Open Access and Stockholm University: The state of affairs at the Department of Computer and System Sciences.

Transcription

1 Open Access and Stockholm University: The state of affairs at the Department of Computer and System Sciences. Abstract: The aim of this paper is to present and inform about the current status of open access scientific publications in academia in general, as well as summarize the current policies and uses of Open Access Journals (OAJ) at Stockholm University specifically. In particular, the use of OAJ will be studied at the Department of Computer and System Sciences (abbreviated as DSV in Swedish). The primary research question is to ascertain researchers current use, knowledge of, and attitudes towards OAJ at DSV. The method to be used will be an online questionnaire. The results showed that in general OAJ is used as intended by Stockholm University, but there were some significant discrepancies namely that a few researchers responded that they do not upload bibliographic information of their research to the institutional repository (DiVA) at all and 34% of the respondents were unaware of prevailing policies regarding Open Access and 18% were unaware of the concept of Open Access at all. However, the general attitudes towards Open Access were overwhelmingly positive. Keywords: Open Access Journals, Open Journal Systems Origins of Open Access Open Access is a relatively new movement within academic research considering that the official movement began roughly ten years ago with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (Open Access Institute, 2001), however as Willinsky (2006) points out the philosophy of open access is in no way new or revolutionary and that the commitment to the value and quality of research carries with it a responsibility to extend the circulation of this work as far as possible, and ideally to all who are interested in it and all who might profit by it dates back to the great libraries of Alexandria. Furthermore, Björk et al. (2010) point out that the modern movement actually began in the early 1990 s due to the emerging Web and as a reaction to subscription prices for conventional journals. However, when the concept of Open Access reached the general public in 2003 it became a hot topic and as Willinsky (2006) mention once again it became what could be loosely termed the Open Access Movement and well-renowned publications such as Nature placed the open access movement among its top stories for 2003 and called it a Free for All in their headlines. As previously stated, the start of this movement began with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (Open Access Institute, 2001). The entire initiative can be read online at however the general gist of the initiative was that the Internet and web should be utilized to allow for world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds and they termed this kind of free and unrestricted online availability as open access (Open Access Institute, 2001). This initiative resulted into two goals 1.) Self-Archiving: a declaration for the need of tools and infrastructure to make refereed journal articles available in open archives and 2.) Open-access Journals: a declaration for the need for tools for scholars to be able to create a new generation of journals committed to open access. The next important event in the Open Access Movement was the Berlin declaration. A conference on Open Access took place at the Max Planck Society in Berlin in October of This meeting was on a larger scale than the previous Budapest Open Access Initiative and resulted in the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (Max Planck Society, 2003). The Berlin Declaration developed the following two conditions for a work to be considered an Open Access contribution: 1. The author(s) and right holder(s) of such contributions grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship (community standards, will continue to provide the mechanism for enforcement of proper attribution and responsible use of the published work, as they do now), as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use. (Max Planck Society, 2003) 2. A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in an appropriate standard electronic format is deposited (and thus published) in at least

2 one online repository using suitable technical standards (such as the Open Archive definitions) that is supported and maintained by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, inter operability, and long-term archiving. (Max Planck Society, 2003) These guidelines and conditions have, overtime, resulted in a variety of Open Access software used to support Open Access publishing as well as two primary methods for Open Access publishing. The two methods used for Open Access publishing are called Green OA Self-Archiving and Gold OA publishing, i.e. the green route or the gold route (Björk, et al., 2010). The green route basically means that an author first publishes a work in a traditional journal and then self-archives a copy in some form of institutional repository that is then available to the public for free. The gold route entails that a work is originally published and made available in an Open Access journal. Björk et al. (2010) found that the current overall share of OAJ publishing for all disciplines is roughly 19.4%, which consists of 8.1% gold OA articles and 11.3% green copies. The primary software used for creating an Open Access journal is Open Journal Systems ( that was created by the Public Knowledge Project which consists of a number of higher education institutions (Marchitelli, 2007). The majority of software used to create institutional copies of research articles are open source of which the largest is Dspace (Bailey et al., 2006), however, many institutions and countries develop their own repositories. Open Access in Sweden SUHF (Sveriges Universitets- och Högskoleförbund), the Association of Swedish Higher Education, signed the Berlin Declaration in December of Since then SUHF has supported the Open Access movement and in 2006 a work group was created to further study and support Open Access in Swedish Higher Education (Danelind et al., 2008). SUHF performed a survey of the current status of Open Access in Swedish higher education in 2008 and the results in Table 1 below show the use of e-publications and reporting of publications for the 40 academic institutions that answered SUHF s survey. According to the survey, e-publications in this survey were defined as a service for publishing full-text copies of research from the local academic institution and reporting of publications was defined as services for storing and publishing bibliographic information for all local research that is then used for reporting the number and frequency of academic publications as outlined by the Swedish Department of Education (Danelind, et al., 2008). Academic Institution E-publication Reporting of publications Blekinge Tekniska Högskola Developed in-house Developed in-house Högskolan i Borås Dspace Dspace Chalmers Tekniska Högskola Developed in-house Developed in-house (with GU) Högskolan i Dalarna Developed in-house Developed in-house Dramatiska institutet Web Page Web page Ersta Sköndal Micromarc - Gymnastik- och Idrottshögskola Diva - Högskolan i Gävle Diva OPUS Göteborgs universitet Dspace Developed in-house (with Chalmers) Högskolan i Halmstad Dspace Dspace Handelshögskolan Developed in-house - Högskolan i Jönköping Diva OPUS Högskola i Kalmar Diva Developed in-house Karlstads universitet Diva Developed in-house Karolinska Institutet Developed in-house Developed in-house Högskolan Kristianstad Eprints - 2

3 KTH Diva OPUS Linköpings Universitet Diva Developed in-house Luleå Developed in-house, Pure Pure Lunds Universitet Developed in-house Developed in-house Lärarhögskolan i Stockholm Dspace - Malmö högskola Dspace Dspace Mittuniversitet Diva Developed in-house Mälardalens högskola Diva OPUS Högskolan i Skövde Diva OPUS SLU Eprints Developed in-house Stockholms Universitet Diva OPUS Södertörns högskola Diva - Umeå universitet Diva OPUS Uppsala universitet Diva OPUS Högskolan Väst Developed in-house + - Aleph Växjö Universitet Diva OPUS Örebro Universitet Diva OPUS Table 1 - Use of e-publication tools and reporting software for Open Access in Swedish academic institutions as of 2008 (Danelind, et al., 2008) As Table 1 shows the most common tool for e-publication in Sweden is Diva, which was originally developed by Uppsala University. Furthermore, 27 institutions of higher learning had local policies for publishing full-text copies and/or bibliographic information of research, and 6 institutions of higher learning had general Open Access policies where researchers are encouraged to publish in Open Access journals when available (Danelind, et al., 2008). These six institutions were Blekinge Institute of Technology, The Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences, Halmstad University, Jönköping University, Lund University, and Stockholm University. Finally, SUHF has even begun to consolidate Open Access initiatives in Sweden with an Open Access portal ( Open Access at Stockholm University Stockholm University was a signatory of the Berlin Declaration in July of According to an interview (see Appendix 1) consisting of 7 questions posed via to a librarian employed at Stockholm University s central library, the Vice Chancellor of Stockholm University also ratified a policy document that states that starting in 2007, researchers at Stockholm University must register the bibliographic information of their research in the e-publication system Diva as well as store an electronic copy of their research as far as is possible (Rektor, 2006). According to the interviewee and the information available on Stockholm University s central library website (Tång, 2011), demands made by research financiers that publicly financed research shall be free and publicly available have provided a basis for these policy decisions as well as motivated researchers to use e-publication systems. Based on SUHF s report Diva is the tool used for e-publications at Stockholm University (Danelind, et al., 2008). This fact is also confirmed based on the interview (see Appendix 1). Uppsala University started the Diva system and Stockholm University adopted it as its e-publication systems in 2002 due to fewer startup issues and costs as well as the cooperative benefits of working with another Swedish university. Diva use has grown steadily since the Vice Chancellor s decision regarding e-publications and the most recent statistics available from Stockholm University are shown in Table 2 below Number of printed disputations Number of full-text copies of disputations published Number of bibliographic entries for articles

4 Number of full-text copies of articles (parallel publications) Number of full-text copies of theses published Total number of published theses Table 2 - Electronic publications in DiVA at Stockholm University (Enarson, 2011) A contributing factor to the growing use of DiVA to store bibliographic information as well as full-text copies, besides the financier s aforementioned demands, could even be the PAVA project that took place among 7 Swedish universities where Stockholm University was one. The PAVA project had the goal of increasing parallel publications of research in order to increase the distribution and visibility of Swedish research (Björklund, Eriksson, Linde, Svensson, & Åström, 2009). Finally, according to the interviewee (see Appendix 1) Stockholm University even supports Open Access in other ways besides DiVA. Stockholm University has created their own Open Access Journal by using the Open Source software Open Access journal system where researchers can create their own Open Access journals or publish openly in existing ones. The Challenge of Open Access Though the Open Access Movement is relatively young, it has grown and become something that is used and of importance in the academic world. The previous sections provide quantitative data regarding the use of open access internationally as well as in Sweden and specifically Stockholm University. An interesting topic to study is to determine the challenges faced by Open Access by exploring how well Open Access is actually used and perceived at a specific institution at Stockholm University. Therefore the primary research question is to ascertain the current knowledge of and use of Open Access at the Department of Computer and System Sciences (abbreviated as DSV in Swedish) as well as determine the prevailing attitudes towards Open Access in general. Method The methods used to determine the perceptions and attitudes of Open Access at DSV consisted of two separate parts. The first part of the method consisted of performing an interview with 7 interview questions (see Appendix 1) posed to an employee at the central library at Stockholm University. The interview questions were sent and answered via . This part of the method intended to ascertain the current use and state of Open Access at Stockholm University as well as partake of the current policies regarding Open Access. The second part of the method consisted of an online questionnaire. The questionnaire was designed as a form on Google Docs. Then, the link to the survey with instructions was sent to 123 researchers at DSV. The researchers s were gathered manually by first extracting all the names from the research section of the web site for DSV. The names were then matched with an address in DSVs LDAP server. One was incorrect and was not delivered, and one was automatically answered stating that the owner of the address was currently not working. Therefore a total of 121 researchers made up the available respondents. The form was available online for 2 weeks, from the 4 th of December 2011 until the 19 th of December Two reminders were sent via , one on the 12 th of December 2011 and one on the 16 th of December The questionnaire intended to ascertain the use and perceptions of Open Access at DSV. Results There were a total of 38 responses from the possible 121 researchers, which is a response rate of 31%. The following results are a portion of the results and are shown categorized on knowledge and use of Open Access as well as attitudes towards Open Access. The entire results can be viewed in Appendix 2. Knowledge of Open Access Figure 1 and 2 below show the results for DSV researchers knowledge of Open Access. Figure 1 shows that the knowledge of Stockholm University s Open Access policies is roughly equally distributed. One third are aware of the policies, one third are familiar with some of the policies and one third are not aware of the policies at all. 4

5 Are you aware of SUs current Open Access policies? 37% 29% Yes 34% No Somewhat Figure 1 - Results of question regarding awareness of Open Access policies at SU However, Figure 2 shows that a clear majority of DSV researchers are aware of the concept of Open Access. Were you aware of the concept and ideology of Open Access Journals before completing this survey? 18% Yes 82% No Figure 2 - Results of question regarding general awareness of Open Access Use of Open Access There were two questions that attempted to determine the current use of Open Access at DSV. As previously mentioned, the system used at DSV is DiVA. Figure 3 shows that a clear majority enter their research into DiVA. However, a few have others enter the data and 11% (5 individuals) responded that they do not enter the data at all, despite the storing of bibliographic information in DiVA being a requirement at Stockholm University. 5

6 Do you enter your various publications in DiVA (SUs Open Access Repository)? 13% 11% 76% Yes, I do it myself No Yes, but someone else enters the information Figure 3 - Results of question regarding use of DiVA. However, Figure 4 shows that roughly half of the respondents always upload a full-text version of their research and that one third of the respondents do not upload full-text versions at all. Do you even upload the full text version of your publications in DiVA? 24% 34% 42% Yes No Sometimes Figure 4 - Results of question regarding sharing of full-text copies Attitudes towards Open Access Three questions in the survey focused on establishing the attitudes of DSV researchers regarding Open Access. Figure 5 shows that an overwhelming majority view Open Access as important or very important for the research community. 6

7 Do you feel the existence and use of Open Access Journals is important for the research community as a whole? Not at all important Very important Figure 5 - Results of question regarding attitudes for Open Access in general However, the importance of Open Access for distance education in particular varies according to the respondents as shown in Figure 6 and are more or less non conclusive with a majority of the responses on the lower half of the scale. Do you feel the existence and use of Open Access Journals is especially important for distance education in particular? Not at all important Very important Figure 6 - Results of question regarding attitudes of Open Access for distance education Finally, a majority of the respondents opined that the quality of Open Access journals was either equivalent with commercial journals or higher (8%) and this is reflected in Figure 7 below. 7

8 How do you rate the quality of Open Access Journals in your research Field compared to commercial journals? 8% 37% 55% Their quality is roughly the same Commercial journals have higher quality Open Access Journals have higher quality Figure 7 - Results of question regarding quality of Open Access journals Discussion The results of this survey were both surprising in some areas and expected in others, and the participation was relatively high considering the short amount of time available for the survey. Almost 40 respondents in 2 weeks are fully acceptable. The most surprising result was that 5 respondents stated that they do not enter the bibliographic information of their research in DiVA. As previously mentioned in the policy document (Rektor, 2006) for Open Access, researchers at Stockholm University must enter bibliographic information. This result is something that will need to be addressed by DSV in the future. However, it could be partially explained by simple ignorance. 34% of the respondents stated (see Figure 1) that they were not aware of Stockholm University s policies regarding Open Access and 18% responded (see Figure 2) that they were not familiar with Open Access at all. These numbers are large enough to contain the 5 individuals that responded that they do not store the bibliographic information of their research in DiVA. Furthermore, only 66% (42% always and 24% sometimes) uploaded full-text copies of their research to DiVA. This in someway contradicts the results regarding the attitudes regarding the importance of Open Access as seen in Figure 5. An overwhelming majority (89%) rated the importance of Open Access as either a 4 or a 5 with a 5 being very important. If the researchers deem Open Access as so important why do the numbers for uploading full-text copies of research not correspond? 34% clearly stated that they do not upload full-text copies yet once again 89% deem Open Access very important. Moreover, the ideologies represented in the Open Access Initiative and Berlin Declaration are clearly supported considering that 89% consider Open Access very important. The question regarding the importance of Open Access for distance education is however not as distinct as the importance for research in general. The answers are spread out from not important to very important. There are quite a few that deemed Open Access very important for distance education but there is a section of DSV called FLEX (Flexible Learning) where research in distance education is made and this may have influenced the answers. These results roughly coincide with a study made by Zawacki-Richter et.al (2010) that stated that Open Access journals and distance education researchers resonate with one another because they both deal with extending access to learning. Furthermore, the study performed by Zawacki-Richter et.al (2010) showed that the quality of Open Access journals as perceived by distance educators was neither better or worse, but roughly the same. The question in this study did not survey only distance educators but all researchers as DSV, but the results were roughly the same as shown in Figure 7, i.e. that the quality of Open Access journals is deemed as equal or greater than commercial journals. How do the results from DSV regarding Open Access compare to other studies. A recent study by Jingfeng Xia (2010) showed that the rate of unawareness of Open Access among researchers was roughly 5% as of This 8

9 implies that the 18% of respondents who were unaware of Open Access at DSV seems unusually high. Xia (2010) also found that the publication rate for Open Access journals as of 2006 was roughly 35%. If this number is compared to the 42% of respondents who upload full-text versions of their research to DiVA then the percentages are similar. However, the numbers from this study most likely are green route publishing whereas Xia s study was gold route publishing. Another interesting point is that Xia s study showed even that there is a negative trend in Open Access publishing with the peak publishing rate being around The trend at Stockholm University seems to be the reverse as the number of publications entered in DiVA is steadily increasing. Concluding Remarks As with most studies of this caliber it would be nice to have a larger number of respondents. If 80-90% of the researchers had responded then the results would have most likely been more insightful. One possibility could be to even repeat this study on a larger scale at Stockholm University. It would be interesting to see how other research fields perceive and use Open Access as well as compare those results to those from DSV. Besides performing a larger quantitative survey, it would be intriguing to generate more qualitative data to try and determine the reasoning and logic behind some of the prevailing attitudes and habits of use. In other words, this study has focused on what the researchers do regarding Open Access. It would therefore be fruitful to examine the why, i.e. why do researchers publish as they do? Finally, qualitative interviews would even help answer why some researchers at DSV choose not to publish bibliographic data of their research in DiVA. It would be meaningful to know if the choice not to publish is a conscious one or not? 9

10 References Bailey, C. W., Coombs, K., Emery, J., Mitchell, A., Morris, C., Simons, S., et al. (2006). Institutional Repositories. SPEC Kits Björk, B.-C., Welling, P., Laakso, M., Majlender, P., Hedlund, T., & Gudnason, G. (2010). Open Access to the Scientific Journal Literature: Situation PLoS One, 5(6), e Björklund, C., Eriksson, J., Linde, P., Svensson, A., & Åström, A. (2009). Parallellpublicering av vetenskapliga artiklar. Stockholm: Kungliga Biblioteket. Danelind, H., Eriksson, J., Gilbert, J., Hansson, P., Karlsson, K., Lawrence, D., et al. (2008). Kartläggning av högskolans elektroniska publicering och rekommendationer för nationell samverkan: SUHF. Enarson, E. (2011, ). Stockholms universitetsbibliotek Siffror. Retrieved , 2011, from Marchitelli, A. (2007). OJS and OCS: upgrading journals, conferences and scholarly communication to Open Access. European Science Editing, 34(1). Max Planck Society. (2003). Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. Berlin: Max Planck Society. Open Access Institute. (2001). Open Access Initiative. Budapest. Policy för Stockholms universitet rörande hantering av Open Access publicering (2006). Tång, I. (2011, ). Stockholms universitetsbibliotek - Forkningsfinansiärernas krav. Retrieved , 2011, from Willinsky, J. (2006). The access principle: the case for open access to research and scholarship: MIT Press. Xia, J. (2010). A longitudinal study of scholars attitudes and behaviors toward open-access journal publishing. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61(3), Zawacki-Richter, O., Anderson, T., & Tuncay, N. (2010). The Growing Impact of Open Access Distance Education Journals: A Bibliometric Analysis. The Journal of Distance Education, 24(3). 10

11 Appendix 1 1. Interview Questions and Answers Question 1. Vad har du för titel och tjänst på SU? Answer removed to maintain anonymity as requested by the interviewee. Question 2. Hur ser OAJ användning ut i Sverige idag bland högskolor och universitet? Precis som Stockholms universitet, har många högskolor och universitet s.k. Open Access policies, t.ex. Chalmers, Malmö, KTH, som är mer eller mindre tvingande. Likaså använder de flesta högskolor och universitet publikationsdatabaser (system) som DiVA, där lärosätets forskare/studenter ska/kan registrera och publicera sina publikationer i fulltext. I DiVA-samarbetet t.ex. ingår ca 28 lärosäten och drift, utveckling och support sköts av Uppsala universitet. Forskningsfinansiärernas krav på Open Access tror jag har aktualiserat frågan om OA-policies och riktlinjer, och gjort att svenska lärosäten har blivit mer medvetna om Open Access. Question 3. Hur ser OAJ användning ut på SU idag? Kan bara uttala mig om den statistik som varje år tas fram ur DiVA Question 4. Vad har SU för styrdokument angående OAJ? På vilka grunder skapades dessa styrdokument? Vid Stockholms universitet finns en Open Access-policy. Den antogs 2006 av rektor och rektorsbeslutet gäller att forskare vid SU ska registrera sina publikationer i publikationsdatabasen DiVA. Ett starkt skäl till detta är att det varje år görs bibliometriska analyser, d.v.s. uttag från DiVA över hur mycket varje institution publicerar varje år och i vilka tidskrifter. I policyn står också att rektor rekommenderar parallellpublicering, d.v.s. att forskaren ska ladda upp sin publicerade artikel i fulltext i DiVA och på så sätt göra den tillgänglig Open Access. Denna rekommendation har blivit allt viktigare nu när olika forskningsfinansiärer kräver OA-publicering. Du hittar SU:s OA-policy på Stockholms universitetsbiblioteks webbplats Jag arbetade inte på Stockholms universitet när OA-policyn togs fram, men skickar med arbetsgruppens underlag Question 5. Vad har SU för vision och mål med OAJ? Vad vill SU uppnå när det gäller användning? Det finns ingen nedskriven vision eller mål utom det som framgår av policyn. T.ex. att synliggöra och sprida den forskning som bedrivs vid SU och dess resultat. Question 6. Vilka specifika OAJ verktyg och databaser används av SU och varför just dem? a) Publikationsdatabasen DiVA Initiativet togs av Uppsala och sedan anslöt sig t.ex. SU (2002), Örebro och Södertörn. Det fanns andra system som t.ex. Dspace och Eprints, men det hade krävts mer resurser att själv starta upp något på egen hand. Ett utvecklingssamarbete sågs också som något positivt. OBS! Jag arbetade inte vid SU 2002, utan har fått dessa uppgifter från en kollega. b) Publiceringsplattformen Open Journal Systems (OJS) Initiativet togs av Pedagogiska institutionen och universitetsbiblioteket som tillsammans sökte pengar till ett OJS-projekt. Målet var att med hjälp av en open source programvara som heter OJS skapa en plattform för Open Access-publikationer utgivna vid SU. Projektet var också ett sätt att följa rektors rekommendation att forskare vid SU ska publicera sig Open Access. Question 7. Övrigt. Om du har något mer du vill tillägga får du gärna skriva ner det i sista punkten här... Inget att tillägga. 11

12 Appendix 2 12

13 13

14 14