Tag Archives: Open Access Week

Dodging Deception: The Crossover between Open Access and Media and Information Literacy Weeks

Open Access and Information Literacy

It isn’t only Open Access that is being celebrated this week. Today also marks the first day of Global Media and Information Literacy (MIL) Week, organised by UNESCO.

The communities involved in the two events tend to differ. MIL Week brings together educators and journalists, with a strong focus on developing new tools and practices.

Open Access week is an opportunity for researchers and others involved in scholarly communications to reflect on the present and future of efforts to maximise access. Of course, libraries have a major role to play in both.

However, the specific issue of ‘deceptive journals’ brings these two fields together.

 

The Reputation of Open Access

Deceptive journals are academic publications which knowingly publish articles in exchange for payment by authors, without offering any meaningful editorial services (peer review, editing, quality control).

In effect, they use, or rather abuse, one particular model of open access – author-pays publication. They undoubtedly also benefit from the pressure on many academics to publish in order to pursue their careers.

Despite a tendency to believe, this is not just a developing country issue either, with recent research showing that academics in richer countries are also guilty of publishing in such journals.

The problem is that that link between deceptive journals and the author-pays model can become, in the heads of some, a feeling that open access journals in general are less credible. This, in turn, risks slowing the progression of Open Access in general, as highlighted in our blog “Effect of Open Access on Copyright Challenges and Library Budgets in Africa“.

Clearly open access faces a number of fundamental questions in its future, which the organisers of Open Access Week are tackling head on. Among these, ensuring future credibility is a key one.

 

Won’t Get Fooled Again?

So what can be done?

The highest profile approach so far has perhaps been Beall’s list, which claimed to identify deceptive (or predatory) journals. The controversy around this underlined the risks around creating ‘black lists’, but has certainly been crucial in awareness raising.

A healthier (and less legally risky) approach seems to be to enable students and researchers to identify high quality places to read or publish articles. Or, in other words, the core ‘information literacy’ traditionally provided by libraries.

This is attractive too – giving people the tools and skills to take their own decisions is, in the long-run, more efficient. It is also less paternalistic.

There are a number of great tools available. Think Check Submit offers a clear and balanced set of criteria, as do various ‘white’ lists (of journals which do respect quality criteria, without necessarily condemning others).

Clearly it’s also important to ensure that the advice given to students and researchers also respects information literacy, and does not fall into the trap of damning journals from developing countries, either explicitly, or by default.

There has been welcome cooperation between publishers, libraries and researchers already in this field. More needs to be done, however, to spread good ideas, around the world.

 

While the coincidence of Open Access and Global Media and Information Literacy Week in terms of dates is accidental, information literacy will play a vital role in tackling one of the barriers to the success of open access.

It is also a useful reminder that, alongside efforts to promote information literacy in situations outside of academia, that core element of work in academic libraries is as important as ever.

Effect of Open Access on Copyright Challenges and Library Budgets in Africa

Open Access Week DAY 1

by Kgomotso Radijeng, Member of IFLA’s Copyright and other Legal Matters (CLM) Advisory Committee (radijengk[at]bitri.co.w)

Open Access (OA) is one of the key methods of ensuring free access to information for all. There is no doubt that OA has liberated access to information and many institutions across the whole world have embraced it. OA is also increasingly becoming relevant as countries, especially the least developed, experience economic difficulties, with libraries experiencing extensive budget cuts.

However, there is a gap in terms of assessing the impact that OA has had on the challenges that it is meant to address such as copyright restrictions and budget constraints. Earlier this year a small survey was carried out to find out if the use of open access resources has had any impact on alleviating copyright challenges to access to information and budget constraints. The target group was academic institutions in the South African Development Community (SADC) region. Five institutions responded, namely: University of Botswana, University of Zambia, Botho University, University of Zimbabwe, and National University of Lesotho.

What the survey revealed is that OA has been well received as evidenced by the level of usage of the institutional repositories. For example, the University of Botswana (UBRISA) was set up in 2010 and has had 1,895,120 downloads while the National University Lesotho was set up in 2014 and has had 414 254 page views.

However, it was also apparent that access to OA has not helped much with copyright challenges and cost reduction; the respondents stated that OA has assisted a lot in terms of quantity of information resources and not necessarily on reduction of costs.

While OA has helped to free some money for other needs, there is still a lot of reliance on commercial databases. Some of the reasons advanced for continued reliance on commercial databases were:

  • Some academics still associated OA with predatory journals and feel that its quality is inferior to commercial publishing.
  • Commercial databases are seen as having higher “integrity”.
  • Commercial databases have a wider subject coverage compared to what is available under OA.
  • Academics still demand access to material in subscription journals.

The respondents were also asked to recommend efforts that should be put in place to promote OA. There was resounding support for advocacy; that the library fraternity needs to work with other stakeholders to raise awareness on benefits of OA and available OA resources.

Other initiatives that are necessary for the success of OA are: institutional leadership support, change of attitudes by researchers and academics towards OA publishing, government investment in ICT infrastructure, establishment of policy structures at institutional and national level, more OA publishing by commercial/reputable publishers, and more promotion by libraries of existing OA resources for the benefit of their users.

The success of all initiatives for promoting OA depends a lot on education, advocacy and awareness among key stakeholders and libraries can take a leading role in this. There is also a need for a more comprehensive impact assessment on the effect that OA has had on copyright challenges and cost reductions. There is recognition that OA can reduce the effects of subscription costs and licensing restriction where it is implemented efficiently, but it is imperative to collect and analyse relevant data that can demonstrate that effect.

For more information, check the power point of Kgomotso’s presentation at the Copyright and other Legal Matters Session during this year’s World Library and Information Congress (WLIC) in Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur.