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The Scholarly Kitchen: Global Trends in Open Access
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The Scholarly Kitchen: Global Trends in Open Access
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Language: EN.
Segment:0 .
JEFF LANG: Welcome to the third SSP webinar of 2021 and the first Scholarly Kitchen webinar of the year. You are joining us for a discussion titled Global Trends in Open Access. I'm Jeff Lang with the American Chemical Society, the chair of the SSP Webinars working group and we're pleased that you could join us today. In a moment, we'll get started and hear from our panelists. During the session your audio would be muted automatically in consideration of our presenters and your fellow webinar participants.
JEFF LANG: Please use the Q&A feature of Zoom to send your questions in. The moderator will review them and present them to the panelists. To help her, please specify to which presenter you'd like your question directed and also please send in those questions as you go. They'll be addressed throughout the session. Please remember the SSP code of conduct and be respectful to all speakers and attendees with your comments and your questions.
JEFF LANG: At the conclusion of today's session, you'll receive a webinar evaluation via email. We encourage you to provide feedback, so we can continually improve the SSP webnair program. You'll also receive a link via email to the recorded broadcast of the webinar. A moderator today is Sian Harris. She's a Scholarly Kitchen chef and the publications and engagement manager in INASP, an international development organization that supports the production, sharing and use of research and knowledge in more than 25 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
JEFF LANG: Before joining in INASP, Sian was editor of research information magazine for over a decade and a Writer and Editor and several science and technology publications at the Institute of Physics publishing and other publishers. She has a PhD in inorganic chemistry from the University of Bristol, UK, where she worked part time for the University library.
JEFF LANG: Now Shaun over to you.
SIAN HARRIS: You very much, Jeff for introducing us all. So I will not take up very much of everybody's time now because I'd really like us to get on to hearing from really great speakers but just to set a little bit of context, access to post research is a vital part of the research process. And it's vital that research insight can be used by policymakers and others. The opportunity for researchers to share their findings with others is also vital but all too often how this process works is decided by relatively small numbers of countries and people.
SIAN HARRIS: Important voices can be missed. An important learning about what people have found has already worked around the world is not reflected in policy decisions in practice. So in this Scholarly kitchen webinar, I am delighted that we have three great speakers from three continents, who are all experts in open access with different perspectives. So I'm really pleased that they're here today giving their time to share their insights into this topic.
SIAN HARRIS: Each speaker will first speak for five minutes or so. And then we'll have a time for-- we have some questions prepared and then we have some plenty of time to answer questions from the audience. As Jeff said please add your questions into the chat. As we go along at any time and we'll try and answer as many questions as possible. And we look forward to the session.
SIAN HARRIS: So first of all, we're going in alphabetical order. So first of all, I welcome Arianna to speak.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: Thank you very much. I'm just trying to show my screen quickly. Please confirm, if you can see my slides.
JEFF LANG: Yes. We see.
SIAN HARRIS: Yes. We can see. ARIANNA BECERRIL
GARCIA: Thank you.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: Well, thank you very much for the invitation to be here today. I'm very, very happy to share this panel. I'm sure I'm going to want to learn from my colleagues from other regions. I'm very pleased to be here. And very quickly I would like to share here, how we are performing open access in Latin America, which are the main challenges, ambition in our regional ecosystem and how well the scholarly communications fit in this landscape.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: First of all, for those who are not familiar with how the open access is being performed in the region, I would like to remind that in Latin America, we keep non-commercial [INAUDIBLE] structural let's say infrastructure where scientific publishing belongs to academic institutions, and not to large publishers. So the institutions who are in charge of generating knowledge are in charge also of communicating the knowledge.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: So this is from my perspective very a good way to a very sustainable way to maintain this ecosystem where open access is natural. So this means that every institution, mainly academic institutions but also governments are involved, support journals that are driven by their own faculty members as part of their academic work. And then that content is made available in open access.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: So this means that everyone gets benefit from everyone's investment. In this ecosystem, we don't have a fees neither for authors nor for readers. So it is as I said before, an organic way to even without the open access term was coined in 2002 or 2003. We made open access in Latin America as a natural way of communicating a research.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: So in this ecosystem, we have a kind of distributed investment by different stakeholders, as I said before national agencies, universities, thousands of universities, the academic community in fact. So this is why we argue that it is academi [INAUDIBLE].. And above these we have different, let's say in an upper layer we have different journals for the authors and repository networks at national level or at regional level, which could be the case of latindex, [INAUDIBLE],, [INAUDIBLE] that also contribute to this competitive ecosystem in terms of providing services on editorial, workflows, quality assurance, metrics, aggregation of contents, [INAUDIBLE] visibility, discoverability, among many other services.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: So we have in the region around 11,000 online journals around of about 2000 journals are quality certified journals. Certified by whom? Well by the entities are certified quality in the region, which are latindex, [INAUDIBLE],, [INAUDIBLE] mainly and different national agencies that are also assessing the quality of journals. We have 62 mandates, Open Access mandates, four out of which are national mandates from Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, and Peru.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: We have 10 national networks of institutional repositories, aggregated also by [INAUDIBLE] which in turn is aggregated by OpenAir and other networks. So our approach is more a science of public good, science as commons, and we differentiate our model from other models that are being well-implemented in or are implemented in fact in other regions, where science is seen as a commodity where University rankings will dictate the decision of universities and the future of publishing.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: For example, which publishing is mainly owned by commercial companies, which is more impact factor based and well, based on proprietary databases and where the open access is evolving through transformative agreements and strategies where APC plays a vital role. So in our case, we will look for these. Well, we have implemented these signs of a common approach which we believe it's a healthier approach and better approach to achieve equity in the diversity immediate open access, natural open access, not pay to read, no pay to publish and also they were less important control by the academic community.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: It's very important key issue and also that it has been sustained by the academic community. So this is sustainability in somehow is guaranteed. It seems that the research itself is sort of sustained by universities. The same way the communication of resources sustained by universities. So just to finish my participation, some big challenges that where we envision and we address with the organizations.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: In this case, I represent the [INAUDIBLE] is to find or to look for a congruence in research assessment and journal assessment with this regional ecosystem. It also is a big challenge in terms of sustainability to keep the investment that is called the current investment but also to have more funds and more investment in terms of a what that allow this ecosystem to be more competitive, more visual and also to implement more innovation in [INAUDIBLE] in the system.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: And we also see a big challenge in terms of coexistent work systems with commercial open access, since we see that journal publishing and this open access tradition is being threatened by commercial strategies. For example the APC based open access and other let's say revenues, the strategy is coming from the commercial world. Well, I just finished here and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: Thank you.
SIAN HARRIS: Thank you so much, Arianna. And I didn't properly introduce you that you're based in Mexico and you're speaking on behalf of [INAUDIBLE] in this context. And now moving around the globe a bit, I'm now delighted to introduce Thomas, who is speaking from Cameroon and is going to be speaking about the context of Open Access in Africa. And I know that one of Thomas' early slides shows quite a lot of different affiliations related to Open Access.
SIAN HARRIS: So I will let him explain. I will let him explain. Welcome Thomas. You might be on mute still.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: OK. Thank you very much. Let me share my screen. OK. Thank you very much. My name is Thomas and I'm very happy to be here. I will start by expressing my support to our colleague and University at the Library of University of Cape Town, where a wildfire devastated the library two days ago, I think.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: So my involvement in Open Access started with OCSDNet led by [INAUDIBLE]. The OCSDNet that funded the [INAUDIBLE] which [INAUDIBLE] for the [INAUDIBLE] francophone. So the idea for OCSDNet was to fund this organization, organization to promote Open Access and Open Science in French speaking African countries and [INAUDIBLE].
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: Then I joined also, I was part of organization like OpenCon and I joined also the DOAJ as early as the Ambassador of DOAJ for West and Central Africa. So in terms of open science, I'm also deeply involved [INAUDIBLE] Open Science Hardware. And in Africa, I am the co-founder of the Africa Open Science Hardware Summit.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: We had it three times now. And as a personal initiative, I'm just launching the Decolonial Library Dominique Mvogo. And I'm also the co-founder of [INAUDIBLE] a community biology lab based in Cameroon [INAUDIBLE].. So the importance of Open Access in Africa is so wide.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: So I just put some important point for the session is undoubtfully Open Access can help to increase visibility and accessibility to what we are doing for academic institutions. Through Open Access people can see how the process of scientific secretion of knowledge is transparent and we can also better assure quality control and evaluation of [INAUDIBLE] and career of research when on these processes are open.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: For policymaker, open access can help them to really contextualize relevant policies because, through open access, they can use free data coming from research done locally and talk from their perspective to create and to design the policy. And for society, is very important, open access, to have resources, open access, because through open access, they can access to this kind of research available or talking about them.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: So the book is not-- I'm not doing the resume of the book you are seeing on my right. It's just if you want to read further. And this book is the book we wrote three years ago through a publisher. And it's a very good book if you want to go through deeply in. You can go and you can read it. It's open access.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: So the situation of open access in Africa is things are moving. So from five years, six years to now, I can't really say that things are moving. Things are moving very well. It's true that we have all this big organization, international organization, working to improve the open access situation in Africa. But, also, we have local initiatives tyring to do their own action.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: From Brazil, you have, for example, AfricaArXiv, you have to Le Grenier des savoirs, and you have all these organizations trying to push the movement inside a continent. And, recently, I was really happy to see this source [INAUDIBLE] collaboration between Africa and Latin America. They agreed to collaborate around our operation. It's something very important for us, because we need to join our-- we need to join to make things move forward.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: And the important thing is that practice related to open access-- it's true that you have all this initiative, but we still have a lot to do in terms of practice, best practice of open-access related to archiving, good publishing practice. The challenges we are facing or the challenges open access is facing in Africa-- we can divide them because we have this traditional physical barrier, electricity access, we keep in mind.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: We have this digital barrier, internet connectivity, and the lack of infrastructure because we can count the number of universities having a reseracher repository for the number of journals existing online. So we are making a little effort, actually, to try to improve the situation. But we still have a lot to do.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: We also have these cognitive barriers because a lot of people are still lacking skill related to open access. Even sometimes librarian are not really trained to facilitate action related to open access in our continent. And people are still alienated by this impact factor university ranking. And the language, also, is playing a big role.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: It's a big challenge in our context. Also, the paucity of contextualized policies because a lot of policies, some countries, like South Africa, can have policy on [INAUDIBLE],, but it's still remaining a lot of things to do. So if you want to go further, I can also encourage you to read this chapter I wrote on epistemic alienation in African scholarly communication.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: So because open access can be sometimes considered as a Pharmakom, sometimes as a journal, sometimes as a person. So we need to see how-- and seeing how we can better manage it in order to benefit very well of the full potential of open access. So thank you very much. I'm done with my presentation.
SIAN HARRIS: That's great. Thank you very much, Thomas. And I think you see why I thought I'd let Thomas explain himself by how many things he was organized with in open access. So moving further around the globe, we now move to India. And our latest speaker, Vrushali, who is DOAJ Ambassador to India and has been involved in a number of bits of research in recent years about open access in Asia.
SIAN HARRIS: So she's now going to present what's going on with open access in Asia in her five minutes. Thank you, Vrushali.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: Can you see my screen? OK. So thank you. So I'll just start on my involvement in open access. So from 2016, I'm working as a DOAJ Ambassador of India and Pakistan. I'm working on data for the next journal application process, evolution process, and also working some promotional events on behalf of DOAJ and for open access community in India, so organizing open access awareness program, trainings, webinars for professionals and business community.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: And I'm also involved in Opencon Conference committee member, Open Access Week advisory committee member. And this year, I am working with Force11 Conference committee member, which will be held in the month of September. And, mainly, my research topic is-- PhD topic is open access Asia. So that's why the importance of open access is more important for me. And why it is important for this year because it will give the global visibility of Asian researchers.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: It will be helpful for more citations from other countries' researchers, easy and free access to knowledge, useful for more research idea and innovation, easy to publish and helpful in developing countries' libraries to build their collection. So on this perspective, open access is important for us. So the status of open access-- I have just draw [INAUDIBLE] the open access journals, open access repositories, open access mandate.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: So, so far, right now-- this is yesterday's data-- 3,636 journals are indexed on View Asia platform. And apart from View Asia platform, we have other in-apps online project is also there, other local journals also there. So a lot of local journals are also there. But there are eight to indexed. And repositories, open access repository status is 1,253 repositories are there on open door.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: Open access mandates, 82 policies are registered, and on MELIBIEA Database, 14 policies are the. So status of open access policies-- because this is also part of my PhD research, I have found out only Cypress, China, and UAE are having the national-level open access policy, and other Asian countries not having any adopted, any national-level open access policy for the country. And involvement and support from the International Organization in Asia-- I feel any [INAUDIBLE] a very supportive organization.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: They are working for promotion of open access in Asia. National-level archives and digital library projects are there. National-level archives-- our libraries are available from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Kazakhstan, and Kuwait. And local language databases are also available. Now, the biggest challenges for Asia is growth of predatory publications.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: Because we are publishing for the research and everything is more important to get academic credit, so everybody want to publish but, then, the quality of publication is very low, too little ICT infrastructure for the building repositories and all this thing, too little support from government-- government is not taking any initiative. Very few countries, our government is supporting for open access movement.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: Always, like Thomas said, in Africa, similar situation in Asia, internet connectivity issue is there. Language problem is there. Lack of training and misunderstanding about open access because, still, people are thinking that if they publish their article in open access, then, also, that is not valid. So this is still a problem here.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: And, really, there is need of support and training for developing open access repositories. So I did some SWOT analysis for Open Access Asia. The strength are many Asian countries are now awareness about open access open data policies and started advocating working on Open Access Asia. Now, slowly, people are getting to know what is in the terms of advocacy and what is useful. Weaknesses is no funding is available for such programs.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: And they still need volunteers to spread awareness for Open Access Asia. Communication gap between, still, decision makers and the policies, so not much focus on OA policies. So opportunity is that unity in diversity. So because now, in Asia, so many people are working individually every country, like Open Access India there is one movement, Open Access Pakistan-Bangladesh.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: So if they come together and if they do something together for Asia, so many good decision can be taken. And if get more funding from international support organization so we can conduct a lot of open access workshops, seminars, conference, so we can promote open access through these webinars and all these things. So thank you. This was my presentation.
SIAN HARRIS: Thank you very much, Vrushali. And thank you to all our speakers. We're starting to see some questions coming in. Before we answer them, well, I'll try and weave them into the questions that we have prepared. But, also, we will have a chunk of time at the end when we can answer those other things, too. So we've had very much a whirlwind tour of open access around the world in about 15 minutes, which was nowhere near long enough to really touch and go into everything but, hopefully, gave a flavor of some of the things.
SIAN HARRIS: And so first of all, I'd like to turn to Vrushali. So policies and approaches around open access vary around the world, as we heard in all these presentations. And how and why is there so much variation, and do you think this is a problem?
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: Yeah. See, actually the main key factor in open access policy mandates are the funder mandates and mandates from authorization. Funder mandates are important because, for author, they are giving funding and grants for research publications. And in many institutions, where OA policy is there, they are simply encouraging submission in open access. So from Asian point of view, it has been observed that authors are not following the institutional mandates regularly.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: And the very least-funded research is coming up from Asia. This is my observation because of my research is going on. I think for promoting adopting open access policies, institutional research department head and the librarians need to take initiative. Policies which are built for the institute need to register on [INAUDIBLE] because still policies are there, but nobody to register them.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: So it will be giving global visibility of research. And, as I said, national open access policy are initiated only from Cyprus, China, and UAE. But it's my opinion that every Asian country government should frame a national-level open access policy, which will be helpful for promotion of open access. Thank you.
SIAN HARRIS: And there were quite significant differences between the situations in Latin America and Africa, as well, in the presentations. Thomas, did you want to say something about the policy comments that you made in your presentation and say where there are gaps in the policies around open access? THOMAS HERVE MBOA
NKOUDOU: In fact,
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: the issue I'm raising with the policy is that policies present, or existing policy in Africa, much of the time bring from big organization or Western organization and then replicated in our context. It is really hard to see a local initiative coming from Africa to try to bring or to design a policy from our own perspective, from our own reality.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: Sometimes you will see that is big organizations supporting, putting money on this kind of stuff. But our own decision maker and policy makers, it seems like they are not aware of the importance of open access for us. So that is a big gap and a big issue we are facing in terms of designing policies related to open access.
SIAN HARRIS: And you also mentioned about the recent links between Africa and Latin America in policies and practices around open access. Arianna, would you want to say something about what-- Latin America has a very clear distinct consistency about open access that's absent in some of the parts of the world.
SIAN HARRIS: Do you want to say something about that and, also, about APCs and the whole funding of open access publishing? That's quite the question.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: That's a great question. Thank you, Sian. Well, what we see is this approach that is of so much benefit, especially for the Global South countries. So, for example, we are working now with Angola to implement this diamond open access approach with different universities in order to strengthen journal publishing in there and to prevent them to adopt these APC strategies and connect with the APC question because I don't want I don't want to give you the impression that it is a war between ABC or non-APC or commercial, non-commercial.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: It's beyond that. We believe that it's more sustainable to have publishing and control of the academic. It's also more cost effective. We can employ better our resources, our money that is already in the academic circuit. It could be more efficiently invested when there's an infrastructure for publishing and for sharing knowledge in open access, but in hands of the academic sector instead of working with the commercial publishers because we have learned from the past that there's this inflation or inflationary practices that the subscription approach cost 20 years ago.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: And, now, we are seeing exactly the same phenomenon with the APC. We have to remember that recently Nature started to charge an APC there is more than $11,000. It is completely out of place from countries like Mexico or anyone from Latin America, perhaps from the rest of the developing countries. And it is not about giving or providing special fees or a waiver fee for us because this is a patronizing strategy.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: We are looking for a systematic participation in science, a systematic global conversation. And this is what we have to discuss. It is not specifically the discussion on APCs, versus APCs, but on how we can really achieve this inclusion and equity in the participation of the conversation.
SIAN HARRIS: Thank you. So just picking up on the comment about APC waivers, not being the answer-- I know this is not in the list of questions that we previously talked about. But I'm interested to know the views of the other panelists on that question and what are the advantages, disadvantages, what you think about APC waivers as an approach or versus other ways to fund open-access publishing.
SIAN HARRIS: Vrushali, would you like to-- do you have any comments on that?
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: Actually, APC, we are, as developing country researchers, we are looking for the APC papers the most. But the main problem is the funding for us. So just this I want to say.
SIAN HARRIS: I realize I'm putting you on the spot of here with these just a bit. Thomas, did you have any thoughts on this?
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: About the APC waiver?
SIAN HARRIS: Yeah.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: Yes, I think is helpful, specifically for a researcher from our context when they want you to publish because they are really alienated, and the system of evaluation want them to publish in a higher [INAUDIBLE],, but they cannot afford them. So when they have this kind of waiver, they can easily reach to-- because they can really publish everywhere across the world.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: But the thing is that for local journals in Africa-- and specifically, I can take the case of Cameroon-- they don't have a lot of funding to be sustainable. So if you ask them to waive the APC, they will ask you how we will sustain ourselves if we cannot take a [INAUDIBLE]. So this issue is different according to the context from which you are looking at the issue. So that is what I can say.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: So you need to be careful because, here in Cameroon, in Africa, I'm trying to convince-- I'm trying to work with editors or journal owners to try to explain them these kind of challenges there or the issue behind open access and APC.
SIAN HARRIS: So this actually leads onto a question that I had regarding the diamond model that Arianna, in particular, was talking about. Are there challenges with the model in terms of how journals are funded, how the publishing process is funded, if things are relying on government funding or institutional funding to ensure that there is no payment either side?
SIAN HARRIS: Can there be can there be challenges? Have you seen challenges in ensuring that journals continued to be sustained if an institutional policy changes or government priorities change in a country, for example? Arianna, do you want to go first? ARIANNA BECERRIL
GARCIA: Yes, well, I
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: would like to say that it is already being analyzed. And it is extremely less expensive to support journal publishing in hands of the universities, instead of thinking going open access through the APCs. For example, together, recently we've made a research study in Latin America. And we saw that with 10% of the total investment, it will [INAUDIBLE] spend expenditure regarding APCs.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: We can publish in diamond open access 10 times more articles. So it is a completely different and more sustainable way to communicate results because it is less expensive. And, also, we have to think on what information technologies can impact in this approach because, with current information technologies, we can really go towards the democratization of knowledge because it is-- we can implement different publishing workflows that are a more cost effective and that can automate very different steps on the publishing or editorial processes.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: So I'd just like to make the point that it is more sustainable and less expensive for institutions to run journal publishing in-house with the benefit that, well, the access is for everyone, not just for the ones that are capable to pay an APC.
SIAN HARRIS: Thank you. Vrushali, I think you had some things that you wanted to add this to this point, too.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: I will answer this question on my work reference in DOAJ. Yes, it's true that some journals struggle to make technical publishing standards and due to technical and financial issues. So that's why DOAJ is now working on diamond open access journal preservation. So they are currently working with the partners on the project which offer free, low-cost digital preservation. So these are the journals which are the most risk of disappearing from the web if instrumental support is not there.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: So that's why we are working for the project. And we are now doing some presentation, and I will share the link of presentation of DOAJ work on the diamond project and preservation of those journals.
SIAN HARRIS: Thank you. I'm aware that we have that we've got lots of questions coming in and not much time left of the webinar. So we'll kind of whizz through the questions that we have. But one of the things that came up when we were discussing this webinar was about language. And I'm very grateful that everybody is speaking in English today, but it's not everybody's first language.
SIAN HARRIS: And that is and can be a significant challenge. A lot of the planning around open access, a lot of the ways that it's done, sort of assume English. I wondered if, Thomas, if you'd like to say something about francophone journals and other language issues that you've encountered. THOMAS HERVE MBOA
NKOUDOU: Yes, thank you.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: In fact, I'm first speaking Cameroonian. But the thing is that English, or French, or Spanish, or Portuguese in Africa are all colonial language because we have our own native language. So what we are facing because we did our school-- me specifically, I did in my school in French. And a lot of researchers are in the same situation like me. And the barrier is that when you look at the ecology of knowledge available on the internet, a lot of resources are in English, for example.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: And these people, my colleagues or my other researchers here from the French part of Africa, cannot read or cannot use this kind of research. And even when they are producing research, their own work, in French, they are not read by English-speaking people and English speaking researchers. So that is a big challenges, contributing to the lack of visibility of the work we are doing here also in other language.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: And this is something very difficult. It's true that you have some apps now that you can use to translate, but is not the same since you are losing the sense of what you are seeing when you are scrolling and translating.
SIAN HARRIS: Thank you very much. Arianna, of course that is a massive issue in Latin America, too. Would you like to comment on that, too.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: Well, yes, in fact, we work mainly with the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries. And we face every day this, well, a challenging situation. But I would like to remind that we are living in an era of information and new technology, as well. I come from the computer science world, so that's why I'm always talking about this. But we have a lot of now-- well, and we are also developing [INAUDIBLE] technologies, not only for multilingualism, but also for accessibility of the content.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: And this is why, for example, requirements like the DOAJ requirement, as Vrushali reminded us about, for example, the XML or machine-readable content in open access is very, very important because we can really improve discoverability and quality of content apart from the one that is written originally in English. So this is why we have to look for this machine-readable formats, and it's very interesting to work in that direction.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA:
SIAN HARRIS: Are there some things that are more difficult to render into machine-readable formats, maybe different types of knowledge or different approaches to publishing? I know, Thomas, that you mentioned a bit about when we were chatting before this call about other types of knowledge from Africa. I wondered if you wanted to comment something about that at this stage?
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: Yes, so I think I was talking about traditional knowledge. Yes, I was talking about the traditional knowledge. And since, currently, we are losing a lot of our own knowledge, our traditional knowledge, our local knowledge, due to all this crossing over of culture and this kind of stuff. But open access can be a good way to work on the preservation of this local, traditional knowledge, through, for example, video, by recording old people still having this knowledge and keep this recording in a very long way using [INAUDIBLE] or all kind of archiving techniques existing actually.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: Yes, so that is what I was talking about. I was talking about the traditional knowledge in Africa.
SIAN HARRIS: Thank you. We have some really great questions that have come through from the chat. So I'm going to start with, how do you measure journal success when publishing in regional open access programs. Who would like to take that one?
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: Can I say-- see, regional open access, journals are there. But the problem here in India and Asian perspective that there should be recognition by any authority, either Web of Science, Scopus, DOAJ. So that is the problem. So journals are coming, and they are not following the standard. So then they are becoming invisible. People will not support, submit the papers to them. So there should be some help from [AUDIO OUT] journal online projects.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: So there is really a requirement for the publishers or someone help them, and then they should indexing criteria or follow some indexing guidelines. So that is the future-- so that's why they're not getting visible, local journals.
SIAN HARRIS: Does anybody have any-- would anyone have any other comments to that, about how you measure success? ARIANNA BECERRIL
GARCIA: Well, if I may,
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: my perspective on this is that if we assume that a journal should be available to communicate science, for me, the success of a journalist should be made sure in terms of how they are, journals, they are communicating, to whom, to the communities that are in the need of that knowledge.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: For example, some myths, let's say, or fake understanding or a misunderstanding about mainstream databases, is that a journal should be indexed by Scopus and should be in Web of Science, let's say. But sometimes they need to talk to different communities. For example, in my University in Mexico, Web of Science, for some disciplines, is not an amazing database. So for some disciplines and some communities, we need to find other the indexes and other ways of visibility because we need to communicate this research in terms of who's needing-- for example, who needs a vaccine, who needs to solve a public health problem.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: And perhaps sometimes, if it is behind a paywall or only indexed in proprietary databases, like Web of Science or Scopus, sometimes we are missing the population or the specific community of researchers that need that knowledge to be published. So we have to be very creative in trying to identify which are the communities that need to get access to the research that is being published by the journal in order to measure the success of the journal.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA:
SIAN HARRIS: Great, thank you. I'm trying to keep up with it. We've got lots of interesting questions here, so I'm apologizing for jumping around just a little bit. So we have a question here about transformative agreements. Arianna mentioned the transformative agreements are challenging to her in expanding open access content in major publishers. Are there any transitional agreements in the works with institutions in Latin America?
SIAN HARRIS: And then the second part is Vrushali said that open access journals have a poor reputation in Asia. Would this implied willingness to sign up to transformative deals? So, Vrushali, would you like to go first with that?
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: Yes. A lot of questions that are coming, and thank you for this, everything. So, yes, actually, we are all ready for [INAUDIBLE] because I'm also librarian. So we have some agreement with the publishers. We are spending some money, and government is negotiating the cost with them. So, yes, this will be successful as Asian perspective. All people are already following it.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: But the problem is here for the funding, given due to this COVID crisis. So publishers-- rising cost is there, and the libraries are having very less budget. So if there shall be some negotiation part of things from government sides and the library sides and the publisher sides. So then it will be really nice for Asia, even for Asian community.
SIAN HARRIS: What about in Latin America, Arianna, with the bit of the-- are there ways that this can fit with the models that you have, or is this a challenge? ARIANNA BECERRIL
GARCIA: Well, since we
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: don't have a great dependence to subscription-based journals, we don't have this concern with transformative agreements in Latin America right now because a great amount of our researchers are used to accessing content in regional databases, as [INAUDIBLE].. And I don't like to use the term local journals because they are not local journals in terms of we publish content from any researcher from around the world in Latin America.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: So they are not exactly local journals, but these journals that are being published in the region are very much accessed by researchers. But, yes, we have concerns on some of the global strategies. Let's say, Plan S-- I see that there's a question regarding Plan S, as well. Because they are spending our big flows of money to transformative agreements, at this moment, they are not looking or investing at diamond open access.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: So in this sense is when we see a major threat in this. But as far as I know, here in Latin America, we have different consortia that deal with subscriptions and APC in different countries. But as these governments and institutions are also sustained diamond open access, I think this is kind of balances right now. But this balance could not maybe continue in the future.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: This is our worry, for example.
SIAN HARRIS: Great. Thank you. So there was a question about India's policy on Plan S. Vrushali, do you want to quickly mention that?
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: Yes, right now, India is not thinking for going for Plan S because, recently, some researchers and open access advocates, they are thinking that government is thinking to write up one nation policy, one is some publications for one journal. I don't know how it's going to implement. But, right now, there is no plan from government on Plan S policy from India. Thank you.
SIAN HARRIS: Thank you. I'm jumping around the order of these just a little bit. But there is a question to Thomas and Vrushali-- we'll turn to Thomas first-- which is what strategies are being pursued to address infrastructure challenges? So, Thomas, if you would have anything to say about infrastructure challenges with open access.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: Yes the thing with infrastructure is mostly about skills because working from here, from Cameroon, the solution is not to bring a drill, [INAUDIBLE] and give it to the university without skilled people able to manage it or to fix some issue, in fact. So it's important to build capacity of local people to build themselves this kind of-- or to put online this kind of infrastructure.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: For example, using this space from the beginning to the end and setup themselves without any support is very important. The same, using OGS as to set up or to help local journals-- I remember, Arianna, to have journals, to go online is very important, to have a local skilled to help local journals to go online.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: Yes, that is what I can say, capacity building related to this infrastructure.
SIAN HARRIS: Vrushali, did you have something to add to that?
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: Yeah, I see, as infrastructures, you can pick as any point of your research. So I'm a librarian. So I'm taking infrastructure, also, for building repositories for the library means main challenges here. People are there. They are building repositories, but not making all open access content and open access. Still, policies are not there.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: So that is also a challenge. And, like so many inserts are from India, lots of universities, but if you see that very less repositories are there. So there is a need of trainings and some type of awareness programs. We are doing even-- I have my own repository of my college repository. But, still, there is a limitation to open it up and we have to see the policies and guidelines, so that is the main challenge we are facing in the infrastructure level.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE:
SIAN HARRIS: Unfortunately, we have more questions and more things we could talk about than we have time to answer. I believe all the speakers will be happy to talk after the webinar if you want to get in touch with anyone. Twitter handles were all displayed. But what I would just like to finish off by asking all of the panelists-- if you would just like to sum up in one minute the key thing that you would like people to take away from this webinar.
SIAN HARRIS: And maybe if you could tie in also-- there's a great question here about good ways to stay informed about challenges and progress in open access around the world. So if you could just say one thing you'd like people to take away and how they can keep informed about things going on in your parts of the world. Let's go in reverse order to the presentations at the start.
SIAN HARRIS: So, Vrushali, if you don't mind going first, that would be [INAUDIBLE].
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: OK, no problem. I just want to say that, yes, Asia, a lot of challenges are there. But they are still developing countries doing a lot of work. But there is a need of support from international organization to support for local journals to hold repositories for earnings and funding. And as I said, APCs are there, but not all developing countries coming under APC. Now, even, I can read some question here [INAUDIBLE]..
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: They are not working for all Asian countries. So that's why you just take some step forward and support for all Asia, so we can see a global open access. And that will be really increasing from Asia, as well. So just I want to say this.
SIAN HARRIS: Thank you. Thomas? THOMAS HERVE MBOA
NKOUDOU: Yes, what I
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: can say as a finite world is just we need a policy maker informed about the issue and powerful of open access in order to make things move. So, for me, that is the most important in order to advance open access in our continent. In terms of stay informed about what we are doing, we are all involved in international organization and events.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: But from Africa, I'm working with organizations, like AfricaArXiv, that also we are trying to do. And also, through my role with DOAJ, I think that is some place where we can stay informed.
SIAN HARRIS: Thank you very much. Arianna? ARIANNA BECERRIL
GARCIA: Well, yes.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: Well, I see a big problem in many discussions with all the regions, from the North or from the South. And I don't think that we cannot do things differently to think beyond the so-called mainstream databases, Web of Science, Scopus, and to focus on commercial publishing and the oligopoly of publishers. I just like to remind that it's possible to-- the same way we generate knowledge in the academic sector, we can communicate the knowledge.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: So it is more effective, less expensive. And if it's more sustainable, it can be free of APC, free of subscriptions, naturally, open access. And as [INAUDIBLE] very wisely said, that only 2% of the total process of the generation of knowledge circuit comes to the final phase of communicating the research results.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: So why don't we invest in this communication of science in the academic sector instead of keeping these, let's say, predatory scholarly communications system that is not sustainable? And it is not benefiting a region like the ones we are participating today. We don't have enough resources to keep or to be part of that commercial ecosystem. We can do things different.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: And we also can leverage new technologies on achieving this.
SIAN HARRIS: Great. Thank you very much to all our speakers. We have still some questions that we haven't had a chance to answer in this webinar. So we will try and answer them in a Scholarly Kitchen article after this webinar as well as a summary of this. I'll just hand over to Jeff for final moments. Thank you very much, everybody.
JEFF LANG: Absolutely, what a fantastic conversation. Thank you to Sian, and to Arianna, Vrushali, and Thomas. Thank you, also, to our sponsor today, Impact Science, a CACTUS solution. And thanks to all of you for attending and bringing your questions. There were some excellent ones here. Once again, please do take the time to respond to our webinar evaluation that you'll receive via email.
JEFF LANG: Your feedback really helps us to continue to improve this webinar program. Please also join us for upcoming SSP events. In May, the national meeting is coming up. Don't forget the early-brid deadline is coming up this weekend. And the next SSP webinar will be on June 22. That's titled The Article of the Future Revisited. We are now concluded for the day.
JEFF LANG: Thank you, all, for your attention, and have a great one.
Segment:0 .
JEFF LANG: Welcome to the third SSP webinar of 2021 and the first Scholarly Kitchen webinar of the year. You are joining us for a discussion titled Global Trends in Open Access. I'm Jeff Lang with the American Chemical Society, the chair of the SSP Webinars working group and we're pleased that you could join us today. In a moment, we'll get started and hear from our panelists. During the session your audio would be muted automatically in consideration of our presenters and your fellow webinar participants.
JEFF LANG: Please use the Q&A feature of Zoom to send your questions in. The moderator will review them and present them to the panelists. To help her, please specify to which presenter you'd like your question directed and also please send in those questions as you go. They'll be addressed throughout the session. Please remember the SSP code of conduct and be respectful to all speakers and attendees with your comments and your questions.
JEFF LANG: At the conclusion of today's session, you'll receive a webinar evaluation via email. We encourage you to provide feedback, so we can continually improve the SSP webnair program. You'll also receive a link via email to the recorded broadcast of the webinar. A moderator today is Sian Harris. She's a Scholarly Kitchen chef and the publications and engagement manager in INASP, an international development organization that supports the production, sharing and use of research and knowledge in more than 25 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
JEFF LANG: Before joining in INASP, Sian was editor of research information magazine for over a decade and a Writer and Editor and several science and technology publications at the Institute of Physics publishing and other publishers. She has a PhD in inorganic chemistry from the University of Bristol, UK, where she worked part time for the University library.
JEFF LANG: Now Shaun over to you.
SIAN HARRIS: You very much, Jeff for introducing us all. So I will not take up very much of everybody's time now because I'd really like us to get on to hearing from really great speakers but just to set a little bit of context, access to post research is a vital part of the research process. And it's vital that research insight can be used by policymakers and others. The opportunity for researchers to share their findings with others is also vital but all too often how this process works is decided by relatively small numbers of countries and people.
SIAN HARRIS: Important voices can be missed. An important learning about what people have found has already worked around the world is not reflected in policy decisions in practice. So in this Scholarly kitchen webinar, I am delighted that we have three great speakers from three continents, who are all experts in open access with different perspectives. So I'm really pleased that they're here today giving their time to share their insights into this topic.
SIAN HARRIS: Each speaker will first speak for five minutes or so. And then we'll have a time for-- we have some questions prepared and then we have some plenty of time to answer questions from the audience. As Jeff said please add your questions into the chat. As we go along at any time and we'll try and answer as many questions as possible. And we look forward to the session.
SIAN HARRIS: So first of all, we're going in alphabetical order. So first of all, I welcome Arianna to speak.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: Thank you very much. I'm just trying to show my screen quickly. Please confirm, if you can see my slides.
JEFF LANG: Yes. We see.
SIAN HARRIS: Yes. We can see. ARIANNA BECERRIL
GARCIA: Thank you.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: Well, thank you very much for the invitation to be here today. I'm very, very happy to share this panel. I'm sure I'm going to want to learn from my colleagues from other regions. I'm very pleased to be here. And very quickly I would like to share here, how we are performing open access in Latin America, which are the main challenges, ambition in our regional ecosystem and how well the scholarly communications fit in this landscape.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: First of all, for those who are not familiar with how the open access is being performed in the region, I would like to remind that in Latin America, we keep non-commercial [INAUDIBLE] structural let's say infrastructure where scientific publishing belongs to academic institutions, and not to large publishers. So the institutions who are in charge of generating knowledge are in charge also of communicating the knowledge.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: So this is from my perspective very a good way to a very sustainable way to maintain this ecosystem where open access is natural. So this means that every institution, mainly academic institutions but also governments are involved, support journals that are driven by their own faculty members as part of their academic work. And then that content is made available in open access.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: So this means that everyone gets benefit from everyone's investment. In this ecosystem, we don't have a fees neither for authors nor for readers. So it is as I said before, an organic way to even without the open access term was coined in 2002 or 2003. We made open access in Latin America as a natural way of communicating a research.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: So in this ecosystem, we have a kind of distributed investment by different stakeholders, as I said before national agencies, universities, thousands of universities, the academic community in fact. So this is why we argue that it is academi [INAUDIBLE].. And above these we have different, let's say in an upper layer we have different journals for the authors and repository networks at national level or at regional level, which could be the case of latindex, [INAUDIBLE],, [INAUDIBLE] that also contribute to this competitive ecosystem in terms of providing services on editorial, workflows, quality assurance, metrics, aggregation of contents, [INAUDIBLE] visibility, discoverability, among many other services.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: So we have in the region around 11,000 online journals around of about 2000 journals are quality certified journals. Certified by whom? Well by the entities are certified quality in the region, which are latindex, [INAUDIBLE],, [INAUDIBLE] mainly and different national agencies that are also assessing the quality of journals. We have 62 mandates, Open Access mandates, four out of which are national mandates from Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, and Peru.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: We have 10 national networks of institutional repositories, aggregated also by [INAUDIBLE] which in turn is aggregated by OpenAir and other networks. So our approach is more a science of public good, science as commons, and we differentiate our model from other models that are being well-implemented in or are implemented in fact in other regions, where science is seen as a commodity where University rankings will dictate the decision of universities and the future of publishing.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: For example, which publishing is mainly owned by commercial companies, which is more impact factor based and well, based on proprietary databases and where the open access is evolving through transformative agreements and strategies where APC plays a vital role. So in our case, we will look for these. Well, we have implemented these signs of a common approach which we believe it's a healthier approach and better approach to achieve equity in the diversity immediate open access, natural open access, not pay to read, no pay to publish and also they were less important control by the academic community.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: It's very important key issue and also that it has been sustained by the academic community. So this is sustainability in somehow is guaranteed. It seems that the research itself is sort of sustained by universities. The same way the communication of resources sustained by universities. So just to finish my participation, some big challenges that where we envision and we address with the organizations.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: In this case, I represent the [INAUDIBLE] is to find or to look for a congruence in research assessment and journal assessment with this regional ecosystem. It also is a big challenge in terms of sustainability to keep the investment that is called the current investment but also to have more funds and more investment in terms of a what that allow this ecosystem to be more competitive, more visual and also to implement more innovation in [INAUDIBLE] in the system.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: And we also see a big challenge in terms of coexistent work systems with commercial open access, since we see that journal publishing and this open access tradition is being threatened by commercial strategies. For example the APC based open access and other let's say revenues, the strategy is coming from the commercial world. Well, I just finished here and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: Thank you.
SIAN HARRIS: Thank you so much, Arianna. And I didn't properly introduce you that you're based in Mexico and you're speaking on behalf of [INAUDIBLE] in this context. And now moving around the globe a bit, I'm now delighted to introduce Thomas, who is speaking from Cameroon and is going to be speaking about the context of Open Access in Africa. And I know that one of Thomas' early slides shows quite a lot of different affiliations related to Open Access.
SIAN HARRIS: So I will let him explain. I will let him explain. Welcome Thomas. You might be on mute still.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: OK. Thank you very much. Let me share my screen. OK. Thank you very much. My name is Thomas and I'm very happy to be here. I will start by expressing my support to our colleague and University at the Library of University of Cape Town, where a wildfire devastated the library two days ago, I think.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: So my involvement in Open Access started with OCSDNet led by [INAUDIBLE]. The OCSDNet that funded the [INAUDIBLE] which [INAUDIBLE] for the [INAUDIBLE] francophone. So the idea for OCSDNet was to fund this organization, organization to promote Open Access and Open Science in French speaking African countries and [INAUDIBLE].
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: Then I joined also, I was part of organization like OpenCon and I joined also the DOAJ as early as the Ambassador of DOAJ for West and Central Africa. So in terms of open science, I'm also deeply involved [INAUDIBLE] Open Science Hardware. And in Africa, I am the co-founder of the Africa Open Science Hardware Summit.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: We had it three times now. And as a personal initiative, I'm just launching the Decolonial Library Dominique Mvogo. And I'm also the co-founder of [INAUDIBLE] a community biology lab based in Cameroon [INAUDIBLE].. So the importance of Open Access in Africa is so wide.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: So I just put some important point for the session is undoubtfully Open Access can help to increase visibility and accessibility to what we are doing for academic institutions. Through Open Access people can see how the process of scientific secretion of knowledge is transparent and we can also better assure quality control and evaluation of [INAUDIBLE] and career of research when on these processes are open.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: For policymaker, open access can help them to really contextualize relevant policies because, through open access, they can use free data coming from research done locally and talk from their perspective to create and to design the policy. And for society, is very important, open access, to have resources, open access, because through open access, they can access to this kind of research available or talking about them.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: So the book is not-- I'm not doing the resume of the book you are seeing on my right. It's just if you want to read further. And this book is the book we wrote three years ago through a publisher. And it's a very good book if you want to go through deeply in. You can go and you can read it. It's open access.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: So the situation of open access in Africa is things are moving. So from five years, six years to now, I can't really say that things are moving. Things are moving very well. It's true that we have all this big organization, international organization, working to improve the open access situation in Africa. But, also, we have local initiatives tyring to do their own action.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: From Brazil, you have, for example, AfricaArXiv, you have to Le Grenier des savoirs, and you have all these organizations trying to push the movement inside a continent. And, recently, I was really happy to see this source [INAUDIBLE] collaboration between Africa and Latin America. They agreed to collaborate around our operation. It's something very important for us, because we need to join our-- we need to join to make things move forward.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: And the important thing is that practice related to open access-- it's true that you have all this initiative, but we still have a lot to do in terms of practice, best practice of open-access related to archiving, good publishing practice. The challenges we are facing or the challenges open access is facing in Africa-- we can divide them because we have this traditional physical barrier, electricity access, we keep in mind.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: We have this digital barrier, internet connectivity, and the lack of infrastructure because we can count the number of universities having a reseracher repository for the number of journals existing online. So we are making a little effort, actually, to try to improve the situation. But we still have a lot to do.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: We also have these cognitive barriers because a lot of people are still lacking skill related to open access. Even sometimes librarian are not really trained to facilitate action related to open access in our continent. And people are still alienated by this impact factor university ranking. And the language, also, is playing a big role.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: It's a big challenge in our context. Also, the paucity of contextualized policies because a lot of policies, some countries, like South Africa, can have policy on [INAUDIBLE],, but it's still remaining a lot of things to do. So if you want to go further, I can also encourage you to read this chapter I wrote on epistemic alienation in African scholarly communication.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: So because open access can be sometimes considered as a Pharmakom, sometimes as a journal, sometimes as a person. So we need to see how-- and seeing how we can better manage it in order to benefit very well of the full potential of open access. So thank you very much. I'm done with my presentation.
SIAN HARRIS: That's great. Thank you very much, Thomas. And I think you see why I thought I'd let Thomas explain himself by how many things he was organized with in open access. So moving further around the globe, we now move to India. And our latest speaker, Vrushali, who is DOAJ Ambassador to India and has been involved in a number of bits of research in recent years about open access in Asia.
SIAN HARRIS: So she's now going to present what's going on with open access in Asia in her five minutes. Thank you, Vrushali.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: Can you see my screen? OK. So thank you. So I'll just start on my involvement in open access. So from 2016, I'm working as a DOAJ Ambassador of India and Pakistan. I'm working on data for the next journal application process, evolution process, and also working some promotional events on behalf of DOAJ and for open access community in India, so organizing open access awareness program, trainings, webinars for professionals and business community.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: And I'm also involved in Opencon Conference committee member, Open Access Week advisory committee member. And this year, I am working with Force11 Conference committee member, which will be held in the month of September. And, mainly, my research topic is-- PhD topic is open access Asia. So that's why the importance of open access is more important for me. And why it is important for this year because it will give the global visibility of Asian researchers.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: It will be helpful for more citations from other countries' researchers, easy and free access to knowledge, useful for more research idea and innovation, easy to publish and helpful in developing countries' libraries to build their collection. So on this perspective, open access is important for us. So the status of open access-- I have just draw [INAUDIBLE] the open access journals, open access repositories, open access mandate.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: So, so far, right now-- this is yesterday's data-- 3,636 journals are indexed on View Asia platform. And apart from View Asia platform, we have other in-apps online project is also there, other local journals also there. So a lot of local journals are also there. But there are eight to indexed. And repositories, open access repository status is 1,253 repositories are there on open door.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: Open access mandates, 82 policies are registered, and on MELIBIEA Database, 14 policies are the. So status of open access policies-- because this is also part of my PhD research, I have found out only Cypress, China, and UAE are having the national-level open access policy, and other Asian countries not having any adopted, any national-level open access policy for the country. And involvement and support from the International Organization in Asia-- I feel any [INAUDIBLE] a very supportive organization.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: They are working for promotion of open access in Asia. National-level archives and digital library projects are there. National-level archives-- our libraries are available from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Kazakhstan, and Kuwait. And local language databases are also available. Now, the biggest challenges for Asia is growth of predatory publications.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: Because we are publishing for the research and everything is more important to get academic credit, so everybody want to publish but, then, the quality of publication is very low, too little ICT infrastructure for the building repositories and all this thing, too little support from government-- government is not taking any initiative. Very few countries, our government is supporting for open access movement.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: Always, like Thomas said, in Africa, similar situation in Asia, internet connectivity issue is there. Language problem is there. Lack of training and misunderstanding about open access because, still, people are thinking that if they publish their article in open access, then, also, that is not valid. So this is still a problem here.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: And, really, there is need of support and training for developing open access repositories. So I did some SWOT analysis for Open Access Asia. The strength are many Asian countries are now awareness about open access open data policies and started advocating working on Open Access Asia. Now, slowly, people are getting to know what is in the terms of advocacy and what is useful. Weaknesses is no funding is available for such programs.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: And they still need volunteers to spread awareness for Open Access Asia. Communication gap between, still, decision makers and the policies, so not much focus on OA policies. So opportunity is that unity in diversity. So because now, in Asia, so many people are working individually every country, like Open Access India there is one movement, Open Access Pakistan-Bangladesh.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: So if they come together and if they do something together for Asia, so many good decision can be taken. And if get more funding from international support organization so we can conduct a lot of open access workshops, seminars, conference, so we can promote open access through these webinars and all these things. So thank you. This was my presentation.
SIAN HARRIS: Thank you very much, Vrushali. And thank you to all our speakers. We're starting to see some questions coming in. Before we answer them, well, I'll try and weave them into the questions that we have prepared. But, also, we will have a chunk of time at the end when we can answer those other things, too. So we've had very much a whirlwind tour of open access around the world in about 15 minutes, which was nowhere near long enough to really touch and go into everything but, hopefully, gave a flavor of some of the things.
SIAN HARRIS: And so first of all, I'd like to turn to Vrushali. So policies and approaches around open access vary around the world, as we heard in all these presentations. And how and why is there so much variation, and do you think this is a problem?
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: Yeah. See, actually the main key factor in open access policy mandates are the funder mandates and mandates from authorization. Funder mandates are important because, for author, they are giving funding and grants for research publications. And in many institutions, where OA policy is there, they are simply encouraging submission in open access. So from Asian point of view, it has been observed that authors are not following the institutional mandates regularly.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: And the very least-funded research is coming up from Asia. This is my observation because of my research is going on. I think for promoting adopting open access policies, institutional research department head and the librarians need to take initiative. Policies which are built for the institute need to register on [INAUDIBLE] because still policies are there, but nobody to register them.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: So it will be giving global visibility of research. And, as I said, national open access policy are initiated only from Cyprus, China, and UAE. But it's my opinion that every Asian country government should frame a national-level open access policy, which will be helpful for promotion of open access. Thank you.
SIAN HARRIS: And there were quite significant differences between the situations in Latin America and Africa, as well, in the presentations. Thomas, did you want to say something about the policy comments that you made in your presentation and say where there are gaps in the policies around open access? THOMAS HERVE MBOA
NKOUDOU: In fact,
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: the issue I'm raising with the policy is that policies present, or existing policy in Africa, much of the time bring from big organization or Western organization and then replicated in our context. It is really hard to see a local initiative coming from Africa to try to bring or to design a policy from our own perspective, from our own reality.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: Sometimes you will see that is big organizations supporting, putting money on this kind of stuff. But our own decision maker and policy makers, it seems like they are not aware of the importance of open access for us. So that is a big gap and a big issue we are facing in terms of designing policies related to open access.
SIAN HARRIS: And you also mentioned about the recent links between Africa and Latin America in policies and practices around open access. Arianna, would you want to say something about what-- Latin America has a very clear distinct consistency about open access that's absent in some of the parts of the world.
SIAN HARRIS: Do you want to say something about that and, also, about APCs and the whole funding of open access publishing? That's quite the question.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: That's a great question. Thank you, Sian. Well, what we see is this approach that is of so much benefit, especially for the Global South countries. So, for example, we are working now with Angola to implement this diamond open access approach with different universities in order to strengthen journal publishing in there and to prevent them to adopt these APC strategies and connect with the APC question because I don't want I don't want to give you the impression that it is a war between ABC or non-APC or commercial, non-commercial.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: It's beyond that. We believe that it's more sustainable to have publishing and control of the academic. It's also more cost effective. We can employ better our resources, our money that is already in the academic circuit. It could be more efficiently invested when there's an infrastructure for publishing and for sharing knowledge in open access, but in hands of the academic sector instead of working with the commercial publishers because we have learned from the past that there's this inflation or inflationary practices that the subscription approach cost 20 years ago.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: And, now, we are seeing exactly the same phenomenon with the APC. We have to remember that recently Nature started to charge an APC there is more than $11,000. It is completely out of place from countries like Mexico or anyone from Latin America, perhaps from the rest of the developing countries. And it is not about giving or providing special fees or a waiver fee for us because this is a patronizing strategy.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: We are looking for a systematic participation in science, a systematic global conversation. And this is what we have to discuss. It is not specifically the discussion on APCs, versus APCs, but on how we can really achieve this inclusion and equity in the participation of the conversation.
SIAN HARRIS: Thank you. So just picking up on the comment about APC waivers, not being the answer-- I know this is not in the list of questions that we previously talked about. But I'm interested to know the views of the other panelists on that question and what are the advantages, disadvantages, what you think about APC waivers as an approach or versus other ways to fund open-access publishing.
SIAN HARRIS: Vrushali, would you like to-- do you have any comments on that?
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: Actually, APC, we are, as developing country researchers, we are looking for the APC papers the most. But the main problem is the funding for us. So just this I want to say.
SIAN HARRIS: I realize I'm putting you on the spot of here with these just a bit. Thomas, did you have any thoughts on this?
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: About the APC waiver?
SIAN HARRIS: Yeah.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: Yes, I think is helpful, specifically for a researcher from our context when they want you to publish because they are really alienated, and the system of evaluation want them to publish in a higher [INAUDIBLE],, but they cannot afford them. So when they have this kind of waiver, they can easily reach to-- because they can really publish everywhere across the world.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: But the thing is that for local journals in Africa-- and specifically, I can take the case of Cameroon-- they don't have a lot of funding to be sustainable. So if you ask them to waive the APC, they will ask you how we will sustain ourselves if we cannot take a [INAUDIBLE]. So this issue is different according to the context from which you are looking at the issue. So that is what I can say.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: So you need to be careful because, here in Cameroon, in Africa, I'm trying to convince-- I'm trying to work with editors or journal owners to try to explain them these kind of challenges there or the issue behind open access and APC.
SIAN HARRIS: So this actually leads onto a question that I had regarding the diamond model that Arianna, in particular, was talking about. Are there challenges with the model in terms of how journals are funded, how the publishing process is funded, if things are relying on government funding or institutional funding to ensure that there is no payment either side?
SIAN HARRIS: Can there be can there be challenges? Have you seen challenges in ensuring that journals continued to be sustained if an institutional policy changes or government priorities change in a country, for example? Arianna, do you want to go first? ARIANNA BECERRIL
GARCIA: Yes, well, I
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: would like to say that it is already being analyzed. And it is extremely less expensive to support journal publishing in hands of the universities, instead of thinking going open access through the APCs. For example, together, recently we've made a research study in Latin America. And we saw that with 10% of the total investment, it will [INAUDIBLE] spend expenditure regarding APCs.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: We can publish in diamond open access 10 times more articles. So it is a completely different and more sustainable way to communicate results because it is less expensive. And, also, we have to think on what information technologies can impact in this approach because, with current information technologies, we can really go towards the democratization of knowledge because it is-- we can implement different publishing workflows that are a more cost effective and that can automate very different steps on the publishing or editorial processes.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: So I'd just like to make the point that it is more sustainable and less expensive for institutions to run journal publishing in-house with the benefit that, well, the access is for everyone, not just for the ones that are capable to pay an APC.
SIAN HARRIS: Thank you. Vrushali, I think you had some things that you wanted to add this to this point, too.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: I will answer this question on my work reference in DOAJ. Yes, it's true that some journals struggle to make technical publishing standards and due to technical and financial issues. So that's why DOAJ is now working on diamond open access journal preservation. So they are currently working with the partners on the project which offer free, low-cost digital preservation. So these are the journals which are the most risk of disappearing from the web if instrumental support is not there.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: So that's why we are working for the project. And we are now doing some presentation, and I will share the link of presentation of DOAJ work on the diamond project and preservation of those journals.
SIAN HARRIS: Thank you. I'm aware that we have that we've got lots of questions coming in and not much time left of the webinar. So we'll kind of whizz through the questions that we have. But one of the things that came up when we were discussing this webinar was about language. And I'm very grateful that everybody is speaking in English today, but it's not everybody's first language.
SIAN HARRIS: And that is and can be a significant challenge. A lot of the planning around open access, a lot of the ways that it's done, sort of assume English. I wondered if, Thomas, if you'd like to say something about francophone journals and other language issues that you've encountered. THOMAS HERVE MBOA
NKOUDOU: Yes, thank you.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: In fact, I'm first speaking Cameroonian. But the thing is that English, or French, or Spanish, or Portuguese in Africa are all colonial language because we have our own native language. So what we are facing because we did our school-- me specifically, I did in my school in French. And a lot of researchers are in the same situation like me. And the barrier is that when you look at the ecology of knowledge available on the internet, a lot of resources are in English, for example.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: And these people, my colleagues or my other researchers here from the French part of Africa, cannot read or cannot use this kind of research. And even when they are producing research, their own work, in French, they are not read by English-speaking people and English speaking researchers. So that is a big challenges, contributing to the lack of visibility of the work we are doing here also in other language.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: And this is something very difficult. It's true that you have some apps now that you can use to translate, but is not the same since you are losing the sense of what you are seeing when you are scrolling and translating.
SIAN HARRIS: Thank you very much. Arianna, of course that is a massive issue in Latin America, too. Would you like to comment on that, too.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: Well, yes, in fact, we work mainly with the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries. And we face every day this, well, a challenging situation. But I would like to remind that we are living in an era of information and new technology, as well. I come from the computer science world, so that's why I'm always talking about this. But we have a lot of now-- well, and we are also developing [INAUDIBLE] technologies, not only for multilingualism, but also for accessibility of the content.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: And this is why, for example, requirements like the DOAJ requirement, as Vrushali reminded us about, for example, the XML or machine-readable content in open access is very, very important because we can really improve discoverability and quality of content apart from the one that is written originally in English. So this is why we have to look for this machine-readable formats, and it's very interesting to work in that direction.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA:
SIAN HARRIS: Are there some things that are more difficult to render into machine-readable formats, maybe different types of knowledge or different approaches to publishing? I know, Thomas, that you mentioned a bit about when we were chatting before this call about other types of knowledge from Africa. I wondered if you wanted to comment something about that at this stage?
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: Yes, so I think I was talking about traditional knowledge. Yes, I was talking about the traditional knowledge. And since, currently, we are losing a lot of our own knowledge, our traditional knowledge, our local knowledge, due to all this crossing over of culture and this kind of stuff. But open access can be a good way to work on the preservation of this local, traditional knowledge, through, for example, video, by recording old people still having this knowledge and keep this recording in a very long way using [INAUDIBLE] or all kind of archiving techniques existing actually.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: Yes, so that is what I was talking about. I was talking about the traditional knowledge in Africa.
SIAN HARRIS: Thank you. We have some really great questions that have come through from the chat. So I'm going to start with, how do you measure journal success when publishing in regional open access programs. Who would like to take that one?
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: Can I say-- see, regional open access, journals are there. But the problem here in India and Asian perspective that there should be recognition by any authority, either Web of Science, Scopus, DOAJ. So that is the problem. So journals are coming, and they are not following the standard. So then they are becoming invisible. People will not support, submit the papers to them. So there should be some help from [AUDIO OUT] journal online projects.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: So there is really a requirement for the publishers or someone help them, and then they should indexing criteria or follow some indexing guidelines. So that is the future-- so that's why they're not getting visible, local journals.
SIAN HARRIS: Does anybody have any-- would anyone have any other comments to that, about how you measure success? ARIANNA BECERRIL
GARCIA: Well, if I may,
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: my perspective on this is that if we assume that a journal should be available to communicate science, for me, the success of a journalist should be made sure in terms of how they are, journals, they are communicating, to whom, to the communities that are in the need of that knowledge.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: For example, some myths, let's say, or fake understanding or a misunderstanding about mainstream databases, is that a journal should be indexed by Scopus and should be in Web of Science, let's say. But sometimes they need to talk to different communities. For example, in my University in Mexico, Web of Science, for some disciplines, is not an amazing database. So for some disciplines and some communities, we need to find other the indexes and other ways of visibility because we need to communicate this research in terms of who's needing-- for example, who needs a vaccine, who needs to solve a public health problem.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: And perhaps sometimes, if it is behind a paywall or only indexed in proprietary databases, like Web of Science or Scopus, sometimes we are missing the population or the specific community of researchers that need that knowledge to be published. So we have to be very creative in trying to identify which are the communities that need to get access to the research that is being published by the journal in order to measure the success of the journal.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA:
SIAN HARRIS: Great, thank you. I'm trying to keep up with it. We've got lots of interesting questions here, so I'm apologizing for jumping around just a little bit. So we have a question here about transformative agreements. Arianna mentioned the transformative agreements are challenging to her in expanding open access content in major publishers. Are there any transitional agreements in the works with institutions in Latin America?
SIAN HARRIS: And then the second part is Vrushali said that open access journals have a poor reputation in Asia. Would this implied willingness to sign up to transformative deals? So, Vrushali, would you like to go first with that?
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: Yes. A lot of questions that are coming, and thank you for this, everything. So, yes, actually, we are all ready for [INAUDIBLE] because I'm also librarian. So we have some agreement with the publishers. We are spending some money, and government is negotiating the cost with them. So, yes, this will be successful as Asian perspective. All people are already following it.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: But the problem is here for the funding, given due to this COVID crisis. So publishers-- rising cost is there, and the libraries are having very less budget. So if there shall be some negotiation part of things from government sides and the library sides and the publisher sides. So then it will be really nice for Asia, even for Asian community.
SIAN HARRIS: What about in Latin America, Arianna, with the bit of the-- are there ways that this can fit with the models that you have, or is this a challenge? ARIANNA BECERRIL
GARCIA: Well, since we
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: don't have a great dependence to subscription-based journals, we don't have this concern with transformative agreements in Latin America right now because a great amount of our researchers are used to accessing content in regional databases, as [INAUDIBLE].. And I don't like to use the term local journals because they are not local journals in terms of we publish content from any researcher from around the world in Latin America.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: So they are not exactly local journals, but these journals that are being published in the region are very much accessed by researchers. But, yes, we have concerns on some of the global strategies. Let's say, Plan S-- I see that there's a question regarding Plan S, as well. Because they are spending our big flows of money to transformative agreements, at this moment, they are not looking or investing at diamond open access.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: So in this sense is when we see a major threat in this. But as far as I know, here in Latin America, we have different consortia that deal with subscriptions and APC in different countries. But as these governments and institutions are also sustained diamond open access, I think this is kind of balances right now. But this balance could not maybe continue in the future.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: This is our worry, for example.
SIAN HARRIS: Great. Thank you. So there was a question about India's policy on Plan S. Vrushali, do you want to quickly mention that?
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: Yes, right now, India is not thinking for going for Plan S because, recently, some researchers and open access advocates, they are thinking that government is thinking to write up one nation policy, one is some publications for one journal. I don't know how it's going to implement. But, right now, there is no plan from government on Plan S policy from India. Thank you.
SIAN HARRIS: Thank you. I'm jumping around the order of these just a little bit. But there is a question to Thomas and Vrushali-- we'll turn to Thomas first-- which is what strategies are being pursued to address infrastructure challenges? So, Thomas, if you would have anything to say about infrastructure challenges with open access.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: Yes the thing with infrastructure is mostly about skills because working from here, from Cameroon, the solution is not to bring a drill, [INAUDIBLE] and give it to the university without skilled people able to manage it or to fix some issue, in fact. So it's important to build capacity of local people to build themselves this kind of-- or to put online this kind of infrastructure.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: For example, using this space from the beginning to the end and setup themselves without any support is very important. The same, using OGS as to set up or to help local journals-- I remember, Arianna, to have journals, to go online is very important, to have a local skilled to help local journals to go online.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: Yes, that is what I can say, capacity building related to this infrastructure.
SIAN HARRIS: Vrushali, did you have something to add to that?
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: Yeah, I see, as infrastructures, you can pick as any point of your research. So I'm a librarian. So I'm taking infrastructure, also, for building repositories for the library means main challenges here. People are there. They are building repositories, but not making all open access content and open access. Still, policies are not there.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: So that is also a challenge. And, like so many inserts are from India, lots of universities, but if you see that very less repositories are there. So there is a need of trainings and some type of awareness programs. We are doing even-- I have my own repository of my college repository. But, still, there is a limitation to open it up and we have to see the policies and guidelines, so that is the main challenge we are facing in the infrastructure level.
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE:
SIAN HARRIS: Unfortunately, we have more questions and more things we could talk about than we have time to answer. I believe all the speakers will be happy to talk after the webinar if you want to get in touch with anyone. Twitter handles were all displayed. But what I would just like to finish off by asking all of the panelists-- if you would just like to sum up in one minute the key thing that you would like people to take away from this webinar.
SIAN HARRIS: And maybe if you could tie in also-- there's a great question here about good ways to stay informed about challenges and progress in open access around the world. So if you could just say one thing you'd like people to take away and how they can keep informed about things going on in your parts of the world. Let's go in reverse order to the presentations at the start.
SIAN HARRIS: So, Vrushali, if you don't mind going first, that would be [INAUDIBLE].
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: OK, no problem. I just want to say that, yes, Asia, a lot of challenges are there. But they are still developing countries doing a lot of work. But there is a need of support from international organization to support for local journals to hold repositories for earnings and funding. And as I said, APCs are there, but not all developing countries coming under APC. Now, even, I can read some question here [INAUDIBLE]..
VRUSHALI DANDAWATE: They are not working for all Asian countries. So that's why you just take some step forward and support for all Asia, so we can see a global open access. And that will be really increasing from Asia, as well. So just I want to say this.
SIAN HARRIS: Thank you. Thomas? THOMAS HERVE MBOA
NKOUDOU: Yes, what I
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: can say as a finite world is just we need a policy maker informed about the issue and powerful of open access in order to make things move. So, for me, that is the most important in order to advance open access in our continent. In terms of stay informed about what we are doing, we are all involved in international organization and events.
THOMAS HERVE MBOA NKOUDOU: But from Africa, I'm working with organizations, like AfricaArXiv, that also we are trying to do. And also, through my role with DOAJ, I think that is some place where we can stay informed.
SIAN HARRIS: Thank you very much. Arianna? ARIANNA BECERRIL
GARCIA: Well, yes.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: Well, I see a big problem in many discussions with all the regions, from the North or from the South. And I don't think that we cannot do things differently to think beyond the so-called mainstream databases, Web of Science, Scopus, and to focus on commercial publishing and the oligopoly of publishers. I just like to remind that it's possible to-- the same way we generate knowledge in the academic sector, we can communicate the knowledge.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: So it is more effective, less expensive. And if it's more sustainable, it can be free of APC, free of subscriptions, naturally, open access. And as [INAUDIBLE] very wisely said, that only 2% of the total process of the generation of knowledge circuit comes to the final phase of communicating the research results.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: So why don't we invest in this communication of science in the academic sector instead of keeping these, let's say, predatory scholarly communications system that is not sustainable? And it is not benefiting a region like the ones we are participating today. We don't have enough resources to keep or to be part of that commercial ecosystem. We can do things different.
ARIANNA BECERRIL GARCIA: And we also can leverage new technologies on achieving this.
SIAN HARRIS: Great. Thank you very much to all our speakers. We have still some questions that we haven't had a chance to answer in this webinar. So we will try and answer them in a Scholarly Kitchen article after this webinar as well as a summary of this. I'll just hand over to Jeff for final moments. Thank you very much, everybody.
JEFF LANG: Absolutely, what a fantastic conversation. Thank you to Sian, and to Arianna, Vrushali, and Thomas. Thank you, also, to our sponsor today, Impact Science, a CACTUS solution. And thanks to all of you for attending and bringing your questions. There were some excellent ones here. Once again, please do take the time to respond to our webinar evaluation that you'll receive via email.
JEFF LANG: Your feedback really helps us to continue to improve this webinar program. Please also join us for upcoming SSP events. In May, the national meeting is coming up. Don't forget the early-brid deadline is coming up this weekend. And the next SSP webinar will be on June 22. That's titled The Article of the Future Revisited. We are now concluded for the day.
JEFF LANG: Thank you, all, for your attention, and have a great one.
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