Category Archives: open access

IFLA WLIC 2023 Grant Winners Congress Experience

This post features  Ezequiel Vallejo Ríos who is one of the 2023 IFLA ARL Grant winners. from México.

Attending the IFLA WLIC 2023 Congress certainly opened an opportunity for those of us who are not in mainstream librarianship to see the various aspects of the profession. I experienced this through my interactions with colleagues who are involved in the day to day activities of the profession, their challenges and successes and other experiences from their various perspectives.

The various presentations at the congress were another source of great experience for me as they provided me with the latest trends in the profession, as well as new ideas which I can implement in my own environment. Some general topics which were discussed included  open access, inclusive publication, copyright, adaptation of copyrighted materials to formats accessible with the Marrakesh Treaty, access to culture and the future roles of the librarian in the environment of access to information. Again, there were discussions that addressed how the role of the librarian changes as society demands it, the implementation of technologies such as AI (Artificial Intelligence) or Chat GPT and with this the development of new digital skills to respond to the constant change in the knowledge society, and innovations in libraries.

Again, attending this congress has helped expand my panorama about the profession also to network with librarians from other institutions, as well as exchange ideas, knowledge, and success stories from their libraries which will help guide me in my work going forward.

Without a doubt, it is gratifying to have experienced professionals sharing their lives, and interests with the new generation of librarians who are barely getting involved in the relevant issues of the profession in order to be able to contribute to the discipline. In turn, it is gratifying that young professionals who came with fresh ideas were given the space to contribute to the profesión and also enrich themselves intellectually. Being in these congresses of global trajectory offers us an excellent environment to get involved with the dynamics of the profesión and thus contributing to the profession.

Inclusion, the theme and topics of the congress are a determining factor for more people to be involved in the development and participation of these congresses. As such, the congress organisers could be more open in their ideas, regardless of gender, religion, social status, political ideology or some kind of motor weakness. This would allow for a more inclusive congress.

 

Open access in Singapore

Author: Yeo Pin Pin, Head of Research Services, Singapore Management University Libraries

Academic libraries in Singapore support Open Access and Open Science trends in the world. Some of the trends can be seen in the ACRL Scholarly Communication Toolkit. Let me outline how we have supported these trends in Singapore.

Open access repositories

Starting from 2005 with the first institutional repository (IR) by the National Institute of Education (NIE), the academic libraries in Singapore progressively launched their own IRs: Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in 2009, National University of Singapore (NUS) and Singapore Management University (SMU) in 2010. The latest IR was launched by the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) in 2021.

The platforms used for the IRs are either open source on DSpace or commercial platforms like Digital Commons and Figshare. NIE, NUS and NTU use DSpace and engage a vendor to help them manage the technical side. SMU uses the hosted solution by Digital Commons and SIT uses Figshare. The library staff of the IRs in Singapore focus on supporting institutional policies, integration with internal systems, building content and promoting usage and engagement within the community.

Content in repositories

The IRs in Singapore showcase the research done at their institutions by having records, and the full text where possible, of publications by their researchers and faculty members. The IRs in Singapore also include theses and dissertations. The IRs in Singapore have good discoverability and downloads.

Some of the unique content available in NUS Digital Gems include the papers of Edwin Thumboo, Koh Kim Yam and the Earl of Cranbrook. The NIE IR has the manuscripts of Dr Muhammad Ariff Ahmad. The SMU IR has the oral history interviews and transcripts with the pioneers who set up SMU and the leaders who helmed SMU subsequently.

Historical newspapers from Southeast Asia published in Chinese, Jawi and English were digitised and made available open access in NUS Digital Gems. Recordings of musical performances from the NUS Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music are another unique offering in the NUS IR.

Growth in open access publications

Using the data in Lens.org, the growth in the number of open access publications in Singapore has been steady and has grown to 50% in 2021 from 11% in 2000.

Let us look at the breakdown by type of open access in Singapore using the data in Lens.org. Singapore started with more green open access publications than gold open access from 2000 to 2019. From 2020, the number of gold open access publications exceeded green open access. Bronze open access publications was 7% in 2021 with hybrid at 10%. We have not seen bronze open access increasing in proportion in Singapore, as found by Piwowar, et al (2018).

The above charts show the growth in percentage of open access publications over the past 20 years. The type of open access has also shifted, from mainly green with less gold open access to more gold and less green open access. From 2019, there were more gold open access publications than green open access publications in Singapore. This was possibly aided by funders allowing grant funding to be used for article processing charges and more awareness of the benefits of open access.

Open Data and Open Science

NTU was the first institution to have a research data policy which was effective in 2016. NIE also had their Data Management Plan and Research Data Management Policy in place by 2017 and revised by 2021. SMU crafted its research data policy in consultation with the library, the schools and the faculty and the policy was in effect from January 2020. SIT put in place their research data policy in 2021. The libraries in Singapore had worked with their respective research offices and key stakeholders to put in place the infrastructure to support the policies. The other institutions are working on their policies.

NTU Library has an Open Science & Research Services team to focus their efforts on creating awareness and advocating the best practices in open science among the NTU community. At SMU, we have a Data Services team to focus our efforts on providing services for accessing, managing and working with data for our community. The libraries in Singapore organise and conduct learning sessions about relevant topics on open science for their own community. Together we are also working to raise awareness about open science in Singapore through organizing events that are open to the academic community. Some examples were the webinar on Institutional repositories and sensitive data in 2020, and COAR Asia OA Meeting in 2021 organised by the Singapore Alliance of University Libraries’ Research Support Task Force.

Data repositories

NTU launched its data repository (DR) on the Dataverse platform in 2017, followed by NIE in 2018 using the same platform. In 2018, NUS enhanced its existing repository on the DSpace platform to take in datasets. In 2020, SMU launched its DR using the Figshare platform. In 2021, SIT launched its integrated repository for both papers and data using the Figshare platform.

There is recognition that not all data can be made open. Hence, NUS, NIE and NTU set up systems to store the data that was still in-progress or sensitive.

Research funders

The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) put in place an open access mandate in 2013 and set up an IR to support their researchers to comply with the mandate. In 2016, the major research funders in Singapore introduced a common clause that required that the publications arising from their funded research be made open access within 12 months of the official date of publication in a suitable repository. The funders then allowed the use of the grants for Article Processing Charges. These changes provided incentives to researchers to make their publications open access and even gold open access.

Publisher agreements

NUS Libraries had negotiated deals with several publishers for discounts on the Article Processing Charges (APCs) for NUS authors. The Singapore Alliance of University Libraries (SAUL) has a committee working on negotiating with selected publishers for better terms and conditions for the group and exploring whether transformative deals would work in the Singapore context.

Conclusion

In Singapore, we follow the trends closely and then work within our own institution to implement those that suit the needs of our institutions. We also collaborate and learn from each other about best practices. Open access is on a strong footing now after steady growth over a decade. We are trying out some deals with publishers to make publishing open access and gold open access easier for our researchers.  We are supporting and promoting Open Data and Open Science and this area is still new for us, but we hope to make further progress in this area.

 

References

Association of College and Research Libraries. (2022). Scholarly Communication Toolkit. Available at: https://acrl.libguides.com/scholcomm/toolkit

Conrad, Lettie. (2022, January). 5 scholarly publishing trends to watch in 2022. Available at: https://blog.scholasticahq.com/post/scholarly-publishing-trends-2022/

Dempsey, Lorcan. (2022, April). Workflow is the new content. Presented at Digital initiatives Symposium. Available at: https://www.oclc.org/content/dam/research/presentations/2022/workflow-is-the-new-content.pdf

Hayashi, Kazuhiro. (2021). How could COVID-19 change scholarly communication to a new normal in the Open Science paradigm. Patterns, 2 (1), 100191. DOI: 10.1016/j.patter.2020.100191

Ooi, Lian Ping. 2021. Open access and open science in Singapore. Presented at COAR Asia OA Meeting. Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/asiaoa2021/program/agenda/6/

Piwowar, Heather, et al. (2018). The state of OA: a large-scale analysis of the prevalence and impact of Open Access articles. PeerJ, 6, e4375. DOI: 10.7717/peerj.4375

 

Links for repositories in Singapore

Elsevier agreement in Denmark: (just) one step forward

During the last few months intense negotiations have taken place between Danish universities and publishing giant Elsevier. The topic was of course license agreements and Open Access.

On January 26 it was announced that Danish universities had entered into a new license agreement for the coming four years, which means that Danish researchers can breathe a sigh of relief, at least for now.

The main points of the agreement are:

• The price of journal subscriptions remains the same for the entire period. It is based on the 2020 price.
• The parties mentioned in the agreement have full, unaltered access to 75% of the Elsevier Freedom Collection (this used to be 100%).
• Free Open Access publishing of the final Elsevier version of an article, with a Creative Commons BY license, when the author is corresponding author and affiliated with an institution that is a part of the agreement. However, several hundred Gold Open Access Elsevier journals and a list of about 170 titles under the licenses (not yet specified) are not part of this contract.
• A price increase of 1,12% on other Elsevier resources, such as Scopus, for all institutions.

For one of the universities under the agreement, The University of Southern Denmark, this means that about 1.2 million Euros, or about 26% of the library budget for electronic materials, will be reserved to Elsevier in 2021. The funding is distributed with around 1 million Euros paid for subscription to the journal package “Freedom Collection”. In addition, the library subscribes to other resources outside the current agreement: e.g. the reference data base Scopus, the bibliometric data base SciVal, various individual journals and digital reference works, and the software underlying the research registration system, PURE.

The University Library of Southern Denmark has also been paying around 100.000 Euro annually for article processing charges (APCs) for Open Access publishing, which meant that the university’s budget had all been fully spent before yet another agreement. Previous agreements with Elsevier have brought annual price increases of 3-5%.

Therefore, the good news is that this part of the universities’ contract with Elsevier has now been settled.

Remaining issues include the following:

– the agreement only covers the Freedom Collection;

– the limitation to “corresponding author” has a unknown impact on the national Danish Open Access strategy and library services related to Open Access;
– Elsevier still denies Open Access to almost 800 journals;
– and the library will only have perpetual access to 75% of Elsevier’s journals – in terms of the journals “value”; it is notyet clear which journals this pertains too, as it depends on the price of the individual journals, as set by Elsevier.

However, the agreement should be seen as the first step in the right direction, which we hope will lead to more reasonable agreements between Danish universities and large publishers like Elsevier.

Nationally and internationall, library budgets are still under huge pressure from price increases on licenses, by far exceeding the increases in public funding. Therefor libraries still experience a massive economic pressure and must still face the need to cancel subscriptions and reduce library services, in order to balance their budgets.

So even though the new agreement with Elsevier in Denmark is no doubt an improvement, the current subscription-based scholarly publishing model does by its nature not present a sustainable future for research libraries: true transformative agreements are still ahead.  

Bertil Fabricius Dorch

Library Director, Associate Professor

University Library of Southern Denmark, SDU

Denmark

Email: bfd@bib.sdu.dk

 

References

Press release from Universities Denmark:

https://dkuni.dk/pressemeddelelser/denmark-enters-agreement-on-open-access-with-major-publisher/

News from University of Southern Denmark:

https://www.sdu.dk/en/bibliotek/om+biblioteket/nyheder/

ket/nyheder/elsevier

Plan S: Open Access Movement

Since a few months, there is one issue that keeps popping up during each gathering of Dutch scientists, and that is the Plan S idea.
I will explain this first of all on the EU level what it means and secondly give some ideas on how this plan has landed in The Netherlands.

Plan S in Europe
Plan S is an initiative of “cOAlition S,” a consortium launched by the Europen Research Council and major national research agencies and funders from twelve European countries are participating. According to this Plan S scientists and researchers, who benefit from state-funded research organizations and institutions, have to publish their work in open repositories or open access journals, and this should be all from 2020 onwards.

Since not much progress was made in the whole open access movement this PLAN S is forcing everybody to move towards Open Access. The Coalition believes to make it possible that this could change the structure of science publishing in two years.
“All EU Member States are committed to making all publicly funded research Open Access by 2020, but we need to accelerate progress towards this objective. I therefore very much welcome this initiative by national research funders and Science Europe to work together with the European Commission to move forward collectively” EU Commissioner Moedas stated during a meeting, held at the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) in Toulouse.

PlanS in The Netherlands
I will emphasize the Dutch discussion.
A hectic debate started: supporters and opponents raised their voice. Also, researchers who support the objectives of open access are concerned about the objectives of Plan S. Public consultation meetings were organized to have discussions with researchers.
On the first of November a discussion meeting was organized by the Royal Academic of Sciences (KNAW) and also the Dutch Research Funder NWO was present. The KNAW and NWO support Plan S. But also, more critical researchers gave presentations. See: https://vimeo.com/album/5533046

Primary concerns of researchers are:
1. What does Plan S mean for international research projects with researchers from countries that do not participate in Plan S?
2. There are differences in open access publishing options in the different fields which are not addressed in Plan S
3. Some researchers see Plan S as a serious violation of academic freedom
4. What does the adaptation of Plan S mean for the business model of learned societies?

Concerning this last issue, CoalitionS is looking for a consultant who will investigate this last issue.

In the Netherlands, there will be a second consultation meeting on 31 January on the implementation of Plan S organized by NWO and ZonMw

All researchers are requested for their feedback. See: https://www.coalition-s.org/feedback/

Drs. M. Th. Koelen (Marga)
Research Support Coordinator Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation ITC University of Twente
Faculty Bureau
Policy Advisor University Library
31 53 489 2137 | m.t.koelen@utwente.nl
Secretary ITC Ethics Committee
Secretary IFLA SC Academic and Research Libraries
Member Unesco Theme Group Permanent Access

Open access and research conference 2013 – Brisbane, Australia

Queensland University of Technology is hosting the Open Access and Research Conference 2013 in Brisbane, from 31 October to 1 November.

The event will be an opportunity to take stock of recent developments in Open Access, and to discuss the strategic advantages these bring to the research sector moving forward. The conference theme ‘Discovery, Impact and Innovation’ examines these developments and looks ahead, to how these emerging systems of scholarly communication can maximise impact and help realise the full benefits of public research worldwide.

The program includes speakers from the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia, as well as a number of thematic sessions focusing on issues such as advocacy, alternative metrics, open data and open access publishing.

For more information and to register, go to www.oar2013.qut.edu.au