Resumos e links de algumas notícias e debates sobre Open Access /Acesso Aberto Brasil

Lund University é a primeira universidade sueca a ter uma política de Acesso Aberto

On November 14, 2005, Lund University became the first Swedish university to have a policy on Open Access.

Resolution

In order to maximize the number of open access publications the Board of Lund University strongly recommends that:

If one slight change is made to the Lund OA policy, the "strongly recommends" can be uncontroversially changed into a "requires":

The only change needed is that what is required is the *deposit* (immediately upon acceptance for publication) of the author's final draft. Then Lund need only "strongly recommend" that *access* to that draft should be set as OA (rather than RA, restricted to institution-internal access).

Researchers at Lund University, if possible, publish in journals with open access

As there are far fewer OA journals to publish in than OA journals, the recommendation to publish in OA journals should not be the primary but the secondary component of the Lund policy. The primary should be the requirement to deposit in the Lund Institutional Repository (IR) all papers published in non-OA journals (and the strong recommendation to set access to them as OA) immediately upon acceptance for publication.

If no equivalent open access journal is available, researchers choose a journal allowing parallel publishing/deposition of the article

As 93% of journals have a "green" policy on immediate OA access-setting (journals have no say at all about institution-internal deposit), the optimal Lund OA policy is (1) required deposit pus (2) strongly recommended OA-setting. Recommend publishing in the 93% of non-OA journals that are OA green (including the 8% of journals that are OA gold). But require immediate deposit in 100% of cases.

Transfer of copyright be avoided. As a minimum the author's right to parallel publishing must be retained.

It is not useful to refer to the self-archiving of the author's refereed final drafts as "parallel publishing." Journals publish. Authors and their institutions provide supplementary ("parallel," if you like) *access* to the published research, by self-archiving the author's refereed final draft free for all on the web.

It is desirable and useful to retain copyright, but it is not *necessary* in order to provide OA. Publishing in any green non-OA journal or any gold OA journal and self-archiving is sufficient. For the 7% of non-OA journals that are still gray, deposit the final refereed draft immediately upon acceptance, set access to RA instead of OA, if desired, and equip the IR with an automatic feature so would-be users can one-click email the author an eprint-request, and the author can one-click approve the emailing of the eprint to the requester. (The Eprints IR software now has this feature, and Dspace is soon likely to have it too; other softwares are certain to follow suit.)

Lund University work for the transition of scholarly journals to a publishing model, where articles either are made freely available to the reader directly or through parallel publishing

If, as stated at the outset, the purpose of Lund's OA policy is "to maximize the number of [Lund's] open access publications" then there is no need to wait for "the transition of scholarly journals to [another] publishing model," nor for any reference to "parallel publishing": just supplementary self-archiving so as to maximise access to Lund research publications.

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The CNRS Guide is an excellent, well-documented, well-written, well-thought-out guide to the legal aspects of self-archiving. I strongly urge that it be translated also into English and adapted for use by other institutions.

Divulgada, em 02 de dezembro de 2005, pelo Movimento Acesso Aberto Brasil, a Declaração de apoio ao acesso aberto à literatura científica - "Carta de São Paulo"

"Nós, professores, pesquisadores, bibliotecários, alunos, cidadãos e representantes de organizações da sociedade civil, vimos através desse documento manifestar nosso apoio ao acesso aberto à literatura científica.

Os indivíduos e organizações que firmam esse documento reconhecem os importantes papéis desempenhados por autores, editores, publishers, bibliotecas e instituições no registro e na disseminação da pesquisa. Reconhecem particularmente a defesa dos direitos autorais de atribuição e integridade da obra. (...)"

20% GROWTH IN EPRINTS ARCHIVES
Recebido por e-mail, BOAI newsletter sexta 14/11/2005

The free GNU Eprints.org software is the first Open Access Institutional Rpository software, and the most widely used worldwide.

The number of EPrints-based archives now stands at 195, an increase of 22% from the 160 in existence 2 months ago. A list of the new sites is provided at the end of this email. http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?action=browse#version

Eprints is continuously upgraded in accordance with the expressed needs of the worldwide EPrints user community - the longest-standing usership of any archive software - as well as the evolving needs of the even larger global Open Access community.

- RSS feeds of latest research outputs from individuals, groups and
institutions
- HTTPS support
- Default metadata set designed by librarians
- Custom search forms
- Maximises Open Access (OAI is enabled by default and automatically
configured) and is designed to support Google searching
- Generate HTML bibliography fragments for including
up-to-date publication lists on web pages and portals
- Easy mechanisms for research reporting

- Output plugins (BibTex, XML etc.)
- Customisable submission workflow
- Support for Research Assessment processes
http://irra.eprints.org/

- Stand alone, out of the box
- Host multiple archives on one physical server
- Designed by researchers (who understand the tasks, OA needs and
motivations of researchers)
- Email alerts
- Scripting API
- Comprehensive customisation
- Multi-language support

In order to help sustain the continued growth of EPrints in the future, a new initiative, EPrints Services, has been launched. http://www.eprints.org/services/

Pat Schroeder and Bob Barr, Reining in Google < http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20051102-093349-7482r.htm >, The Washington Times, November 3, 2005. Pat Schroeder is a former member of Congress from Colorado and the current president of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), which his suing Google. Bob Barr is a former member of the House Judiciary Committee. (Thanks to Garrett Eastman.) Excerpt:

You're probably reading the byline above and wondering, "What could these two, from opposite sides of the aisle in Congress, possibly have in common with each other?" The answer is when it comes to Google's Print Library Project we have much in common: We're both authors and both believe intellectual property should actually mean something....The creators and owners of these copyrighted works will not be compensated, nor has Google defined what a "snippet" is: a paragraph? A page? A chapter? A whole book? Meanwhile Google will gain a huge new revenue stream by selling ad space on library search results....Not only is Google trying to rewrite copyright law, it is also crushing creativity. If publishers and authors have to spend all their time policing Google for works they have already written, it is hard to create more. Our laws say if you wish to copy someone's work, you must get their permission. Google wants to trash that....Just because Google is huge, it should not be allowed to change the law....Google envisions a world in which all content is free; and of course, it controls the portal through which Internet user's access that content. It would completely devalue everyone else's property and massively increase the value of its own....These lawsuits are needed to halt theft of intellectual property. To see it any other way is intellectually dishonest.

Comment of Peter Suber (Open Access Project Director):
Nine quick replies. (1) A snippet is a fair-use excerpt. If you think Google's snippets are too long to count as fair use, then the AAP should scale back its lawsuit to the demand that snippets be short enough to count as fair use. Right now the AAP is trying to halt the whole project regardless of fair use. (2) Why do you care whether Google makes money? When a book critic quotes a fair-use excerpt in a book review, it appears on the same page as an advertisement. The publishing newspaper has a commercial purpose in publishing the excerpt. Does that negate fair use? Does it depend on how much the newspaper makes from advertising? (3) Authors who have nothing better to do than "police" free advertising for their books, and try to stop it, should lie down and wait for help. Meantime, other authors can write books and work with Google, among others, in bringing them to the attention of readers. (4) Google believes that existing rules protect what it is doing. It doesn't need to trash them. If you really don't know that Google has a legal argument, then see the many defenses of Google's project by lawyers and law professors that I collected < http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/10-02-05.htm#google > last month. (5) You write: "Just because Google is huge, it should not be allowed to change the law." Did you really think Google disagreed? Just because you are angry authors doesn't mean that Google is harming you. Just because you are former members of Congress doesn't mean that you've got the lock on fair use. (6) No doubt, Google is taking a step whose legality is uncertain. But its legality will be decided by a court, not by Google. Did you really think otherwise? (7) Google is making some information free, but it's making other information searchable without making it free and helping users find places to buy it. (8) You clearly believe that Google's project will harm authors and publishers. But why not cite even one piece of evidence? (9) Why is it more important for you to disparage the arguments against you as intellectually dishonest than to restate them honestly and criticize them?

Oxford Journals today released the first results from its optional open access model, Oxford Open, maintaining its commitment to sharing first hand open access evidence with the scholarly community. It has also confirmed a further 19 journals to join the initiative from January 2006. The initiative, launched on July 1, 2005, gives authors the option of paying for their research to be made freely available online immediately on publication. Results from the first quarter of operation show an average of 9% open access take-up by authors across the 21 participating journals, with take-up limited to the Life Sciences and Medicine. There has been no take-up by authors publishing in participating Humanities and Social Sciences titles. Martin Richardson, Managing Director, Oxford Journals, commented, "Nine of the 21 journals involved in the first phase of Oxford Open have published open access papers since July. There has been a noticeable variation in the take-up of open access amongst these journals; some life science journals have published up to 5% of papers under the open access model, while others have seen take-up of approximately 17%." Most authors submitting papers for open access are from subscribing institutions, who as part of the Oxford Open model pay a discounted rate (£800 or $1500, compared to £1500 or $2800 at full charge for authors from non-subscribing institutions). "The optional open access model supports our authors by allowing them the choice of paying for immediate free access to their articles, with unrestricted reuse for education and research." commented Richardson. He added, "Ultimately, Oxford Open will allow us to examine whether optional open access is a long term sustainable financial model for publishing peer-reviewed journals, and in which subject areas the market demands might be strong enough to move more proactively in this direction. These early results suggest that open access is likely to be only one of a range of models that will be necessary to support the requirements of different research communities."

Oxford Open is the latest of four open access models being tested by Oxford Journals. Further trials include partially funded open access (Journal of Experimental Botany); sponsored open access, Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine (eCAM); and full open access, Nucleic Acids Research (NAR). NAR, one of the first major science journals of such stature and prestige to move to a full open access model in January 2005, will remain full open access in 2006 based on positive feedback from readers and authors, and a continued increase in submissions.

Rebecca Kemp has posted some figures on the costs of setting up and running open-source OA repositories at 10 institutions, < http://library.uncwil.edu/Faculty/kempr/listserv-summary-IR-open-source-costs.xls >. The figures came in response to her call for data on the LibLicense discussion list. If you have additional data, send them to her at < kempr(at)uncw.edu >.

According to her spreadsheet, the low end for set-up costs is $6,886 (University of Nottingham) and the high end is $1,706,765 (Cambridge University). The low end for yearly maintenance is $36,000 (National University of Ireland) and the high end is $285,000 (MIT). Because Cambridge gives no annual maintenance cost, it's very high set-up cost may include annual maintenance. Kemp lists the Caltech archive but doesn't mention Caltech's finding < http://www.arl.org/sparc/pubs/enews/aug01.html#6 > that set-up costs are less than $1,000.

It's not clear what the different institutions are counting as part of set-up and maintenance. It would help to break out the different costs so that we know when we're comparing like with like and when we're not.

Recebido por e-mail: SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue #91
November 2, 2005

The Open Content Alliance (OCA) is a major new project to scan print books
and index them for searching. It was launched on October 3 by an
international consortium of profit and non-profit organizations. When the
books are in the public domain or when OCA has obtained the
copyright-holder's consent, then it will provide open access to the full-texts.

The press is calling OCA a Yahoo initiative, perhaps to play up a rivalry
with Google. But the Internet Archive conceived the OCA and will
administer it. Yahoo will index the content for searching. Adobe and HP
Labs will provide technology. Content will come from any and all
institutions that can be persuaded to volunteer. At the time of launch,
there were six: the European Archive, National Archives of the UK,
O'Reilly Media, Prelinger Archives, the University of California, and the
University of Toronto. Three weeks later the content-providers had almost
tripled. The new members include the Biodiversity Heritage Library, the
Smithsonian Institution Libraries, Columbia University, Emory University,
Johns Hopkins University Libraries, and McMaster University, Rice
University, York University, and the Universities of British Columbia,
Ottawa, Pittsburgh, and Virginia. Two especially important post-launch
members are the RLG and Microsoft. New members are always welcome.

Unlike Google Library, the OCA will only scan copyrighted books when it has
the copyright-holder's consent. As a result, publisher groups that
criticized Google Library (AAP, AAUP, ALPSP) have endorsed the OCA.

OCA-scanned books will be available at a separate web site called the Open
Library, and searchable through IA, Yahoo, and Microsoft. Or more
precisely, that's where they'll start. But all OCA's digitizing, copying,
and indexing will be non-exclusive. If other organizations want to copy
and host the texts, they may. If other search engines want to index them,
they may. Yes, that includes Google.

In addition to producing free online digital books, OCA will support
print-on-demand from Lulu and audio editions from LibriVox.

Here are some thoughts about the project, especially in contrast with
Google's Library project.

* For publishers of books under copyright, the OCA is opt-in rather than
opt-out. This definitely pleases publishers and others with a conservative
interpretation of fair use, but it doesn't follow that the Google opt-out
policy is unlawful. Nor does the OCA policy weaken the legal case for the
Google policy.

Both policies might be lawful. If Google wins in court and vindicates the
opt-out policy, then book-scanning projects will have two lawful options
and it will be interesting to compare them. For some authors and some
publishers, the OCA method will look better. But for the book-scanners
themselves, for readers, and for many other authors and publishers, the
Google method will look better. The advantage of opt-in is strongest in a
period of legal uncertainty, like the present. While Google is moiling
through lawsuits, paying lawyers, and risking liability, the OCA can
proceed without risk.

However, if opt-out is ever vindicated, then its attractions will be
unmistakable. First, it dispenses with the cost and delay of seeking
permission. Second, it open a much larger universe of books for the
book-scanners. If some publishers will opt in, some will opt out, and
others will not respond one way or another --because they don't realize
that their texts are being scanned or they don't care enough to stop it--,
then an opt-in policy will get only the first set of texts while an opt-out
policy will get both the first and the third.

In short, the chief advantage of the OCA opt-in policy is that it's clearly
legal. If the Google opt-out policy is ever clearly legal too, it will be
so much better that even the OCA should consider using it.

* While the OCA pleases publisher groups that objected to Google Library,
its reception among author groups is less clear. At least one author group
that criticized Google Library --the Text and Academic Authors
Association-- also supports the OCA. But I haven't yet seen a statement
from the Authors Guild (AG) about the OCA. In fact, if the AG is
consistent, it will have the same objection to the OCA that it has to
Google Library. If the Google project undercuts book sales, then so will
the OCA, and publisher consent won't stop it. If the Google project
increases book sales but doesn't pay for the privilege, then the OCA
project will do the same, and publisher consent won't change that.

* The OCA will deliver full open access to its texts whenever it has
permission. By contrast, when Google digitizes public-domain books, it
will disable printing and downloading in the user's browser, ruling out
redistribution and offline reading. Google's scanning is non-exclusive in
the sense that anyone else with millions of dollars is free to scan the
same texts. But it's exclusive in the sense that Google will not share its
digital results with the public except under certain restrictions. For
Google, these restrictions are the default, even for public-domain
texts. Google is spending a lot of money to digitize these texts and wants
to be the only tool in town to index them, at least for a significant time.

For the OCA, however, the default is to remove all access barriers and
retain no edge over rivals. That's so remarkable that it's worth saying
again: the OCA policy is to give everything away everything that it has
permission to give away. The only edge its members will retain over rivals
is the good will they generate and the use of the digital files slightly
before anyone else. Not only are Yahoo and Microsoft --bitter rivals--
working together within the OCA, both are willing to share the results with
Google, a common rival to them both.

We could even say that insofar as they participate in this digital book
commons, the members of the OCA have no rivals. Everyone is either a
partner by working with them or a partner by receiving the benefit of their
work and investment as a gift. Google can be forgiven if it wonders
whether this is a business model or a potlatch.

It's not an ordinary business model, since the OCA is not-for-profit. But
it's not an ordinary potlatch either, since it's all about utility, not
ceremony. However, it has elements of both. The OCA has found a way to
make a gift of unrivaled significance and still to pay the bills. The OCA
is consciously surpassing Google in the openness of its content, or the
generosity of its gift, but it's also consciously surpassing Google in the
legal stability of its business methods.

But of course Yahoo and Microsoft are still rivals apart from OCA and still
see ways to make money from their participation in OCA even if that has to
be long-term and indirect. The only short-term boost they get over Google
from this project is the chance to build better relations with the authors
and publishers who dislike the Google project. We should never forget,
however, that many authors and publishers think the lawsuits against Google
are baseless and harmful, approve the opt-out policy, and love the Google
project.

The rivalries among Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google are not only real, but
interesting enough to soak up news attention. But reporters who focus on
the rivalries are missing half the full story. The OCA project and Google
Library are compatible and complementary. Both teams take the position
that "the more, the merrier" and they're both right to do so. Both teams
work to minimize duplication among the scanned books.

* The best statement of the OCA's open-access policy is by Daniel
Greenstein of the California Digital Library. Barbara Quint quotes him in
the October 31 issue of Information Today: Content providers "must compete
on value added to the content, not on ownership." Giving away the content
to all who want it will "drive innovations in service provisions, such as
annotated and educational services." Even the for-profit OCA partners must
recognize that "proprietary control over content is an impediment to commerce."

* Even for the OCA, however, the details of reuse permissions may vary from
one content donor to another. Here's how Brewster Kahle put it in his
introduction to the OCA for the Yahoo Search Blog (October 2): "We believe
that donors should have the option to restrict the bulk re-hosting of a
substantial part of a collection. This seems fair....Interestingly
University of California and Yahoo have decided to not put any
restrictions. So if another library wants to re-host these on their
website, or another search engine wants to integrate them into their page
flipping system, they are welcome to. To be clear, the public domain works
in the Open Content Alliance can be "borrowed" in bulk for build navigation
services, do research on, and the like. Bits and pieces of the public
domain collections can be re-used and re-interpreted. If someone wants to
print and binding a book and sell it on Amazon.com-- go nuts, if they want
to make it into an audio book and post it on the web-- go for it (we will
even supply the hosting for this), basically let's have a blast building on
the classics of humankind." http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000192.html

"[1] The OCA will encourage the greatest possible degree of access to and
reuse of collections in the archive, while respecting the rights of content
owners and contributors. [2] Contributors will determine the terms and
conditions under which their collections are distributed and how
attribution should be made." http://www.opencontentalliance.org/participate.html

* I appreciate that Google would undermine its investment if it shared its
files freely. But of course I still prefer the OCA policy of free
sharing. Given the complicated balance of rivalry and complementarity
between the two projects, is there a chance that Google will feel anything
like competitive pressure to open up access a bit more to its public-domain
books? Google's need to protect its investment may explain why it displays
its books as images rather than text, but it doesn't explain why it
disables printing. The purpose can't be to block rival indexing, since a
search engine can't crawl a printout. Nor can it be to ingratiate rights
holders, since no permission is needed to copy books in the public
domain. Similarly, it doesn't explain why Google blocks downloading the
image files for offline reading, since a search engine can't (yet) crawl
image files online or off. Can we hope that Google will feel pressure from
the OCA to offer printing and downloading for its public-domain books, even
if not full OA for rival indexing?

Moreover, Google is oddly blocking access to its digital books for users in
certain European countries, even for books that are clearly in the public
domain in those countries. (Thanks to Klaus Graf for documenting
this.) Google hasn't said whether this is a feature or a bug, deliberate
or inadvertent. But either way, can we hope that pressure from the OCA
will give it a reason to lift the barriers?

BTW, the OCA books in the Open Library are images, just like
Google's. However, the OCA allows users to download the books in PDF
format. (The download command is in the "Print" menu, and is currently
supported for some but not all the Open Library books.) The PDF contains
the image files, not text for cutting and pasting. This is an annoying
limitation but a step above what Google is offering. If Google lifts
access barriers in response to OCA, and rivals the OCA in openness, is
there any chance that OCA will take a step to maintain its lead? Both
projects have text qua text behind the images, for searching. Which will
be first to give it to users, at least for public-domain books? I'd love
to see non-image or text versions of these books online, even if they are
only crudely formatted.

* The OCA hasn't merely made a general offer of its content to every user
and search engine. It has specifically invited Google to join the
consortium and crawl the content. As far we know, Google hasn't come to a
decision yet. I'd like to see Google accept the invitation. Indexing the
OCA content would improve the Google index, which would help both Google
and its users. Is Google willing to pass up that increment of quality in
order to avoid feeling pressure to reciprocate, or in order to spurn a gift
from Yahoo and Microsoft? Declining the invitation would not be "evil",
but I can't see that it would do any good.

* While some OCA members are for-profit corporations (Yahoo, Microsoft,
Adobe, HP), the OCA itself is non-profit. More, it's a 501(c)(3)
corporation, which means that donations to it are tax-deductible in the
U.S. Supporters who have no technology or content to offer may help by
donating money.

* The Google project has at least one advantage for the libraries and
archives that donate content. Google will pay the costs of scanning, while
the OCA expects the donating institutions to bear these costs --at the
unprecedented low rate of 10 cents/page. There are some exceptions,
however. Yahoo will pay to scan the University of California's 18,000
volume collection of American literature, for example, and Microsoft will
pay to scan 150,000 books still to be determined. The U of California,
though, has committed $500,000 of its own money to pick up where Yahoo left
off and scan a few more collections after that.

The allocation of costs is one reason why the OCA corpus will grow more
slowly than the Google corpus. Of course it's also a reason why Google
feels more pressure than the OCA to glean some competitive advantage from
its investment.

* Another reason why the OCA corpus will grow more slowly than the Google
corpus, at least for copyrighted books, is that seeking and obtaining
permission from the copyright holder is time-consuming, expensive, and
frequently unsuccessful.

Look at these obstacles closely. That's what the OCA has signed up to face
and what Google needn't face as long as it can use its opt-out policy.

* Google Library has signed up five significant research libraries. The
OCA started with two, now has a dozen, and has a standing invitation for more.

Libraries attracted to the general idea may be unsure which team to
join. Google offers the advantage of paying the bills, but also the risks
of implicating its library partners in lawsuits for contributory
infringement. So far, both the author plaintiffs and publisher plaintiffs
suing Google have left the libraries out. That's commendable but legally
unnecessary and there's no telling how long it will last.

* The libraries already participating in the OCA, Google Library, and the
EU's i2010 project are among the best-stocked in the world. Only a
fraction of their books have been digitized so far. But before long we'll
reach an important crossover moment when every researcher with an internet
connection will have free online access to more full-text books online than
are shelved at the average university library. The crossover moment for
public-domain books will occur long before the crossover moment for
copyrighted books, but I believe both are inevitable. Also inevitable is
the crossover moment when online researchers have free online access to
more full-text books than are shelved at the *top* academic libraries.

The number of free online full-text journal articles is growing steadily
and it's likely that its percentage relative to toll-access journal
articles is also growing. However, the percentage of books that are free
online may soon exceed the percentage of journal articles that are free
online. A year or two ago that would have been most unexpected. Journal
articles are the low-hanging fruit for OA because they are royalty-free,
and books are higher-hanging fruit because they are not. But to be
precise, only copyrighted books pay royalties; public-domain books are as
royalty-free as journal articles, though for a different reason. One clear
advantage for journal articles is that they are born digital, nowadays,
while public-domain books must be scanned. On the other side, however,
public-domain books have two advantages over journal articles for the
purposes of OA. The first is that well-funded and well-motivated players
are providing OA to public-domain books, one huge swath at a time. The
second is that the legal basis for OA to public-domain books is the
expiration of copyright, while the legal basis for OA to (most) journal
articles is copyright-holder consent. As we know all too well, the fact
that article authors have an interest in consenting to OA, and the fact
that they could consent to OA without losing revenue, don't mean that they
are all consenting. Moreover, when they do consent, they don't always take
the next step of submitting their work to an OA journal or depositing it in
an OA repository. Consequently, we should be prepared to see the curve for
OA public-domain books, starting about now, rise more quickly than the
curve for OA journal articles. The public-domain book curve could cross
the journal curve in less than a year, keep climbing, and reach roughly
100% ages before the journal curve reaches 100%.

* Both the OCA and Google Library will give priority to public-domain
books, although both will also include books under copyright. For some
time, then, progress reports and popular scans will focus public attention
on the wealth of the public domain. Let's hope this educates voters about
the importance of protecting the public domain from encroachments such as
copyright-term extensions.

Likewise, by making a point of getting the rights-holder's consent before
including books under copyrighted, the OCA could educate the public about
the benefits of relaxing the tightening grip of copyright and consenting to
wider and easier access. If consenting publishers discover that free
online full-text searching increases net sales (as the consenting
publishers in Google's Publisher program are discovering), then more and
more publishers should open their content to the OCA.

Aos poucos o acesso aberto se fortalece...
Declaração de Salvador, divulgada no IX Congresso Mundial de Informação em Saúde Bibliotecas
10 de outubro de 2005

Declaração de Salvador sobre o Acesso Aberto: a perspectiva dos países em desenvolvimento

O Acesso Aberto significa acesso e uso irrestrito da informação científica. Tem recebido apoio crescente em âmbito mundial e é considerado com entusiasmo e grande expectativa nos países em desenvolvimento.

O Acesso Aberto promove a eqüidade. Nos países em desenvolvimento, o Acesso Aberto aumentará a capacidade dos cientistas e acadêmicos de acessar e contribuir para a ciência mundial.

Historicamente, a circulação da informação científica nos países em desenvolvimento tem sido limitada por inúmeras barreiras incluindo modelos econômicos, infra-estrutura, políticas, idioma e cultura.

Consequentemente, NÓS, os participantes do International Seminar on Open Access - evento paralelo do 9º Congresso Mundial de Informação em Saúde e Bibliotecas e 7º Congresso Regional de Informação em Ciências da Saúde, concordamos que:

1. A pesquisa científica e tecnológica é essencial para o desenvolvimento social e econômico.
2. A comunicação científica é parte crucial e inerente das atividades de pesquisa e desenvolvimento. A ciência se desenvolve de forma mais eficaz quando há acesso irrestrito à informação científica.
3. Em uma perspectiva mais ampla, o Acesso Aberto favorece a educação e o uso da informação científica pelo público.
4. Em um mundo crescentemente globalizado, no qual a ciência proclama ser universal, a exclusão do acesso à informação é inaceitável. É importante que o acesso seja considerado um direito universal, independente de qualquer região geográfica.
5. O Acesso Aberto deve facilitar a participação ativa dos países em desenvolvimento no intercâmbio mundial de informação científica, incluindo o acesso gratuito ao patrimônio do conhecimento científico, a participação efetiva no processo de geração e disseminação do conhecimento, e a ampliação da cobertura de temas de relevância para os países em desenvolvimento.
6. Os países em desenvolvimento são pioneiros em iniciativas de Acesso Aberto e, portanto, desempenham função essencial na configuração do cenário de Acesso Aberto em âmbito mundial.

Instamos que os governos dêem alta prioridade ao Acesso Aberto nas políticas científicas incluindo:

* a exigência de que a pesquisa financiada com recursos públicos seja disponibilizada através de Acesso Aberto;
* a inclusão do custo da publicação como parte do custo de pesquisa;
* o fortalecimento dos periódicos nacionais de Acesso Aberto, de repositórios e de outras iniciativas pertinentes;
* a promoção da integração da informação científica dos países em desenvolvimento no escopo mundial do conhecimento.

Conclamamos a todos os parceiros da comunidade internacional para conjuntamente assegurar que a informação científica seja de livre acesso e disponível para todos e para sempre.

O Conselho Deliberativo do CNPq manifesta seu apoio à publicação de trabalhos em veículos de acesso livre
http://www.cnpq.br/noticias/2005/051005.htm
10 de outubro de 2005

O Conselho Deliberativo (CD) do CNPq entende que a divulgação de resultados é parte essencial da pesquisa científica ao favorecer a disseminação do conhecimento. Tal disseminação torna-se mais eficiente se for rápida e amplamente disponível para a sociedade. Nesse sentido, a internet possibilita ampla divulgação de resultados com redução dos custos de produção e de distribuição das publicações científicas.

Para permitir que o benefício das publicações científicas de acesso livre [2] se consolide e se estenda, devem ser adotadas políticas claras em relação às publicações de beneficiários de apoio do CNPq:

1. Encorajamos os beneficiários de projetos e bolsas do CNPq a publicar o seu trabalho segundo os princípios do modelo de acesso livre e a depositar os seus trabalhos em repositórios eletrônicos de acesso público 1;

2. Os recursos financeiros recebidos do CNPq poderão ser utilizados para pagamento de custos de publicação no modelo de acesso livre;

3. O CNPq dará apoio prioritário, no seu programa editorial, a revistas nacionais que adotem o modelo de acesso livre, e

4. Finalmente, reafirmamos que o mérito intrínseco do trabalho, independentemente do veículo de sua publicação, deve ser considerado nas avaliações de desempenho pelos comitês do CNPq.

[1] Baseada na “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities”; www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html

[2] A publicação de acesso livre é propriedade dos seus autores e não necessariamente das revistas e órgãos de publicação e deve preencher duas condições:
a) os autores e detentores do copyright garantem o direito do acesso livre, irrevogável e perpétuo, sem restrições geográficas, a todos os usuários para copiar, usar, distribuir, transmitir, exibir o trabalho em qualquer meio digital para qualquer objetivo responsável desde que seja reconhecida e atribuída a sua autoria;
b) uma versão completa do trabalho, assim como todo material suplementar relacionado, em formato eletrônico padrão, deve ser depositada imediatamente após a publicação inicial em pelo menos um repositório eletrônico. Tal repositório deve ser garantido por uma instituição acadêmica, uma sociedade científica ou similar, uma agência governamental ou outra organização reconhecida e garantir o acesso livre, distribuição irrestrita, interoperabilidade e arquivamento de longa duração.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

III Conferência sobre Comunicacao Acadêmica
10 de outubro, recebido por e-mail

Third Nordic Conference on Scholarly Communication
Beyond Declarations - The Changing Landscape of Scholarly Communication
24-25 April 2006 Lund, Sweden

In order to discuss, present and analyse the problems and challenges that arise within scholarly communication Lund University Libraries invite scholars, publishers, vendors, editors, librarians and other interested parties to the Third Nordic Conference on Scholarly Communication, 24-25 April 2006 in Lund, Sweden

THEMES
Open Access infrastructure
Future financing of scholarly publishing
Intellectual property rights
Research assessment

SPEAKERS
Bo-Christer Björk, Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration, Helsinki, Finland
Eugene Garfield, Founder & Chairman Emeritus Institute for Scientific Information - now Thomson Scientific, Philadelphia, USA
Jean-Claude Guedon, University of Montreal, Canada
Derk Haank, Springer Science+Business Media, Berlin, Germany
Mathias Klang, Department of Informatics, University of Göteborg, Sweden
Mark McCabe, School of Economics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA
Alma Swan, Key Perspectives Ltd, UK
John Wilbanks, Science Commons, Cambridge, MA, USA
Astrid Wissenburg, Economic and Social Research Council/Research Councils UK

You will find more details about the programme on http://www.lub.lu.se/ncsc2006/

CERN Promove Workshop sobre Comunicacao Acadêmica
19 de setembro, recebido por e-mail

CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication - OAI4 - 20-22 October 2005
Mais informacoes: http://oai4.web.cern.ch/OAI4/.

"The series of Cern Workshop has established itself as one of the premier meetings on Open Access in Europe. The 2005 Programme reflects
a wide spectrum of interest in the Open Access movement, with papers and workshops to interest librarians, funders, academics and technical
specialists."

Medindo o valor do Impacto Perdido
Stevan Harnad, escreve artigo sobre a maximizacao do retorno do investimento britânico em Pesquisa.
14 de setembro, recebido por e-mail

Abstract: The United Kingdom is not yet maximising the return on its public investment in research. Research Councils UK (RCUK) spend £3.5 billion pounds annually. The UK produces at least 130,000 research journal articles per year, but if it is worth funding and doing at all, research must be not only published, but used, applied and built upon by other researchers (‘citation impact’). The online-age practice of self-archiving has been shown to increase citation impact by a dramatic 50-250%, but so far only 15% of researchers are doing it spontaneously. Citation impact is rewarded by universities (through promotions and salary increases) and by research-funders like RCUK (through grant funding and renewal) at a conservative estimate of £46 per citation. If we multiply this by the 85% of the UK's annual journal article output that is not yet self-archived, this translates into an annual loss of £2,541,500 in revenue to UK researchers for not having done (or delegated) the few extra keystrokes per article it would have taken to self-archive their final drafts. But this impact loss translates into a far bigger one for the British public, if we reckon it as the loss of potential returns on its research investment. As a proportion of the RCUK’s yearly £3.5bn research expenditure, our conservative estimate would be 50% x 85% x £3.5.bn = £1.5bn worth of loss in potential research impact. The solution is obvious, and it is the one the RCUK is proposing: to extend the existing universal 'publish or perish' requirement to 'publish and also self-archive your final draft on your institutional website'. The time to close this 50%-250% research impact gap is already well overdue. This is the historic moment for the UK to set an example for the world, showing how to maximise the return on the public investment in research in the online era.

Veja também a nota de imprensa da Universidade de Southampton sobre o artigo de Harnad:

The UK is losing around £1.5 billion annually in the potential impact of its scientific research expenditure, according to one of the key figures in the global open access publishing movement. Professor Stevan Harnad, Moderator of the American Scientist Open Access Forum and Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science, has calculated the potential return on the investment in scientific research findings that are being lost to the UK each year through the limitations of the current academic publishing environment....He reveals today that the calculations of the value of research impact to be gained by a universal policy of self-archiving indicates a figure of at least £1.5 billion's worth annually. 'This is actually a conservative estimate,' says Harnad. 'It also takes no account of the much wider loss in revenue from potential usage and applications of UK research findings in the UK and worldwide, nor the still more general loss to the progress of human inquiry.' He is calling for a full acceptance of the RCUK recommendation. 'We know that 90 per cent of journals already endorse author self-archiving,' he says, 'and that over 90 per cent of authors will comply. 'This is a historic moment for the UK to set an example for the world,' he concludes, 'showing how to maximize the return on public investment in research in the online era.'

ColLib - Sistema que organiza documentos relacionados com reüpositórios de Acesso Aberto
12 de setembro, recebido por e-mail

"ColLib - a prototype of a system for organizing and finding documents that are available in Open Access repositories.
http://collib.info/

colLib is based on the fact that anyone can contribute to organizing the records. When you look at a post you will allways find a link marked "Click here to add/edit tags". Clicking here will give you the opportunity to change the old tags and/or add new ones. You will find some more information on how to do this here:
http://collib.info/index.php/Help:Editing

Another way to contribute is to upload documents you have created to one of the repositories that are harvested by colLib."

ColLib foi criado por Magnus Enger (bibliotecário da Bodø Regional University, Noruega)

Nova versao da Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography
09 de setembro, recebido por e-mail (BOAI Forum)

"Version 59 of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography is now available. This selective bibliography presents over 2,480 articles, books, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet."
http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepb.html

"The Open Access Webliography (with Ho) complements the OAB, providing access to a number of Websites related to open access topics."
http://www.escholarlypub.com/cwb/oaw.htm

Acréscimos na lista de periódicos de Acesso aberto de Jan Szczepanski
02 de setembro, recebido por e-mail

Editor do portal de Acesso Aberto BioMed Central muda para a Editora Springer
02 de setembro, recebido por e-mail

On August 16, Jan Velterop became the Director of Open Access at
Springer. Jan is the former publisher of BioMed Central, the first and
largest open-access publisher. Springer is the second-largest publisher of
science journals (after Elsevier). Springer is green on self-archiving
(preprints and postprints) and last summer launched its Open Choice
program, a version of the author-choice or Walker-Prosser model, for all
its journals.

Carta Aberta para o Conselho de Pesquisa Britânico
Open Letter to Research Councils UK: Rebuttal of ALPSP Critique
Recebido por e-mail de Stevan Harnad/ BOAI Forum,
21 de agosto de 2005

// Carta em resposta a Sally Morris, diretor executivo da ALPSP (Association of Learned and Professional Society
Publishers), que afirma que o acesso aberto terá consequências desastrosas para a pesquisa (a respeito dos planos da agência de pesquisa britânica sobre política de auto-arquivamento).//

Assinam:
Professor Tim Berners-Lee (University of Southampton)
Professor Dave De Roure (University of Southampton)
Professor Stevan Harnad (University of Southampton)
Professor Nigel Shadbolt (University of Southampton)
Professor Derek Law (University of Strathclyde)
Dr. Peter Murray-Rust (University of Cambridge)
Professor Charles Oppenheim (Loughborough University)
Professor Yorick Wilks (University of Sheffield)

e (3) JISC Technical Report on Central vs. Institutional Archiving (Swan et al.) http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11000/

Debate:
" Scholarly Journals at the Crossroads: A Subversive Proposal for Electronic Publishing -
An Internet Discussion about Scientific and Scholarly Journals and Their Future"
http://www.arl.org/scomm/subversive/toc.html

Lista de jornais de acesso aberto.
por Jan Szczepanski, bibliotecário da Universidade de Göteborg.
19 de agosto de 2005

Notícias Terça-Feira, 12 de julho de 2005
Recebido do JC e-mail 2809, de 12 de Julho de 2005.

Médico sugere moratória de publicações

Para Richard Smith, ex-editor de revista médica, farmacêuticas manipulam periódicos para propaganda

Um tanto constrangido, o britânico Richard Smith, 53, confessa que passou quase 25 anos como editor de uma das maiores revistas médicas de seu país, a "British Medical Journal", sem atinar para a influência que as empresas farmacêuticas estavam tendo sobre as publicações do ramo.

Dois anos atrás, em plena Veneza, ele teve tempo de ler o que havia sido publicado sobre a relação entre essas publicações e a indústria. Smith percebeu que, por meio de estratégias discretas, as empresas fazem seus remédios parecerem muito melhores do que realmente são.

Além disso, atrelariam as revistas a seus interesses comprando milhões em artigos reimpressos e distribuindo-os para médicos do mundo todo.

Por isso, num artigo publicado em maio na revista científica "PLoS Medicine" (que pertence a um grupo de periódicos de acesso gratuito do qual Smith é um dos diretores), ele defendeu um passo radical: cancelar toda e qualquer publicação de testes clínicos de medicamentos nos periódicos científicos.

Só assim pesquisadores e médicos seriam capazes de examinar com um olhar mais crítico o potencial e os perigos de cada remédio para as pessoas. De seu escritório em Londres, Smith falou à Folha por telefone.

Folha - Como o sr. passou a tomar consciência da influência negativa da indústria farmacêutica sobre as publicações médicas?

Richard Smith -No começo de 2003, eu consegui dois meses de licença sabática [do "British Medical Journal"] num "palazzo" do século 15 em Veneza, onde eu estava escrevendo um livro sobre ética de publicação e revistas científicas. Foi meio que um tempo para olhar as coisas de outra perspectiva e também de ler uma batelada de coisas. Eram coisas que eu ainda não tinha lido, e que provavelmente deveria ter lido, como o artigo que citei no meu texto. Nele, os pesquisadores examinaram todos os testes clínicos de drogas antiinflamatórias contra artrite e descobriram que não havia um só cujos resultados não fossem favoráveis à empresa patrocinadora. E isso meio que me atingiu. Eu pensei: "Minha nossa, 58 testes e nem unzinho não-favorável!". E foi então que a ficha caiu. Logo depois disso nós publicamos um número do "BMJ" sobre médicos e companhias farmacêuticas, com uma revisão sistemática desse tipo de estudo, investigando se normalmente os patrocinadores conseguiam resultados favoráveis. E, de novo, conseguiam. E de repente pensei: "Meu Deus! Aqui estamos nós em meio ao processo de decidir quais testes clínicos publicar, mas a realidade é que praticamente todos são favoráveis às empresas". Não é que elas estejam mexendo nos resultados, não é fraude. Não é que elas estejam enterrando os resultados desfavoráveis, embora eu ache que isso exista. É mais o fato de que elas são espertas em relação às perguntas que fazem. Então a ficha realmente caiu enquanto eu lia aquele artigo.

Além da questão da eficácia das drogas propriamente dita, o sr. afirma que os estudos com avaliações econômicas de determinados medicamentos costumam ser ainda mais favoráveis aos fabricantes. A que eles se referem?

- Eles tratam da relação custo-benefício de um remédio. Publicávamos muitos no "BMJ", não apenas com avaliações econômicas de drogas mas também de outras coisas. O significado deles é o seguinte: se você prescrever essa e essa droga -que muitas vezes são caras-, as pessoas podem dizer que não são capazes de pagar por elas. Mas as avaliações econômicas vão mostrar que há benefícios substanciais em termos de reduzir hospitalizações, ou reduzir visitas ao médico. Assim, embora seja caro prescrever a droga, o gasto final é menor. Em tese, acredito nisso, mas aí fico preocupado ao ver que, em todo santo caso, as avaliações econômicas favorecem a empresa.

Em seu trabalho, o sr. menciona o caso de dois remédios, a risperidona [usada contra náuseas] e o odansetron [para tratar esquizofrenia], como emblemático do procedimento de "fazer as perguntas certas" da indústria. Como os testes mostram isso?

- No caso da risperidona, foi um artigo publicado no "Lancet" [importante revista médica britânica], e o que ele demonstrava era o seguinte. Se você examinasse os testes clínicos, vários dos quais haviam sido publicados em revistas diferentes, a maioria demonstrava que a risperidona era bem eficaz. Mas, quando contava os pacientes daqueles testes, descobria que muitos deles tinham sido publicados mais de uma vez. Poderia parecer que eram uns 20 testes diferentes, mas na verdade é um número muito menor, fatiado e servido de maneiras diferentes. Isso permite um monte de possibilidades. Vamos publicar um teste com todos os pacientes, vamos publicar o estudo que foi feito no Brasil numa revista brasileira, vamos pegar todos os estudos feitos na Europa e juntá-los... Então, a evidência que parece sugerir que o remédio é bom não é tão substancial assim. No caso do odansetron, o que eles demonstraram foi, mais uma vez, essa sobreposição de pacientes. Onde havia testes com resultados positivos, eles tendiam a ser publicados mais de uma vez. Existe um conceito conhecido como "número de pacientes necessário para tratar" uma doença -o número necessário para se conseguir um ataque do coração a menos, um derrame a menos ou seja lá o que for. No caso do odansetron, parecia haver menos pessoas ficando doentes. E, claro, quanto menor o número de pacientes necessário para tratar, melhor. E o que o estudo mostrou é que esse número é maior se você eliminar a sobreposição.

Quando estudos clínicos são publicados numa revista médica, normalmente eles são produzidos por cientistas independentes ou pelas próprias empresas?

- Cada vez mais esses testes são feitos por coisas conhecidas como organizações de pesquisa por contrato, ou CROs. São empresas independentes, pagas pelas companhias farmacêuticas para fazer o teste. É cada vez mais comum elas fazerem isso, e não contatarem um grupo acadêmico. Na verdade, a maior parte dos grupos acadêmicos vai acabar dizendo: "Bem, não é uma coisa cientificamente muito criativa de se fazer". Meu conselho para um grupo acadêmico seria: vocês nunca devem assinar um contrato no qual outras pessoas decidem sobre a publicação. Por outro lado, uma CRO iria aceitar isso.

E quanto ao chamado "ghost-writing" [no qual uma pessoa contratada escreve o artigo e outro pesquisador é convidado a assiná-lo]? É um problema significativo no momento?

- Eu acho que é difícil saber quão grande é o problema, quase por definição você não sabe muito bem. Mas eu acho que pode ser bastante comum a publicação de artigos escritos por pessoas cujos nomes não aparecem. Eu não vejo realmente um problema no fato de que um profissional escreva um artigo -desde que esteja declarado. Assim como você tem um estatístico para te aconselhar na área dele, não vejo por que não possa pedir para que um escritor profissional faça o texto, desde que todo mundo seja listado como autor ou contribuinte. O problema é quando essas pessoas não aparecem, e acho que é particularmente um problema em textos opinativos e editoriais. Um amigo meu é decano de uma faculdade de medicina aqui em Londres e, há algumas semanas, recebeu um artigo escrito por outra pessoa dizendo "você estaria disposto a colocar seu nome aqui?". Não sei o quanto isso acontece, mas acontece mesmo.

O sr. acha que há algum defeito no próprio sistema de "peer-review" [revisão por pares, na qual cientistas da mesma área que os autores de uma pesquisa dão parecer anônimo sobre ela] que favoreça essas distorções?

- De fato, quando você examina o "peer-review", há uma série de problemas com ele. É lento, caro, enviesado, está sujeito a abusos, não acha erros. Fizemos um estudo no qual pegamos um artigo de 600 palavras com 38 erros e o mandamos para 400 revisores. Ninguém achou mais que cinco erros, 20% dos revisores não achou nenhum e o número médio encontrado foi apenas ligeiramente superior a dois.

Como seus colegas reagiram à proposta de uma moratória na publicação de estudos clínicos?

- Acho que a maioria das pessoas considerou que era um passo radical demais. Mas acho que, da maneira que as revistas são hoje, se você tirasse os grandes testes, o valor delas cairia dramaticamente. Não apenas em termos de não conseguir vender mais as reimpressões, mas essa também é uma das principais razões que levam as pessoas a assinar as revistas. Eu sou da escola que acredita que tudo deveria ser aberto para todo mundo e gostaria de ver os testes disponíveis numa base de dados. O papel das revistas seria descobrir quais eram realmente importantes, comentá-los, criticá-los e apresentar seus resultados a médicos e pacientes.
(Folha de SP, 12/7)

Um dos mais antigos periódicos estadounidense torna-se de acesso aberto
One of America's oldest journals moves toward Open Access
June 30, 2005

Psyche: A Journal of Entomology, published since 1874, is moving toward OA. From the web site: 'As of spring 2005, editorial strategy meetings are ongoing and focus on sponsorship and on how to establish a sustainable publication process. It is hoped that regular publication will resume in an on line, open access format by early 2006. We will be scanning most back issues, from volume 17 (1910) through the present, in June 2005. Look for about 2500 .pdf files on this web site in July or August.'
http://psyche.entclub.org/about.html

An interview with Richard Smith, former editor of BMJ. Excerpt: 'Before the internet came along, scientific papers had to be published in journals. But now, he says, journals should give up what are effectively immoral earnings. They add no value to the scientific research, and yet it may take a year or more before they publish and they then charge people to read it. "Making money out of restricting access to research is immoral," he says. Instead, he says, all research should be published in one large free database, with access for all. Smith has joined the board of directors of the free access online Public Library of Science (PLoS). The biggest problem with this scenario is financial. Journals make more money from reprints of scientific papers than they do from advertising. Pharmaceutical companies strive to get their drug trials in the best-known journals, because the cachet helps sales. They will order hundreds of thousands of reprints for their reps to distribute in hospitals and GP surgeries. It is a huge earner, and the journals have become reliant on the money. Some journals would go bust, but Smith does not think they would be mourned. "All this would mean is that instead of 30,000 journals or whatever, you might have 50 to 100 good ones," says Smith with equanimity. He does not accept the arguments of medical societies, which publish some of the journals, that they need the income to support other activities. "If these are genuine value-added things, you should find a way for them to pay for themselves," he says.'

PS: Also see Smith's article, Medical Journals Are an Extension of the Marketing Arm of Pharmaceutical Companies, PLoS Medicine, May 2005.
http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020138

Spain has taken huge strides in supporting Open Access publishing, with over 67 universities, hospitals and research institutions becoming BioMed
Central members in recent months. The membership agreements cover the cost of publication, in BioMed Central's 130+ Open Access journals, for all researchers, teachers and students at member institutions. On acceptance, articles will be immediately and freely available online to all, in accordance with BioMed Central's Open Access policy.

BioMed Central has recently formalised agreements with four regional health authorities in Spain: Aragon, Madrid, Galicia and Asturias. Madrid, the
most recent health authority to come on board, agreed membership for two years for 22 institutions, thanks to the Consejeria de Sanidad y Consumo de Madrid / Agencia Pedro Lain Entralgo.

In Aragon, Instituto Aragones de Ciencias de la Salud agreed membership with BioMed Central for all five hospitals in the health authority. In Galacia, eight hospitals became members via Servicio Galego de Saude, while the universities of Galicia are also members through the BUGalicia Consortium.

Asturias was the first Health Authority to take out BioMed Central membership, for all eight hospitals, announced in September 2004. Dr Angel Lopez Díaz, Public Health and Planning Director, speaking on behalf of the Asturias ConsejerÃa de Salud y Servicios Sanitarios, explained why the decision was taken to become a BioMed Central member,

"The Public Health System of Asturias is developing a health information strategy, one of the main aims of which is to provide our health professionals with fast, efficient, straightforward, value for money access to the best sources of health information. BioMed Central is an initiative
which breaks the mould within the world of biomedical publishing by transferring the costs from the consumer, to the producer of the information. But above all, in our opinion BioMed Central offers a high quality publishing product and an editorial process which is extraordinarily transparent. We believe that BioMed Central has a very promising future and we hope that the health professionals of Asturias will incorporate BioMed Central into their work, which in turn will benefit the health of all Asturians".

In addition, the Spanish Research Council has taken out membership for all 13 of its biomedical institutions countrywide.

BioMed Central, the largest Open Access publisher, has seen its membership program go from strength to strength since its launch in January 2002.
Denmark, Norway and Finland all have national memberships with BioMed Central. The NHS in England and all UK universities are also members, as are 50 institutions in Italy, 45 in Germany and all three of the major research organisations in France. Support for Open Access publishing is not limited to Europe however, as BioMed Central has over 150 members in the United States, 25 in Canada, 18 in Australia and many others around the
world. BioMed Central now has 535 member institutions in 38 countries.

Indian Medlars Centre have pre-launched a new service of providing facilities to authors to self-archive their articles. Named OpenMED as being OPEN access archive for MEDical and Allied Sciences. It is described as under and available from
http://openmed.nic.in

"OpenMED is an open access archive for Medical and Allied Sciences. Here authors / owners can self-archive their scientific and technical documents. For this they need to register once in order to obtain a user id in OpenMED system. However no registration is required for searching the archive or viewing the documents.

OpenMED is a discipline based International Archive. It accepts both published and unpublished documents having relevance to research in
Medical and Allied Sciences including Bio-Medical, Medical Informatics, Dental, Nursing and Pharmaceutical Sciences. These could be preprints
(pre-refereed journal paper), postprints (refereed journal paper), conference papers, conference posters, presentations, technical
reports/departmental working papers and theses. In case of non-English documents, descriptive data (Author, Title, Source etc.), abstract and
keywords must be in English. Submitted documents will be placed into the submission buffer and would become part of OpenMED archive on their
acceptance.

The aim of OpenMED is to provide free service to academics, researchers, and students working in the area of Medical and Allied Sciences. We expect
it to promote self-archiving and open access to papers / scholarly publications in these fields."

You are requested to register and submit your articles/papers, all free of cost, and give us your valuable feedback/comments.

Naina Pandita
Indian MEDLARS Centre
National Informatics Centre,
A-Block, CGO Complex, Lodhi Road,
New Delhi 110003 - India
http://indmed.nic.in

The PLEIADI Project (acronym for "Portale per la Letteratura scientifica
Elettronica Italiana su Archivi aperti e Depositi Istituzionali")

A portal for Italian scholarly e-literature in open archives and institutional repositories,
(http://www.openarchives.it/pleiadi/index.php?sel_lang=english)
originated from the collaboration between two major Italian university consortia, CASPUR and CILEA. PLEIADI is a national platform that offers
centralized access to the scholarly literature archived in Italian institutional repositories, harvested via the OAI-PMH protocol. Metadata
are then filtered through different services that add value by crosswalking, normalizing and indexing. PLEIADI portal offers a joint
search interface and a series of user-centred services (news, forum, RSS, alerting, resource linking, profiling, etc.) that supplement the platform
offer. The list of IRs is continuously growing.

Because of the importance to gather a critical mass of open access contents, CASPUR e CILEA (via AEPIC, <http://www.aepic.it/index.php?lang=en>
support the promotion of interoperable archives through several initiatives addressed to researchers, technicians, librarians in universities and
research centres. Both also offer the design and implementation of archives, journals, portals and integrated systems for any need of
information aggregation.

Project Leader AePIC, http://www.aepic.it
CILEA - Inter-Academic Consortium for ICT, http://www.cilea.it
Via R. Sanzio 4, I-20090 SEGRATE (MILANO) - ITALY
voice +39 02 2699 5322, mobile +39 348 7090 226

Thursday, March 17, 2005

Time to Walk the Talk?

Berlin 3, held in the UK in March as a follow-up meeting for monitoring implementation of the 2003 Berlin Declaration, provided a timely opportunity to feel the pulse of the Open Access (OA) movement. How does the patient look? On paper, he looks good. Indeed, he turned out to be fitter than expected: instead of succumbing to factional disputes and bickering, delegates at the meeting agreed a short, very practical action plan for implementing the Declaration. But can the movement now follow through?

por Richard Poynder

The OA movement has never been short on declarations, petitions and exhortations. In 2000 there was the Public Library of Science (PLoS); in 2002 the Budapest Open Access Initiative; and 2003 saw the Bethesda Statement and the Berlin Declaration. And these are just the better known asseverations.

When it comes to "walking the talk", however, the movement has been less successful. Today still only 5% of scholarly papers are published in OA journals, and only 15% of the estimated 2.5 million articles published annually are self-archived.

In short, despite the plethora of fine words and public statements calling on interested parties to "free the refereed literature" — and despite ten years of OA agitation and proselytizing – the vast majority of the world’s scholarly output remains firmly locked behind increasingly-expensive subscription firewalls. This, complain OA advocates, is holding back research, and threatens to slow the progress of science.

But could the OA tide be about to turn? Delegates at the Berlin 3 meeting dared to think so. "I was impressed with the amount of activity going on – specifically with institutional archives," says Barbara Kirsop of the Electronic Publishing Trust. "There seemed no consideration now about 'whether we should support OA', but just 'how can we better support OA'." Indeed, she concludes, the movement is now "unstoppable."

Certainly Berlin 3 provided a good opportunity to feel the pulse of the OA movement. The Berlin Declaration, after all, is now the primary flag around which many OA advocates rally, and it has a truly international membership, and focus.

The 55 signatories include international research institutions like CERN; large national research institutions like France's CNRS and Germany's Max-Planck Institutes, national Academies of Science in China, India and the Netherlands, and a wide a variety of individual universities and research funding agencies around the world. Delegates to Berlin 3 also came from Japan, Scandinavia and Italy.

Incongruous setting

The two-day event — one of the now bi-annual follow-up conferences for monitoring implementation of the 2003 Declaration — took place in the incongruous surroundings of an English Edwardian Manor just north of Southampton. While the location was certainly pleasant enough ("set amongst 12 acres of beautiful landscaped gardens", boasts the Manor's web site), obtaining an online connection was all but impossible — even when armed with a cell phone data card!

Day one began with a UK satellite session — an event that served to underline the degree to which the UK Science & Technology Select Committee Report and the publication of the final version of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) policy on public access to research have shifted the emphasis of the OA movement. Where previously the stress was on the gold road to OA (in which researchers publish in new- OA journals) today much greater weight is placed on the green road (where researchers continue publishing in traditional subscription-based journals but then self-archive the papers — either in a central subject-based repository or an institutional archive).

It was also quickly apparent that some progress is being made. Nottingham University's Bill Hubbard, for instance, explained that — despite the UK Government spurning the Select Committee's recommendation that it fund a network of institutional repositories (IRs) — those repositories are nevertheless being built. The 20 research universities belonging to the SHERPA consortium, for example, have all created their own IRs, and are now starting to focus on how they can ensure that they are filled.

It is clear, however, that creating an IR is the easy bit: filling it far harder. Primarily, Key Perspectives' Alma Swan explained to delegates, this is a question of ignorance. Surveys carried out by Key Perspectives, she explained, indicate that 78% of researchers who do not currently self-archive "are not aware of the possibility of providing open access to their work by self-archiving." Clearly there is a need for greater education and advocacy.

The good news, added Swan, is that were researchers mandated to self-archive, most would comply. 79% of those surveyed, she said, indicated that they would willingly self-archive if their institution told them they had to. She noted, however, that both the UK Government and the US NIH have chosen not to mandate anything.

But at least the UK Government's failure to act gave Derek Law, university librarian at the University of Strathclyde, an opportunity to boast that Scotland is ("as usual") way ahead of England. Thus while the British Government has chosen to sit on its hands over OA, Scotland has been busy developing its own national OA policy — a policy that will shortly see Scottish universities beginning to mandate their academics to self-archive their papers.

When the main conference began the keynote address was given by Tony Hey, director of e-Science. Talking on the theme of data-archiving and interoperability, Hey put the OA movement into the larger context of distributed global collaboration between scientists. It was a fascinating presentation, and emphasised how academic research — along with the large data collections that much scientific research depends upon — will increasingly need to be readily accessible to researchers if science is to progress at an acceptable rate.

The keystroke strategy

But it was day two that proved the more interesting. The day began with an upbeat presentation from Stevan Harnad, leading self-archiving advocate and professor of cognitive sciences at Southampton University, who explained to delegates the "Keystroke Strategy" OA policy that the University has introduced.

Conscious that institutions are confronted with a potent mix of ignorance and inertia when trying to fill their repositories (and in the light of the failure of government to take the initiative on OA) the Keystroke Strategy exploits the UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) — upon which hangs the fate of academic promotions and departmental budgets — as a tool with which to incentivise researchers to self-archive their papers.

Specifically, to ensure that their research is counted towards their RAE contribution Southampton academics must ensure that copies of their papers are keyed into the University archive. In effect, any research not archived will be "invisible” for RAE purposes.

The point, Harnad explained to delegates, is that the best way to encourage researchers to self-archive is to request they do it "not for the sake of Open Access, but for record-keeping and performance evaluation purposes."

Once a paper is available in the IR, added Harnad, it requires only a simple additional keystroke to make it OA. That final keystroke, he said, would make what was already visible to the institution visible to the rest of the world over the web; and the message to researchers is that “the Nth (OA) Keystroke is strongly encouraged (both for preprints and postprints) but is up to you.”

As the day progressed it became evident that while the UK may have been the main centre of debate about self-archiving, institutions in other countries are also proving effective at building and filling IRs. The manager of the Dutch SURF/DARE programme Leo Waaijers, for instance, explained to delegates how a consortium of the 12 principal Dutch universities has agreed an effective policy of institutional self-archiving.

Representatives from the French national research centres CNRS and INSERM, and from CERN, also outlined their institutional OA policies.

CERN's Joanne Yeomans gave a particularly stimulating presentation. Following the introduction of an institutional mandate, she reported, CERN estimates that around 60% of its research output is now made OA. Moreover, she added, this figure is expected to rise to 100% as a result of new initiatives shortly to be introduced.

In addition, explained Yeoman's colleague Jens Vigen, CERN has started to archive its historical research output. This, however, is not without its challenges, he added. Since researchers historically assigned copyright to the publishers, CERN has first to obtain their approval before scanning the papers. Unfortunately, he said, permission is not always forthcoming: both Elsevier and Wiley, for instance, have refused to allow a number of 50-year old papers produced by CERN researchers to be scanned — even though, in the case of Wiley, the papers are not provided online by the publisher!

In order to be able to provide OA "at source" CERN researchers are also being actively encouraged to publish in OA journals, reported Yeomans. In addition, she added, CERN is exploring ways in which it can support the start up of new OA journals — a reminder that while self-archiving has won the argument for now, many believe that in the long run the gold road offers a more effective and stable way of providing Open Access to scholarly research.

Highlight

But the highlight of Berlin 3 — and one which came like a bolt from the blue — occurred during the final plenary session. Intended simply as a forum to discuss, and possibly update, the wordy roadmap produced at Berlin 2 last May, the session quickly threatened to descend into a series of bad-tempered wrangles over issues like metadata, copyright, and distributed versus central archives.

At the last minute, however, delegates apparently concluded that, rather than fighting needlessly over minor issues, they could work together for the common good. By now it was also apparent that the roadmap was simply too lengthy and unfocused to provide an effective call to arms. In a remarkably short period of time, therefore, delegates agreed a short statement intended — in the words of the Max Planck Society's Georg Botz — to be "an implementation guide in a nutshell."

The wording agreed was:

"In order to implement the Berlin Declaration institutions should:

“1) implement a policy to require their researchers to deposit a copy of all their published articles in an open access repository, and

“2) encourage their researchers to publish their research articles in open access journals where a suitable journal exists and provide the support to enable that to happen."

That it proved possible in a very short time to agree two very practical measures that signatory institutions can take in order to enact the Declaration they had signed evidently provided a real fillip to delegates. "I was quite surprised," says Kirsop, "but this was good and shows that people wanted something more positive to come out of the meeting."

Even the normally rumbustious and argumentative Harnad was taken aback at such an apparently satisfactory outcome to the meeting. "The distillation into a short clear action plan had in fact not been on the formal agenda, and its adoption came as a total surprise," he says.

Follow Through?

Time will tell whether the statement agreed at Berlin 3 will prove to be a brief moment of harmony, and proactive intent, or just one more paper wish list. History certainly suggests that the latter could prove to be the case.

On the other hand, the progress reports from Holland, Scotland, and CERN — not to mention Southampton — suggest that the movement now has sufficient momentum to ensure that the Berlin 3 statement becomes a reality.

The question then, of course, becomes not whether but when. The fact that many of the Berlin Declaration signatories have yet to demonstrate a concrete commitment to the Declaration they signed suggests there may still be a long road to travel. On the other hand, since it had until Berlin 3 been completely unspecified exactly what they were meant to commit to, the concrete policy proposal now gives them a basis for acting — if they are minded so to do.

Key to what happens next will presumably be the fate of the statement. Is it now an official statement, and will it be integrated into the Berlin Declaration? Might it still be further edited?

For the moment, replies Botz, the statement "remains provisional." Moreover, he adds, it is not expected that the Berlin Declaration will be changed in any way "because that would require asking all signatories whether they agree."

Clearly the danger is that the signatories (particularly those who did not attend Berlin 3) may just ignore it — an outcome all the more possible given that the Berlin Declaration did not create any formal structure or organisation. Rather it acts merely as a consensus group. "Each organisation," explains Fred Friend, who chaired the plenary session, "takes the Berlin process forward according to the situation in its own environment."

Nevertheless, insists Friend, it would be wrong to conclude that this will lessen the impact of the statement agreed at Berlin 3. "Do not assume that because the statement is not a condition of being a signatory to the Berlin Declaration that it is only a wish and therefore ineffective," he says. "There are other examples of very effective statements from organisations without formal structures — for example, the International Coalition of Library Consortia, ICOLC, likewise has no formal structure but its various statements have been very influential in setting standards for licensing and usage of electronic content."

In fact there is absolutely no need to re-word the Berlin Declaration, says Harnad; nor is there any need for the original signatories to re-sign it. "It merely needs a 'commitment' rider which describes the new implementation policy and invites institutions to sign it, separately, to register their commitment to implementing the Berlin Declaration and to describe their own institutional self-archiving policy so other institutions worldwide can see how progress is being made and can emulate their example.

"This 'commitment' sign-up site already exists," he adds, "and institutions can already begin registering their commitment and their self-archiving policies." ***

Something concrete

PLo

Outros links de interesse:
	Open Access Newsletter e Open Access Forum - http://www.arl.org/sparc/soa/index.html
	Boletim do movimento Open Access (arquivo) - http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/archive.htm
	Open Access News blog - http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html
	Forum (arquivo)- https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SOA-Forum/List.html