Emerging Trends and Evolving Issues in Open Access and Scholarly

Communications

Daniel Gelaw AlemnehDigital Curation Coordinator

University of North TexasDaniel.Alemneh@unt.edu

 

Kris HelgeDirector of Library Services,

Tarrant County CollegeKristyn.Helge@tccd.edu

Ahmet Meti TmavaDoctoral Candidate, UNT,

College of InformationAhmet.Tmava@unt.edu

Ida Fajar PriyantoDoctoral Candidate, UNT,

College of InformationIdaPriyanto@my.unt.edu

 

• Background• Open Access and Scholarly Communication

• Global Perspectives of OA• Challenges and Opportunities

• Issues and Considerations• Plagiarism, IP and Copyrights

• Stakeholders Roles• Emerging Trends and Institutional Initiatives

• Summary• Policy Frameworks

Outline

Background: Open Access and Scholarly Communication

• In the current global knowledge economy, power and wealth are increasingly measured by one’s ability to access and use information and Knowledge.

- Knowledge divide vs. knowledge equilibrium

• Digital technologies fundamentally change the rules of information dissemination and provide scholars with access to diverse and previously unavailable contents

- While infrastructure development and increased availability of interoperable Open Access content helps to integrate and enhance access to diverse digital resources, they also bring about great challenges for traditional policies, IP and copyright laws, and changing the overall global socio-economic environment in general.

• A goal towards a global:- Research communication Infrastructure- Network of Interoperable digital archives and content network framework- A federated system of institutional, national, and global network of digital archives

Background

Global Research Communication Infrastructure

http://www.geant.net/Resources/Media_Library/Documents/GEANT_Global_Connectivity_September_2014.pdf

• The Open Access movement is transforming scholarly communication• Open Access provision of unrestricted online access to results/outputs of research

& development

• While the notion of Open Access to scholarly information is not new, various factors, including local and national mandates for sharing the products of (funded) research drive scholars to rethink traditional scholarship models.

• There's been some concerns, questions, and misconceptions about various issues, ranging from intellectual property and Copyrights to predator publications and quality issues.

Open Access and Scholarly Communication

Open Access:A Global Perspective

Open Access: Views from the distance• Open Access has been around for about 2 decades

• Declarations and statements came from various organizations and societies, and individual countries

• Launching of Open Access Journals (OAJs) and Open Access Repositories (OARs)

• Directory of Open Access Journals and Open Access Repositories

Repository by Continent

Source: (Pinfield et al., 2014: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/76839/15/wrro_76839.pdf)

Repository by Type

Source: (Pinfield et al., 2014: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/76839/15/wrro_76839.pdf)

Concerns of Open Access in the developing world

• Plagiarism• Commitment• Policy• Organizational culture• Information sharing

HE Institutions:Plagiarism but

not Open Access

Some studies and practice

• Open Access Policy and Commitment toward Open Access are still the issues in some countries—especially in the developing countries.

• Views that OAJs have no value for personal development• Beliefs among stakeholders that OA will make other institutions better• Plagiarism issues: Open Access increasing plagiarism vs. Open Access

lowering plagiarism

Some points to note:

• A study on Open Access Policy in Kuwait shows that the understanding of OA is still low among stakeholders of HE institutions

• A reputable university in Indonesia is considering the closing of its Open Access Repository after the new library director was appointed and disagreement among professors.

• I experienced a controversial problem when the university president encouraged me to have an Open Access Repository while the vice president discouraged me with the issue

OA concerns:

• The need to increase the awareness of OA existence

• The role of librarians and other stakeholders to promote OA

• New strategies to build an OA understanding

Law and Digital Challenges:

Addressing IP and Copyright Issues

Plagiarism

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Return_of_sherlock_holmes.jpg CC BY-SA

Copyright

• https://www.flickr.com/photos/71715246@N00/521723595/ CC BY

The Future

• https://www.flickr.com/photos/uclmaps/8722010691/ CC BY

Stakeholders Roles:Emerging Trends and Multiple levels of

Influence

Charge fees

Provide funds

Funding Agencies

Authors/Researchers

Publishers

Research & Academic Institutions

Submit

Prov

ide

Acce

ss

Prov

ide

cont

ent

The role of stakeholders involved in scholarly communication process

Authors/researchers

• Creators • Consumers• Quality control (peer reviewers)

Publishers

• Dissemination • Quality control • Packaging • Promotion

Institutions/Libraries

• Support their community - information discovery & access

• Support new forms of publishing - preservation & dissemination of institutions research output

• Development of IR and exploration of open access journals - promote publishing in OA - publishing/archival support - digitization of resources - content management - resource discovery

Summary and Concluding Remarks

Summary and Concluding Remarks

• Expressions of scholarship are increasingly becoming more diverse• Rate of creation of new data and data sets• Storage format evolution and obsolescence

• Maintaining accessibility to data through links and search results• Different community inclined to share items at different level of normalization• Comparability of semantic and ontological definitions of data sets

• Access from anywhere, anytime, via whatever (mobile) devices• Embracing true user-centric in any context • Giving users what they need with freedom and flexibility

• Altmetrics for measuring impact in this diverse scholarly ecosystem• Traditional metrics vs. usage metrics vs. divorcing a metric from the scholarly work• Rethinking vs. revolutionizing the analysis of the value and impact of scholarly work

Institutional State Country Regional International

• Funding• Require• Infrastructure• Compliance • Repositories

• Funding & budget support

• Require• Compliance • Infrastructure

• Funding & budget support

• R&D Policies• Require• Compliance• Larger/Wider

scale• Infrastructure

• R&D collaboration and consortium

• Larger/Wider scale

• Infrastructure

• Declarations & Statements

• Support• Encourage

Many Stakeholders

Access from

anywhere

(from 206

Countries)

Access v

ia M

ob

ile

Devic

es

Thank you!