Challenging the crisis in scholarly communication:A role for the Open Archives Initiative

William J NixonDAEDALUS Project, University of Glasgow

UKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

A revolution must be wrought in the ways in which we make, store, and consult the record of accomplishment.... It is not just a problem for the libraries, although that is important. Rather, the problem is how creative men think, and what can be done to help them think. It is a problem of how the great mass of material shall be handled so that the individual can draw from it what he needs-instantly, correctly, and with utter freedom. Compact storage of desired material and swift selective access to it are the two basic elements of the problem.

Vannevar Bush,Science Is Not Enough, 1967

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

Overview

• Crisis in Scholarly Communication– Origins, Implications and Consequences

• Open Archives Initiative (OAI)– Origins, Mission and OAI-PMH

• Institutional Repositories– Evolution, Policies and Issues

• Glasgow Experience– Create Change, Eprints and DAEDALUS

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

Definition

Scholarly Communication refers to the formal and informal processes by which the research and scholarship of academics, researchers, and independent scholars are created, evaluated, edited, formatted, distributed, organized, made accessible, archived, used, and transformed.

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

The Crisis is Real

• You, your colleagues and your students have access to less and less of the published literature in your field

• Institutions are being forced to cut back on acquisitions because their resources cannot keep pace with price rises

• There are copyright and re-use issues

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

Evolution of this Crisis

• Incremental by degrees– 1960’s – explosion of research– 1970’s – Commercial Publishers more

involved– 1980’s onwards – acquisitions and

mergers

• Harvards and Have-Nots

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

Facts and Figures

• There are currently 20,000 peer-reviewed journals of scientific and scholarly research worldwide, publishing over 2 million articles per year

• Academic libraries in the UK spent 19% more per fte student to purchase 18% fewer journal titles per fte student in 1999-2000 than in 1991-92

• While world production of scholarly communication is estimated to have doubled since the mid 1980s, the average research library's journal subscriptions have actually declined by 6%

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

Journal Price Index

Graph and statistical information compiled from the SCONUL Statistics by LISU, the Library and Information Statistics Unit, based at Loughborough University.

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

Library sees Red

Dangling red tags are marking periodicals that have one-year subscription rates of $1,000 or higher

- Brown University Science Library

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

BOAI

• Launched 14 February 2002• “accelerate progress in the international effort

to make research articles available on the internet.”– Open Access Journals– Open Access Archives

• 1st Anniversary, 14 February 2003– Directory of Open Access Journals– Pilot project to support institutional memberships

of Biomed Central

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

The Open Archives Initiative

The Open Archives Initiative develops and promotes interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content.

The OAI has its roots in an effort to enhance access to e-print archives as a means of increasing the availability of scholarly communication.

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

OAI-PMH

• Low barrier interoperability framework based on metadata harvesting

• Metadata: 15 elements of Dublin Core

• OAI version 2.0 released in June 2002

• Two classes of participants:– Data Providers– Service Providers

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

OAI adopted globally

• UK: FAIR Programme inspired by the vision of the Open Archives Initiative (OAI)

• Europe: Open Archive Forum• Australia: Group of Eight • United States: DSpace [MIT]; Caltech

CODA; California Digital Library; Carnegie Mellon Funded projects.

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

Some JISC FAIR projects

• E-Theses projects at Edinburgh and The Robert Gordon University

• HaIRST at Strathclyde

• SHERPA – Partners with Nottingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Oxford universities

• Eprints UK – Harvester Service

• ROMEO Project at Loughborough

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

Growth in number of OAI Archives

Number of Archives and Mean Number of Papers Per Archive (all OAI Archives)

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Cumulative Mean Records per Archive Cumulative Archives to Date

-Tim Brody, ePrints, Southampton University

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

Institutional Repositories

• Maximise the visibility and impact of research for individual researchers

• Maximise the access to research at other institutions [who follow suit]

• Provide an opportunity to reduce annual serials expenditures

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

Different roles

• Manage University’s scholarly output

• Raise the Institutions profile

• Digital Preservation

• Golden road of reciprocity [Brody]

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

Policies

• Institutional Policy– Will it encourage self-archiving?

• Collection Policy– What will be accepted?

• Submission Policy– Who can submit content?– Will there be editorial control?

• Metadata Policy– What metadata may be harvested?

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

The Glasgow Experience

• ePrints pilot service– November 2001

• Create Change event– April 2002

• DAEDALUS Project– August 2002 – July 2005

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

DAEDALUS

• Funded until June 2005

• Building an Institutional model

• Partner with the CURL SHERPA Project

• Core strategic aim for the Library

• Two strands– Advocacy– Service Development

                                               

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

Range of Repositories

• Published and peer-reviewed papers• Pre-prints, grey literature, technical reports,

working papers• Theses• Research Finding Aids• Administrative Documents• Other objects: images, sound files, film clips• Search service

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

Issues we will explore

• Cultural– Encouraging deposit– Barriers to use and deposit

• Organisational– IPR and copyright– Plagiarism

• Technical– Metadata Standards – File formats

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

Range of Metadata Issues

• Subject schemas

• Controlled vocabulary

• Rights

• Digital preservation

• OAI-PMH 2.0 stable and focus now ePrints extensions (2nd OAI Workshop)

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

Advocacy – Avoiding ESpace

• to create an Open Access culture• to gather content for the range of Open

Archives services• to provide advice on policy implications,

guidelines and processes of the services• to formulate an exit strategy that ensures an

embedded and ongoing service

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

Academic Concerns

• Integrity of the work will be compromised• That no journal will subsequently publish it• That it will break existing copyright agreements with

publishers• Who benefits?• Institutional liability• Document formats • Collection policies and Quality control

- From Project RoMEO Author Questionnaire

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

Strategies

• Set-up institutional repositories

• Adopt an institutional policy of self-archiving all research output

• Discuss, debate and engage your academic colleagues

• Become the catalyst for “utter freedom” in your institution

               Challenging the Crisis in Scholarly CommunicationUKSG Conference 7-9th April 2003

DAEDALUS – Freeing Research at the University of Glasgow

http://www.gla.ac.uk/daedalus

DAEDALUS