The OA Interviews: Leo Waaijers

The Netherlands is a leading nation in the ongoing struggle for Open Access (OA). It has been more successful than any other country in creating a network of institutional repositories, and it has led the world in deposit rates — most notably by means of its Cream of Science and Promise of Science initiatives. Significantly, it has achieved this without the need to mandate researchers to deposit their papers. Instead it has incentivised them. Much of the credit for this success must go to the manager of SURFshare Leo Waaijers.

But how successful is successful? Can the Netherlands ensure that the entire nation's research output will eventually become freely available on the Web without a mandate? Waaijers speaks to Richard Poynder.


Leo Waaijers

RP: I believe you are a librarian by training. Can you start by saying something about your background and your current role?

LW: Actually, I am not a librarian by training. I studied mathematics and theoretical physics and I was an associate professor. But after a long odyssey through the academic managerial ranks, including an elected post on the executive board of Delft University of Technology, in 1988 I was appointed university librarian at Delft. Then, in January 2004 I became manager of SURF's DARE program, and subsequently manager of SURFshare, the successor to DARE.

RP: As I understand it, SURF is a collaborative venture of all the institutions of higher education and research in the Netherlands. Its mission is to stimulate and organise the ICT co-operation of these institutions. But what is the specific purpose of the DARE and SURFshare initiatives, particularly with regard to Open Access?

LW: The aim of both programmes is to provide better access to the results of research. DARE's focus was on textual publications; SURFshare is about the production of and access to complex documents.

RP: What do you mean by complex documents?

LW: Complexity here refers to structured multiplicity. I.e. many dislocated authors collaborating on consecutive versions of multidimensional publications (including text, data, visuals, algorithms etc.) that are distributed over a multitude of repositories.

RP: Which implies e-Science I guess. In terms of OA, however, I'm conscious that there are a number of different views as to what it is, and the purpose it should serve. How do you define OA, and what do you see as its rationale and objective?

LW: OA to knowledge means that the only access limit is your own comprehension. The need to know is fundamental in humans: Think of children; think of Eve. Sharing knowledge has always been the critical survival factor of our species.

Green and gold

RP: Ok, but in the context of scholarly literature I guess we are talking about the free availability of research papers (and increasingly primary research data) on the Internet. There are two approaches to OA: the so-called gold and green routes. What's your view on the respective merits of these two approaches?

LW: In terms of the OAI layers: green is data, gold is a service.

RP: When you talk about OAI layers you are referring to the Open Archives Initiative. This assumes a two-layered model in which data providers (research institutions) create institutional repositories (IRs) at an organisational level (and archive their research in them). Third parties then offer services on top of these repositories. Initially it was envisaged that these services would mainly be harvesters like OAIster, which are designed to aggregate the data in OAI-compliant repositories in order to create a virtual archive that researchers can use to search the entire corpus of distributed papers through a single interface.

Most people view gold OA as a complete publishing service, but one in which the costs are covered by means of an upfront Article Publishing Charge (APC), rather than a post factum subscription fee. In referring to any service built on an IR as a "gold" service you appear to be implying that for you publishers too are now just service providers (providing, for instance, peer review).

LW: Right. The point is that green is necessary but insufficient on its own ...

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If you wish to read this interview in its entirety please click on the link below. I am publishing it under a Creative Commons licence, so you are free to copy and distribute it as you wish, so long as you credit me as the author, do not alter or transform the text, and do not use it for any commercial purpose.

If after reading it you feel it is well done you might like to consider making a small contribution to my PayPal account. I have in mind a figure of $8, but whatever anyone felt inspired to contribute would be fine by me.

Payment can be made quite simply by quoting the e-mail account: richard.poynder@btinternet.com. It is not necessary to have a PayPal account to make a payment.

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Open Access: The War in Europe

As the battle for Open Access (OA) to the scientific literature has intensified, so different fronts of conflict have opened up. With the proposed US Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) on hold as a result of the American election, the main action in February was in Europe — where the European Commission (EC) announced a number of measures intended to support OA.

However, to the disappointment of OA advocates — and despite the recommendations of its own study — the EC chose not to introduce a mandate requiring all publicly-funded research to be made freely available in open repositories. Why did the EC step back from the brink, and where does this leave the OA Movement? Richard Poynder explores the issues.

The EC's long-awaited policy on Open Access was published as a Communication on 15th February, and formally announced at a conference on scientific publishing held in Brussels.

While the Commission has decided that it will encourage researchers to publish their papers in "author-pays" OA, or hybrid, journals it chose not to introduce a self-archiving mandate. Rather it will issue programme-specific "guidelines" for making publicly-funded research available on the Web after an embargo period. This, it says, will be done on a sectoral basis, taking into account the specificity of the different scholarly and scientific disciplines.

What this guideline approach will mean in practice, commented OA advocate Peter Suber in his March newsletter, is for the moment unclear. "It doesn't tell us when it will issue the guidelines, whether the guidelines will require or merely encourage OA … [or] … what the maximum permissible embargo will be … [However] ... It does tell us that the guidelines will vary by discipline and funding program; hence even if the rules in some areas are strong enough, others are likely to be weak."

Speaking to CORDIS News on February 17th, Horst Forster, director of digital content at the EC's directorate general for information society and media, confirmed: "We [the Commission] will not have a mandate on Open Access."

In other words, the EC seems inclined to adopt a voluntary, rather than compulsory, approach. The aim, Forster told CORDIS News, is to encourage experiments with new publishing business models that may improve access to and dissemination of scientific information, and to initiate a policy debate.

So why has the EC retreated from a mandate? …


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If you wish to read this article in its entirety please click on the link below. I am publishing it under a Creative Commons licence, so you are free to copy and distribute it as you wish, so long as you credit me as the author, do not alter or transform the text, and do not use it for any commercial purpose.

Please note that while I am making the article freely available to all, I am a freelance journalist by profession, and so make my living from writing. To assist me to continue making my work available in this way I invite anyone who reads the article to make a voluntary contribution to my PayPal account.

I have in mind a figure of $8, but whatever anyone felt inspired to contribute would be fine by me. Payment can be made quite simply by quoting the e-mail account: richard.poynder@btinternet.com. It is not necessary to have a PayPal account to make a payment.

What I would ask is that if you point anyone else to the article then you consider directing them to this post, rather than directly to the PDF file itself.

If you would like to republish the article on a commercial basis, or have any comments on it, please email me at richard.poynder@journalist.co.uk.

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UK's AHRC to introduce Open Access mandate

The UK is a world leader in the movement for Open Access (OA). In June 2006, for instance, the country's biggest public research funder, Research Councils UK (RCUK), published an OA-friendly position paper that has led to five of the eight constituent UK Research Councils adopting self-archiving mandates. These mandates require grant-holders to make their research freely available in online repositories.

To date, however, the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) has not introduced a mandate. Moreover, the likelihood of it doing so has not looked good. When in February, for instance, the Chief Executive of AHRC Professor Philip Esler was invited to sign a petition calling on the EC to introduce a European-wide OA mandate, he responded by sending an e-mail to the heads of all the other Research Councils, as well as to OA advocates and journalists, saying that he did not intend to sign the petition because "to do what the petition requires in a particular case could arguably entail inducing someone to breach the copyright clause of his or her publishing contract." Perhaps as a consequence of this, only one Research Council Chief Executive signed the petition.

OA advocates were quick to suggest that Professor Esler had misunderstood the petition; a misunderstanding he now appears to concede. But what is current thinking about OA at the AHRC? And has it ruled out introducing a mandate? Richard Poynder e-mailed Professor Esler to find out.



Professor Philip Esler


RP: Do you envisage the AHRC introducing a self-archiving mandate at some point? If so, when will that be?

PE: The AHRC is one of eight UK Research Councils that have a common policy on Open Access. This policy can be found on the RCUK website. The AHRC is committed to the principles articulated in that policy. A key principle among them is that "Ideas and knowledge derived from publicly-funded research must be made available and accessible for public use, interrogation and scrutiny, as widely, rapidly and effectively as practicable."

The Research Councils, including the AHRC, agree that their funded researchers should, where required to do so, deposit the outputs from Research Councils' funded research in an acceptable repository as designated by the individual Research Council. Detailed guidance on this issue will, in due course, appear on the websites of each Council.

The RCUK policy also provides that "Full implementation of these requirements must be undertaken such that current copyright and licensing policies, for example embargo periods or provisions limiting the use of deposited content to non-commercial purposes, are respected by authors. The research councils' position is based on the assumption that publishers will maintain the spirit of their current policies."

The Research Councils have a round of activities in progress in relation to this policy that includes consulting with the publishing community regarding copyright and licensing issues.

Clearly, it would be in the interest of researchers and users of research if a blanket arrangement could be reached with publishers allowing deposition of works in which the publishers hold copyright in Open Access repositories, and in as short a period as possible after publication by the publishers.

The AHRC, like other Research Councils, is moving toward a detailed policy in line with these principles.

RP: You say that the Research Councils have a common policy on Open Access. My understanding, however, is that five of the eight Research Councils have introduced a self-archiving mandate, but the AHRC has not. Does this not suggest that the AHRC is out of step?

PE: We have announced our intention to introduce a self-archiving mandate. Our policy is the same as the other Councils and this is merely a timetabling issue.

We are currently reviewing the Arts and Humanities Data Service (jointly funded with JISC) and that is a factor that has slowed us down a bit in comparison with the other Councils. We are not out of step with the other Councils on this!

RP: I wasn't aware of an announcement.

PE: We will consider the AHDS at the Council meeting on 15th March 2007, so I hope it will be shortly after that. We point out on our website that we will take into account our findings on the AHDS prior to offering our guidance.

RP: Some argue that Open Access raises different issues for the arts and humanities than it does for the sciences? Would you agree?

PE: In my view, the principles of Open Access are as applicable to the arts and humanities as to the sciences. That is why we are moving forward on this issue jointly with the scientific Research Councils.

RP: In February you were asked to sign a petition calling on the EC to introduce a Europe-wide self-archiving mandate. You responded by saying that you would not sign it because to do so would amount to inducing researchers to breach the copyright clause of the contracts they had with publishers. OA advocates refuted this vigorously. Do you hold to your position?

PE: In my message of 8th February, I did not say that signing the Open Access petition "would" be a tortious act but that it "may" be. At that time I was on a train, did not have the text of the petition before me, and was responding to a statement concerning it. I only had in mind the position of my fellow Research Council Chief Executives (the full list of participants to the conversation was not present on my Blackberry when I sent my message and I did not know I would be honoured with such a large audience!).

What I said was also specifically restricted to the situation under English law (with which I am familiar with from my past as a lawyer in Australia, where English law forms the foundation of the legal systems of the States), not the law of any other jurisdiction.

I was simply seeking to remind my fellow Research Council Chief Executives of the need for caution in this area, especially in light of the fact that the RCUK policy specifically refers to the copyright issue, as noted above.

RP: So have you subsequently changed your views about the implications of signing the petition?

PE: I have now read what I gather is the current version of this petition. It does not specifically mention copyright, but does talk of the need to have discussions with publishers, which would imply that copyright would be discussed.

Every legal case must be decided on its own facts, but it is not easy for me to say how anyone signing this petition would, under English law, commit the tort of inducing a breach of contact.

But anyone signing the petition should not rely on my view in doing so (I am no longer a certificated and practising lawyer) but, if he or she is in any doubt, should take legal advice in their own jurisdictions.

RP: Will you personally now be signing the petition?

PE: I will still not be signing the petition (even though I am sympathy with its intentions). The announced position of the AHRC is in line with that of RCUK, is very clear and is actually more detailed than the provisions of this petition.

To the extent that there might be thought to be any differences between this petition and the stated RCUK policy, it might be confusing for me to sign up to both.

RP: The EC Communication that was the focus of the petition has now been published. In the event, the EC has decided not to introduce a Europe-wide mandate, but says that it will issue specific guidelines about providing access to research outputs for each of its research programmes (presumably on a voluntary basis). It has also agreed to provide funds to assist researchers who would like to publish in Open Access journals. What are your views on the EC policy?

PE: The intentions of the Communication are worthy, both because it looks to opening up access to research and also because it proposes to do so in a way that will be integrated across Europe.

This latter point is important because there is now empirical data showing that research conducted by international teams is higher in quality and impact than research carried out in one country.

For European research, it would be inconvenient if there were different policies on Open Access operation across countries from which research teams might come.

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Open Radio

As disenchantment with today's increasingly outdated economic and political system grows, so more and more people are turning to a proliferating number of free and open movements — in pursuit of alternative ways of doing things. Is Open Radio about to become the next trend?

At the end of last year I received an email from a US community radio station called KRUU-FM, which is based in Fairfield, Iowa. While surfing the Web Sundar Raman, the host of a show called Open Views, had come across the interviews I have been doing with leaders of the various free and open movements, and he wanted to talk to me about them on air.


Sundar Raman

Sympathetic to the notion of community radio, and intrigued by the raison d'être of Open Views — to explore the open source and free culture movements around the world "stretching beyond the limits of software" — I agreed to do the interview, which was broadcast in December (and can be heard here).

It was only after the interview was over, however, that I realised that KRUU is more than just a community radio station: it is also a grassroots initiative with a deep commitment to the principles advocated by the various free and open movements. Or as station manager James Moore more extensively described it during the inaugural Open Views programme, KRUU is "grassroots, community, public, non-profit, open radio."

Moore's use of the term "open radio" caught my attention. What, I wondered, did he mean?

Amongst other things, it seems, he meant that KRUU has made a commitment to use only Open Source software. As KRUU founder Roland Wells explained on Open Views, all KRUU's PCs run on the GNU/Linux operating system, and the audio editing tools (Ardour and Audacity) used by DJs at the station are also Open Source. Likewise, the office suite used by Moore to administer the station (OpenOffice) is Open Source, and the station's web site was built using Free BSD UNIX, and is hosted on the Open Source web server Apache.

By using Open Source solutions rather than proprietary software, Wells told KRUU listeners, the station has saved "tens of thousands of dollars".

A philosophy

But such cost-savings are just a side benefit for KRUU, since its commitment to openness is informed more by a philosophy than a business model.

Above all, this philosophy includes a determination to involve the community in the station as much as possible. And since KRUU broadcasts on a 24-hour round-the-clock basis — and uses only one half-hour of syndicated programming (from Free Speech Radio News) — this means that Fairfield's 10,000 or so citizens not only get to hear a lot of local content, but they provide it themselves.

As The Des Moines Register put it a November news report, "In Fairfield, any breathing resident may be stopped on the street and asked to host a radio show."

To date, 150 local residents have volunteered to help run KRUU, and 70 of them now host their own shows. Practically all these DJs, moreover, have no previous experience whatsoever of radio broadcasting.

In other words, in true Open Source fashion, KRUU has spurned a top-down model in favour of a bottom-up, do-it-yourself approach. And where traditional radio stations aspire to little more than pumping out an endless flow of anodyne, mass-produced programming, KRUU invites local citizens to select the kind of programming they want, and then produce it themselves.

"One of the reasons why we want to do this," explained Wells at the station's launch last September "is because most of the media we see or listen to these days is created somewhere else."

And the end result, Moore wrote recently in The Iowa Source is "an aural mosaic" that is a "far cry from the corporatised amalgamation so prevalent in so much of syndicated radio nowadays."

This aural mosaic includes a wide range of different musical genres (including TV theme songs) local news, and political debate — one of the first "Speaking Freely" shows featured former US Republican Congressman Jim Leach, who described the Iraq war as "the greatest foreign policy blunder in the history of our country".

There is also a rich mixture of minority programming — including "Magyar Mix" (Hungarian music selected and played by Hungarian-born Fairfield resident Laszlo Papp), a Spanish-speaking show, a drum show, and "Sleepy Time with Grandpa D", an evening spot for kids that features soft music and bedtime stories.


Laszlo Papp

As a volunteer effort KRUU has an authenticity that no slick for-profit radio station could hope to match. True, there are frequent glitches, dropped lines, and miscues. And since KRUU is located next to the railroad, the occasional clanging of passing trains provides an intermittent but atmospheric backdrop.

However, listeners are unfazed by these rough edges, says Raman. "Every DJ (myself included), regardless of their show, is accosted on the street regularly and told that the station is the best thing to have happened to the community."

"It's the realness that people are responding to," Moore suggested to The Des Moines Register ... ==>

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If you wish to read this article in its entirety please click on the link below. I am publishing it under a Creative Commons licence, so you are free to copy and distribute it as you wish, so long as you credit me as the author, do not alter or transform the text, and do not use it for any commercial purpose.

Please note that while I am making the article freely available to all, I am a freelance journalist by profession, and so make my living from writing. To assist me to continue making my work available in this way I invite anyone who reads the article to make a voluntary contribution to my PayPal account.

I have in mind a figure of $8, but whatever anyone felt inspired to contribute would be fine by me. Payment can be made quite simply by quoting the e-mail account: richard.poynder@btinternet.com. It is not necessary to have a PayPal account to make a payment.

What I would ask is that if you point anyone else to the article then you consider directing them to this post, rather than directly to the PDF file itself.

If you would like to republish the article on a commercial basis, or have any comments on it, please email me at richard.poynder@journalist.co.uk.

To read the article in its entirety (as a PDF file) click here.

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A Conversation with Microsoft's Tony Hey

After thirty years as an academic at the UK's Southampton University, and four years in charge of the UK's e-Science Programme, last year Tony Hey surprised everyone by accepting a post as corporate vice president for technical computing at Microsoft.

Below Hey explains to Richard Poynder why he took the job, and why he believes his decision to do so is good news for the global research community and good news for the Open Access Movement.


Tony Hey

Unusual academic

RP: Thank you for making time to speak with me. Let's start with your background? Until joining Microsoft you were an academic who specialised in parallel computing?

TH: Well, I started out as a particle physicist, and I spent 15 years doing particle physics research, and using the whole gamut of UNIX, and tools like LaTeX.

Then in 1985 I switched to computer science and spent 20 years doing computer science in academia.

RP: You were based at the University of Southampton. Can you say more about your research there?

TH: My work was in parallel processing for scientific applications, which when I started was an area that the computer science community had neglected.

RP: You are talking about high performance computing?

TH: Right, or supercomputing: those are the names people use. My research, however, was in practical parallel computing. In the mid 1980s, for instance, I worked on the transputer.

RP: The transputer was a concurrent computing microprocessor developed at INMOS — a company funded by the UK Government right?

TH: Yes. I worked very closely with INMOS and, with other colleagues, was responsible for developing the transputer, which was in some ways ahead of its time. Today, for instance, we are seeing chips being developed that are very similar to the transputer, but appearing many years later. Had INMOS been properly funded I think the UK would have had a significant impact on the computer industry.

RP: INMOS was part of the so-called white heat of technology initiative instigated by the British Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson in the 1960s wasn't it?

TH: Indeed. The trouble was that when the Conservatives inherited INMOS, they didn't know what to do with it, and sold it off to Thorn EMI. Thorn in its turn didn't understand that it was necessary to invest in the business. So it was a very, very exciting but brief period when the UK seemed to have the courage of its convictions, and just for a minute the country was really competitive in the field.

After the transputer I went into interoperability and portability, and parallel code. One thing I did — with some colleagues — was to write the first draft of the Message Passing Interface [MPI]. This involved a bunch of European and US people meeting every six weeks in Dallas airport hotel, and within a year we had an implementation of MPI that is now an accepted standard around the world.

I was also very keen, by the way, that there should be an Open Source version developed at the same time. So today there are a number of commercial versions of MPI available, plus an Open Source version. There is even a version running on Microsoft products today. I am proud of that.

RP: In total you spent thirty years at Southampton University?

TH: Right, although I had 10 years leave of absence.

RP: And you became head of the School of Electronics and Computer Services department?

TH: I did, and then I was dean of engineering. So I span the gamut from physics, to computer science, to engineering. In that sense I am an unusual academic.

e-Science

RP: But your background was clearly ideal for running the UK's e-Science Programme, which you took over in 2001. What is the UK e-Science Programme?

TH: It was the brainchild of John Taylor when he was running Hewlett Packard's research labs in Europe. He had a vision in which computing would be a utility — a pay-as-you-go service similar in concept to the pay-as-you-go mobile phone services available today.

RP: Or the hosting services offered by companies like Google and Amazon (through its S3 service)?

TH: Exactly. And of course Microsoft now offers such services too — services that are delivered in the cloud: You don't care where they are stored, you just use the services.

Anyway, John was later put in charge of the UK Research Councils, and he found himself working with all the physicists, the chemists, the biologists, and the medics, when they were bidding for money from the government. In fact, it was his responsibility to make those bids.

In doing so, he noticed that a lot of researchers from different institutions were collaborating to do their research, often on an international basis. The particle physics community, for instance, is a genuinely international community, and hundreds of different sites all around the world collaborate with one another.

Other research communities — for example the biologists — might want to collaborate with just a few specific sites: an institute in the UK, say, might want to collaborate with an institute in the US, and an institute in Helsinki. So these three sites would collaborate and share their data.

It was in observing this that John developed his idea of e-Science. Then, when I took over the Programme, it became my task to define it.

RP: So how do you define  e-Science?

TH: Well, the first point to make is that it's not a science like biology or chemistry. Rather, it is a set of technologies to enable people to collaborate: to share computing, to share data, and to share the use of remote instruments etc. So e-Science is the technologies that allow networked, distributed, collaborative, multi-disciplinary science. It's a very exciting area.

RP: How does e-Science differ from what in the US is called the cyberinfrastructure. Or are we talking about the same thing?

TH: Essentially we are talking about the same thing. In fact I had Paul Messina — who was on the US cyberinfrastructure Blue-Ribbon Advisory Panel — on my steering committee; and John Taylor and I were both interviewed by the Blue-Ribbon Panel. So you will see a lot of e-Science ideas in the US cyberinfrastructure report, and you will see a lot of the US cyberinfrastructure report in what we developed. It just happens that in the US they chose another name. Personally, I think e-Science is a much better name than cyberinfrastructure.

RP: Why?

TH: Because it emphasises science. The purpose isn't to build roads and infrastructure, but to do science. Of course, e-Science depends on the cyberinfrastructure — the networks, the software, and so on, which we in Europe call the e-infrastructure.

But what is wonderful about the e-Science programme is that it has always been application led.

RP: You mean that the emphasis has been on what scientists actually want to do, not the technology?

TH: Exactly. Too often these things are dominated by the technology. And what I really, really liked about the e-Science Programme (and I didn’t set it up that way, John Taylor deserves the credit) is that I was only running about 20% of the budget. That is, I ran the core of the Programme, the part that was needed to underpin all the application projects — and the remaining 80% was application-led.

So it was my responsibility to develop the middleware requirements to support the R&D projects, and the applications themselves were directly funded. This meant that the applications were really great, and that is why the e-Science Programme became so visible around the world.

So I believe we had the right idea. The aim was to do serious science, and to tackle next-generation scientific problems.

RP: Can you give me an example of e-Science in action?

TH: There are many examples. At one end you have particle physics, where physicists need to share their compute clusters to analyse the data that will soon be generated by the LHC machine in CERN, Geneva. At the other end are astronomers who want to share data from different telescopes all over the world ...

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If you wish to read this interview in its entirety please click on the link below. I am publishing it under a Creative Commons licence, so you are free to copy and distribute it as you wish, so long as you credit me as the author, do not alter or transform the text, and do not use it for any commercial purpose.

If after reading it you feel it is well done you might like to consider making a small contribution to my PayPal account.

I have in mind a figure of $8, but whatever anyone felt inspired to contribute would be fine by me. Payment can be made quite simply by quoting the e-mail account: richard.poynder@btinternet.com. It is not necessary to have a PayPal account to make a payment.

What I would ask is that if you point anyone else to the article then you consider directing them to this post, rather than directly to the PDF file itself.

If you would like to republish the interview on a commercial basis, or have any comments on it, please email me at richard.poynder@btinternet.com.

To read the interview in its entirety (as a PDF file) click here.

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Creating a National Open Access Policy for Developing Countries

Held in India, in the first week of November, the Bangalore workshop on Electronic Publishing and Open Access (OA), was convened in order to agree a model National OA Policy for developing countries. Guest blogger Barbara Kirsop, of the Electronic Publishing Trust for Development, was one of those attending. Below is her report.



Barbara Kirsop

Meeting in the idyllic surroundings of the Indian Institute of Science campus, in Bangalore, the 44 participants of the workshop included scientists and OA experts from India, China, Brazil and South Africa, along with colleagues and OA advocates from a number of other countries.

The workshop was hosted by three major Indian scientific institutions — the Indian Institute of Science, the Indian Academy of Science, and the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation — and funded by the Open Society Institute.

The two-day event included thought-provoking presentations on the etymology of such terms as 'open' and 'own', intensive debate about the challenges and opportunities OA raises for developing nations, and a demonstration of the impressive Indo-Chinese Million Books Digital Library project.

With superb Indian refreshments served beneath shady tropical trees, the atmosphere was highly conducive to intensive networking and focussed discussions, and included important updates on existing OA projects, along with statistical evidence showing progress in both OA-advanced countries and developing countries

Moving on

But why was it felt necessary to hold a workshop on OA so soon after the Salvador Declaration on Open Access for Developing Countries, held in September 2005?

The Bangalore workshop was not intended to be a venue simply for confirming acceptance of the principles of OA, but was convened to bring some of the most scientifically advanced developing countries together to report on progress, and consider a model National Open Access Policy that could be offered to governments, and their funding organisations, as a practical tool for driving OA forward.

The aim, therefore, was to take the next step towards ensuring the implementation of earlier OA declarations, not just to talk about OA (the free online availability of peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly journal articles).

What was abundantly clear was that participants agreed on the fundamentals: that academic researchers, in whatever country they work, need access to the published literature in their area of research — for without that they are unable to build on the work of others, gain recognition for their own research, or form professional partnerships.

Grossly uneven

But since the cost of academic journals is prohibitive for many developing countries, scholarly communication is for them severely restricted.

This is a huge problem: A survey conducted by the WHO in 2003, for instance, found that in 75 of the poorest countries, 56% of the medical institutions had been unable to access any journals over the previous five years.

The problem with the current system, therefore, is that the playing field is grossly uneven, and seriously handicaps researchers — who are unable to access all the publications they need to make academic progress because of the high cost of journals.

Furthermore, the cost of printing and distributing local journals means that much developing world research is 'invisible' to the rest of the world, isolating research communities and limiting communication with neighbouring countries.

As a consequence, the incorporation of regional knowledge into international programmes remains minimal. Yet with the growth of global problems — think only of HIV/AIDS, avian 'flu, environmental disasters, climate change or crop failure — it is essential that the countries in which these problems are most commonly experienced have access to research findings, and can contribute their crucial experience to finding global solutions.

Without both improved access and regional visibility, the science base of poorer countries will not be strengthened, and it is well documented that without a strong science base economies remain weak and dependent on others.

But thanks to the profound media developments made possible by the Web, OA has created exhilarating new opportunities for the exchange of essential research information. And while this promises huge benefits for all academic research, it will be especially beneficial for developing nations, by providing equality of access for all.

It is clear, for instance, that wherever researchers have embraced OA, the visibility, quality and the impact of local research has flourished, and subscriptions to OA journals have even increased — a clear indication that researchers were previously information-starved.

Progress has been made

Yet while awareness of OA in many developing countries remains low, the more scientifically advanced nations have already recognised the benefits of OA, and are making fast progress — both in converting journals to OA and establishing interoperable institutional repositories

Progress has also been made in developing nations, and workshop delegates were updated on local developments. In India, for instance, the MedKnow project in Mumbai, has done much to raise the visibility of Indian medical journals in a sustainable way, and without charging authors or readers.

Meanwhile, the Bioline service has recorded impressive increases in requests for full-text papers from the developing country journals it hosts, with a projected one million requests in 2006 for papers that would otherwise be largely unknown and unavailable to local researchers.

This kind of progress highlights the amount of research information that was totally unused pre-OA, due to its inaccessibility.

Successful strategies for filling institutional repositories were also discussed at the workshop, with examples taken not only from the developed regions, but from local research institutes too. One Indian institute, for instance, is 'gently persuading' its scholars to deposit their articles by refusing travel support to those that do not archive their publications!

Further examples were given of OA progress in China and South Africa, as well as from the established SciELO programme in Brazil — all of which confirmed the growth and value of Open Access policies.

Vigorous debate

It was agreed, however, that progress could be significantly speeded up if a model National OA Policy could be drawn up, and developing countries encouraged to adopt it.

It was also felt that this would be particularly effective if it was formally accepted by a group of local experts — of which there was no shortage at the workshop — who know and understand the problems faced by developing countries on the ground.

While there was vigorous debate on how to encourage adoption of such a policy, there was no dissent over the need for it, or of its basic form.

Specifically, the draft Policy document urges governments to require copies of all publicly funded research published in peer-reviewed journals to be deposited in an institutional digital repository as soon as publication is accepted, and encourages government grant holders to provide Open Access to their deposited papers immediately upon deposit. Grant holders are also encouraged to publish in a suitable Open Access journal, where one exists. This should be a condition of research funding for any papers partly or fully funded by the government.

Delegates decided to allow a further two weeks for local consultation about the final wording of the Policy, and submission of further improvements — after which the document would be made widely available.

Next logical step

While the development of any new academic practice always generates wide debate, the Bangalore workshop was grounded on the principle that OA is the next logical step in the evolutionary process of scholarly communication.

The ethos of those attending was summed up by a comment from Lawrence Laing, of the Alternative Law Forum. "Why," he asked, "are top scientists said to be gifted?" "Because", he replied, "they give their research findings to others."

It was also evident to participants that it was important to produce a new tool for ensuring continued progress; a tool targeted clearly, but not exclusively, at developing countries. It was agreed therefore that a model National OA Policy would prove to be a valuable advancement.

Clearly, the success of the Policy will depend on whether the relevant governments, funders and research institutes adopt its recommendations.

But it may be that the countries represented at the Bangalore workshop will lead the way in the adoption of Open Access policies. After all, they have most to gain and so much to contribute.

All presentations, lists of participants and the draft model National OA Policy document are available on the workshop web site.



Barbara Kirsop can be contacted on: ept@biostrat.demon.co.uk.

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Open Access: Beyond Selfish Interests

Few would question that the aim of the Open Access (OA) Movement — to make all research papers freely available on the Web — is a laudable one. OA will considerably benefit the research process, and maximise the use of public funds. It was encouraging therefore to see the topic of OA aired in a number of presentations at the recent Internet Librarian International (ILI). Listening to them, however, I found myself wondering how many acts of selfishness stand between us and OA.

There is today no shortage of discussion about OA. A simple search for the term on Google demonstrates that. Most of these discussions, however, tend to take place amongst the various warring factions of the OA Movement, particularly researchers and librarians, plus the occasional scholarly publisher brave enough to put his head above the parapet.

I was interested, therefore, to hear at ILI the opinions of someone with a less partisan view; the view, moreover, of an economist. For the conference keynote was given by Danny Quah, professor of economics at the prestigious London School of Economics. True, Quah is himself a researcher, but it was clear that it was as an economist that he spoke. He also brought a welcome international perspective to the debate.

Quah had been asked by conference chair Marydee Ojala to give a paper on the weightless economy (a term Quah coined) and "the knowledge glut". In the event, Ojala commented on her blog, he didn't talk about either of these, but "the economics of publishing."

However, Ojala may have missed the point. Speaking as an economist, Quah set out to ask a very important question about the so-called knowledge economy. That is, why, despite the glut of information in the world today, is some information increasing in price? He clearly also wanted to draw to the attention of his librarian audience the important role they play in this counterintuitive development.

Maximum social good

Modern economists, explained Quah, work on the assumption that in free markets the greatest social good is achieved when supply and demand are in equilibrium. To help achieve this, he added, brokers, or intermediaries, constantly work to match customers with suppliers. In doing so, intermediaries "perform a useful function — one that increases welfare for society — and they earn the resulting appropriate rewards."

Indeed, he added, the extraordinary thing about free markets is that maximum social good is arrived at through a process in which everyone acts selfishly. "[P]eople do good for society by doing well for themselves", he said, not least the intermediaries, whose sole aim is that of "single-mindedly, just narrowly trying to get suppliers and demanders to meet."

He added: "It is far from the brokers' minds, and rightly so, that in merely doing their job a greater social good might be attained."

Nevertheless, he concluded, the model is not foolproof. When social institutions are created or destroyed, for instance, the opposite effect can occur. And when this happens the system may not automatically be able to repair itself.

That, he argued, is precisely what has happened in the scholarly journal market. Where economists would expect an increase in supply to have caused prices to decrease, the rapid growth in published research we have seen over the past several decades has led to an increase in the price of scholarly journals.

Even more puzzling, he added, this has occurred during a period of unprecedented advances in the technology for distributing information. As he put it, "In the face of arguably the greatest improvement in information dissemination technology in pretty much all of recorded history … academic journal prices have not fallen but actually increased."

And journal prices have increased in an extraordinary manner. By 2000, Quah said, the average annual subscription of science and technology journals had reached $1,200, having increased by 80% over the previous decade. In the case of biomedical journals, he added, the market experienced a more than doubling of prices in the seven years after 1994.

An important feature of this price inflation, added Quah, is the difference in price between journals produced by commercial publishers, and those produced by non-profit publishers.

So where, for instance, in 2001 the top 10 most-cited economics journals produced by commercial publishers had an average annual subscription rate of $1,370, the cost of the top 10 most-cited economics journals produced by non-profit publishers was just $190.

How could it be, asked Quah, that the market is able to tolerate a 600% mark-up like this?

And in case anyone accuse him of trying to compare apples and oranges, he added, we should note that the same disparity is evident when costs are calculated on a price-per-page basis: thus where the cost of a page produced by non-profit publishers averaged 18 cents, the figure for commercial publishers was 82 cents.

Likewise, when calculated on a per-citation-basis the average non-profit price was 15 cents per citation, compared to $2.40 in the case of commercial publishers.

"Evidently," concluded Quah, "the premium that the marketplace willingly pays commercial publishers remains high — between 5 and 16 times according to these back-of-the-envelope calculations."

Peculiar economic commodity

So why has a glut in scholarly information led not to a fall in price but to an increase? Because, answered Quah, "Information is a peculiar economic commodity. It does not trade easily or conveniently in conventional markets."

As a consequence, he added, "the social institution that has emerged historically to allow information exchange, production, and dissemination is an intellectual property rights (IPR) system."

The problem with the IPR system, however, is that while it is a good way of assigning priority, and according proprietary rights in new information and ideas, it is not an effective pricing mechanism, said Quah.

In short, when the IPR system is used for pricing, rather than assigning priority and ownership, it causes problems — because while ordinary property rights foster market competition, intellectual property rights create and sanction monopolies. As such, rather than facilitating market competition, IPRs stifle it.

The market outcome, said Quah, is one in which price is separated from cost, "and the price mark-up over cost turns out to be whatever the marketplace will bear."

Add to this the fact that the market for scholarly journals is inelastic, he said, and it becomes apparent why there is no market control on the price of scholarly journals.

While Quah did not directly state it, his point was surely that the dysfunction in the market for scholarly journals is a direct result of publishers insisting that, as a condition of publication, researchers have to sign over copyright in their papers, thereby giving publishers an exclusive right to distribute them (at whatever price they want).

Certainly, Quah's analysis touched a raw nerve for some in his audience. Conscious that ILI organiser Information Today is itself also a commercial publisher, the company's president Tom Hogan suggested that Quah's figures did not take into account the fact that learned societies are able to subsidise their publishing activities through membership subscriptions.

"As I said during my talk," Quah replied cannily, "my aim is not to point fingers."

In short, Quah's thesis appeared to be that in a free market diverse selfish actions are aggregated in such a way as to maximise public good — an economic theory first enunciated by Adam Smith in his 1776 book The Wealth of Nations. Smith devised the metaphor of the "Invisible Hand", which economists today frequently use to characterise the way in which in a free market multiple selfish acts can lead to outcomes that have beneficial consequences not just for those individual actors, but for society at large.

In the case of the information market, Quah argued, the IPR system has destroyed the benign social function that the invisible hand can have.

Quah's talk spurred me to think about the various actors in the OA drama, and their different motivations. Might we, I wondered, reach a better understanding of the problems besetting the scholarly journal market if we considered the motivations of the different actors, and the selfish actions that drive the market? Could this also alert us to the dangers ahead, and help us see what needs to be done?

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The full text of Danny Quah's paper, and his blog entry on ILI can be found here

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