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 Kerryn McKay |
Welcome to this discussion which will provide a valuable space for us to reflect upon our different perspectives on what open access means for the developing world. Open access has enjoyed a great deal of acceptance and growth over the last decade, with a particularly strong spurt in the adoption of open access policies by major agencies and governments in the last 12 months. With open access policies and initiatives now being taken up by UNESCO, the World Bank, the FAO, the European Commission, and the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States, it is clear that open access has entered the global mainstream. We now know that open access can work in the immediate and short term in providing better access to the research literature, whilst some of the longer term consequences and effects are still emerging. This is especially so in the developing world, which has been badly served by the publishing system we have inherited from the 20th century new opportunities and possibilities are created by open access, and, at the same time certain pitfalls need to be noted and avoided. With this as a background context, we will focus in on the developing-world scenario. Our first point of discussion will be: The production, publication and consumption of scholarly knowledge and OA This will focus on the greater concern of scholarly research in the developing country context debating the questions:
Sub-theme 1: Considering the issues of translation; co-production and increasing access to academic materials; and the importance of OA in producing and sharing of non-state-supported educational materials; Sub-theme 2: OA in academia and the search for global prestige; the perverse impact of metrics and rankings; scholarly knowledge production; and sharing and consumption challenges in developing countries. The Center for Internet and Society, along with The African Commons Project, both non profit organisations operating in the global South, will facilitate this discussion, ably assisted by a group of committed activists, academics and open-access specialists, whom we will invite to give us a brief welcome and background about their areas of interest. For deeper information to assist in contextualising the discussion, you are encouraged to look at the positioning paper that was collaboratively drafted with funding from the Institute for Development Studies (IDS). The paper, entitled "Open Access and devleopment: Journals and beyond" can be accessed for download here. Our launch date for the discussion is officially Tuesday, 27 November 'world time', so join us then! :) When registering on WSIS Knowledge Communities in order to take part in this discussion, we encourage you to provide as much information about yourself, your interests and your location as possible, as this will add key background info to our collective opinions.
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Sridhar Gutam |
In India, we have formed an online advocacy group called Open Access India <https:/ |
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Katie Foxall |
Really looking forward to the discussion - I run a platinum open access cancer journal, ecancermedicalscience, which charges no author fees and we're always looking for ways we can attract authors from developing countries who may not be able to afford to publish in gold open access journals. |
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Kerryn McKay |
Welcome Sridhar and Katie! We look forward to interacting with you in the coming days. |
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Tel Amiel |
Great topic. I've been working with colleagues o some of these concerns and I think it will be a valuabe discussion to have - particularly topic 1. We have worked with colleagues from Brasil, Mexico and USA on these concerns and are holding a regional symposium (the 2nd) this coming week in Brazil. Cheers! |
M Madhan |
Use made of open access journals by Indian researchers to publish their findings http:/ |
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M Madhan |
Open Access to Scholarly Literature in India: A Status Report |
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Bhanu Neupane |
Dear Colleagues, Welcome to the WSIS KC - knowledge communities platform. We look forward to your contributions. Please visit setting just below the menubar and make sure that e-mail and community notifications are set to "ON" to receive messages. To create a true Community, it would be excellent if you'll provide a little information about yourself and your activities. By providing a little more profile information, you'll encourage members to comment on your activities, to ask questions, or to share similar interests. The WSIS KC User Guide provides a very user-friendly step-by-step guide to updating your Profile and changing your Notifications as well as all the other cool features of the Community. Regards, |
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Kerryn McKay |
Eve Gray, who is currently travelling between Gauteng and Western Cape, has written the following launch post, which is quite controversial in some aspects, but a great way to start this discussion. As follows: The open access dialogue is intended to open up discussion on how open access is being used in the developing world, and whether this differs from developing country OA. The aim is to canvass views with the idea of identifying what policy initiatives might best support developing country OA. The answer to this question is in fact hard to come by, although the answer is almost certainly 'no'. What is certain, however, is that the figures cited above are not a comprehensive reflection of the research endeavour of India and Africa. They are, rather, a very narrow measure - the proportion of journal articles published by researchers on these continents in the Thomson Reuters Web of Science journal indexes. This has come to be used all too often as the proxy for estimating research productivity, along with the number of patents registered. It is no accident that the developing world research performs badly in this context, as it is being judged according to the ability of researchers to publish halfway across the world in competition with much better resourced academics. Moreover, inclusion in the ISI indexes depends upon the recognition of 'mainstream' research, while many of the critical issues that are of importance in developing country research are dismissed as 'local'. 'Removing access barriers to this literature will accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge.'
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Bhanu Neupane |
Thank you Eve for such a powerful opening remarks. Other than the small typo on I will take one of the pointa that Eve has raised, why Africa is only producing only
There are silver linings though. High level mechanisms have been set up (such as Some Reference: http:/ http:/ http:/ and here is some basic information on OA situation in Africa http:/ Regards, Bhanu Neupane UNESCO |
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Roger Harris |
The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries (EJISDC ISSN: 1681-4835 - http:/ Given the lack of budgetary constraints, we have never felt the pressure to publish fewer papers - we believe that all quality papers should be published in a timely fashion. Our zero budget model contrasts with the more traditional academic publishing, where researchers are paid nothing for their material and are then charged exorbitant fees to read it. The big three publishers that dominate the industry consistently enjoy profit margins of 30-40%. They charge astronomic subscriptions for the top journals that put them out of reach of pretty much every university in the developing world, forcing them to choose between a journal subscription or hiring a professor for a year. Little wonder that there are concerned academics (like those of us working with EJISDC) who have had enough, with the growing boycott of Elsevier journals. At the time of writing, around 13,000 academics have signed up to an online pledge not to publish or do any editorial work for the company's journals, including refereeing papers (see http:/ The value of information and knowledge in the development process is now well-understood and it is to the shame of the top academic publishers that they continue to prevent access to it by the developing nations that stand to benefit the most from being able to use it. The approach of EJISDC, demonstrates how open access to research achieves its moral imperative without discarding the benefits of peer review that academics depend on. Roger Harris Co-Editor-in-Chief, EJISDC Hong Kong
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Eve Gray |
The statistics posted by Bhanu Neupane on the African research enterprise make for sad reading. There are historical reasons behind this picture, but let's look forward for a moment. As Tom Olijhoek has just pointed out, there is research going on in Africa, but the use of misaligned measures for reporting on research performance is distorting our appreciation of what is being produced. There is a double bind here: if governments go on judging research performance according to publication in ISI journals and the impact factor, then the poor outcome will make them reluctant to increase their investment. A more optimistic picture is provided in the open access journal arena. In the wake of the OA Africa conference, Ruth King posted a list of the excellent articles that had been published in Biomed Central by African researchers. Then, in a post in this dicsussion, we were pointed to an article by Muthu Madhan and Subbiah Arunachalam on the successes scored by Indian scientists in leading OA international journals. A broader question - what would research publication look like if it were aligned with African and other developing country research strategy? A case in point is set out in the submission by the Southern African Regional Universities Association to an Extraordinary Meeting of SADC Ministers of Higher Education which made recommendations for an expanded research mission in the region. This encompassed knowledge diversity, interdisciplinary research practices, regional collaboration, a good mix of applied research, transnational projects on areas of high regional relevance, and support for indigenous knoweldge production for econmic success and social progress. What would a publication programme look like for a research enterprise like this? It seems to cry out for open access. And how does this vision reflect in other developing countries? |
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M Madhan |
Access to Scientific Knowledge for Sustainable Development: Options for Developing Countries |
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M Madhan |
Eve Gray: I am giving links to articles that discusses about OA in developing countries. They have some anecdotes which would be of help to us in discussing the case |
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Allison Stevens |
Thank you for this participatory platform and for welcoming different views. In my role as a communications practioner in academic research and education, I can identify with some of the open access challenges in Africa. In practise, the prestige associated with getting published in an international peer-reviewed journal is still pervasive. Journals take all prestige, which means that the other outputs we produce (such as policy briefs, working papers, posters, blogs, etc), are not left with much academic peer-to-peer recognition or reward (in the way journals enjoy). Yet as others point out, it is these other outputs that impact development in Africa. And as has been raised by many public health managers and policy-makers, they simply do not have time to read lengthy, technical, complicated journal articles – they constantly request short, reader-friendly materials. That more emphasis is placed on getting published in journals means that less attention, less time, less value and less thought goes into thinking about using other mediums of communication to get the research out. So prestige and promotion are relegating other more popular research outputs to a lower status. Journal publishing is of course important, especially as a long-term record or documentation of a key finding and as a source of reference that other researchers can go to in order to find out about current thinking. And some open access journals such as PloS Medicine are accessed via PubMed by non-academics which is great for development because that means that the research is reaching other public bodies. Certainly in my profession, translating research from open access journals into other research outputs is such a pleasure because the Creative Commons license gives us automatic permission to re-use the material provided we give full credit. This means that the process of research translation is much shorter than for example, sending rights permissions emails to a toll access journal publisher who may take up to two months to reply to our request. And that someone can google a topic and potentially discover a journal article that is open access is great news for communications because that means they can access the article without paying to read it. But we do need some changes. We need a system whereby we embrace the ideal of open access by not only recognising journal publishing, but also (and equally) recognising the importance of publishing research in a format that most appropriately meets the information and knowledge needs of those who can use that research to improve society’s development. This would require not only massive system changes (e.g. changing human resource policies to recognise other ways of communicating so that researchers’ promotional paths are not obstructed), but also a huge degree of realistic reflection on the part of researchers (recognising the fact that Africa’s knowledge potential is hidden in other modes of outputs, being brave enough to bypass prestige for the benefit of the public good, willfully engaging with communication specialists who could help them map out suitable ways of communicating, etc). Another concern is how to get African researchers to submit research to African journals, not just international high impact journals. How can an African journals’ impact factor increase if all the ground-breaking research goes to international journals? I thank Eve Gray for her eloquent launch post and recommend a reading of Michelle Willmer’s work in scholarly communication at UCT: http:/ Open access publisher Biomed Central kindly answered some difficult questions I posed to them about key themes emerging from the recent conference in Cape Town on: http:/
Allison Stevens Communications Officer, UCT South Africa |
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Guna |
Thank you very much for inviting me to take part of this discussion. I am grateful to Mr Sunil of CIS. But, not all the developing countries are poor in publishing papers in OA journals. |
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Bhanu Neupane |
From most of the posts, its again firmly established that - there is an immediate need for capacity enhancement to realize the benefits of OA. "Research stakeholders" in the developing countries must realize what benefits are there in OA. UNESCO’s attempt to better understand exisiting state of capacity enhancement opportunity established the following facts: “Though paucity of formal education programmes in OA is encouraging in terms of opportunities, it is disconcerting to note that we have a long way to go before we reach a favorable stage for launching them. While there is sufficient ground both in terms of need and knowledge base, to begin the next phase of OA movement — education for OA, there exist some persistent questions. Some of the questions that arise are (or we need to be asking) are:
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Guna |
Eve Gray: Summed up well the discussion of these three days. Your views on ISI impact factors of journals is true. I just want to say a few on this: Citation indices were originally designed by Henry Small and Garfield for information retrieval. Latter they increasingly used for bibliometrics and studies involving research evaluation. Citation data is also the basis of the popular journal impact factor. Many studies had cautioned the use of IF. http:/ Any journal indexed in ISI Thomson databases will have an impact factor (or latter it would have). Not all journals published are indexed in JCR or ISI databases. They have their own threshold to consider the journals in ISI databases. We collected and compared the journal sources indexed in three major databases and found that there were 970 OA journals in JCR 2011 (science edition). Also we found that the impact factors of Indian OA journals are on the raise. Please see our recent article http:/ A recent study revealed that the IF of OA journals are approaching the same scientific impact and quality as subscription journals (http:/ The OA journals are budding and growing rapidly.Impact factors of OA journals will take time to compete with well established toll access journals. It is unfortunate that the unhealthy development of many predatory publishers. |
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sitaramamv |
Does a doctor give an advice that diminishes his returns? Does a lawyer give advice against litigation that diminishes his practice? Does a government ( Let us watch Cameron!) enact laws that modify its hold on the press and police? Does the press diminish its publication of its sensationalized stories that sell the rag? The whole debate on open access reminds me of a literal-minded student of mine, when responded for a query by asking whether the Pope is Catholic, answered me actually, "I don't know. I am not a Christian!" Open access... to what end? To read or to publish? These two are different end games and some confusion persists towards these different ends. In India, all our journals are open access and without the cost of publication. Yet, they struggle hard to stay alive. Impact factors have much to say about that. Open access itself has not mattered an iota. Where Milton Friedman has been the new God as in the USA, nothing makes sense unless couched in terms of market forces. To pay for open access is a contradiction of terms and to say it is needed by developing countries is not to understand the nature of control of research and its appropriation by the West in the name of peer pressure and control of clubs. The original sin rests with the scientific community which is primarily self seeking when it comes to credit mongering. Plagiarism has been made much of, which is actually petty theft. The grand larceny relates to non-citation, which is the standard Western practice for any work that arises elsewhere. Citations are controlled by clubs, which is a crime in these days of automation. When I suggested in an article to Current Science, India, that the plagiarist is a praise-worthy patriot, (attaching a photograph of mine with tongue in cheek in case the editor missed the point) the editor found it embarrassing to publish. The argument was simple. Since the worth of science squarely rests with the West, amply justified historically, the right things to do is what the West does. That is where the advancement of science lies (the pun was unintentional, though GM crops and climate change tell us otherwise). Either reconfirm their ideas or pursue the logical path they set out as progress. Always give them credit. If acknowledged, shed copious tears of joy and, if ignored, remember that it is not becoming of your station to question the superiors. If you have the hubris to chalk out a different course, you will be ignored and when you cannot be ignored any more, a couple of reviews written in captive journals (that is what these high impact journals are to control the written word, since the reviews are invited) will soon take over the original author. You can always be handled. Here is the nub. The conscientious scientist who is seized of the situation in totality would apply market analysis to the problem. Should he spent Indian money for the Western research as all his colleagues are doing to get promoted or get awards or should he be patriotic and not waste Indian money? If the West wants their results confirmed in their journals, is it not market wisdom…with globalization and WTO to boot… to republish their data in their own journals? Is plagiarism the stuff that heroes are made of? A thoroughly equitable solution… stiff upper lip and all that…and yet we blame him? My heart bleeds. The original sin also rests with publishing houses (which includes societies which declare themselves to be non-profit), which have a monopoly on the access to publicly funded research. To enhance their marketability, they have to create an exclusiveness and created an equivalent of Academic Hit men (after the fashion of economic hit men) without whose support, this level of control would not have been possible. Open access is a new slogan for an old problem. Nothing has been solved. I attach two urls that are relevant to these considerations. http:/ http:/ |
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Guna |
Tom Olijhoek: Thanks for your views upon my posting on IF and the OA journals. I just want to say that I am not against the impact factor and its practice. There is no other alternate to measure the surrogate of journals for its quality or impact. I strongly admit that the article level metrics (citations/impact) has more value than the journal level. http:/ http:/ The Medknow (India) and SciELO (Brazil) publishing models have proven that the impact factors of their OA journals are on the raise. http:/ http:/ These two publishing models are good example for DCs - Where majority of journals do not ask APC and they are running successfully. I do not mean that “WE DO NOT WANT TO USE THIS ANY MORE“. Impact factor based evaluation is globally accepted and used by many researchers, organisation and funding agencies for various evaluation purposes for long time. We have to use the IF of journals carefully. I think the Impact Factors will be there in practice until the alternate comes. But my point is "OA journals are budding and growing rapidly. Impact factors of OA journals will take time to compete with well established toll access journals. |
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Eve Gray |
It is interesting that the last two posts came in in sequence - one praising a great venture that produces a successful OA medical journal that does not charge publication fees, the other a bitter complaint from a leading public health academic in South Africa about charges for hybrid OA in an Elsevier journal. This picks up on a persistent strand in the discussion so far that argues that charging for open access publication is a contradiction in terms and undesirable. I would also like to suggest that Leslie London’s complaint needs, as he makes clear, to be contextualized in the discussion on on impact factors and competitive research systems; the question of knowledge and power disparities; and in the discussion on capacity and infrastructure issues. Katie’s post demonstrates that scholarly societies can develop models for maintaining scholarly publication that do not depend upon a commercial model and article processing fees, but can function on donor funding and other support. It is also interesting to note that ecancermedicalscience does not aim for the creation of an impact factor, but is involved instead in using and developing alternative metrics. Another university colleague tackled me yesterday, with a similar story to Leslie’s, angry that a Royal Society journal in his discipline was asking for a £1,000 fee to publish an OA article. He felt he was caught between changing UK OA policy and the realities of a developing country university, where research funding was not as generous. As Leslie says, if he had been funded by Wellcome or the NIH, he would have been in a different position. The clearest lesson is that there is a real problem in developing countries when it comes to the payment of APCs. There is no government support for the transition to OA with bridging funds, or research funders who will build publication costs into research grants. With some notable exceptions, like the Universities of Stellenboach and Pretoria, there are few South African universities with coherent policies for managing scholarly communication in their institutions. After the recent Biomed OA Africa conference, we know that Biomed Central and PLOS are both concerned, from the different perspective of a for-profit and not-for-profit OA publisher, about the dilemma posed by developing country academics wanting to publish in their journals. But who do they engage with, in the policy vacuum that we experience? Some additional issues: Leslie’s complaint is about a hybrid journal, in which he would be paying an additional fee to open his article, which, as public health research really needs to reach a wider audience that those who can afford an expensive subscription. Hybrid OA options are not popular among developed country researchers - only a 3% uptake worldwide. Should this be an option to be discouraged? That raises another question: what has my university done about addressing these issues and about providing information about the options that face its academics? Should academics consider hybrid OA? Or rather be encouraged to full OA? What would that cost, and what would the value be? Has anyone in the library or research office run the figures on what the university is paying for journal subscriptions? Not just the overall figure, but what are we spending on that hugely expensive chemistry journal per reader and per article read? I think we would be very shocked. Leslie is right – we also need much more clarity on the pricing and profit margins of the commercial journals and their APC charges, and his indignation suggests that as academics engage with this, there will be pressure on these numbers. Elsevier, after all, is already being boycotted. Where is the policy guidance at national level? Among university associations in the region, only the Southern African Regional Universities Association (SARUA) has tackled this issue and mapped what would be needed to develop a communication pathway for open research dissemination. The South African Minister of Science and Technology expressed support for OA, but coherent national policy is lacking. Payment of substantial rewards for the publication of articles in ISI journals by the Higher Education Department remains a central platform of national publishing policy, a potentially corrupting influence, as Sitaramam has argued. Leslie makes a powerful case for the desirability of open access for public health ressearch and the double bind that academic authors find themselves in in relation to the impact factor and the realities of the publishing system which, as Sitaramam has made powerfully clear, is powerfully stacked against us. It all goes back to what Bhanu has been asking for from the start - a need for coherent infrastructure and capacity development and for policy and strategy development that is broad enough to address the real issues. |
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Katie Foxall |
Tom Olijohek - thanks for your kind comments. The next language we're planning to translate is Portuguese. Unfortunatley we don't yet have funding for doing the same thing in French but it's definitely one of our aims for the future. Leslie - I really sympathise with your position - you may find this blog post interesting, written by an ex-editor of the BMJ http:/ |
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Lucy Browse |
Hello everyone, I work at INASP www.inasp.info - it has been really good to follow the discussions so far and we really value the opportunity to participate in this way! As an organisation we work as a network south and north to strengthen the research communication cycle (availability, access, use, creation and uptake). I think the points raised about article processing charges are very timely and relevant. As we know, some international journals offer fee waivers to developing countries. However, we need to explore how widely waivers are being adopted by publishers and also the impact that this might have in terms of a) encouraging submissions and publication from developing country researchers and b) the impact this might have on journals from Africa who may need to charge APCs at the current time to be sustainable. It is incredibly important that these journals continue to thrive and increase their visibility globally. This is an area the INASP/Association of Commonwealth Universities "Publishers for Development" initiative will be looking at over the months to come (www.pubs-for-dev.info) As Sridhar Gutam says, it would seem there is also the very real need to advocate for the benefits of Open Access publishing to researchers - so we hope to be increasing the messages and case studies we are sharing in this vein on AuthorAID www.authoraid.info which is targetting early careers researchers. So if you have examples for us to share they would be gratefully recieved. I think Allison Steven's point about encouraging other mediums for research/knowledge communication is also very important for engagement and dissemination. All the very best, Lucy
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Tracy Hanson |
I am a new-comer to the site so I hope you all will bare with me as I try to find my way around. But first I will just introduce myself and organzation as it seems to fit nicely into WSIS. We are Next Generation Global Education. Our mission is " to develop a Global Curriculum Continuum using Open Educational Resources that will transcend political, cultural and linguistic barriers to provide children worldwide anytime with a dynamic, interactive personalized education. In doing so we will assure students leaving high school are self motivated, independent learners, college or career ready, with experience in global collaboration and cooperation prepared to be leaders in the 21st century."
We ARE building a global classroom using the following ideas: Mastery of Learning, using CEO's, building curriculum based on learning styles, developing personal learning tools, and Global Project Based activities.
We welcome any individual, organization, or counry to join us. We are global - no longer should we be separated by imaginary lines of states and countries. Divided, we will always be conquered. Together, however we will bring education into the 21st century and beyond. For global education to be successful it must shed its traditional ineffective ways and create the synergy necessary to form a learner-centered global instructional model as we progress forward into the 21st Century. Through the education of our children, working and learning together in a world environment, we will be able to survive and thrive. Tracy Hanson, Founder |
