Open Access and the Developing World

Matthew CockerillManaging Director, BioMed Central Ltd

The old world of access to knowledge

The new world of access to knowledge

The internet has the potential to radically expand access to

knowledge

Digital divide or digital bridge?

African internet connectivity is improving dramatically

Cellphones

Source: African Mobile Factbook 2008

International Telecommunications Union report (2009)

“The increase in the number of mobile cellular subscriptions over the last five years has defied all predictions and Africa remains the region with the highest mobile growth rate”

Although number of Internet users has also grown faster than in other regions:“Africa’s ICT penetration levels in 2009 are still far behind the rest of the world and very few African countries reach ICT levels comparable to global averages”

Growth of mobile phones in Africa

Mobile phone networks are already aiding scientific data gathering

As connectivity improves, other access barriers become significant

Open access journals do away with access barriers

About BioMed Central

Largest publisher of peer-reviewed open access journals

Launched first open access journal in 2000 Became part of Springer in 2008 Now publishes 207 open access journals >80,000 peer-reviewed OA articles published All research articles published under Creative

Commons license Costs covered by article processing charge (APC)

BioMed Central and Africa

ComputerAid

BMC/Nature 10K fun run in support of ComputerAid

OA Waiver Fund

All African countries receive automatic fee waiver, except:

Libya Namibia Nigeria South Africa

AlgeriaBotswanaEquatorial GuineaGabon

Growth in manuscript submissions from Africa to BioMed Central

Manuscript submissions from Africa as fraction of total

Top 10 journals for publications from Africa in last 12 months

How can increased access to knowledge via Open Access help

Africa?

UN Millenium Development Goals

Reduce child mortality,improve maternal health

Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases

Ensure environmental sustainability Develop a global partnership for

development

Who needs access to the results of research?

Public

Professionals

Researchers

Research on global health issues has expanded greatly

Developing world health issues are finally attracting substantial research spending

Private philanthropic initiatives have played an important role

Why do research if it is not accessible where it is most relevant?

Wellcome Trust Medical Research Council US National Institutes of Health Howard Hughes Medical Institute European Research Council EC Seventh Framework Program

Many research funders are now requiring open access

Harvard University (and other members of Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity)

More than 100 mandatory institution-wide open access policies world-widehttp://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/

But still very few in Africa…

Many universities are now requiring open access

Open Access in practice

Open Access journals

What is open access publishing?

Traditional journals– take ownership of the research– provide access to subscribers only

Open access journals– have no subscription barriers– take advantage of the economics of the

internet to allow universal access– research is openly licensed to allow reuse

Who pays?

Open access journals do have costs Publication fee is a very small fraction

of the cost of doing research Most open access publishers, including

BioMed Central, give waivers to developing countries

In other cases, open access journals have central support, so no charges for authors or readers

Open Access publishing,then and now…

20102000

And many more…

African Journals Online

A new industry association

Goals of OASPA

Represents Open Access publishers Agree common definition of Open Access Establish and enforce good standards of

editorial and business practices amongst members

Identify guidelines and best practices for publishers and institutions in managing payment of publication fees

Malaria Journal - an open access journal case study

Malaria Journal homepage

Annual growth in submissions to Malaria Journal

Top 20 African countries publishing in Malaria Journal (no. or articles)

Impact Factor trend

A highly accessed Malaria Journal article

15,000+ downloads

31 citations

Parasite to Prevention - Malaria Journal’s scientific conference

Inaugural conference October 2010, Edinburgh, Scotland

Full bursaries for participants from low-income countries, supported by Gates Foundation

Next conference 2012, probably in Africa

Other high profile open access journals relevant to tropical diseases

Gateways

The latest open access research on global health issues

The benefits of open access for the developing world

Zambia

Nigeria

The Gambia

Open Access repositories

Open Access repositories

Allow archiving of articles published both in traditional journals and open access journals

Traditional publishers typically only allow author version to be archived

Many require a 6 or 12 month embargo period

Open access articles can be deposited and made immediately available

Open Repository

Hosted digital repository service, operated by BioMed Central

Built on the DSpace open-source platform Dramatically reduces time and costs

involved in setting up, maintaining and developing a repository

Hosting in UK ensures maximum international exposure

Open Repository

MSF 1

MSF 2

How can OA publishers work with Institutional Repositories?

Many institutions now have OA repositories in place

Populating the repositories is often a challenge

Open Access journals provide a stream of immediately available OA content for the repository

BioMed Central is automating this via feeds using the SWORD protocol

Connecting open access journals and open access repositories

Institutional Institutional RepositoryRepository(DSpace/Eprints (DSpace/Eprints

etc.etc.))

PublisherPublisher

Manuscript

Author final

version

1

2

Manual deposit to IR

Institutional Institutional RepositoryRepository(DSpace/Eprints (DSpace/Eprints

etc.etc.))

Manuscript

SWORD Import

SWORD Export

Published articles

from institution’s

authors

Published article

Automated deposit to IR via SWORD

University of Stellenbosch

Thanks, and enjoy the rest of the conference!