Stanford is going to establish open access repository of Bioinformatics
Stanford has got a grant to establish an open access repository of Bioinformatics on autism . This repository, according to Dennis Wall (PhD) who leads the project, is going to be the biggest ever built of its kind. This project, beyond contributing towards finding a breakthrough in autism research, also adds momentum to an open access movement.
The repository, once it is built, is expected to provide autism researchers a centralized database from which pertinent research output and data can be fetched. The project will be funded by The Hartwell Autism Research and Technology Initiative (iHART). To realize this the iHART has allocated $9 million for the project. The iHART is a charitable organization whose primary mission is to support early stage biomedical research projects.
The researchers and the iHART Foundation anticipate that the repository will enhance collaboration and data sharing. It could be also a platform from which researchers dig deeper into large quantities of autism related research data.
American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) commits itself to make its highly valued journals readily available to public on open access platforms. The ASCO does so because it believes making scientific research out puts help advance its goal of curing cancer. To make this a reality, the ASCO, will make its publications such as Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO), Journal of Oncology Practice (JOP), and Journal of Global Oncology (JGO) widely available to all interested readers and researchers. The ASCO has already revised its open access policy to better serve its mission and accommodate the need of authors.
For the time being ASCO puts embargo on its journals. That means readers are allowed to get full access to those journals/articles once embargo period is lifted. The embargo period, in most of the cases, runs for 12 months from the date of publication. As far as the papers are under the embargo period, access to those papers is limited.
Moreover, in order to accommodate the need and the reality in developing countries, ASCO has a plan in place. According to ASCO’s plan, resource constrained countries can access its journals either free of change or by paying minimal subscription fees. To make this work, ASCO works in collaboration with HINARI- World Health Organization research portal.
All ASCO papers funded by the National Institutes of Health are deposited to PubMed Central once the embargo period is expired.
Source ASCO
Knowledge institutions and organizations are denouncing a new sharing and hosting policy recently adopted by publisher Elsevier. Their concern: the policy undermines open-access policies at learning institutions and also prevents authors from sharing publicly their work.
Elsevier, which publishes thousands of journals, introduced the policy last month. It aims to strike a balance between making sharing “simple and seamless” and “being consistent with access and usage rights associated with journal articles,” the publisher said in a blog post.
Many librarians and open-access advocates, however, see the policy as an attack on institutional repositories, where colleges collect and make available research their faculty members produce. The new policy does not allow authors to share their journal article manuscripts publicly through those repositories, only privately “with a colleague or with an invitation-only online group.” Availability through the repositories is subject to journals’ embargo periods, which in some cases last for several years.
There is mounting pressure on Elsevier to reconsider its policy. Open access organizations, libraries and Creative Commons from countries such as the U.S., Canada, China, Australia, Brazil and the U.K. released joint statement asking Elsevier to adopt more open access friendly policy.
Those organizations criticize Elsevier’s open access policy from the view point that ‘it creates unnecessary barriers for Elsevier-published authors.’ according to them Elsevier’s policy hinders the dissemination and use of research knowledge. Moreover, those organizations blame Elsevier for formulating this policy without even thoroughly studying how immediate sharing of articles impact publishers’ revenue.
In a statement, Elsevier made clear that it was surprised by the reaction its open access policy received. Nevertheless, it still believes that its new policy is ‘more liberal’ which aims at facilitating the dissemination and consumption of research output.
“At each stage of the publication process authors can share their research: before submission, from acceptance, upon publication and post publication,” said Elsevier’s director of access and policy Alicia Wise. She added, “For authors who want free immediate access to their articles, we continue to give all authors a choice to publish gold open access with a wide number of open-access journals and over 1,600 hybrid titles.”
For open-access advocates this policy is an attack against open access. It’s primarily designed, they suspect, to undermine institutional repositories. They argue, in 2012, Elsevier put a restrictive policy in place which discourages authors’ from depositing their research manuscripts in institutional repositories.
‘The latest policy update is an attempt to slow down the spread of open-access policies,’ said Heather Joseph, executive director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, or SPARC.
Wise said the policy is not “intended to suddenly embargo and make inaccessible content currently available to readers.” She added that Elsevier is “happy to have a dialogue to discuss these, or any other, issues further.”
Source: Inside Higher ED
There have been numerous ongoing efforts to bring open access repository networks from around the world closer. This also includes major efforts to align ever expanding repository networks. Recently Confederation of Open access Repositories (COAR), taking the lead, has organized a meeting which was held on April 16, 2015. The meeting was held in Port, Portugal. This meeting was held for the second time in a row. Representatives from all corners of the world attended the meeting. The meeting’s main area of focus was on finding sustainable ways of implementing open access and research infrastructure.
Research is an output of strong collaboration. There is also increasing international dimension in it. Repositories are intended to facilitate and speed up research output’s dissemination and consumption. This makes the need to align repository networks imperative. Repositories can collaborate around major issues such as open access polices, standards and services.
Participants of the meeting shared about their experiences and local networks. What had been made clear, out of the meeting, was that repositories have progressed over the years. And now they are in a better position to enter deep international collaboration. Meeting participants reviewed the progress has been made since their previous meeting. They looked into details as what has been changed, particularly, in the areas of open access elements and metadata harmonization and improving repository networks global visibility.
Out of the meeting came a resolution to further align repository networks. In order to realize these objectives different kinds of activities will be carried out. Those activities, by in large, include enhancing collaboration around developing tools and guidelines. To improve global visibility of repositories more work will be done with policy makers and other stakeholders.
Sorce: COAR
Asian Development Bank Embraces Open Access
Since it was founded in 1966, the Asian Development Bank has been the leading organization fighting poverty in the Asian and Pacific region. The organisation set its goal to enhance economic collaboration by investing in regional projects. Currently, the Asian Development Bank has 67 members. All of them are countries funding the projects.
The Asian development bank uses scientific research to optimise the use of available funds. Since February, all of their publications are collected in the Open Access Repository (OAR). Together with the launch of their new repository, the ADB stated in their news article they decided to switch to an open access mindset. They also adopted more liberal terms of use for their published content, argumenting that publicly funded research should be accessible to all without requiring any form of payment. The underlying idea is when access to information is restricted for some, this will slow down further scientific research, which is disadvantageous for all parties involved.
Currently the Open Access repository holds more than 3000 research items from the Asian Development Bank. In the near future the repository will grow until it holds over 5000 items including research dating back to ADB’s early days. Even non digitized content or content that’s currently not archived will eventually be added to the repository.
Sorce: Duraspace