Welcome to the December issue of ScieCom info. Nordic-Baltic Forum for Scientific Communication

Abstract

We continue to follow the promising Open Access developments in Denmark. In our last issue we published the news that the Danish Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation was prepared to introduce a policy of Open Access to publicly funded research, http://www.sciecom.org/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/announcement/view/16

• Read about the latest developments in Líse Mikkelsen’s report “Recommendations for implementation of Open Access in Denmark – extraction of comments from the hearing process” The subjects she has chosen to address are presented objectively, but are selected as being issues she believes to be the most interesting and crucial to the process of deciding how to implement Open Access in Denmark. The hearings have resulted in a wide range of views from very positive to a few very negative.
http://www.sciecom.org/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4759/4320

• Lars Björnshauge’s provocative “Call for action!” was originally addressed to the annual Swedish “Meeting Place Open Access” conference, recently held in Lund. Libraries have made so much progress in their work to support Open Access. Institutional repositories are now recognized as adding value to their institutions, their researchers, and to society, and the number of OA mandates is growing. BUT there is still much more to do. While working with Green OA, librarians simultaneously conserve and support the very system they want to change. It is time to stop paying only lip service to Gold OA. We can do much better. Why not try the 1% idea?
http://www.sciecom.org/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4768/4331

• In another provocative article, Jan Erik Frantsvåg asks researchers: “What is it about the public?” Frantsvåg has noticed, that time and again, researchers mention the public as – at best – an audience that is uninteresting for the scientist. Sometimes one is even left with an impression that the public should have been actively barred from access to what scientists write. What characterises this “public”?
http://www.sciecom.org/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4765/4326

• One might suspect, that Jan Erik heard some of these arguments when his university launched its new OA-policy – a mandate - this year: “The University of Tromsø adopts an institutional Open Access policy.” The general rule is that students and researchers at the university shall deposit their theses and articles in Munin, the IR of the university
http://www.sciecom.org/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4764/4325

• The concept of quality is fundamental and closely linked to all kinds of research assessments. Claus Vesterager Pedersen presents: “The Danish Bibliometric Research Indicator – BFI. Research publications, research assessment, university funding.” In 2009 a new model for distributing basic funding for Danish universities was introduced to be gradual implemented 2010-2012. The universities’ research publications will be the second most important parameter for the distribution of new basic funding for universities in Denmark, based on outcome (“weights and measures”).
http://www.sciecom.org/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4757/4318

• In “Open Access availability of articles by Nordic authors”, Turid Hedlund describes the OA phenomenon from an article based perspective. Data have been collected within a project led by Professor Bo-Christer Björk at Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki. Internet was trawled for Open Access copies of peer-reviewed articles with at least one author from a Nordic country. A quantitative method was used, and was based on an articles selected from the Scopus database. The results are certainly interesting for Nordic authors.
http://www.sciecom.org/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4760/4321

• A group of authors from Helsinki University Library have focused on the web visibility and OA availability of publications from the University of Helsinki: “The current state of Open Access to research articles from the University of Helsinki.” They tried to locate full text versions of article references published in 2007 and 2008, exported from the University of Helsinki publication database JULKI. Apart from demonstrating the percentage of OA availability, they also compared the results from Google or Google Scholar with the results in Open DOAR or Scientific Commons, and got very different success rates.
http://www.sciecom.org/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4761/4322

• Áslaug Agnarsdóttir presents the experiences of “The University of Iceland‘s digital repository, Skemman - open access or closed?” The University of Iceland joined Skemman in 2008, but in spite of numerous presentations there was a marked lack of submissions. Thus it was good news for the librarians at the National and University Library (NULI) when the organizers of The Social Science Research Institute‘s annual conference wanted to enter their conference proceedings into Skemman. The University‘s five Schools show very different submission rates. The School of Education has the highest, and the School of Engineering and Natural Sciences has the lowest rate.
http://www.sciecom.org/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4762/4323

• In “PersID: building a persistent identifier infrastructure”. Adrian Price describes how six European countries have been engaged in building a persistent identifier infrastructure for the scientific community: PersID. The project is led by the SURF foundation in the Netherlands. PersID will enable institutions providing search and access services for any type of information resources to name, reference and locate these with persistent identification. A persistent identifier is a necessary step to ensuring a “shelf mark” for distributed internet resources, both for long-term preservation, and to establish stable relations between them.
http://www.sciecom.org/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4756/4317

• Mikael Karstensen Elbæk reports from the OpenAIRE conference: “Knowledge grows when shared – The Launch of OpenAIRE, 2nd December in Ghent.” This was the official launch of OpenAIRE, the European infrastructure for Open Access. The aim of this project is to facilitate the success of the Open Access Pilot in FP7 as presented by Jan Hagerlid earlier in our March issue http://www.sciecom.org/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/view/3551/3125 Among the highlights was Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission, responsible for the Digital Agenda. She talked about the challenges of Open Access, and, incidentally, had a message for those researchers described by Jan Erik Frantsvåg in his article “What is it about the public?” Neelie Kroes:”But above all, open access to scientific information is important because it helps citizens to their right to have access to knowledge produced using public funds. It is the exercise of all those holding a public office to protect this right and to take all the measures required to maximise the return on public funding that open access can deliver.”
http://www.sciecom.org/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4758/4319

• From Tromsö in Norway Jan Erik Frantsvåg sums up “The 5th Annual Munin Conference on Scientific Publishing 2010 - ”Open Access – The Competitive Advantage” This year the theme of the conference was totally related to Open Access. Participants from all over Norway had registered, and the organizers were pleased to see that the number of scientists in the audience was higher than it had ever been before. This year’s conference was held in English to enable keynote speakers to take part in discussions, and to attract participants from abroad.
http://www.sciecom.org/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4763/4324

• The international workshop "Open Archives and their Significance in the Communication of Science" was held in Uppsala, November 16 – 17 2010. Urban Ericsson, Jenny Ericsson, and Linda Åström Wennbom report from the workshop, organized by the library at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, and sponsored by the openaccess.se development program at the Swedish National Library. Usage statistics and quality were among the subjects discussed. Several speakers stressed the need for more content in the open archives and called for more OA mandates from universities and funders.
http://www.sciecom.org/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4767/4330

• Mikael Graffner. Kristoffer Holmqvist report from “MOA- Meeting place Open Access 2010“. The Swedish conference “Mötesplats Open access” held its fourth meeting on November 24-25 at Lund University. This year around 130 participants gathered for the one and half day-conference focusing on the development of Open access at Swedish higher education institutions. Open Access for research data, Open Educational Resources and Open Access Policies were some of the topics discussed at the conference.
http://www.sciecom.org/ojs/index.php/sciecominfo/article/viewFile/4766/4327

As always, your comments and ideas are very welcome

Happy Holidays! Ingegerd Rabow Editor-in-chief