Open Access / Open Mind

Open access to scientific publications

The idea of Open Access to Information has been growing, indicating that it will increasingly be part of the future of scientific communication.

Free Access or Open Access means the online availability of free copies of peer-reviewed articles from scientific journals, conference papers and technical reports, dissertations, and working papers. This enables making research results available to the entire scientific community, thus contributing to this advancement.

Why Open Access? Unlike other authors, researchers and academics publish the results of their work not to earn income (copyrights, royalties, etc.) but to obtain another type of reward: impact of publication.
Researchers are rewarded (career progression, funding for their projects, scientific awards, etc.) for their scientific output, which is evaluated not only in terms of size (quantity) but especially for its impact (quality).

The Open Access movement The international movement Open Access Initiative (OAI) or Free Access to Knowledge aims at the vast and unrestricted dissemination of academic and scientific literature on the Internet, making it available with minimal restrictions on use, without cost or permission barriers. It came about not only in response to the limitations and contradictions of the current scholarly communication system, but also as a result of the growing awareness of the increased impact caused by the availability of free scientific production without restrictions on access.

In this context, the main objectives of the movement are:

– Promote free access to scientific production without copyright restrictions and authorizations;
– Value the impact of research conducted at universities;
– Contribute to the change in the system of scientific communication;
– Develop international scientific cooperation.

This movement led to several Declarations and Recommendations, among which the following international ones stand out:

– The Declarations of Budapest (2002), Bethesda (2003) and Berlin (2003);

– The Declaration of Principles and Plan of Action approved by the World Summit on the Information Society organized by the UN (2003) (this declaration explicitly supports open access to scientific information);

– The recommendations of the Working Group on Open Access of the European University Association (EUA) (March 2008);

– The OECD Ministerial Declaration on Access to Digital Research Data From Public Funding (2004);

– The decisions of the European Commission under the Open Access pilot project of the 7th Framework Programme and the guidelines of the European Research Council.

In Portugal, the first Open Access initiatives were led by the University of Minho through the creation of its institutional repository – RepositóriUM in 2003. Other initiatives have since been developed, mainly by higher education institutions. In 2006, the Declaration of the Council of Rectors of Portuguese Universities – Open Access to Scientific Literature – was approved and published.

Institutional repositories are embedded within the Open Access to scientific literature movement. They emerged as a new strategy to enable universities to promote changes in the scholarly communication system. They are digital collections that store, preserve and disseminate the intellectual output of academic and scientific communities on a free access basis.

They allow a significant improvement in the monitoring, evaluation and administration of science, including:

– Evaluation of researchers, groups and research centres based on the analysis of citations of individual articles (not on the impact factor of journals);

– Development of a “CitationRank” similar to the “PageRank” algorithm from Google;

– Registration and tracking of downloads, citations and usage patterns;

– Assess the degree of endogamy/exogamy of researchers and research units;

– Detection of not cited/ignored authors/work and plagiarism detection through semantic analysis.

The UL and Open Access
At the University of Lisbon, these principles were endorsed in early 2007. The Publication Deposit Policy of the University of Lisbon (Política de Depósito de Publicações da Universidade de Lisboa) of the Repositorio.UL (Repository of UL) was published in June 2010, and its recommendations include:

-? UL lecturers and researchers must deposit in the Repository the entire scientific output produced in the context of their activities at the UL as authors or co-authors. Scientific output means scientific publications, including articles in journals, talks, conference papers, reports and book chapters, among others, as well as books whenever permission is granted.
? UL research centres, associate laboratories and departments must ensure the implementation of the scientific production deposit policy of their members.

? According to Resolution no. 1506/2006 published in the Government’s Official Gazette, 2nd Series, no. 209, of 30 October, the authors of theses and dissertations approved by the UL are required to deliver a digital copy of their work on a CD or DVD, preferably in pdf format (Portable Document Format), together with a statement authorizing the deposit of the thesis or dissertation in the UL Repository

? The correct institutional affiliation in the signed articles.

The Repositório.UL, is the institutional repository of the University of Lisbon and is part of the RCAAP project (Open Access Scientific Repository of Portugal), which was set up in 2008, marking the beginning of a new stage in Open Access in Portugal.

Image 1: Repositorio.UL

Part of the Open Access to Scientific Knowledge (Open Access Initiative), the Repositorio.UL consists of the collection of documents that form the intellectual, academic and scientific production of this university. It aims to gather, organize, disseminate, and preserve the scientific output of the UL, and promote free and unfettered access to online academic and scientific literature.

A diverse set of documents can be researched in the Repositório.U: doctoral theses, master degree dissertations, articles, and publications in proceedings of scientific meetings, among others.

The available documents are:

? Produced (author or co-author) by members of the UL (lecturers, researchers, 2nd and 3rd cycle students, non-teaching staff),

? Not ephemeral,

? Complete and ready for dissemination.

Users can also read, download, copy, print, and reference (link) the full text of documents, and obtain statistics of downloads and views of each document.

The Repositório.UL is organized into Comunidades e Colecções (Communities and Collections). The Communities correspond to organizational units (Faculties, Research Centres, Institutes, etc.) of the University of Lisbon. In turn, each community may have Sub-communities corresponding to Departments, Laboratories, Research Centres, Institutes, etc.

Each Community or Sub-community gathers its documents in different Collections and each collection may contain an unlimited number of documents. Collections are organized by type of document. Different collections may have distinct policies.

The FMUL and IMM communities in the Repositório.UL still have a negligible number of deposited documents (585) with regard to scientific output. However, albeit slow, uptake has been increasing.

Image 2: The FM / IMM communities in the Repositório.UL

To date, six Sub-communities are part of the FMUL Community: the Neurology University Clinic, the Paediatrics University Clinic, the Biochemistry Institute, the Pharmacology and Neuroscience Institute, the Preventive Medicine Institute, and the Laboratory of Basic Immunology

The Library-DIC is committed to raising the awareness of its researchers to the importance of the deposit/self-archiving of their scientific output, highlighting the gains obtained:

– Increased visibility and potentially greater impact of their work;

– Interconnection with other information systems (e.g. curriculum management systems, …);

– Statistical data (e.g. accesses, views and downloads,…);

– Creation of publication lists, individual or of the unit;

– Filing (digital preservation);

– Persistent identifiers for records;

– A tool for evaluating scientific production.

As an example, we recall here the numbers published in the Open Access week held on 22-28 October 2012. At the time, in a total of 542 documents deposited by the FMUL and IMM communities, there were 139, 264 downloads, 59% of which from foreign countries.

Image 3: Information disclosed by the Library-DIC as part of the Open Access to Information Week on 22-28 Oct. | 2012

In addition to following the recommendations of the Publication Deposit Policy of the University of Lisbon, which are: to ensure the quality of metadata introduced by authors whenever they self-archive publications, and guarantee the inclusion in the UL Repository of digital contents supplied on CD or DVD of theses and dissertations submitting to them by the Administrative Services, the Team of the Library-DIC will always be available to support researchers and research groups, promote self-archiving and clarifying any queries.

Towards a European Research Area

Based on the study “Open access policies and practices in Portugal: current situation in relation to other countries in southern Europe” undertaken as part of the MedOAnet(Mediterranean Open Access Network) project, currently Portugal stands out both in the number of repositories and in the number of mandatory policies. Nevertheless, there is poor controlling and monitoring of implemented open access policies, mandates and digital preservation policies, and the number of scientific data contents needs to increase.

Although allowing some forms of open access to their publications, researchers have many doubts with regard to copyright, licencing and OA policies.

However, international guidelines point to increasingly openness to open access to scientific research. The European Commission has been working to improve access to scientific information produced under public funding of research undertaken in Europe. Access to scientific documents and data should be broader and faster for researchers and research groups, heading towards a European Research Area.

On 7 November 2012, at the 10th Conference of Berlin, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science of the European Commission, expressed her firm support for the movement: “Our approach is set out in a policy document, a Commission Communication entitled “Towards better access to scientific information”, which I would urge you to take a look at”.

In a strategy of aligning with European policies and recommendations, the main public funder of scientific research in Portugal, the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), is currently investing on establishing an Open Access policy, which will be published shortly, as stated by Professor Miguel Seabra, President of the FCT, during the 3ª Conferência Luso-Brasileira de Acesso Aberto (3rd Portugal-Brazil Open Access Conference).

Given the obvious interest of universities, their organizational units, lecturers and researchers in increasing the visibility and impact of research undertaken, Open Access will undoubtedly be the way forward towards the coveted European Research Area, since, as noted by the European Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, “good science and good innovation should have no boundaries. Breaking down the remaining boundaries is what open access is all about.”

Susana Henriques
Biblioteca – CDI