Opening remarks: Open access and the developing world
- 1. Open Access and the Developing World Matthew Cockerill Managing Director, BioMed Central Ltd
- 3. The old world of access to knowledge
- 4. The new world of access to knowledge
- 5. The internet has the potential to radically expand access to knowledge
- 6. Digital divide or digital bridge?
- 7. African internet connectivity is improving dramatically
- 8. Cellphones
- 9. Source: African Mobile Factbook 2008 International Telecommunications Union report (2009) “The increase in the number of mobile cellular subscriptions over the last five years has defied all predictions and Africa remains the region with the highest mobile growth rate” Although number of Internet users has also grown faster than in other regions: “Africa’s ICT penetration levels in 2009 are still far behind the rest of the world and very few African countries reach ICT levels comparable to global averages” Growth of mobile phones in Africa
- 10. Mobile phone networks are already aiding scientific data gathering
- 11. As connectivity improves, other access barriers become significant
- 12. Open access journals do away with access barriers
- 13. About BioMed Central Largest publisher of peer-reviewed open access journals Launched first open access journal in 2000 Became part of Springer in 2008 Now publishes 207 open access journals >80,000 peer-reviewed OA articles published All research articles published under Creative Commons license Costs covered by article processing charge (APC)
- 14. BioMed Central and Africa
- 15. ComputerAid
- 16. BMC/Nature 10K fun run in support of ComputerAid
- 17. OA Waiver Fund
- 18. All African countries receive automatic fee waiver, except: Libya Namibia Nigeria South Africa Algeria Botswana Equatorial Guinea Gabon
- 19. Growth in manuscript submissions from Africa to BioMed Central
- 20. Manuscript submissions from Africa as fraction of total
- 21. Top 10 journals for publications from Africa in last 12 months
- 22. How can increased access to knowledge via Open Access help Africa?
- 23. UN Millenium Development Goals Reduce child mortality,improve maternal health Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases Ensure environmental sustainability Develop a global partnership for development
- 24. Who needs access to the results of research? Public Professionals Researchers
- 25. Research on global health issues has expanded greatly Developing world health issues are finally attracting substantial research spending Private philanthropic initiatives have played an important role
- 26. Why do research if it is not accessible where it is most relevant?
- 27. Wellcome Trust Medical Research Council US National Institutes of Health Howard Hughes Medical Institute European Research Council EC Seventh Framework Program Many research funders are now requiring open access
- 28. Harvard University (and other members of Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity) More than 100 mandatory institution-wide open access policies world-wide http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/ But still very few in Africa… Many universities are now requiring open access
- 29. Open Access in practice
- 31. What is open access publishing? Traditional journals – take ownership of the research – provide access to subscribers only Open access journals – have no subscription barriers – take advantage of the economics of the internet to allow universal access – research is openly licensed to allow reuse
- 32. Who pays? Open access journals do have costs Publication fee is a very small fraction of the cost of doing research Most open access publishers, including BioMed Central, give waivers to developing countries In other cases, open access journals have central support, so no charges for authors or readers
- 33. Open Access publishing, then and now… 20102000 And many more…
- 35. A new industry association
- 36. Goals of OASPA Represents Open Access publishers Agree common definition of Open Access Establish and enforce good standards of editorial and business practices amongst members Identify guidelines and best practices for publishers and institutions in managing payment of publication fees
- 37. Malaria Journal - an open access journal case study
- 39. Annual growth in submissions to Malaria Journal
- 40. Top 20 African countries publishing in Malaria Journal (no. or articles)
- 42. A highly accessed Malaria Journal article 15,000+ downloads 31 citations
- 43. Parasite to Prevention - Malaria Journal’s scientific conference Inaugural conference October 2010, Edinburgh, Scotland Full bursaries for participants from low- income countries, supported by Gates Foundation Next conference 2012, probably in Africa
- 44. Other high profile open access journals relevant to tropical diseases
- 45. Gateways
- 46. The latest open access research on global health issues
- 47. The benefits of open access for the developing world
- 48. Zambia
- 49. Nigeria
- 50. The Gambia
- 52. Open Access repositories Allow archiving of articles published both in traditional journals and open access journals Traditional publishers typically only allow author version to be archived Many require a 6 or 12 month embargo period Open access articles can be deposited and made immediately available
- 53. Open Repository Hosted digital repository service, operated by BioMed Central Built on the DSpace open-source platform Dramatically reduces time and costs involved in setting up, maintaining and developing a repository Hosting in UK ensures maximum international exposure
- 54. Open Repository
- 55. MSF 1
- 56. MSF 2
- 57. How can OA publishers work with Institutional Repositories? Many institutions now have OA repositories in place Populating the repositories is often a challenge Open Access journals provide a stream of immediately available OA content for the repository BioMed Central is automating this via feeds using the SWORD protocol
- 58. Connecting open access journals and open access repositories
- 62. Thanks, and enjoy the rest of the conference!
Editor's Notes
- #5: One of our journal authors from the national malaria control centre in Zambia…
- #14: Mostly online only…
- #16: A major part of why we’re here - last few years of collab with ComputerAid - started with donating commission from T-shirts
- #24: Some of the the goals v OA related - esp Global partnership
- #34: Quadruple blind review process
- #36: Guardian of definitions of open access, standards and good business practices
- #37: ‘Publishers’ are too often treated as a monolithic group in favour of the status quo First OASPA meeting taking place in Lund in September
- #38: Really has demonstrated what a truly international forum the open access model can deliver
- #47: Bring together research from across BioMed Central’s journals
- #61: Now in use by MIT and others