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Access to Information
consequent to the Information Technology revolution was a major landmark
of the last Century. In spite of our remarkable achievements in making
Information accessible, the fact that a major share of vital research data
is still behind access barriers may seem a bit paradoxical. Scholars from
around the world –and particularly from the developing world have been
categorically denied access to vital research that could make a big
difference.
This obviously makes the
current publishing crisis- dubbed the ‘serials crisis’ or rather the
‘serials pricing and access crisis’ the epicenter of discussions. The
crisis is characterized by vicious cycle of an exponential increase in the
prices of Journals and a decreasing funding allocation to maintain the
collections. Even well off institutes in affluent societies have been
badly affected-not to mention the institutions in developing countries.
Serials Crisis: Contributing Factors
Many factors have
directly or indirectly contributed, including the rising costs of
publishing, ever increasing profit motives, mergers and acquisitions- just
to name a few.
Profit motive is one
major factor that has contributed significantly to the crisis. The recent
mergers and acquisitions in the publishing industry has left behind just a
handful of monopolies which have almost no competition given the unique
characteristics of scholarly publication. The end of competition has
obviously endowed these publishers enough freedom to hike the prices as
they wish.
Open Access- The Philosophy
Now what is the point in
doing science if it were not to be accessible? This single question has
now become the epicenter of thought worldwide. To make a difference,
research need to be freely accessible to scholars and policy makers. It
may also seem paradoxical that a major share of this research was funded
from public coffers. This obviously necessitates the free access to this
vital information. In the Health domain, access to up to date research
data is so vital that it may even make a difference between life and
death.
Open Access by
definition means “immediate, permanent, toll-free, non-gerrymandered,
online access to full text” (The Budapest Open Access Initiative
Definition).
Open Access Initiatives
have come forward propagating the philosophy. The major Initiatives were
the Budapest Open Access Initiative (www.soros.org/openaccess)
and the Open Society Institute [OSI] backed by the Soros Foundation.
Open Access in the
Health Domain: How Relevant It Is?
Open access is perhaps
more relevant in the Health domain than perhaps any other - given its
unique impact on human lives. Health is a basic human right and thus gives
open access to scholarly communication in the health domain a unique
philosophical and ethical perspective.
Moreover, it has been
pointed out that Open Access to Scholarly communication in the health
domain is essential to contain the menace of diseases which plague the
developing countries and to create a unique platform of exchange of
knowledge between scholars. It is thought that Open Access would
significantly improve the south-north flow of knowledge, adding to the
prestige of scholars from the developing world.
Open Access: The Three Pillars
Open Access may be
considered as borne on three pillars- Open Access Publishing, Open Access
Archiving and Open Access Support/Advocacy. These three pillars are
integral in creating sustainable Open Access to scholarly communication.
Fig 1: Pillars of Open
Access
Open Access Publishing
Journals are
increasingly finding it a viable option to go Open Access given the fact
that many Open Access Journals have rapidly built upon readership base,
visibility and impact. For example, Calicut Medical Journal (www.calicutmedicaljournal.org),
a new Open Access Journal crossed 1 million hits within just 6 months with
all articles ranked highly on all major search engines. Similar visibility
and an increase in International submissions was noticed for other Open
Access Journals like Journal of Postgraduate Medicine (www.jpgmonline.com)
and Online Journal of Health and Allied Sciences (www.ojhas.org)
-all of which are published from India.
Open Access Publishing: Who bears the costs?
The new model does not
infringe the publishers’ right to profit. BOAI clarifies this by stating “
There are many alternative sources of funds for this purpose, including
the foundations and governments that fund research, the universities and
laboratories that employ researchers, endowments set up by discipline or
institution, friends of the cause of open access, profits from the sale of
add-ons to the basic texts, funds freed up by the demise or cancellation
of journals charging traditional subscription or access fees, or even
contribution from researchers themselves. There is no need to favour one
of these solutions over the others for all disciplines or nations, and no
need to stop looking for other, creative alternatives” [from
www.soros.org/openaccess]
Different Journals have
their own streams of funding. While Open Access publisher BioMedCentral (www.biomedcentral.com)
derives funds partly through the article processing fees, Journal of
Postgraduate Medicine(www.jpgmonline.com)
funds its OA version through funds derived from its print subscriptions
and advertisements, Calicut Medical Journal(www.calicutmedicaljournal.org)
derives funding from its publisher the Calicut Medical College Alumni
Association and OJHAS(www.ojhas.org)
derives funding from advertisements and personal contribution.
Open Access Archiving
Open Access archiving
offers immediate solution to the need to free
scholarly communication from the shackles of access barriers. Since 1991,
high energy physics researchers from around the world were networked
through an eprint archive maintained by Paul Gispang of Los Alamos
National Library (http://lanl.gov)
(later moved to Cornell University which currently hosts the archive).
This archive- 'arxiv' (http://arxive.org/)
receives two-third of its total hits from institutions outside the United
States, including many research facilities in developing regions. The
archive has become indispensable to researchers in research institutions
that would otherwise be excluded from the frontline of science for
economic and other reasons.
The success of Arxiv had its impact worldwide and led to the creation of
the Open Archives initiative which has developed E-Print (www.eprints.org)
software which would enable interoperability between different archives
encompassing different specialties. The OAI has also developed an Open
Archives Metadata Harvesting Protocol which would enable interoperability
across distributed archives. Thus the distributed archives form a
networked global library that enables cross linking, searching and
permanent archival of meta data enhanced manuscripts. Moreover these data
are available for seamless search and other features supported by Open
Archive search engines like OAIster (http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister).
The new wave has swept through the biomedical domain too, with a number of
institutional and centralised archives like Cogprints
(http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/)
being established. Here the works of the US National Library of Medicine
through the PubMedCentral
(www.pubmedcentral.com),
which is now integrated through the OAI Protocol for Metadata Harvesting,
and other archives like the Clinical Medicine Netprints (http://clinmed.netprints.org/)
maintained by the BMJ publishing Group and E-Research archive (ERA) by the
Lancet are worth mentioning.
How Professionals/Scholars Benefit from Open Access
The major advantage as
far as professionals and Scholars from the Developing world are concerned
is that they can have access to up to date information, which would enable
them to function more effectively and efficiently. For scholars it would
mean they have access to research data, which they could enhance through
their contributions. The high impact and visibility offered through
publishing their research in Open Access Publications or archiving them at
Institutional/ Centralized archives like Cogprints would significantly
enhance their prestige and improve their interaction with their peer
community worldwide. The existence of small and regional medical journals
have been noted to be of some value in maintaining the health of that
population, since region specific health information is essential for
maintaining the quality of health in each geographical area(http://www.calicutmedicaljournal.org/2003;1(1)e1.htm)
How We Can Capitalize on Open Access
Open Access market also
puts developing countries with immense IT-related expertise like India and
South Africa at an advantageous position. The low cost for development and
maintenance added with the low cost of manpower (compared to western
statistics) make them potent and attractive destinations for publishers
and service providers. Moreover, indigenous publishers can also leverage
their expertise into an International platform effectively exploiting the
unique opportunity.
The Future of Open Access
Open Access publishing
is perhaps the future of scientific communication in developing countries.
The landmark success of many new open Access Journals in India and other
developing countries speak for this. Since most scholar societies
interested in experimenting with Open Access Journals are little aware of
the intricacies of this domain, a support organization comprising of Open
Access publishers
is the need of the day. This would enable more Open Access Journals from
developing countries emerge successful, both regionally and
internationally. To this end, Editors of five new Open Access Journal
Editors from India have decided to form an alliance to share their
expertise, infrastructure and to help creation of new Open Access Journals
in India. This alliance, though still in the conceptual stage is sure to
boost the Indian Open access movement.
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Competing interests
The author is Editor in
Chief of two Open Access International Biomedical Journals [Internet
Health
www.internet-health.org and Asian Student Medical Journal
www.asmj.org
] and editorial board member of two Indian Open Access Journals [The
Online Journal of Health and Allied Sciences
www.ojhas.org
and Calicut Medical Journal
www.calicutmedicaljournal.org ]. He is a contributor to Open Access
WebLog
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html and a consultant to
many Open Access Biomedical journals.
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Related Resources
Some Indian Open Access Journals
Calicut Medical Journal
www.calicutmedicaljournal.org
Internet Health
www.internet-health.org
Asian
Student Medical Journal
www.asmj.org
Online
Journal of Health and Allied Sciences
www.ojhas.org (first Online Medical Journal in India)
Journal of Postgraduate Medicine
www.jpgmonline.com
Journal of Orthopedics
www.jortho.org [coming up]
Directories of Open Access Journals
DOAJ
(Directory of Open Access Journals)
www.doaj.org
Archives/Repositories
Cogprints
http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/
PubMedCentral
www.pubmedcentral.com
Clinical Medicine Netprints
http://clinmed.netprints.org/
Open Access News
Open
Access News
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html
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