Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Thursday, July 05, 2007

The state of OA in the Nordic countries

Turid Hedlund and Ingegerd Rabow, Open Access in the Nordic Countries: A State of the Art Report, Nordbib, undated.  The authors' preface is signed February 28, 2007, but the report was announced today.  From the report summary:

The report describes the present situation in the Nordic countries (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland) regarding Open Access in scientific publishing....

The reports deals with primary Open Access publishing of scientific journals, working paper series and doctoral theses as well as parallel publishing of scientific articles in publication repositories. The role of the publishers will also be examined in connection with questions about agreements....

The report considers the central questions and initiatives to solutions to the copyright problems....

The report gives examples on differences between, for example, medicine and humanities/social sciences concerning publishing as a means for research communication....

The introduction of the report is a section about the background to the Open Access or free access to scientific publications. We try to provide a picture of the central stages in the development of scientific publishing and the Open Access movement. This illustrated the shortcomings of the publishing process and offered the possibilities of the Internet to distribute research publications with free access to all interested....Scientific journal publishing, specifically in the Nordic countries with small language areas and small circles of readers, is one of the problem areas in the report. In section four, alternatives for solutions through some pilot studies in the Nordic countries are described. In sections five to nine a country report of each Nordic country is given (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden). The report finishes with a discussion about future and existing challenges.

This report is commissioned by the Nordbib project, and the report will primarily function as a basis for discussion at a workshop, arranged by Nordbib, during the spring 2007. Nordbib emphasises that both the report and the workshop shall form a basis in support of discussions between different parties to promote the access to research publications....