories. Their hesitation usually hinged on misunderstanding about the legality and impact of such repositories and not on disagreement with the underlying principles.

Vézina concluded that librarians had an important role to play in countering some of these apprehensions. She also urged the librarians present to ensure that internal repositories were not only available, but actively promoted within their institutions.

Concordia is going ahead with plans to establish an internal repository of our own. Equipment has been purchased and the project will be introduced over the next academic year....