Open Access in Russia(a view from inside Russian

Academy of Sciences)

Sergey Parinov,

CEMI RAS, principal researcher

euroCRIS, Board member

A brief overview of Open Access in Russia

• What is your perspective on the current status of OA developments in your country? – positive in general, but no strong motivations for players

• Who are the major players (organizations and institutions)? – Universities (most OA projects), Ministry of Education and

Science (with new approach to RAS assessment)

• What are the key national projects and initiatives?– 1) OA Repository of CITIS, – 2) ASU RID RAS, – 3) Socionet

What are the potential barriers for further adoption?

• Awareness: Typically scientists fear that they will have problems with academic publishers

• Players support: Research Funds and institutions produce low motivations and few mandates

• Re-use: Benefits of OA for researchers are mostly understood as the growth of citations, in many cases it is a week motivation

What are the desired developments?

• Institutional repositories should be recognized as the primary source for assessment of research organizations publication activity

• Research funds should mandate OA for results of funded project

• The community should design new approaches, tools and services to re-use OA content and produce new added values

How kind of collaborative and collective efforts could contribute to advance OA

in the region?• We should provide cross-countries and cross-

nationalities circulation mechanism of OA research, with clear benefits for players – Integrate all OA collections and IR into common research

information space, e.g. into Socionet• Socionet technology allows easy creation of OA repositories

• Based on current OA achievements we should discuss next steps to improve Science System at large, e.g. by designing Open Science technology and practice– New forms and technology of scientific re-use for OA research

• Scientists establish relationships between research objects and the OA and technology provides new basis to support this

Role for UNESCO in approaching OA policy

– List issues that a multilateral organization like UNESCO can potentially address

• UNESCO can promote a program (guideline) for institutions

• UNESCO can organize a discussion like Beyond OA, including new re-use forms based on OA

For countries where Open Access has had some success

• What are the enabling features in the country?

• What have been the critical success factors?

• What national organizations or funding agencies have mandates in place requiring researchers to deposit their scholarship into an Open Access repository?

Discussion

• Guideline for Governments and other research funders– Form of Policy – Is it possible to make OA as

a mandatory clause for funding?

• Scope of the policy – – Is the OA understood uniformly? Is it possible

to declare everything open, if not, what should be included and what should be allowed to remain restricted? What are target contents?

• Licensing– What is the best licensing that can be utilized – How to best comply with the policy on OA?

• Locus of deposit and Time of Deposite– What should be the locus of deposit– What is the best time for deposit

• Some key issues to policy development– Article processing charges– Copyright– Embargo– Compliance and sanctions

• Regional Network– Who are the major players (organizations and

institutions)? What are the key regional projects and initiatives?

– What are the potential barriers for further adoption?

– What are the desired developments? – How kind of collaborative and collective

efforts could contribute to advance OA in the region?

• Role for UNESCO in approaching OA policy– List issues that a multilateral organization like

UNESCO can potentially address• they can support a creation of added value, e.g. as a

support of OA content multiple re-use (Socionet) initiatives

• They can promote a program (guideline) for institutions

• They can organize a discussion like Beyond OA, including new re-use forms based on OA

• Provision of upstream policy advice and building partnerships

• Strengthening capacities to adopt Open Access

• Serve as a clearing-house and informing the global OA debate